A mob of angry sex workers filled the streets of Amsterdam on Thursday to protest the city’s new plan to shut down their windows in order to clean up the infamous Red Light District. According to U.S. News & World Report, the plan isn’t to shut down legal sex work, but to change how the workers advertise their services.
The prostitutes took their noisy but peaceful protest all the way into city hall, where they presented a petition to Mayor Eberhard van der Laan and told him that the closures are depriving them of safe places to work.
Ruth Morgan-Thomas, representing an organization called the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, said the city was going in the wrong direction by closing the windows.
“Amsterdam had it right,” she said. “They enabled women and men and transgenders to work safely. Now they are closing windows. That makes people more vulnerable.”
The city has since closed 100 of the district’s 500 windows, but told the sex workers that no more will be shut down. Un-phased by the offer, the prostitutes won’t stand down until the 100 shuttered windows are returned to their original, sexy state.
(Source: U.S. News & World Report)