DSW Legal Team Leads Class for Advocates on Spokes Hub

DSW Legal Director Melissa Broudo and DSW Staff Attorney Becca Cleary led a class for Spokes Hub called Defining Terms for Legislative Advocacy. Spokes Hub, in collaboration with Woodhull Freedom Foundation and New Moon Network, is a free online academy aimed at supporting people with lived experience in the sex trade to develop their voices and authority as advocates. On their website, they outline their mission and how the program works:

Participants are encouraged to deepen their understanding of complex issues through peer learning and research, and to expand their advocacy skills through writing and public speaking.

Spokes Hub graduates can access financial support through the Awards Pool. To date, Spokes Hub has distributed nearly $16,000 in Awards Pool payments to program participants.

Spokes Hub classes are led overwhelmingly by people with lived experience in the sex trade. Classes include “hard skills” trainings, such as media readiness and public speaking, as well as subject matter deep dives and group discussion spaces.

Lived experience in the sex trade includes…escorting, street based sex work, stripping, webcamming, adult content creation, porn, phone sex, pro-domming and subbing, prostitution, etc. People with lived experience in the sex trade are welcome at Spokes Hub regardless of whether they were coerced or worked voluntarily, formally or informally, whether they traded sexual or erotic services for money, a place to stay, drugs, or anything else of value.

Watch Broudo and Cleary’s class on Defining Terms for Legislative Advocacy here.

To learn more about Spokes Hub and the resources they offer visit https://www.woodhullfoundation.org/spokes-hub/