Protester FAQ – September 1st Banking Protests

EVENTS | PROTESTER FAQ | VIDEO TIPS | FLYERS

September 1st has passed, but we’ll leave this online for posterity. And you can still protest!

Who is in charge?

You!! Don’t wait for other people to jump in the hashtag or plan a protest!

It’s your individual story – especially in video format – that will help us change hearts and minds.

We want our efforts to scale, so people need to run with it on their own! Share the statement and protest info directly to other workers, publicly, in groups. We have to spread the word if we want to fight back!

If your promo group on telegram isn’t talking about banking discrimination yet, bring it up. You collaborate to promote your businesses – now do it to keep your income.

We really could have 100,000 sex workers standing up and demanding to be heard!

Where is this happening?

Our main action is online – on social media and this website. But we encourage people to protest everywhere! Sex workers are everywhere and so are banks.

Show up and give them something to think about. Even a couple sex workers taking selfies with signs in front of a local bank is enough to add to our press packet and scare the crap out of some middle manager somewhere. Banks are notoriously PR minded!

Please email your event locations and flyers to [email protected]

We will share those locations and resources back out on our events page, which you can link publicly. 

You can link SexWorkSignOn.com to have people sign on to the statement before the 1st. On the first, switch to using AcceptanceMatters.org and we’ll use that link from then on!

We’ll support your protest efforts online with press, threads, hashtags and by embedding your videos so they can’t be hidden by shadowbans.

Why #AcceptanceMatters? Are we endorsing the slogan?

We don’t endorse MasterCard’s corporate hashtag – which they’ve used for around a decade and spent millions on to win advertising awards. Many workers feel it is a cold and calculating appropriation of Black Lives Matter as part of a rainbow capitalism campaign more directed at a straight audience than meant to help LGBTQ community members.

But it’s hard for us to protest MasterCard physically, so we’re going to ruin their hashtag. MasterCard will not be able to simply reach for this phrase again next pride without confronting our critiques of their discriminatory practices.

We don’t think it’s an ideal protest phrase nor do we intend to campaign with it. We only seek to associate MasterCard and their actions towards the LGBTQ+ community with the actual impact, not their rosy advertising. If they pick a new pandering phrase without ending their discrimination, we’ll occupy that hashtag too.

What are we organizing for?

  • An immediate pause to impending MasterCard policies planned for October 15th
  • A stop to all planned debanking, defunding, or deplatforming until further study
  • Creation of sex worker stakeholder advisory groups and councils and commitments that no changes will be made for the safety of workers without workers
  • Survivor focused policy that identifies harm and works to end it – with policies that impact all businesses, instead of impossible to comply with policies only applicable to porn sites
  • An end to paid advocates, professional ‘experts’, and especially religious groups and law enforcement being seen as experts and policy creators on our own lives – we deserve a seat at the table

These are important demands, but just a starting point! You can read the detailed version of our statement at the home page of AcceptanceMatters.org.

Make your own demands in your video. Share your own ideas for how things can be safer. 

Tell people exactly what you think of “common sense” solutions that cause harm or “unintended consequences” to discriminatory policy that seems to have the same consequence every time – taking resources away from sex workers.

This is YOUR campaign. Don’t let us tell you what to think – it’s your turn to tell everyone else what you think should be done.

Let your experience and specialized knowledge fly. Share the story that only you could share.

What can I share publicly or do I need to know?

Date:
September 1st (USA, check time zones)

Subject:
Banking Discrimination Against Sex Work (and queer communication, etc)

URLS
:
Share our statement at AcceptanceMatters.org! Use the hashtag #AcceptanceMatters

How:
Make a video, plan an in person protest at banks, and use #AcceptanceMatters on September 1st!

Locations:
See existing events here. Plan your own protest send it in to [email protected] and we’ll post it back up. Keep checking back there to see protest locations popping up or send an email asking about your area and we’ll try to connect you to start one!

What can I post to get started?

The big thing is the video of your personal experiences with banking discrimination with the #AcceptanceMatters hashtag! Tell them how you felt when BackPage or PornHub lost payments, explain how platform instability has impacted our income. And so on! We’ve got a page of video tips!

Here’s some other ways to make this a successful action!

  • Share this info in dm to your friends, in promo groups, sex worker forums, discords, wherever
  • Make social media posts encouraging other workers to contact you to organize together
  • Make social media posts about your local sex worker peer org, inviting workers and allies to help plan your protest
  • Make and post Flyers planning protests
  • Make and post Flyers encouraging online participation
  • Make and post Instagram decks, TikTok videos, all kinds of media to promote our efforts
  • Talk to press telling them to plan to cover the actions on the 1st, or to draft an article to run on the 1st with our hashtag
  • Talk to allied orgs, representatives, etc to ask them to show support or attend our protests
  • Send around the link to this statement to get people to sign on in advance and have videos here for press to watch!!
  • Write and publish your own statements and sign on letters from different perspectives – racial justice, women’s rights, labor rights, migrant workers rights, etc!
  • Get equipment together – PAs, webcams, whatever – be ready to livestream your event! Even if it’s a few workers meeting at a house, it’s ALL useful!

What hashtags should I use?

Feel free to @ or tag any bank that’s personally wronged you. You can also use hashtags already in wide use like the ones below. We can have a rumbling until the day comes, we’ll need a bit of it to pick up speed and have a real showing on September 1st.

September 1st “Trend” Hashtag:
#AcceptanceMatters

TikTok Sex/SWer Hashtags:
#accountantsoftiktok #kinktok #striptok #skrippertok #fssw #shrekworker 

Twitter Hashtags:
#VisaVictims #MasterCensors

Bank Specific Hashtags: Mastercard uses #Priceless a lot for for ad campaigns

Notably, don’t use hashtags with swears as they will limit your reach.

Why is this organized this way?

Some people may be unfamiliar with online grassroots organizing, but remember we don’t have millions in funding or full time non-profits organizing things. Our allies are mostly uncommitted with resources. 

We don’t have billionaires like Swanee Hunt or Bill Ackman, or institutions with chains of command like churches or law enforcement. We have to do it ourselves.

We can’t wait for top down organization to tell us what to do. It simply does not exist or have the resources. When groups can respond, they’re often too slow – we encourage groups to join us in this action but we can’t afford to wait!

This has to be organic and entirely grassroots. 

Think flashmobs, think spontaneous, think about how we are too powerful & numerous to squash.

Where can I find more info?

We’ll post what we can here! 

[email protected] will be a bit of a clearing house trying to collect and send info.

But you’ll have to make your own hubs too – there are a million tiny sex worker communities for tips and promo – USE THEM!

What’s next?

Plenty! You should all be joining the sex worker union APAG and local groups in your area. Use in person protests and these online conversations as networking opportunities. If there isn’t a group in your area, start it! 

When platforms go down, that community will be your lifeline. Cherish and nurture it. 

At the same time, never stop coming up with creative ways to speak out, even if it’s just you. You don’t need someone directing you to make a flyer or a meme. You already have more fans than most people can hope to reach with their posts, literally no sex worker survives without some positive attention. We’ve got a lot of great skills that apply to public relations, so make use of em. 

Many of you have content creation skills! Our more establish organizations tend to be made up of organizers who are mostly in-person workers. They may really appreciate help with things you take for granted.

Consider asking groups if they can use your skills like shooting videos (even on phones), taking pictures, making graphics, making social media profiles, making websites, even stuff like moderating chats or setting up a payment platform. Some of our wisest long term organizers still just don’t have these skills that digital natives have.

Reach out to orgs and let them know what you’ve got!

Even if you don’t feel you have a lot of experience, another pair of hands, or even another signature on letter campaigns, makes a difference. Again, we can’t out fund our opposition, they are literally billionaires like Swanee Hunt and Bill Ackman and literally banks. 

We can’t even out organize them in a traditional sense – they are literally The Church. They have tons of top-down volunteers.

But we DO outnumber them. Ad we all have at least a couple fans who can be convinced to chip in with donations to sex worker groups or do some microvolunteering. Heck, workers have raised money or gotten signatures for projects with nude drives.    

We’ll plan actions after the 1st as well and list some we hear about on the event page. The SexWorkSignOn.com domain will be reused for other petitions. 

Remember a big part of keeping press attention in this war on porn is just always having things to report on. The opposition is great at it, but they pay themselves 200-300k in yearly salary to sit in an office writing press releases all day, so we gotta get creative.

Even if you just go with two friends and some signs and stand in front of a bank if you send a picture of that to the local press they’ll run it with an article. They really have nothing better to do. Take advantage of that and you’ll be heard.

Can we do it?

Yes!

It seems hard, but remember, we’ve got one thing:

We’re mother fucking content creators and we can work quick, work live.

We’ve got millions of fans, literally. There are millions of us, literally.

Us all standing up, loudly, is the last thing banks and other institutions want.

Antis are a few powerful people with a lot of money they’ve got in government funding, stolen from workers or from donations to survivors. They have lies & power. 

But we have the truth, our personal stories, the moral high ground, and the skills & passion need to change the narrative.

Let’s do it!