Our Values

We believe:

• Massage parlor work is a form of gendered caring labor, and may or may not involve sex work.

• All workers should have the right to dignified workplaces safe from physical, sexual, emotional harassment or violence.

• Criminalization of sex work endangers Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as queer and trans folks, including Asian massage parlor workers. We reject the criminalization of sex work.

• State violence is the largest threat that immigrant workers encounter, in the form of police and immigration law enforcement. The police do not keep our immigrant communities safe.

• We organize with a transnational framework and seek to understand the conditions that drive our community members to migrate to the U.S. to work in massage parlor and care industries.

• We believe in worker organizing through building collective workers’ power and community support.

• Relationships and trust are the crux of our outreach and organizing work.

• We resist the gentrification of Chinatown/ID. Gentrification endangers the safety of our Asian/Asian American communities, including massage parlor workers.

• We reject the rescue narrative that assumes that the police and non profits that partner with police can bring safety to our Asian/Asian American communities through raids and surveillance.

We recognize that we are working and living on indigenous Duwamish and Coast Salish lands. Our organizing is inspired by the resilience and traditions of radical Black, Indigenous and People of Color resistance and struggles for autonomy and sovereignty in this country. We are committed to addressing the ways in which our communities are complicit in white supremacy and settler colonialism and aim to build meaningful solidarity through our common struggles.

Our Story

MPOP was formed in 2018, recognizing that there were many massage parlors in our community where workers were stigmatized by other local businesses. We recognized that outreach to these workers was difficult, as they often had limited English, non-English speaking social networks and many immigration-related barriers to accessing mainstream American society.  

After the Seattle Police Department raided 11 massage parlors in King County in 2019, with many similar raids across the U.S., MPOP renewed outreach to Chinatown/International District massage parlors with distribution of zines with culturally relevant information about the current political environment and legal and language support as well as mutual aid resources.

Following the tragic shooting in Atlanta targeting Asian spas, MPOP held a community vigil in collaboration with local grassroots organizers and nonprofits. The tragedy in Atlanta point to the ways in which marginalized Asian/Asian American communities are made vulnerable through the systemic invisibilization of their living and working conditions, made possible through the complicity of the white supremacist, patriarchal institutional forces, as well as the support of conservative, anti-worker Asian/Asian American institutions. 

Currently, we are building new initiatives to increase worker leadership and power. 

At this moment (summer 2021), we have developed deep relationships with Chinese workers in Seattle and other parts of our region, as well as expanding our outreach to Vietnamese workers.

We seek to build our vision of safety and dignity for all massage parlor workers, and all gendered care labor, including sex work, in a manner that is community-driven, relational, and culturally relevant.