Massage Parlor Outreach Project (MPOP) Seattle

Massage Parlor Outreach Project (MPOP) is a grassroots formation of Asian/Asian American community members organizing to provide support for migrant Asian massage parlor workers, sex workers, and care workers in the Seattle Chinatown/International District and greater Seattle area. They build worker power through organizing and leadership development.

Impact Highlights

We Got Us Funding will support MPOP’s goals to materially change and improve the conditions of migrant Asian massage workers and sex workers in the Seattle King County region. Asian women have historically been targets of sexual exotification as well as racialized violence. We saw anti-sex work and anti-Asian sentiment dovetail in the 2021 Atlanta Massage Parlor Shootings, reflecting how dangerous racist ongoing mainstream narratives about massage and sex work, especially as it relates to low-income women of color, are. NBF’s funding provides MPOP with the resources necessary to support the leadership and power of Asian migrant women workers by addressing the internalized shame around being a massage worker or giving sexual services in parlors. Creating healing spaces helps to mitigate the risks and dangers of such work, creating avenues where migrant Asian workers are able to find power and confidence to organize for systemic change.

What’s Next

MPOP will continue connecting with massage workers through outreach and direct engagement, coalition building, and supporting local CID organizing efforts. As their relationships with workers evolve and deepen, they hope to build more worker leaders that feel empowered to lead events, outreach, and campaigns. MPOP strongly believes in the need for community-based education and pedagogy that is rooted in a vision of education for change. They are transitioning from a service-oriented, outreach-based formation into a worker-organizing formation that truly practices mutual aid over charity. Eventually, MPOP strives to become an organization run by workers, for other workers.