Registration is now open for the Desiree Alliance 2010 Conference! We are so excited! Yes, we'll be there. No, we don't plane on presenting. We want to savour the full week. (Though we'll no doubt be doing some on-site benefit and we are already doing behind-the-scenes planning work.)
We're looking to put together an amazing project for everybody who takes part, so if you think you might want to represent on a range of topics, please submit a proposal! We have 5 different tracks: Academia, Activism/Leadership, Business Development, Arts/Media, Harm Reduction.
We toured the grounds of the conference shortly before we left the States and it's great for everyone. The room rate is great!. It's going to be very budget-friendly this year too. (Yes, there's a pool. It's Vegas in July. Bring sunscreen too.)
Yes, you have to register in advance. Yes, we are screening. This has to be a safe space so the general public just can't wander in. That being said, you don't have to be a sex worker to attend. Allies and supporters are always welcome. And no, you don't have to live in the US to be welcome either.
If you're not interested in attending but still want to help out, you can always volunteer your time (behind the scenes), services (like printing programs) or just a plain old financial support always helps. DA always offers scholarships ever year so sex workers who are on tight budgets can attend and have their expenses covered. The more money we can raise, the more scholarships can be awarded.
It's always about networking, learning, making new friends and just seeing friends you haven't seen in a year! It's something sex workers in the US rarely get. It's going to be so great this year!

One of the man's relatives Roman Dunka, 34, then rang his sister Abzeta Dunkova, 26, who lived in Sheffield. Mother-of-four Dunkova visited to Slovakia to capture the girl.
The teenager said: "She handle with me well at first and said I would have a better life than here in Slovakia."
But after a two-day train and ferry trip the girl was taken by Dunkova to her Sheffield home and have to work as a call girl with Dunka's 19-year-old daughter and Zaneta Horvathova, 21.
While the other two girls kept their income, the 15-year-old was forced to give away over all the money she gained for doing "turns" of?20 or?30 a time.
Dunkova's two brothers, Roman Dunka and Simon Kandrac, both came in Sheffield after the girl was trafficked into the country.
Theteenager asserted Roman Dunka beat her and both he and Dunkova's husband Marcel Dunka would not admit her leave the house.
On her sixth night in Sheffield an Iraqi punter befriended her. She said: "He didn't want sex. He just wanted to talk to me. I told him I was from Slovakia and said 'help me.'"
Horvathova tried to drag the girl away but the punter intervened and rang the police. The five Slovakians were later arrested.
Dunkova, her husband Marcel Dunka and her brother Roman Dunka all deny two offences of trafficking the girl into the UK for sexual exploitation and one of false imprisonment.
Dunkova, the Dunkas and Horvathova deny causing the girl to become a prostitute and controlling a child prostitute.
Hovathova's husband Simon Kandrac, 19, meanwhile, is facing two counts of rape and Marcel Dunka is accused of causing a child to engage in sexual activity. All the defendants lived in Page Hall Road, Grimesthorpe.

A teenage girl broke down in eye-drop yesterday as she said how she was trafficked into the country, raped and compeled to work as a Sheffield prostitute.
Being questioned over a live video link, she said she was bullied to sue, spoke little English and had nobody to turn to for help.
The 16-year-old previously told the court how she ran away from a children's home in Slovakia and was involved to Britain "for a better life."
Straight on arrival she was forced to work as a?300-a-night prostitute, before a punter took pity on her and rang the constabulary.
The girl, in a video interview with police through an interpreter, told how she was suppressed captive, extipated and impended with being assassinated if she ebdeavored to escape.
She could not remember how many men she had sex with but was enforced to hand over all her earnings to her Slovakian captors.
The dark-haired girl told a court of justice at Sheffield Crown Court: "If I ebdeavored to run away they said they would find me and murder me.
"I was told I had to work really hard every day and nothing would happen to me."
Three siblings and two of their partners are before the courts after the girl, who was then 15, was allegedly brought into the UK on a false passport and set to work as a child prostitute.
The girl told how in May this year, a fortnight after the death of her mother, she ran away from a children's home and caught a train to Trnava, where she was befriended at the station by a man.
She said: "I told him I had run away and he said he would help me so I went to his house.
"At first he was nice to me then became aggressive and punched me in the face. I was tired and went to bed but during the night he raped me."
The 15-year-old said she was locked in the room and then sold for sex.

Suellen did not work but was wired money from her family in Brazil, the flatmate told.
She had a sweetheart until recently, he said.
Suellen appeared happy and normal when the flatmate last saw her about 11.30pm on Wednesday, November 18, he said.
He believed she'd gone to reggae party at Manly's The Steyne Hotel on the Thursday to catch up with her Brazilian friends, as she did almost every week.
He said he and Suellen's best friend were rocked to read yesterday's news calling her a tootsie.
"We both found the escort thing extremely... It's out of the blue," the flatmate said. (more...)

The flatmate of a hospitality student found dead in a brain surgery's Sydney room says there is "no way" the dead girl was a prostitute.
The woman, a Brazilian hospitality management graduate known as Suellen, 22, was found dead in the $1.7 million Elizabeth Bay apartment of Sydney brain surgery Suresh Nair 9 days ago.
Reports yesterday said Suellen was a high-class prostitute and had been in Dr Nair's apartment with two other women when she died.
But a good friend of Suellen, who lived with her in Crows Nest, said she was a "fun-loving, chargeable" girl who had just finished college and was about to take off on a road journey to Perth before begin to work. (more...)