Rights Not Rescue

Elene Lam

Elene Lam is an activist, community organizer, educator, and human rights defender. She has devoted herself to defending the rights of and empowering marginalized communities—particularly sex workers, migrants, and precarious workers—for over twenty years. She is the founder of Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network) and has used diverse and innovative approaches to advocatesocial justice for migrant sex worker, e.g., leadership building and community mobilization. She has made transformative contributions to the migrant sex workers’ movement in Canada by being a unique and compelling player in sex worker rights, migrant justice, labour rights, and gender justice circles. She holds a Master of Laws and Master of Social Work. She is a PhD candidate at McMaster University (School of Social Work) and studying the harm of the anti-trafficking movement. Recipient of Constance E. Hamilton Award for Women’s Equality (City of Toronto). She has a forthcoming book with Chanelle Gallant on how the anti-trafficking industry is against abolition.

Chanelle Gallant

Chanelle Gallant is an activist-writer and strategist who has been a force in grassroots anti-capitalist and anti-racist feminist movement for two decades. She is on the leadership team for Showing Up for Racial Justice (U.S.), and has founded and worked with sex work organizations in Toronto and internationally. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, most recently Pleasure Activism and Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement. She has a forthcoming book with Elene Lam on abolishing the anti-trafficking industry.