Quick Facts
Biography
Matilda "Red" Bickers is a Portland, Oregon based artist, writer, and sex worker rights activist. She has written for the now-defunct $pread, Tits and Sass, and the Red Umbrella Project.
She is the founder of the sex worker rights and houseless outreach organisation STROLL and founder and editor of the quarterly publication "Working It", which features art and writing by sex workers from around the world, with a Portland specific resource list and an national Ugly Mugs section to keep track of bad or dangerous clients.
Activism
In 2014, Bickers and coworker Amy Pitts filed a lawsuit against their then-place of employment, Casa Diablo, suing for back wages, employee status, and battery.
While the lawsuit drew on, Bickers joined a coalition of sex workers, social workers, and lobbyists who were trying to write protections for strippers into law. These efforts became reality in HB 3059, which established a Bureau of Labor and Industries hotline for live entertainers in Oregon, a hotline which Bickers became the first (and last) to staff in December 2015. In the interim Bickers also started the street outreach project STROLL, strollpdx.org, funded in part by Cascade AIDS Project with support from Abeni, a Southern California sex workers' rights org run by Meg Vallee Muñoz, and put on "$pread the Love", the first of what would become the Art by Tarts annual art show featuring art by sex workers from around the world.
In February 2016 Bickers and other members of STROLL testified, at the Oregon State Capitol against legislation that would have made receiving money, services, or goods from funds derived from prostitution a crime.
Bickers continues to be active in working on legislation to protect the human rights of vulnerable people and exploited workers.