Entering Millennium Park on Saturday, Sept. 5, I was guided to the meeting place for the Stripper Strike Chicago demonstration by a trail of neon green vests which, along with sticker-laden bike helmets, I’ve come to recognize as the unofficial uniform of protest marshals. We sat gathered at the west edge of the field at Pritzker Pavilion, until two lingerie-clad Black women stood up together, and began to gather everyone’s attention.
Their names are DeCarri Robinson and Lynzo, aka Juniper Perle and Lynzo the Heartthrob, respectively. Robinson is an organizer for the Chicago chapter of Haymarket Pole Collective (HMP) and Lynzo is the creator of the Black and Brown Sex Workers’ Mutual Aid Fund.
Robinson held up a megaphone and began introducing herself and introducing the ideology of Stripper Strike Chicago. She spun a yarn of her struggles since the pandemic began.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the country to shut down in March, non-essential workers were forced to work from home or lost their jobs altogether. The latter group became the filers of a historic 55 million applications for unemployment insurance.
While filing for unemployment is a universally frustrating process, those benefits can be the difference between survival and drowning in debt for millions of Americans. But for strippers, filing for unemployment isn’t just frustrating — in many cases, it’s straight-up impossible.
That impossibility comes from the fact that strippers are often employed as independent contractors, or freelancers, and don’t receive the W-2 forms sent to full-time workers. Instead, they should receive an IRS Form 1099, for freelance workers, from the clubs where they work, a practice that Robinson said most don’t adhere to. This, along with other workplace abuses, pushed her past the breaking point.
“Our income is taxed and we have to pay the house in order to work, but we don’t benefit from it,” Robinson said. “All we got when things shut down was a text message saying that we were out of a job.”
Paying “house” describes the transaction between dancers and clubs, where dancers purchase a spot on stage for a flat fee or percentage determined by the club. Whereas dancer’s cash tips are not taxed by the government directly, they are taxed by the clubs but receive no return benefits from that tax.
Robinson, age 26, struggled to support herself and even lost her home while trying to secure Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
But the struggle of sex workers is also intersectional. As Black women sex workers, Robinson and Lynzo are both more likely to face workplace violence and discriminatory practices. Black women are also disproportionately likely to be arrested for sex work. According to FBI arrest statistics, Black women made up about 39% of arrests for prostitution in 2018.
“We’re fighting for the human rights that you are granted at every place you work,” Robinson said. “Why is it okay for me to be assaulted?”
Our income is taxed and we have to pay the house in order to work, but we don’t benefit from it,” Robinson said. “All we got when things shut down was a text message saying that we were out of a job.”
The first Stripper Strike was organized by HMP, a group of autonomous sex workers who, according to their website: “share a common vision of our labor liberated from the binds of racism, patriarchy, ableism, and other oppressive structures.”
HMP was formed by a stripper and artist-turned-organizer named Cat Hollis in 2019. In June 2020, the PDX Stripper Strike began with demonstrations across Portland, Ore. Sept. 5 was the inaugural demonstration of the Chicago chapter of HMP — Stripper Strike Chicago — with a march and rally from Millennium Park to Grant Park.
As the march led out of Millennium Park and down Madison, heads began to turn away from “the Bean” and toward the demonstrators chanting “Black Strippers Matter.”
As the procession approached Madison and Wabash, we encountered the police for the first time. They began blocking traffic and the flow of the march, forcing demonstrators off of the street and onto the sidewalk using their bikes. The tactic didn’t work for too long, as the march, maybe one hundred deep, began to spill onto State Street, absorbing the lanes of south-bound traffic. The march moved quickly but carried a heavy impact due to the chant leaders stationed at the front and back of the line with megaphones.
The cries from police cruisers for protesters to vacate the roads fell on deaf ears as the march moved onto Ida B. Wells Drive toward Columbus Drive. As we arrived at the stage at Grant Park for the rally, passersby stopped and looked, and leaned over railings to catch the mic check.
Robinson began by announcing the program, then she kicked off the rally with her speech.
“It’s clear that the people support sex work,” she said. “We just need the laws to reflect that.” And she made it clear that “the laws” is not an abstract concept in this context. It is specific.
The repeal of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), and the blockage of the now-pending Earn It Act are all part of the agenda. These acts, according to 25-year-old Lynzo the Heartthrob, were created only under the guise of stopping sex trafficking.
“Over 100,000 investigations were halted by the shutdown of websites under the FOSTA and SESTA acts,” she said. “In practice [these acts] have only made working more difficult for sex workers who used those sites.”
Lynzo is a burlesque performer and the creator of the Black and Brown Sex Workers Mutual Aide Fund for the Chicagoland Area. The fund has received more than $45,000 in GoFundMe donations to date that has gone to support sex workers in need directly. I was able to speak to her Monday about why she took up arms in the fight to decriminalize sex work.
“I realized once the stay-at-home order went into effect that there is no safety net or health protections for sex workers,” said Lynzo. “The sex work organizations I know of in Chicago are primarily white-led, and I hadn’t seen anything from them in terms of funding Black LGBTQ sex workers.”
I want people to understand that sex work is work,” Lynzo said. “People who are entrepreneurs, people who are freelance artists, people who believe in defunding the police and abolishing police, should not allow the police or the government to have a say in what two consenting adults want to do.”
Lynzo was inspired by a New York-based mutual aide fund that she came across to start one herself. She reached out to organizations around the city who support sex work, and fight for LGBTQ rights to signal boost and to direct people to the GoFundMe for aide.
Along with Robinson, Lynzo even reached out to alderpeople for support and signal boosting. “No aldermen have donated,” she said. “Honestly, donors have mostly been sex workers,” she said.
Robinson said she reached out to alderpeople to help her in demanding that strip clubs act in compliance with state and federal law surrounding daily conduct and pandemic-specific ordinances.
“These clubs aren’t enforcing mask rules, they don’t do any sexual assault prevention training [and] they don’t have the proper signage stating their compliance with state and federal law,” she said. “Some aldermen have straight up told me to wait until after November.”
The Admiral Theatre is being sued by a dancer over workers’ rights, said Robinson. She also named Alderpeople Rossana Rodriguez of the 33rd ward, Daniel LaSpata of the 1st Ward, Brian Hopkins of the 2nd ward, and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa of the 35th ward (home of Admiral Theatre), as the only alderpeople who replied at all to her call for support in calling for Chicago clubs to be held accountable. However, the replies she received turned up empty in terms of actual support.
She received no responses from other Alderpeople, including those whose jurisdictions cover the other Chicago strip clubs; Byron Sichgo-Lopez of the 25th ward (home of Pink Monkey), and Walter Burnett of the 27th ward (home of VIP’s Gentlemen’s Club).
“They call us independent contractors,” Robinson said, “But that can’t be true when they determine our hours, and whether we perform or not. All we’re asking for is for our rights to be protected and for clubs to be held accountable.”
Robinson explained that, unsurprisingly, Black women are particularly disenfranchised in clubs. “I’ve seen bouncers steal money from Black women and I’ve seen Black women be told to leave the floor because a customer says they don’t want any Black girls in their section,” she said, listing countless injustices she’s faced, and witnessed. “And I’m a thin, light-skinned, cis woman. Imagine being a darker-skinned Black woman, a heavier Black woman [or] God forbid you’re a trans Black woman.”
Since the criminalization of sex work disproportionately harms Black women, the fight to decriminalize sex work is thus a Black issue.
The rally at Grant Park continued with performances from Black dancers and speeches from ally organizations, including Brave Space Alliance, and GoodKids MadCity.
“I want people to understand that sex work is work,” Lynzo said. “People who are entrepreneurs, people who are freelance artists, people who believe in defunding the police and abolishing police, should not allow the police or the government to have a say in what two consenting adults want to do.”
Once the rally is over, the strike continues. Robinson and supporters of the Haymarket Pole Collective will not work at any clubs in Chicagoland until they get into compliance. She asserted that this fight is everyone’s fight.
“All strippers, Black, white, Brown, Indigenous; do not perform until there is reform. If we are not protected, then you are not protected,” she said. “I need you to remove those ‘Black Lives Matter’ posts from your Instagram If you do not believe in the decriminalization of sex work because that is a racial injustice within itself.”
