Help Dolores French Heal & Shine Covid Relief

Artist, activist & brilliant memoirist Dolores French is a foremother and pioneer of the sex worker rights movement and long time AIDS educator and activist. She has also been a coalition builder, comrade and mentor to many SWers, harm reductionists, reproductive justice, prison abolition and AIDS activists. She has put herself on the line for years by being willing to be transparent in local, national and even global media starting in the 80’s with her ground breaking memoir of her experiences in the sex trades, and appearances on television to educate and help change laws that criminalize and harm the most vulnerable SWers.

 

Now she needs our help and we have way to thank her and let her know that we so deeply appreciate her kicking down the door and making the world safer for woman, LGBTQQIIA folks, people with HIV/AIDS, and for all people who are navigating the sex trades and the criminal Injustice system and criminalization. We can donate and share this campaign, 100% goes to help her meet financial challenges and make her life a little easier, with exception of gofundme transaction fee.

She is currently in recuperation from COVID, the first few months after having covid is very challenging, delicate and scary time… in the early aftermath of having covid she is still fighting for her life.

I’m a sexual justice activist and musician in Georgia and I’m setting up a gofundme page for this wonderful mentor and dear friend. For Dolores, the last few years have been especially challenges and rough with multiple health challenges including heart surgeries, and then this past year she contracted COVID-19. The year 2020 in general has left her in serious need, and struggling to keep on top of all her bills. She lives with disabilities and chronic health and pain conditions. Currently she has financial needs around accessibility supports, personal care, medical/dental, home assistance type support on top of some urgent home repair needs. I will update to share more details on her needs and goals.

Dolores is a seminal leader for the decriminilization of sex work and de-carceration movements for sex workers, In the 1980’s she was THE FIRST WOMEN IN HISTORY to ever go on television without a screen in front of her face and say she was an active sex worker (she used the word prostitute) she has never forgotten what and who she is fighting for, a comrade to Harm Reduction, Feminist, reproductive justice, prison abolition and HIV/AIDS Movements.

Dolores French is an activist and an artist who has literally changed the world by being willing to advocate for sex workers and being willing to be an out face in the media and to be on the front lines of feminism as an out sex worker in the 1980s, and by being an inspiration for decades to current/future activist. She was an AIDS Advocate and educator in the scariest earliest years of that epidemic. Her work to educate and advocate for people with HIV in the late 80s and 90s was groundbreaking, she was the first official sex worker liaison to the CDC in these very early HIV/AIDS years.

Dolores was also on Atlanta mayor Andrew Young’s task force on prostitution in the 80s.

 

 

pictured above is Priscilla Alexander, Dolores French and Gloria Lockett from COYOTE sitting by a sign that says 'Outlaw Poverty not Prostitution' during the 1980s.

Dolores, being a pioneer doing everything first, got Covid! and is now working on her healing, The following months after have Covid is a crucial time. And by donating and/or sharing we have a great way to show her appreciation, support her healing and give some love too!

Although I’m sad to say the reason for it is Covid relief, one positive thing about doing this gofundme page is getting to uplift an important story which could easily get obscured by time.

Currently around the country we are seeing powerful movements for decriminalization of SW, finally, such as in Louisiana in Massachusetts and we owe this to the pioneers like Dolores French who have been advocating for this since the 1980s, even before there were US organizations to help galvanize support. As a matter-of-fact she was instrumental in starting the first US organizations to help people in a sex trades.

During the 80’s when Dolores’ great friend and comrade Margo St James started the first US organization to do advocacy for sex workers, the group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old and Tired Ethics). Margo wanted Dolores to come to San Francisco but she chose to stay in Atlanta and start COYOTE/HIRE. San Francisco would've been an easier place for her to be a sex positive feminist fighting for the rights of people in the sex trade but she chose to stay in the south, to stay in GA, and as Stacy Abram’s would says, “stay and fight”.

One of my favorite quotes by Dolores is that… “Sex Workers are the foot soldiers of Feminism”, she said this at a Take Back the Night rally in the 80’s during the ground zero years of the 80’s feminist sex/porn wars! She is a brave woman, always so far head of her time and we have a great way to say thank you and help her out now by donating to her Covid relief and or sharing with your communities.

I’m honored to be creating a gofundme page for one of the most amazing, kind, badass  AND bravest women in the world, I obviously admire her and could say so much about her but here's what some others also have to say….

 

Carol Leigh, SF documentary film maker archivist, (the SW activist who coined the word ‘Sex Work’!), also a foremother of the SW movement and longtime activist writes….

 

“Some folks don’t know that Dolores French is one of those rare compassionate people. She was always rallying to the cause to help sex workers. She generously let me stay at her house in Atlanta, and made sure I was happy, informed and entertained the whole time! I watched how she helped others in our community, and saw the love she inspired from sex workers through many decades that I have known her.

Artist, sex worker, brilliant advocate, serious activist and leader for so many years, Dolores is an extraordinary woman. I feel so fortunate that she has been a friend for so long. I am so angry that she is suffering like this from Covid. If folks can help her by donating, that would be so needed. Her generosity was something that always moved me. I hope our sex worker communities can offer support. I know she is so proud and hesitant to ask for help, even though she is so quick to offer assistance. I love you, Dolores!”

 

Cris Sardina, writes "Dolores is an inspiration! She is a pioneer in the sex worker rights movment and everyone should be grateful that she's opened so many doors for all of us” - Cris is the Director of the Desiree Alliance (a national coalition of current and former sex workers working together with supporting networks for an improved understanding of sexual policies and its human, social and political impacts of criminalization surrounding global policies in sex work.)

 

Caty Simon, Sex worker liaison for the Urban Survivors Union, and Founder-Director of “Whose Corner is it Anyway” one of the US's most effective advocacy harm reduction organizations for low-income and street-based people in the sex trade writes about Dolores' brave memoir… “WORKING allowed 21 yo cheap baby hooker me a companion from decades ago riding down the nitty-gritty of our work like the voice of a whore aunt from the past I hid my money in the crotch of wet bathing suits for years in her honor”

 

Here's a link to her book WORKING on Amazon, a story just as important today as it was in the 80s

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=working+Dolores+French&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

 

Also to learn more on the history of the Sex Worker Rights Movement and to see wonderful pictures, and interviews of Dolores, I definitely recommend watching the wonderful tribute to Margo St James who unfortunately died this past year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JAvNwZuxfU

 

Below is a video of Dolores at a December 17th (The International Day to end violence against sex workers ) vigil in Atlanta in 2014 speaking to and encouraging fellow activists on why its important to stand up to police brutality and disrespect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNQuTl9WJdA