The Washington state legislature is taking up a so-called ‘Strippers Bill of Rights’

Adult dancers in Washington say draconian laws make it one of the most difficult states for them to work. The state legislature is considering a bill to address the issues they’ve identified.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The Washington State Legislature is considering a bill that advocates call a Strippers’ Bill of Rights. It’s been championed by adult dancing activists who say Washington has archaic laws around strip clubs. From member station KUOW in Seattle, Monica Nickelsburg reports.

MONICA NICKELSBURG, BYLINE: By the time Madison Zack-Wu was 18, she says she was living on her own and supporting herself. Stripping became her path to financial independence, but she quickly started to notice problems in the clubs where she worked.

MADISON ZACK-WU: Management encouraging me to work with customers that were known to be harmful and violent even, and there was definitely a pressure to dance with them.

NICKELSBURG: Kasey Champion, another longtime Washington dancer who has since retired, says there were other problems, too. It’s standard for clubs to charge strippers house fees to use the stage, but Champion says that the fees in Washington were more than double those in the other states where she worked, like Oregon and Nevada.

KASEY CHAMPION: I paid about $185 a day. Now that was regardless of if I made money, so If I showed up that day and didn’t have any just cash in my pocket and I didn’t make any money, then I could put my debt down.

NICKELSBURG: She says dancers she knew sometimes racked up thousands of dollars of debt to the club. Both Madison Zack-Wu and Kasey Champion are now activists with the organization Strippers Are Workers. The group is pushing for a bill that would do things like limit the fees clubs can charge dancers, require a security guard to be on duty and mandate sexual harassment training for all club employees. But the bill could do something else as well – pave the way to legalize alcohol in…