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Scarlet Alliance participation in Mardi Gras

Scarlet receives no specific funding to participate in Mardi Gras & participation in Mardi Gras has been, in the past, facilitated by the efforts of individual sex workers, on the volunteer working party and as staff at the Scarlet Office.

There has always been a significant flow on impact on both Scarlet's volunteer capacity & the Scarlet Office over Mardi Gras time.

Given recent Funding reductions & budgeting concerns, issues of capacity are forefront in all of our minds - but there is also the fact that there were significant barriers to participation put in place by Sydney Mardi Gras last year.

Our right as sex workers to participate was questioned, our sexual identities were "credentialed", we were asked what "letters" we did or didn't have, & we had to fight tooth & nail to participate in what some members of community feel is moreand more a commercial rather than a cultural event.

The Scarlet Alliance Executive committee has made on the basis of all of these factors - funding, capacity & community - the unanimous decision to not delegate a working party from the Executive to co-ordinate an official Scarlet Alliance entry into Mardi Gras this year.

This does not of course preclude participation by individual or organisational members, or discussion regarding this issue. Scarlet Alliance last year hosted a Post-Mardi Gras Panel on the 26th of April at which nine groups – including sex worker & queer community - spoke regarding their experiences with Mardi Gras, on issues of exclusion, identity policing & censorship.

Scarlet Alliance is open to and welcomes feedback from sex worker peer community on this issue.

Read the Speech from the April 2012 Post Mardi Gras meeting

ICAAP CONFERENCE BANGKOK

• International Congress on HIV in Asia and The Pacific
• Bangkok, Thailand
• 18 - 22 November

COMING SOON

• information about Melbourne Festival of Sex Work 2013
• information about International Whores Day around Australia

LATER IN THE YEAR

• Scarlet Alliance National Forum, in Sydney in 2013

This page was updated 28/2/13