Tara Burns has been on my radar for a decade, but I didn't have the pleasure of actually speaking with her until last week. A sex worker, writer, researcher, and activist who lives off the grid in Alaska, Burns has been at the forefront of fighting bad policies surrounding sex work and sex trafficking. Since 2020, she has served as research and policy director for the Rhode Island chapter of the sex worker rights group Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE ), which recently put out Sex Work Policy: Participatory Action Research By and For Sex Workers, a great compendium of research conducted by Burns, COYOTE, other sex worker rights groups, and Brown University.
I interviewed Burns about the book, her work, and how so many sex trafficking laws end up backfiring. People would be surprised by how anti-trafficking laws "are most harmful to the people that they say that they're intended to help," she says.
