International Whores’ Day: Manifesting Monica Jones
Doors Open at 6pm TICKETS HERE
Project SAFE will be screening Manifesting Monica Jones by director PJ Starr and then hosting a talk with Monica Jones and PJ Starr.
The documentary film features Monica Jones as she challenges the constitutionality of the Arizona laws limiting her freedom of expression and sexuality. This is a decision that unhinges her world and propels her to redefine her personhood and place in society.
The film screening and panel is part of the Not Welcome Anywhere exhibit series, which features the findings of a community research study titled “Not Welcome Anywhere: Exclusion From And Inaccessibility Of Legal, Medical And Social Services For People Who Trade Sex And Use Drugs.” The media detail the struggles and challenges people encounter in their everyday lives as well as the ways in which they address harms created by state policies that criminalize the very activities– drug use and sex work– that people engage in to survive the brutality of capitalism.
Project SAFE is a grassroots, direct-service, and peer-based harm reduction collective. We organize with and provide women- and queer-centered services with a focus on community members living and working in the street economies in Kensington.
PJ Starr is a filmmaker, photographer and advocate for the rights of sex workers, immigrants and the LGBT community. Her documentary projects build community, involve skills sharing and working with diverse sets of people. She was a participant in the second series (2011) of the Filmmakers Collaborative at the Maysles Institute in Harlem, New York. She has made a number of films (both narrative and documentary) that portray the experiences of people in the sex trade and related communities. These include: the award nominated NO HUMAN INVOLVED (2016); PROSTITUTION FREE ZONE (a 15 minute film highlighted at the Reel Affirmations Film Festival in DC in 2009); SEX WORK AND TRADE UNIONS (2010, a 15 minute film documenting actions organized by the Karnataka Sex Workers Union at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil); SEX WORKERS DO HARM REDUCTION I and II (2007 and 2009); TORN (2011, a 55 minute narrative film) and PROTECTION (2005).
Monica Jones is an inspirational leader for communities of sex workers and trans people of color who was born and raised in Phoenix. She has been advocating for gender justice since 2010. In 2013, after speaking at a public action protesting rights violating arrests in Phoenix she was herself arrested. In partnership with local and national organizations, Monica Jones created a campaign that garnered global attention about the injustice of the statutes that facilitated arresting her for “walking while trans.” This successful two year long campaign opened the way for discussion in the media about both the laws used to criminalize trans people and the complicity of “diversion” programs such as Project ROSE. Her case is now frequently cited in legal and policy briefs in support of strategic litigation and campaigns in other jurisdictions. In 2016 she founded the Outlaw Project prioritizing the leadership of Transgender Women, BIPOC, gender non-binary, migrant and sex worker folks and she is creating an innovative tiny homes housing project in Tucson for trans people. https://www.theoutlawproject.org/ (https://www.theoutlawproject.org/)