By Jamison Liang, Freedom United

UPDATE: The Safer Streets For All Act which has successfully passed out of the legislature is due to land on California’s Governor Newsom’s desk soon! This is a crucial moment – add your support and call on Governor Newsom to sign this bill into law.

This bill seeks to stop survivors of trafficking and sex workers from facing a criminal record simply for walking on the street. It will repeal the penal code section that criminalizes loitering for the intent to engage in prostitution — a law that in practice harms survivors of trafficking and cis and trans women of color.  

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No trafficking survivor should be put in handcuffs. But that is what is happening in California, where survivors on the streets are threatened with arrest and criminal records under a harmful and discriminatory anti-loitering law. 

Today you can help survivors by supporting the Safer Streets for All Act. The bill has successfully passed out of the legislature, meaning the final step is for California’s Governor Newsom to sign it into law.

The anti-loitering law has the effect of making traffickers’ crimes easier to commit through threatening survivors with arrest, incarceration, and a criminal record.