Support For Gabrielle Monroe
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"I don't know where along my life I became unimportant to myself, maybe I always was, but I want to change that. I've always been good at supporting and taking care of others, but it took me until now to believe that I am a person worthy of survival and support, too. This is a whole different level of self esteem, where I believe I am not only worthy of surviving, but building a future where I can thrive." Gabrielle Monroe
Those of you who know Gabrielle Monroe know that she does so much, for so many. She is the embodiment of taking your deepest wounds, finding your greatest gifts within those wounds, and then bringing them to the world.
Gabby's Story
*Trigger Warning*
Gabby is a childhood sex trafficking survivor. Her story is heartbreaking. She was trafficked by her father to his friends when she was only 9 years old. That continued until her stepmother murdered him to stop the abuse. Gabby says her stepmother saved her life.
But the abuse did not stop there. Her grandfather began sexually abusing her until she was able to get away from him and seek other temporary living situations. She bounced around various places as a homeless teen, and began trading sexual services to survive. Gabby never had a truly safe place to land, to relax, and to heal.
At 18, she became a stripper. That was what she knew; using her body to survive. Within weeks she had a vehicle and a safe place to live for the first time in her life.
She was arrested at 24 for prostitution. Wanting to leave sex work, she worked towards her real estate license. The prostitution case was pending for 3 years. Because of that pending case, she was discriminated against and never allowed to use the real estate license that she'd worked so hard for.
So she went back to what she knew, sex work. By the time her prostitution case came to court, Gabby was a mother, a girl scout troop leader, and had been providing a stable and safe home for herself and her family. Though they didn't have enough to convict her of prostitution, the DA's office threatened to out her to her community in the local paper unless she plead guilty. So she did.
Finding Her Gifts and Bringing Them to the World
An incredibly important and inspiring part of Gabby's story is how she began working to try and change the system. After FOSTA/SESTA was signed into law, Gabby found inside herself a passionate desire to help her community. She felt devastated by continually seeing her sex worker friends being abused and killed. This motivated her to become an advocate and activist for sex workers. An effective one!
One example (others below): Since 2017 Gabby has been working to help survival sex workers. At that time she started a sex worker and homeless outreach program, with monthly deliveries of hygiene items and non-perishable food items. That program has since expanded to 5 counties in PA!
In 2020, they distributed:
360+ Narcan
2,000+ Condoms
2,500+ Masks
1,000+ Gloves
100+ Food Boxes
336 Hot Hands
60+ Disinfectant Wipes
175+ Hand Sanitizers
175+ Hand Lotion
$10,000+ in cash
Plus thousands of Self-Care products
Not Everyone Likes an Activist
In Spring of 2019 Gabby was assaulted and warned to stop her activism. There are many sources of sex worker abuse and discrimination beyond the client abuse that most people picture. Often, powerful organizations that claim to be fighting sex-trafficking or helping the victims do very little for the very victims they are claiming to help. Gabby is fearless in calling out these organizations, including the police, governmental agencies, anti-sex-trafficking organizations and many more. As a sex-trafficking victim herself, she has insights into the most effective methods of fighting it.
She educates any who will listen, including elected officials, about the FOSTA/SESTA conflation of sex work and sex trafficking, resulting in the lack of any real help for trafficking victims. She is working hard towards full sex work decriminalization, repeal of FOSTA/SESTA, and programs that truly help sex trafficking victims instead of pretending to in order to qualify for multi-million dollar grants.
~~~~~
Asking For Help
What will the funds be used for?
Living Situation Stability
Due to a combination of COVID, and pushback from the people she is calling out, Gabby is back in a place of instability regarding her living situation.
Medications
She is disabled and autistic. Her medications cost her $600 per month.
Vehicle
Gabby sold her vehicle in January of 2020 to avoid eviction, and to help a trafficking survivor obtain permanent housing. Again, this is an example of how she gives so much to so many. With this GoFundMe, she hopes to purchase a replacement vehicle for personal use and outreach deliveries.
Rent
With COVID lockdowns, Gabby finds herself 2 months behind in rent, having evaded eviction thanks to the moratorium in her state. She would love to bring her rent current to ensure the continuity of a safe and stable place to live.
Self-Care
This GoFundMe is also Gabby's effort to take better care of herself, with the intention that it will assist her to help even more people (because that's how she thinks). Please contribute if you can. Any amount helps. This amazing person is working so hard to change these injustices, bring true help to sex-trafficking victims and survivors, and support the severely marginalized sex worker community. Let's lend her a helping hand, so that she can become even more of a force in this world than she has already proven herself to be.
Patreon Continuing Support
If you are able to provide continuing support, please consider joining Gabby's Patreon. She will be posting about all of her activist work there, as well as keeping you informed of opportunities for you to get involved on any level that works for you (petitions to sign, posts to amplify, elected officials to contact, groups to donate to).
Here's the link: https://www.patreon.com/GabrielleMonroe
Take a look and see what she is doing right now! All content is available to view, whether you are a patron or not.
In Gabby's words: "Walk on this journey with me. It's time to Rise Up."
~~~~~
There is so much more to Gabby's story, and she is writing a book, titled, "A Special Kinda Broken". She hopes to publish it this year. Please take a moment and look at some of the accomplishments she has achieved, just in 2020 (there are more):
Community Gone Rogue Co-founder
April 15, 2020 - Community Gone Rogue started the vehicle protest movement in Pittsburgh, with the first covid-safe socially distancing event being held on April 15, 2020. Over 30 folks showed up to send the message #ReleaseThemNow, referring to release folks from Allegheny County Jail as there is no safe way to social distance. Weekly actions continued for 6 weeks, picking up other movements along the way with messages from #ReleaseThemNow to #CancelRent.
#PghMutualAid founding member
March 2020 - As a response to COVID lockdown #PghMutualAid rallied, started a GoFundMe and connected with other larger organizations to provide over $50,000 in CASH grants to vulnerable communities in Pittsburgh. They hosted virtual fundraisers, provided resources and matched volunteers to help connect the community with their needs.
September 2020 - Allegheny County Department of Human Services changed their request for proposals (RFP) to center and protect child sex trafficking victims.
From Dept of Human Services
September 14, 2020
"We are grateful for the feedback we received from Proposers for this RFP and from the community, including survivors of childhood sex trafficking. To address some of the concerns that were raised, we changed the title of the RFP from “RFP for an Inpatient Program for Victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children” to “RFP for an Inpatient Program for Victims of Childhood Sex Trafficking,” and changed all references to “commercial sexual exploitation of children” or “CSEC” in the RFP and Response Form to “childhood sex trafficking.”
Survivor Siblings Co-founder
October 2020 - Survivor Siblings first annual sleepover and meeting for survivors of sex trafficking was a huge success. All members of Survivor Siblings voted to keep the org a grassroots org for another year. No members wish to pursue nonprofit status at this time. Survivors were provided gift baskets and cash stipends at the sleepover. (Within this group, when work needed to be done, Gabby insisted the volunteers be paid for their work, and paid it out of her own pocket. She is unable to sustain this, and would like to provide all sex trafficking survivors who volunteer with stipends for their work.)
#DecrimPA coalition member
October 2020 - Survivor Siblings and #DecrimPA celebrated a huge success when Pennsylvania State Representative Summer Lee (above, second from left) put out a memorandum calling for the removal of prostitution and "related crimes" in Pennsylvania. Gabby (above, center) has been working on policy with Rep. Summer Lee's staff, and has learned a lot about legislation in the process. There are no paid lobbyists working for the rights of sex trafficking victims and sex workers, so Gabby has basically been acting as one; an unpaid one.
November 2020 - Gabby crashed an online police academy training on sex trafficking in Allegheny County. After listening to detective Joe Ryczaj state endless inaccuracies about sex trafficking (conflating it with prostitution), Gabby asked why less than 1% of the department's arrests were even related to sex trafficking. They were unaware of the article she was referring to that quoted the stat, but detective Joe Ryczaj was quoted in the same article. In that moment, Gabby pretty much called out the Pittsburgh VICE squad for misuse of anti-trafficking funds, and was swiftly removed from the online space.
Those of you who know Gabrielle Monroe know that she does so much, for so many. She is the embodiment of taking your deepest wounds, finding your greatest gifts within those wounds, and then bringing them to the world.
Gabby's Story
*Trigger Warning*
Gabby is a childhood sex trafficking survivor. Her story is heartbreaking. She was trafficked by her father to his friends when she was only 9 years old. That continued until her stepmother murdered him to stop the abuse. Gabby says her stepmother saved her life.
But the abuse did not stop there. Her grandfather began sexually abusing her until she was able to get away from him and seek other temporary living situations. She bounced around various places as a homeless teen, and began trading sexual services to survive. Gabby never had a truly safe place to land, to relax, and to heal.
At 18, she became a stripper. That was what she knew; using her body to survive. Within weeks she had a vehicle and a safe place to live for the first time in her life.
She was arrested at 24 for prostitution. Wanting to leave sex work, she worked towards her real estate license. The prostitution case was pending for 3 years. Because of that pending case, she was discriminated against and never allowed to use the real estate license that she'd worked so hard for.
So she went back to what she knew, sex work. By the time her prostitution case came to court, Gabby was a mother, a girl scout troop leader, and had been providing a stable and safe home for herself and her family. Though they didn't have enough to convict her of prostitution, the DA's office threatened to out her to her community in the local paper unless she plead guilty. So she did.
Finding Her Gifts and Bringing Them to the World
An incredibly important and inspiring part of Gabby's story is how she began working to try and change the system. After FOSTA/SESTA was signed into law, Gabby found inside herself a passionate desire to help her community. She felt devastated by continually seeing her sex worker friends being abused and killed. This motivated her to become an advocate and activist for sex workers. An effective one!
One example (others below): Since 2017 Gabby has been working to help survival sex workers. At that time she started a sex worker and homeless outreach program, with monthly deliveries of hygiene items and non-perishable food items. That program has since expanded to 5 counties in PA!
In 2020, they distributed:
360+ Narcan
2,000+ Condoms
2,500+ Masks
1,000+ Gloves
100+ Food Boxes
336 Hot Hands
60+ Disinfectant Wipes
175+ Hand Sanitizers
175+ Hand Lotion
$10,000+ in cash
Plus thousands of Self-Care products
Not Everyone Likes an Activist
In Spring of 2019 Gabby was assaulted and warned to stop her activism. There are many sources of sex worker abuse and discrimination beyond the client abuse that most people picture. Often, powerful organizations that claim to be fighting sex-trafficking or helping the victims do very little for the very victims they are claiming to help. Gabby is fearless in calling out these organizations, including the police, governmental agencies, anti-sex-trafficking organizations and many more. As a sex-trafficking victim herself, she has insights into the most effective methods of fighting it.
She educates any who will listen, including elected officials, about the FOSTA/SESTA conflation of sex work and sex trafficking, resulting in the lack of any real help for trafficking victims. She is working hard towards full sex work decriminalization, repeal of FOSTA/SESTA, and programs that truly help sex trafficking victims instead of pretending to in order to qualify for multi-million dollar grants.
~~~~~
Asking For Help
What will the funds be used for?
Living Situation Stability
Due to a combination of COVID, and pushback from the people she is calling out, Gabby is back in a place of instability regarding her living situation.
Medications
She is disabled and autistic. Her medications cost her $600 per month.
Vehicle
Gabby sold her vehicle in January of 2020 to avoid eviction, and to help a trafficking survivor obtain permanent housing. Again, this is an example of how she gives so much to so many. With this GoFundMe, she hopes to purchase a replacement vehicle for personal use and outreach deliveries.
Rent
With COVID lockdowns, Gabby finds herself 2 months behind in rent, having evaded eviction thanks to the moratorium in her state. She would love to bring her rent current to ensure the continuity of a safe and stable place to live.
Self-Care
This GoFundMe is also Gabby's effort to take better care of herself, with the intention that it will assist her to help even more people (because that's how she thinks). Please contribute if you can. Any amount helps. This amazing person is working so hard to change these injustices, bring true help to sex-trafficking victims and survivors, and support the severely marginalized sex worker community. Let's lend her a helping hand, so that she can become even more of a force in this world than she has already proven herself to be.
Patreon Continuing Support
If you are able to provide continuing support, please consider joining Gabby's Patreon. She will be posting about all of her activist work there, as well as keeping you informed of opportunities for you to get involved on any level that works for you (petitions to sign, posts to amplify, elected officials to contact, groups to donate to).
Here's the link: https://www.patreon.com/GabrielleMonroe
Take a look and see what she is doing right now! All content is available to view, whether you are a patron or not.
In Gabby's words: "Walk on this journey with me. It's time to Rise Up."
~~~~~
There is so much more to Gabby's story, and she is writing a book, titled, "A Special Kinda Broken". She hopes to publish it this year. Please take a moment and look at some of the accomplishments she has achieved, just in 2020 (there are more):
Community Gone Rogue Co-founder
April 15, 2020 - Community Gone Rogue started the vehicle protest movement in Pittsburgh, with the first covid-safe socially distancing event being held on April 15, 2020. Over 30 folks showed up to send the message #ReleaseThemNow, referring to release folks from Allegheny County Jail as there is no safe way to social distance. Weekly actions continued for 6 weeks, picking up other movements along the way with messages from #ReleaseThemNow to #CancelRent.
#PghMutualAid founding member
March 2020 - As a response to COVID lockdown #PghMutualAid rallied, started a GoFundMe and connected with other larger organizations to provide over $50,000 in CASH grants to vulnerable communities in Pittsburgh. They hosted virtual fundraisers, provided resources and matched volunteers to help connect the community with their needs.
September 2020 - Allegheny County Department of Human Services changed their request for proposals (RFP) to center and protect child sex trafficking victims.
From Dept of Human Services
September 14, 2020
"We are grateful for the feedback we received from Proposers for this RFP and from the community, including survivors of childhood sex trafficking. To address some of the concerns that were raised, we changed the title of the RFP from “RFP for an Inpatient Program for Victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children” to “RFP for an Inpatient Program for Victims of Childhood Sex Trafficking,” and changed all references to “commercial sexual exploitation of children” or “CSEC” in the RFP and Response Form to “childhood sex trafficking.”
Survivor Siblings Co-founder
October 2020 - Survivor Siblings first annual sleepover and meeting for survivors of sex trafficking was a huge success. All members of Survivor Siblings voted to keep the org a grassroots org for another year. No members wish to pursue nonprofit status at this time. Survivors were provided gift baskets and cash stipends at the sleepover. (Within this group, when work needed to be done, Gabby insisted the volunteers be paid for their work, and paid it out of her own pocket. She is unable to sustain this, and would like to provide all sex trafficking survivors who volunteer with stipends for their work.)
#DecrimPA coalition member
October 2020 - Survivor Siblings and #DecrimPA celebrated a huge success when Pennsylvania State Representative Summer Lee (above, second from left) put out a memorandum calling for the removal of prostitution and "related crimes" in Pennsylvania. Gabby (above, center) has been working on policy with Rep. Summer Lee's staff, and has learned a lot about legislation in the process. There are no paid lobbyists working for the rights of sex trafficking victims and sex workers, so Gabby has basically been acting as one; an unpaid one.
November 2020 - Gabby crashed an online police academy training on sex trafficking in Allegheny County. After listening to detective Joe Ryczaj state endless inaccuracies about sex trafficking (conflating it with prostitution), Gabby asked why less than 1% of the department's arrests were even related to sex trafficking. They were unaware of the article she was referring to that quoted the stat, but detective Joe Ryczaj was quoted in the same article. In that moment, Gabby pretty much called out the Pittsburgh VICE squad for misuse of anti-trafficking funds, and was swiftly removed from the online space.
Organizer
Ruby Ryder
Organizer
Monroeville, PA