Who Keeps Us Safe? | Episode 4: MPOP

Who Keeps Us Safe? (WKUS) is a podcast by Asian Americans living in Seattle that explores safety, policing, and abolition in our communities and beyond. Join us monthly as we speak with organizers in the Seattle area and reflect on their work and learnings. We hope that our listeners will use this podcast to begin or supplement their own conversations about safety and policing in their own communities. This is a project of PARISOL: Pacific Rim Solidarity Network, a grassroots, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, Hong Konger, Taiwanese, and Chinese* diaspora group based in Seattle. PARISOL is dedicated to local and international solidarity, community building, cultural and politicized learning, abolition, and anti-racist work.

This episode was produced for the podcast Who Keeps Us Safe? and was previously released in December 2021. The production crew is a small volunteer team of community organizers: Andy Allen, Alex Chuang, Jenn Shaffer, and Ryan Fang.

In their fourth episode, they wanted to connect their learnings about incarceration and immigration with the local work being done around supporting and organizing Asian migrant massage workers. The massage parlor industry has been highly targeted by systems of policing and punishment, so it's another vital piece to the discussion around community safety. They are so grateful to be sharing this conversation with MPOP (Massage Parlor Outreach Project), which is an innovative local organization that supports massage workers in the Seattle area.

Content Warning: This episode discusses violence against Asian Americans, and specifically comments on the violence that occurred in March 2021 against massage parlor workers in Atlanta.

You can find MPOP on Facebook at Massage Parlor Outreach Project 女工'助小组 and on Instagram @mpop_sea. Episode artwork by Quinn Rao, @anonymous_squirtle.

Listen to the episode at the official WKUS podcast website.

For their first six episodes, Who Keeps Us Safe? partnered with KVRU 105.7 FM to air their podcast on the radio. For this reason, you'll hear some brief station IDs in some of the episodes.

Find out more about WKUS at their Linktree site, or follow them on Instagram @who_keeps_us_safe.

Featured Image: In this episode of "Who Keeps Us Safe?" podcast hosts chat with Massage Parlor Outreach Project (MPOP), an innovative local organization that supports massage workers in the Seattle area. (Artwork: Quinn Rao)