Documentary 'Fly In Power' Highlights The Work Of Red Canary Song

The documentary focuses on providing protections for Asian and migrant sex and massage workers.

Fly in Power, the title of a documentary film being shown at the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), is a tribute to Yang Song, a 38-year old woman who fell to her death in 2017 while police attempted to arrest her for allegedly engaging in sex work. Before her death Yang alleged she had been sexually assaulted by an undercover officer and was pressured to become an informant.

“Fly in Power comes from our vigils to Yang Song: Rest in Peace; Fly in Power,” said Yin Q, executive producer and co-director of the film along with Yoon Grace Ra. “It’s a promise to her, her family, and to other workers who’ve passed from similar circumstances of oppression and violence that we will not forget them and will continue to work to better the lives of their sisters and comrades.”

The film explores the work done by Red Canary Song (RCS), a grassroots organization of Asian and migrant sex workers and massage workers, incorporating the stories of Charlotte (a Korean massage worker/poet), KhoKhoi (a body/sex worker/healer) and Prof. Elena Shih (a global human trafficking researcher at Brown University), as well as the broader RCS community.

In the US 90% of the arrests made for working in unlicensed massage parlors are women in the Asian community. According to Red Canary Song, many workers allege that police officers ask them for sex, with the promise that they won’t be arrested. Yet, whatever they do they get arrested anyway. Calling for “rights, not rescue,” Red Canary Song works for decriminalization and to debunk misleading ideas about sex trafficking.

“The Anti-Trafficking movement– fueled by racist, sexist, anti-immigrant and white-righteous feminism– baits public sentimentality with images and stories of victimization,” said Q. “While more commonly, workers in the sex and massage industries don’t view themselves as victims of trafficking and the shame and policing actually causes more violence and exploitation. But the AT movement has so much money and credulous white celebrity promoters, that we see this myth-advertising in every area of transport from airports to hotels.”

Red Canary Song was founded in 2018. It has taken almost as many years for Q and Yoon to make the documentary “The filming and the work of organizing were side by side,” said Q. “Our first priority has always been first and foremost the community of Asian massage workers and sex workers so that they could see a story that is similar to their own on screen and to be affirmed that they are not alone in their struggles. We also want to reach our allies and the greater AAPI communities, as massage workers have always been an invisibilized community, even in our own social spaces.”

It’s a sector of society that Q thinks people find it hard to care about.

“Most people don’t want to make the effort to care about Asian massage workers,” said Q. “But if we understand that workers in the massage industry are also home care workers, domestic laborers, restaurant workers, then hopefully people will start to question why the stigma around body work exists. Why is wellness culture obsessed with spas and massages and not caring of the people who work in those spaces and especially the people who are being targeted by police in those spaces?”

Every year the organization holds a vigil for Yang Song and also remember the eight lives that were lost in 2021 when a gunman targeted spas and massage parlors in Atlanta. Red Canary Song advocates for the decriminalization of sex work, which happened in New Zealand in 2003 and Belgium in 2022.

“I’ve been advocating for decriminalization for sex work for over thirty years and I am not an optimist,” said Q. “Amnesty International did extensive research and wrote a statement advocating for global decrim in 2015. The LGBTQ equality rights passed and then reproductive rights got taken away. We are in flux and I have to believe that, as the younger generation is learning more about how criminalization of sex work affects them directly, whether they are in the industry or not, there will be an opportunity for sex work to be decriminalized. We are watching other countries, like Australia, progress with decrim and the violence against workers decline in those places. I would hope that New York would lead the way with decrim.”

Fly in Power will be screened at this year’s AAIFF. It will be screened at noon on July 29 at the Quad Cinemas in the West Village, with a Q&A afterwards with crew and cast. The festival runs from July 26 to Aug. 6.