Turkey’s sex workers seek to establish a union

Posted on behalf of Maxine Doogan

Article Source

ISTANBUL ­ Activists and sex workers in Turkey are working on a project to establish Turkey¹s first sex workers union. They are hopeful about finding a solution to their problems and changing society¹s approach toward sex workers. They will organize an awareness walk to bring attention to their issues

Turkey’s sex workers seek to establish a union

An initiative to establish a union for sex workers in Turkey has been proceeding slowly but patiently for almost a year.

Several activists plan to establish a trade union to protect the health, security and education rights of sex workers in Turkey, where the majority of them work without licenses or social security.

³People should have the right to voluntarily chose to be a sex worker. One has to have sovereignty over his or her body,² said Buse Kžlžçkaya, an activist from Ankara-based Pembe Hayat Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender, or LGBT, association. Kžlžçkaya said if they can establish a union, it would be the first for Turkey¹s sex workers.

Activists and sex workers are hopeful about establishing a union, believing that it will help acknowledgment of this type of labor as a viable profession and will protect their rights in many aspects.

³We are against forced sex labor,² said Kžlžçkaya. ³But this is the oldest profession on Earth and this will continue to be done by some people. This is why those people¹s rights need to be protected.²

Prostitution is mentioned in the Turkish Penal Code and sex workers have to be registered according to the law. However, statistics show that many sex workers are unregistered and have no health or social security.

³Only 126 sex workers are registered in Istanbul, but the real number is much higher than this,² said Muhtar Çokar, a doctor who helps sex workers access free and easy medical support.

³The number of registered sex workers in Turkey is 3,500 according to police data,² said Çokar. ³That is too small a number compared to Ankara Trade Chamber, which said there are around 100,000 unregistered sex workers in total in Turkey.²

Activists believe sex workers are exposed to discrimination from society as well as by state authorities. Transsexual and transvestite sex workers in particular are beaten and harassed by clients or sometimes by the police.

³There is a social consensus that if you are a sex worker then you deserve to be exposed to violence, sexual harassment and discrimination,² said Kžlžçkaya, adding that this approach has to change.

Union needed
³The first sex union was established in Argentina during the 1970s. Holland and Hungary also have unions for sex workers. Why don¹t we have one?² asked Belgin Çelik, a Lambda Istanbul activist.

Although the majority of sex workers are biologically women, transsexuals and transvestites are usually more active in protecting their rights.

³Most woman work as a sex worker secretly, some of them have families, and cannot declare their names. Another reason is that transsexuals and transvestites were more commonly harassed, beaten and insulted,² said Kžlžçkaya, explaining why they are more willing to unite and defend their rights.

The initiative¹s meetings are closed to the press at the moment.

³The initiative may not bring about a union in the end, this is why the NGOs and political parties supporting the initiative have not declared their names,² said Sinem, a sex worker and activist from Pembe Hayat LGBT.

But the efforts of the initiative will be significant, since it will draw attention to sex workers¹ problems, such as having social security or health insurance and a retirement salary.

ŒRed umbrella walk¹ against discrimination The activists will organize for the first time a walk titled ³Red Umbrella² on March 3, International Sex Workers Day in Ankara, simultaneously with the entire world. The sex workers and NGO activists will try to voice the many problems of those who are not seen or approved by society but who are part of it and suffering.

New Agency Bust

Here is the video

When will they just leave adults to their own devices? When will ALL adults start fighting for the right to be left alone??

Join us at San Francisco Pride

Sex Workers will be representing at San Francisco Pride tomorrow!! If you are in the area, definitely fight the crowds and come meet up with us!! Also a bunch of Sex Workers have their own contingent in the Dyke March! Sex Workers Outreach Project will be hosting 2 booths, a Beer Booth and an Information Booth (with totally hot Whore and U.S. Out Of My Underwear Shirts!)

Sex Workers Dyke March contingent will meet at 6:45pm Sat the 27th on the corner of 18th and Dolores, directly to the side of the Dolores Park Cafe. Bring any signs, fabulousness, lovers and allies.

Our Beer Booth will be at the corner of Hyde on McAllister.

Our Information Booth will be around the corner on Larkin between Golden Gate and McAllister, across from the State Building.

We’ll have lots of GREAT information both for Workers and Allies, and ways for you to get involved! Come stop by, we’d LOVE to meet you!

Sexism in Prosecution

So a woman and a man were caught by police while engaging in sex for goods (he offered her a case of chips in exchange for oral sex, to which she agreed). The woman got arrested, the man did not. The woman had her mug shot taken and released, and now published, the man did not. Nor was his name published. The woman’s was.

WTF??

Here is the story. (I am including the link to the SWOP LV News blog instead of original to try to give the woman some anonymity.)

Alleged serial rapist of prostitutes caught

While we have heard and experienced awful stories about police, I have to commend the Atlanta police on this one. They are asking sex workers to come forward to help convict a serial rapist who targets sex workers, and they believe he is responsible for raping at least 6 women. They are promising to not arrest them. I am hoping this will remain the case. But do we have anyone in Atlanta who can check in on this from time to time?

Here is the story.

Help get tranny-alert.com taken down!

Via gudbuytjane.livejournal.com, reposted from feministing

Call for action: www.tranny-alert.com
From http://www.tranny-alert.com . This is not just appropriative or transphobic, it directly threatens the safety and privacy of trans women:

Our site cannot survive without your submissions!
Spot a tranny or suspected tranny around town? See a hot tranny mess? Observe a guidette in New Jersey with tranny style? Notice trannies on TV/Radio/Billboards? Find yourself at a Lady Gaga concert? WE WANT TO KNOW!

Remember, if you spot a tranny: snap your fingers, snap a pic, and e-mail those photos to: mayday@tranny-alert.com !

In light of the murders of trans women such as Gwen Araujo, Angie Zapata and others, it is indefensible to run a website that requests readers submit photos of trans women (or people they’ve read as trans women) without their consent and publicly out them. This site threatens the safety of every person they post a photo of. Please spread the word and take action.

Please contact http://www.tranny-alert.com and let them know this is NOT okay.
The site appears to be hosted via Blogger, so please enter a complaint against their hate speech and endangerment of the lives of trans women.
Please Twitter about it with the #trannyalertfail hash tag.
Please send complaints about their Facebook page .

ETA: To enter a complaint at Blogger, follow this link: http://help.blogger.com/bin/request.py?contact_type=hate_speech&blog_URL=http://trannyalert.blogspot.com/ (Thanks queersubversion!)

ETA2: TrannyAlert’s response on Twitter : “Wow people really need to get a fucking sense of humor.”

ETA3: If you have access please post about this on LJ trans communities, as this account isn’t a member of any of them (and will have to wait for approval to post, etc.).

– gudbuytjane

You can go here, http://tinyurl.com/n34flk

to file a direct complaint to Blogger against this blog, you can also do it as many times as you like so please try to do it as much as you can so as to draw attention! Thanks!

Sex Workers at Pride in San Francisco, today!

A message on San Francisco’s sex worker contingent at Pride:

Please forward to all sex workers. Sex Workers Dyke March contingent will meet at 6:45pm on Sat the 27th on the corner of 18th and Dolores, directly to the side of the Dolores Park Cafe. Bring any signs, fabulousness, lovers and allies.

Love, Sadie Lune

Kudos to COSWAS!

And our very own Tara was quoted!
From Salon:

Taiwan legalizes world’s oldest profession

Score one for sex workers: Activists in Taiwan emerged victorious Wednesday after waging a long battle to legalize prostitution in their country. Six months from now, the nation’s 600,000 working girls (and guys) will be free to ply their trade without fear of incarceration. “Now the client gets off free, but the prostitute gets punished, and that’s not fair,” sex worker spokesman Su Jun-pin told Reuters. Under the new regulations, it will be up to local governments to decide whether to relegate prostitution to specific districts or decriminalize it throughout the entire region.

What is especially remarkable about this decision is that it results from old-fashioned grass-roots organizing from groups such as Taipei’s Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters. This means a massive victory not only for prostitutes in Taiwan but also for activists around the world working for decriminalization. “This is telling about the global movement,” says Tara Sawyer, a Sex Workers Outreach Project board member. She compares the fight for decriminalization to the civil rights movement, saying that the Taiwan decision underscores the urgent need for the U.S. government “to listen to the people doing the work. We’re not doing that yet.”

Of course, it makes sense that groups working for decriminalization in this country have had less success than their Asian counterparts: In Taiwan, prostitution has only been prohibited for the past 11 years.
― Judy Berman

Yay for Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates

On a brighter note, we may have two celebrity spokespeople!

Legalise prostitution: Michelle Pfeiffer

24 Jun 2009, 1558 hrs IST, ANI

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates want the U.S. Government to legalise prostitution.

The two stars, who play historical hookers in Stephen Frears’ new period movie Cheri, are wondering why the ”world’s oldest profession” has been banned throughout most of their native America.

“There is an argument to be made for providing some protection for prostitutes. It would solve a lot of problems for them. They”re going to do it anyway,” Contactmusic quoted Pfeiffer as saying.

Her co-star Bates agrees: “For health reasons, it would be better for people to enjoy those pleasures.”

Original on Times of India

Donna Hughes: Have tattooes? You don’t deserve respect.

I was pretty taken aback at the condescension dripping from Donna Hughes’s opinion piece below that appeared in the Providence journal. How on earth someone who is clearly repulsed by “certain” women can be involved in any Women’s Studies program in any university is way beyond me.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Providence Journal
DONNA M. HUGHES

AFTER MY EXPERIENCE at the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, I believe Rhode Island is headed for a human rights disaster and nationwide political embarrassment. It is becoming apparent that the Senate is not going to pass a much-needed prostitution bill. Rhode Island will continue to have an expanding number of spa-brothels, prostitution of minors in clubs, and no law that will enable the police to stop it.

The hearing (on Senate bill 0596, to close the loophole allowing indoor prostitution) was a sordid circus, with pimps and prostitutes coming forward to oppose the legislation.

Harm reduction and Human Rights (both) for Sex Work Plenary

I know some activists going to a harm-reduction conference called CLAT5 in Porto (Portugal) in the near future, where I’m to give a plenary talk at the opening session. The description of the conference in English: ‘Our aims for this event are to rethink – in a transnational way – the future of harm reduction and to question the actual (current) consensus about its policies and practices of intervention. For this we will stimulate a critical discussion based on the concepts and practices linked with harm reduction and also bring to the debate issues of human rights, South-North and East-West inequalities and social dialogue among key actors.’

I understand some people in the harm-reduction field don’t think sex work should be there and that it was a close thing whether any plenary speaker would address it. And I know that some people don’t like harm reduction as a way of thinking about sex work.  To put this in context, the conference has 6 streams:

1 Drugs on the Street
2 Parties: Pleasures Management and Risks Reduction
3 Alcohol and Harm Reduction
4 Sex: Pleasures, Risks and Sexual Work
5 Other addictions
6 Human Rights and Penal Control

There are five panels addressing sex/sex work and several good activists will speak, mixed with outreach/academic folk. Sex-work activists have gone to other harm-reduction conferences, of course, but here I’m to talk about human rights AND harm reduction, which feels challenging because they are both theoretical frames for thinking about the issues. And since globalisation is another of the event’s keywords I can talk about trafficking and anti-demand politics as well, but I’d rather not just spout a string of platitudes. Any ideas or tips from past experience?

Thanks, Laura

Laura María Agustín  Border Thinking

They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them.

A month ago, I was riding my Empowerment Vehicle (motorcycle) home from a friends house at 2AM one Sunday night.  I had a lapse in judgement, and ended up flying over the motorcycle, landing on pavement, sliding across an exit ramp, and landing in the bushes.  This obviously wasn’t planned, or wanted.  I have no health insurance, and it hasn’t been overly pleasant.  I’m temporarily in a wheelchair, and will be for another month it looks like.

These life accidents happen to all of us at one time or another. I’m blessed to have many good close friends who care about me, and are doing their best to help me navigate life from a disabled perspective.  And I’ve been lucky enough to put a positive spin on this, and see it as a great learning experience about experiencing life on 4 wheels instead of 2.  But I want to talk about savings (or the lack there of).

It’s the loss of income that’s really sucked.  I haven’t been able to work much at all! Provided there are no more unexpected expenses that rise up, it looks like I’ll pull through this ok financially, and end up with a manageable debt of about 5-6 thousand.

I know that I’m really blessed in this way, I’ve had many friends who have gone thru unexpected life changes that have altered their income, and raised there expenses and are still trying to recover.  It doesn’t take much.  For me it was about 30 seconds all told, and will lead to 2 months of wheelchair time, and lots of asking for help, and lots of brand new expenses!

This has made me think about how to save and plan for these events.  They WILL happen in your life, they happen to all of us in different degrees, but how we manage to plan ahead for these, and how we handle them when they come up make a world of difference.

Lots of Financial experts(cause I was off searching about this) will say we need 3 months of living expenses (but they really want us to have 6!) in a Money Market or Savings account just lying about, and banks give you huge deals and love  you WAY more when you are able to have that kind of money it turns out.  For me three months is only about $3,500.00 or so all told (I live cheaply), but even this is a big number to have laying about!

Financial experts seem to always come across like we can easily come up with this kind of money, but so many of us already live directly off of our income, and have no wiggle room.  But even if we can only put 10% of a single call a week away, it will add up.  The hardest part, is deciding what constitutes an emergency to go spend that money.  For me, it’s the new motorcycle protective gear, so I can go feel empowered and graduate once again from 4 wheels to 2.

P.S. If you can tell the author of the title of this post, you’ll know one of the smartest people I know in all the world!!

Sex worker trafficking unlikely for 2010 Winter Olympics: report

Winter Olympics: report
By Damian Inwood, Canwest News Service
June 11, 2009 7:11 PMComments (2)

posted on behalf of Maxine Doogan
Human trafficking in the sex trade is unlikely to increase in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics, according to a new study released Thursday.

But Tamara O’Doherty, head of the group that commissioned the 150-page report, says sex trade workers still fear they’ll be hit by a police crackdown, due to misinformation which surrounds the topic.

“People tend to join up prostitution with trafficking as if they’re one thing and this inflates the numbers hugely,” said O’Doherty, chairwoman of the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group (SIWSAG).

“Vancouver sex trade workers are concerned that because everyone is worried about trafficking, there’s going to be a clampdown and people will be displaced, moved out of their areas and pushed around.” SIWSAG is made up of community organizations that work with sex-trade issues, sex-trade workers and the Vancouver Police Department.

The report says that a predicted influx of human trafficking victims into the sex trade failed to materialize at previous global sporting events such as Olympics and the 2006 World Cup of Soccer in Germany.

“At first blush, logic says that there would be people being trafficked to these events,” said Karen Mirsky of Pivot Legal Aid Society.

“The numbers being floated tend to be very inflated.”

She said that, in fact, there’s not much financial incentive for traffickers to spend a lot of money to bring people to short-duration events like the three-week Olympics.

“We might see sex workers from Alberta voluntarily coming to B.C., anticipating an increase in business,” she added.

VPD Insp. John de Haas said that, after looking at what happened at other mega events, it’s not reasonable to expect a huge increase in trafficking.

He said one of the unwanted results of a police crackdown is when sex workers are moved to unsafe areas.

De Haas said police need to build up stronger communications with sex-trade workers and create greater awareness around trafficking.

© copyright (c) CNS Olympics

No boost for sex trade as Olympics loom, says report

Posted on behalf of Maxine Doogan
Sex industry-commissioned study debunks link between increased human trafficking, major sporting events

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun columnist June 11, 2009

The Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group’s new report’s five recommendations are explicitly aimed at preventing human trafficking of women and men into prostitution and helping victims.

There is no proof that human trafficking increases in advance of major sporting events such as the Olympics, says a new 150-page report commissioned by a group of Vancouver sex-trade workers.
“The commonly held notion of a link between mega-sport events, trafficking in persons and sex work is an unsubstantiated assumption,” says the report done for the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group (SIWSAG) with the support of the Pivot Legal Society, Vancouver Police Department and the B.C. government (see the report here).

Both SIWSAG and Pivot are leading a campaign to legalize solicitation. Prostitution is not illegal under the Canadian Criminal Code. What is illegal is that act of negotiating payment for sex.

Although the report purports to debunk any notion that mega-sports events lead to more prostitutes and increased human trafficking, its five recommendations are explicitly aimed at preventing human trafficking of women and men into prostitution and helping victims.

It recommends a comprehensive public awareness campaign that would describe the dangers of trafficking, provide information on victims’ rights and services, inform the public of steps they can take to identify and assist victims and make it clear that violence against victims of trafficking and sex workers will not be tolerated.

It recommends that a full range of services be available for trafficking victims from housing to translation services.

And it recommends that someone be hired full-time from November until the end of February to act as a liaison between sex workers, police, local government officials and community groups in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where many prostitutes work on the street.

“If anything, we found that the conflation of sex work and trafficking can result in policy and enforcement responses that negatively affect the lives of sex workers and victims of trafficking,” says Tamara O’Doherty of SIWSAG.

UBC law professor Ben Perrin called it “an odd report.”

“It makes very important recommendations — early detection, intervention and a major public awareness campaign,” he said, even though the report denies that trafficking is likely to increase.

Perrin called that conclusion “absurd.”

“We currently have a problem with sexual exploitation and trafficking that we need to deal with. So throw a million visitors into the mix and, of course, the problems will increase,” he said.

“And to recommend ignoring the risk of increased demand is dangerous public policy.”

Perrin’s own 2007 report — Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking at the 2010 Olympics — was one of the first to highlight the potential for increased prostitution and trafficking.

He based his conclusions on data from the Greek Ministry of Public Safety that indicated a 95-per-cent increase in the number of trafficking victims identified in 2004 when Athens hosted the Summer Olympics.

The SIWSAG report says that didn’t necessarily mean trafficking increased. Rather, it says, better detection meant more victims were found.

The SIWSAG report ignored a 2007 German government report to the European Union after the 2006 World Cup of soccer, which Perrin quoted in his research.

The German report said that it became clear in the run-up to the World Cup that higher numbers of prostitutes would be in and around the game sites and fan hotels. “An increase in the number of prostitutes was recorded at game venues and the surrounding areas. This was due, for instance, to the fact that prostitutes from outside regions travelled to the game venues.”

Perrin noted — as did the SIWSAG report — that the increase did not reach the widely reported 40,000.

Michelle Miller, of the anti-trafficking group Resist Exploitation and Embrace Dignity, said if SIWSAG is convinced that human trafficking won’t increase, why all the recommendations for detection, intervention and victims’ assistance?

“From REED’s perspective, when men travel in large numbers and away from their social networks, demand will increase for sexual services … Our concern is around the demand.”

She went on to say that trafficking already happens in Vancouver and it’s poor and ethnic women who are its most frequent victims.

As for the specific recommendations about informing victims of their rights and available services, Miller said they have no rights and there are no services.

She also dismissed the call for a public awareness campaign in advance of the Games. There already is one, she said. Her group launched it several weeks ago. It’s called Buying Sex is Not a Sport and is aimed at stopping demand for paid sexual services.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Donna Hughes and Criminalizing Prostitution

Posted on behalf of B.

In her May 2, 2009 email, Professor Donna Hughes claims that criminalizing prostitution in Rhode Island will some how help victims of sex trafficking in the state. Despite what she says, Professor Hughes’ position amounts to a claim that the best way to help the victims of the crime of slavery is to spend large amounts of public money to arrest the very small number of victims of this serious crime and the much larger number of women who are not victims of any crime. This proposition makes no sense, violates any sense of justice and fairness and won’t work.

Arresting the victims of a serious crime so we can, in theory, get at the real criminals is just not an answer to anything. By making the victims criminals themselves, we would only strengthen the hold that the slavers have on them by increasing the victims’ fear of identifying themselves as victims to the police or anyone else. It will make the victims less talkative, not more talkative, since they will fear criminal punishment and deportation.

If Professor Hughes’ theory were correct, Rhode Island would be the sex trafficking capital of the US, and there would be no sex trafficking anywhere else in the country, except the two counties in Nevada where prostitution is legal. Obviously, this is not the case.

NY State Condom Legistlation CALL TO ACTION

The No Condoms Bill is before the Assembly for a vote and we urgently need you to call, email and fax your Assembymembers and let them know they should vote FOR bill A3856. It could come to a vote today or early next week! Thank you for all your support thus far!

If you could take a moment to:

· Look up your Assemblymember, either by where you live, where your organization is located, or both! Call the Assembly Public Information Office a: 518-455-4218, or you can use your zipcode to search on this site: www.votesmart.org.

· Call their Albany office. Attached is a list of talking points.

· Fax their Albany office with a memo of support – attached is the one we are sending today you can use as a model.

· Email them directly with a letter of support (CC ahardikar@urbanjustice.org if you can!)

Phone Talking Points

Memo in Support from SW

You should do this before Wed. June 10th, 2009 But the sooner the better!

Thank you Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center! We love all of your work on this!

Voices from Sex Workers.

I haven’t posted in a while, sometimes I’m afraid to post, sometimes I’m not sure *WHAT* to post, since this site has such a wide range, and sometimes I’m just to busy to post. But mostly, as the only transgendered woman author on this site, and not having the range of writing experiences all the other authors have, I just feel overwhelmed by their awesomeness at writing. I hope to someday be as well written as them! But sometimes my insecurities with my voice get the better of me, and here I am posting again! 🙂

But I’m not posting about me, I’m posting about other people’s voices. I think one of the best parts about this blog, Bound, Not Gagged, is that we shouldn’t feel Gagged, we should be able to share our voice, and talk about the things we need to say. So let’s share some voices!

This is the best fucking job I ever had.

Why can’t we as a society have a rational, meaningful discourse about sex work, embracing all its nuances and contradictions?

These are some of my favorite quotes from Ester’s article on alternet, titled “My Life As a ‘Craigslist Hooker’: Why We Need Smart Policy About Sex Work”.

Also, Alexa has started a new site called “My first professional Sex”, where she’s attempting to share stories from many different Sex Workers, from all walks of life. You can read my story on her site here. I think the site can be summed up by her very words:

Sex workers are human beings, just like everyone else. The stigma associated with their line of work can often be quite dehumanizing. And, sadly, there are a lot of misconceptions about what brings people to sex work. I hope to show that there are a wide variety of reasons people get into sex work – reasons that are unique to each individual, reasons that are just as valid as the reasons anyone gets into any other line of work.

These are but 2 recent examples of Sex Workers taking to heart, we are Bound, Not Gagged. Thanks for speaking up, speaking out, and sharing your stories.

Whore Lover: Sex Workers Queering Love

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 18th, 2009 – 8PM. Stories of romance in spite of social stigma, as told from both sides of the bed. Turns out it’s not actually true that sex workers are incapable of feeling love; or too generous, greedy, humiliated or gold-hearted to pursue it. Likewise, the city hosts hordes of humans who love whores. In fact, many of those who have turned a trick or courted a courtesan are luminaries of queer arts and performance.

<p>Whore Lover is a multimedia showcase of the art of balancing between erotic work and play; and establishing long-term intimacy with those of us who charge by the hour. Tales of love, lust and lucre, straight (but not narrow!) from the talented mouths of porn stars, hookers, rent boys, strippers, Dominatrices, and the lovely folks who love them. Featuring art, films,  and performances by: Sadie Lune, Kirk Read, Mariko Passion, Ed Wolf, Lorelei Lee, Ginger Virago, Seeley Quest, and Madsen Minax. Curated by Sadie Lune, and presented by the National Queer Arts Festival with support from the Creating Queer Community program.

<p>

Whore Lover: Sex Workers Queering Love
The Garage Theater
975 Howard St. @ 6th
June 18, 2009 @ 8:00
Tickets: $12-$20
Buy Tickets on-line:
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/66151
415-885-4006

For more information please visit: http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/QFest09/WhrLvr.html

Heat Index: Erotic Photography Exhibit

Heat Index: an exhibition of erotic photography

HEAT INDEX

featuring

Eric Kroll

Richard Steele

Cherrie Stabs

Matthew Yates

Rick Soloway

Opening night, features a live art/bondage static performance.

Rocket Gallery

270 E Congress

Opening reception

June 6th 2009, 7pm

come on down!

Runs through June.