What does it mean to care about the wellbeing of sex workers?

Once again, Oliver Thorne has created an important, informative video on an issue laden with controversy and bad intentions.

 

For those who can’t see, at the beginning and end, Ollie is in a dressing room applying makeup. During the portions where he talks about gambling, and magic, he illustrates his points with card tricks, combined with a gambling scenario in which he plays the role of the House, in a three-piece suit and a leather armchair, casually demonstrating how he holds all the cards, and the sex worker, presented as the viewer (Based on camera angles) isn’t even allowed to keep hold the cards in their hand, having them replaced with jokers as the various entrapping rules are described.

Important context for understanding what’s happening in Latin America

I think the closed captions cover the material OK, but the TL:DR is this: Aid for Latin American countries has often come with strings attached. Leaders who don’t give favorable deals to wealthy nations and corporations (and “favorable” means “keeps the tropical country poor”), the people sent to talk to them start getting less friendly. Over time, the nice people in suits are replaced by “do what we say or you’ll die. Badly.” And if you don’t take the money in the first place? Well, then we just skip that step.

The United States, and the corporations protected and served by the United States, have done a LOT of harm to the global south, while the population of this country has, for the most part, turned a blind eye. Until we accept what we’ve been doing, and stop doing it, it is right and just for every poor country to view the United States as a hostile power. So far, we haven’t learned. We continued these atrocities under Democratic and Republican presidents, and congresses, and it sure looks like we’re continuing them now.