Mission

The Ishtar Collective is a nonprofit collective of sex workers, survivors, and industry allies in Vermont who focus on intersectional social justice liberation. Our mission is to see our communities thrive as we aim for equity in race, class, gender, healthcare, housing, food, immigration, labor, (dis)ability, and LGBTQIA+ issues, with a special focus on sex workers’ rights and anti-trafficking work.

To inquire about voting or non-voting membership into the Ishtar Collective, please email info@ishtarcollective.org

How We Roll

We are queer, trans, cis, nonbinary, Black, Brown, Indigenous, white, Asian, multiracial, neurotypical and neurodivergent. Many of us come from trauma, housing and food instability, poverty, violence, and some of us are formerly incarcerated or living with disabilities.

Some of us have kiddos and some of us are kiddos at heart. Some of us have the privilege of being out on this website and some of us do not. We love ourselves, our collective, and as we do our work on sacred land, our imperfect selves are committed to examining our intersections and degrees of privilege.

We are committed to acknowledging the land we occupy. We recognize the indigenous culture and people that existed in N’dakinna (Homeland) long before Europeans arrived in North America.

We commit to policies and practices of cultural equity to benefit current and future generations.

Vermont is founded on Abenaki land and was stewarded by the Abenaki people for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.

The tradition of land acknowledgements began in Canada and is now used by many cultural organizations across North America. To learn more about the importance of land acknowledgements, please visit www.landacknowledgements.org.

To learn more about some of the many different groups of the Abenaki People of N’dakinna in Northern New England and Quebec please visit the following websites: