This March marks five years since the Atlanta spa shootings of March 16, 2021, when eight people — six of them Asian women working in massage spas — were killed. For We Got Us Fund grantee partner, Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective that has spent nearly a decade standing beside migrant massage workers and sex workers, the anniversary is a moment of reflection and continued work. We spoke with Yin Q of Red Canary Song about the past five years and RCS’ upcoming exhibition, Touch the Heart, at MoMA PS1, honoring the 8 Lives lost.
For readers who may not be familiar, can you tell us about Red Canary Song?
Red Canary Song is a grassroots collective made up of migrant massage workers, sex workers, queers, women, and families of the Asian diaspora who face state violence because of their work. We formed in 2017 after a migrant massage worker named Yang Song fell to her death during a police raid in Queens.
Since then, we’ve been providing mutual aid to workers in the form of crisis cash assistance, groceries, connections to legal and medical resources, as well as advocating for the decriminalization of massage work and sex work more broadly. Our work continues because the raids against migrant massage parlors have ramped up, with our community also now navigating ICE raids.
As the five-year anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings arrives, what has this moment meant for your community?
The Atlanta shootings brought national attention to anti-Asian racism and to our work. But something important got lost: these women were targeted because they were perceived as sex workers. This part was sidelined in the media within the broader Asian American organizing community. This centered the Asian American identity without naming the labor and the stigma that made these women so vulnerable to begin with.
For us, it meant naming that directly. It meant grieving with our communities and being very clear that this is the kind of violence that happens when state violence is continuous against migrant women and the most marginalized workers.
Five years later, we have seen more raids against massage spas. Just in the past couple of days, a Latinx trans sex worker was killed in the same neighborhood where many of our massage worker community members are. Our outreach team knew her. The workers knew her. She was a neighbor. I want to name that, because this anniversary is not only about our Asian American community. It is about all our neighbors in extremely vulnerable positions – facing these raids, facing ICE, facing institutional and interpersonal exploitation — and our response and action through coalition building to take care of each other in different ways. Because while we reflect today on a violence that made it to the newspaper, this one probably won’t.
What kinds of organizing and coalition-building have grown in the past few years?
Coalition-building has become central to everything we do. When we bring outreach supplies to workers on the streets, we give to everyone. Organizationally, we’ve built deep relationships with groups like MPOP, G.L.I.T.S, DecrimNY, and CITG, which center Latinx trans sex workers. Black, brown, indigenous, and all marginalized folks in sex work.
We’ve also established strong connections with law firms, medical facilities, and academic institutions. We work alongside the domestic workers movement, which was highlighted in the “Ain’t I A Woman” campaign, because so many massage workers are also elder care providers or caregivers for children. The interest, allyship, and infrastructure in our work have grown, but we stay mindful of the fact that institutions will have their own issues. We had an exhibition planned with NYU that was cancelled over fears of the current administration’s backlash against universities, but we pivoted and continued building through conversations with our community.
You’ve been preparing for an exhibition. Can you tell us about that?
Red Canary Song opened an installation at MoMA PS1, in collaboration with artist Augustina Wang and the museum’s space, Homeroom, which focuses specifically on community and social justice work. It’s called Touch the Heart, and it runs from March 19 through August 17.
The space is designed like a dim sum restaurant, with four tables, each acting as a kind of Venn diagram of the issues we work around: migration and surveillance; the body and desire; and healing, grief, and the literature and writing that have shaped our movement. There are also eight portraits of the Atlanta shooting victims, painted by a migrant massage worker — We asked her to just focus on their eyes, with traditional altar flowers, because we wanted to respect the privacy of their families. Augustina’s paintings of massage workers’ personal belongings ask: what does it mean to belong to a space?
Our programming includes screening of our documentary, Fly in Power, on April 18th with a community conversation about the ongoing raids and need to decriminalize sex work. And later in the season, we’re bringing a group of migrant workers from Flushing and Jackson Heights to see the exhibition. We partnered with the Astoria Worker Project to teach them how to navigate the subway, which can be confusing. We’ll walk through the entire process together, from how to buy the subway card to figuring out how to get to their destination.
What gives you hope?
Younger generations, especially within LGBTQ+ and social justice communities, are understanding why sex work rights matter. We have more staunch allies than we used to. The conversation is shifting.
But the raids keep happening. The stigma, the shame, the violence continue. Workers are still targeted by perpetrators who exploit their vulnerabilities. So the work doesn’t stop.
What keeps us going is knowing we’re not doing it alone. New Breath Foundation was part of ensuring we had the funds to build an outreach team, because folks don’t have the time to volunteer for free. Beyond the funding, it’s phenomenal to see a foundation specifically built for Asian American organizations facing state violence and incarceration. Going to the retreats, sitting with other organizations, hearing how everyone is holding on, and creating systems of care and art – and even being able to nominate sister organizations like MPOP into the network — means we’re part of something larger than ourselves. That feeling is a big part of what keeps us in the fight.
—
Red Canary Song’s exhibition Touch the Heart is on view at MoMA PS1’s Homeroom Gallery from March 19 through August 17, 2026. To learn more about their mutual aid work, outreach, and decriminalization advocacy, visit their website. Red Canary Song is a We Got Us Fund grantee partner of New Breath Foundation.