Queens pol aims to decriminalize massage work — Queens Daily Eagle - Queens Daily Eagle

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A new bill from Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas (top left) would make working as an unlicensed masseuse no longer a crime. Screenshot via Zoom


By Rachel Vick

In 2017, Chinese massage worker Yang Song fell to her death during a police raid on the Queens massage parlor where she worked. For Flushing masseuse Charlotte K. — a 20 year veteran of the industry from Korea — and her coworkers, the fear and trauma of arrests was ever-present prior to Yang’s death and ever since.

“We have seen no change, we have found no comfort,” said Charlotte, an organizer with Red Canary Song, a coalition of Asian massage parlor workers. “Why, and for whom, do you do these raids? What do you gain? We are just workers, we are only human.”

She explained that during a raid, all of the employees in the parlor would be brought and held in custody, forced to wait for hours. Yeonhoo Cho, a member of Red Canary Song Korean, said that workers told her about being denied tampons while held, false promises of greencards for cooperating, threats of deportation and sexual coercion at the hands of the NYPD.

“Migrant workers in Flushing unanimously want one thing,” Cho said. “They want all of this to stop.”

Advocates gathered Friday to celebrate the introduction of a bill to decriminalize unlicensed massage work, sponsored by Queens lawmakers Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas and Sen. Jessica Ramos, which they say will open the door for better working conditions.

A8281 will remove criminal penalties for those who give unlicensed massages, currently charged as a misdemeanor or E Felony. The bill would also prevent law enforcement from seizing the property of massage workers — an issue frequently mentioned in outreach work.

Jared Trujillo, policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, helped draft the legislation. He emphasized that it would not change the distinction between being licensed and unlicensed in practice, but it would offer protections for “one of the only professions in New York where if someone doesn't have a license they are arrested.”

“There are prosecutors that have let their license lapse,” he said. “They're not going to jail, not spending money on lawyers or gettinging their livelihoods taken away.”

The bill was accompanied by a report from Red Canary Song, Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network in Toronto, Canada, and Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery.

Authors found that in addition to the trauma and financial burdens following arrests, the fear of arrest forces women into precarious situations and makes them vulnerable to scammers.

Elena Shih, from Brown University, joined the condemnation of anti-trafficking organizations that claim the massage industry and the issue are “falsely equated.”

“Rather than raids, rescue and arrests, the coauthors of this report… have demanded the ability for massage workers to organize themselves.. to ensure their own safety and livelihood,” Shih said. “Workers can only do this if they do not face the constant daily fear.”

Though former Mahattan District Attorney Cy Vance pledged not to prosecute unlicensed parlor workers, the bill is the latest in a series of policy actions intended to limit the influence of bias in arrests allegedly connected with sex work.

Last year, the legislature repealed the “walking while trans ban,” which allowed police officers to arrest individuals who they assumed were soliciting sex, leading to a disproportinate rate of Latinx transgender individuals’ arrests based on their clothing and expression.

In March 2021, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz requested the dismissal of around 700 cases where people were charged with loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or related crimes.

The advocates and lawmakers said the issue of masseuse criminalization is inextricably linked to the issue of race and gender, while also promoting the stereotype that Asian women who work in massage parlors are all sex workers.

“For too long we know that Asian American and Pacific Islander people, especially women, have been criminalized for trying to survive and that is wrong,” Gonzalez-Rojas said. “It's important to put this into statute bc we can't count on [the DAs].”