Bay Area Workers Support (BAWS) amplifies and harnesses the community power of sex workers in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and coalition-builds with accomplices and allies, to provide material resources, information, and resonating cultural advocacy.

We've been doing this work since 2018. Nearly a decade of peer-led organizing, resource redistribution, and showing up for the people institutions leave behind.

We are hustlers, artists, parents, survivors, and your favorite local sex workers. We are also among the most criminalized, stigmatized, and under-resourced communities in the Bay Area — and we have been building power and showing up for each other anyway. That means poor and working-class people, drug users, disabled folks, trans communities, and BIPOC sex workers. We build the tools, knowledge, and resources to navigate an unsafe system. Together, and with dignity, style, and joy.

On May 31st, in honor of International Whores’ Day, we're throwing Pleasure4Ever - a night of performances, vendors, and community at The STUD in San Francisco — with a goal of raising $10K. This event is the kickoff of our $150K Save BAWS Campaign, our yearlong push to secure our future through 2027.

The reality is that we have only enough operating budget to keep our operations afloat until October 2026. This isn't a story about mismanagement. It's a story about what happens when peer-led organizing exists in a stigmatized, criminalized, and chronically underfunded space. Check out our Blog for the full story.

We are the last peer-led sex worker organization of our kind in the Bay Area. If BAWS closes, there is no backup. The infrastructure, the programming, the archives, the relationships — gone.

We represent people that institutions are often happy to ignore. We represent people that the establishment tries to erase. We have refused to disappear for nearly a decade. We're asking you to make sure we don't have to.

Every dollar raised here goes directly toward keeping BAWS operational. Donate, share this page, or give monthly — recurring contributions are our lifeblood and can be set up on our website. Can’t make it on the 31st? Your donation still helps us get to our $10K goal.

Donations are tax-deductible. BAWS is fiscally sponsored by Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), a 501(c)(3) organization.

BAWS Pleasure4Ever

Good things come to those who fund.

Team Members