leads a protest song during a March 15 vigil at Hing Hay Park honoring the victims of the Atlanta spa
shootings in 2021. • Photo by Hong Ta
On March 15, the Massage Parlor Organizing Project (MPOP) hosted a vigil at Hing Hay Park to honor the victims killed during the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021.
The victims were Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Sun Cha Kim and Yong Ae Yue. Six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.
Robert Aaron Long pleaded guilty to murder charges in Cherokee County, where he shot and killed four people, including a white man and woman and two women of Asian descent, and he was sentenced to life without parole. He has pleaded not guilty in Fulton County, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Long under Georgia’s hate crime statute in connection with the lethal shooting of four more people, all women of Asian descent.
During the vigil, organizers launched the Safety Not Stigma campaign, which emphasized four advocacy priorities. These included increased and diversified access to work, stopping punitive and carceral solutions to trafficking, safe workplaces and affordable housing, and the creation of ICE-free zones across WA state, including in the Chinatown-International District (CID).
MPOP was founded in 2018 as a grassroots organization conducting direct outreach to Asian migrant massage workers, specifically in the CID. Speakers at the event included a coalition of advocates alongside MPOP, including API Chaya, CID Coalition, International Migrants Alliance, Strippers are Workers, Stop Surveillance City and Whose Streets Our Streets.
Evelyn, who preferred to go by only her first name for safety reasons, was also a speaker at the event and is a former massage parlor worker. As a single mother, she immigrated to Seattle from China in 2015 and began getting involved with the MPOP in 2022. She currently conducts outreach by visiting individual massage parlors with other organizers.
Through Mandarin interpreter and MPOP organizer Rachel Sun, Evelyn recounted experiences of being pistol-whipped, choked, held against a wall, and needing emergency stitches during her work time. She stated that there was no set protocol at her workplace for situations such as armed robberies and assaults, and called for more security measures to be taken place in the area to protect.
Not only do workers allege poor working conditions, MPOP organizers such as Joshua Hou say they also feel unsafe due to the increased ICE presence in Seattle.
“The massage parlors often face a lot of really dangerous situations because they’re open late, and they’re immigrant-owned businesses, and they’re vulnerable and massively affected by immigration enforcement right now,” said Hou.
A 2023 research study conducted by the UW Center for Human Rights in collaboration with MPOP and massage parlor workers found that most local massage parlor workers are immigrants and migrants without U.S. citizenship. According to the study: “These social determinations contribute significantly to the vulnerability and precarity that workers in this sector experience.”
The increase in immigration enforcement has made it more difficult for workers to report wage theft and unsafe working conditions, or seek help from law enforcement if they are being trafficked or coerced, according to MPOP.
A January 2026 report from the UW Center for Human Rights confirmed the Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) is sharing its database with federal immigration agents to carry out arrests. A part of MPOP’s central demands is to call on Governor Ferguson to stop sharing DOL data with ICE and CBP.
In addition, organizers are fighting against the stigmatized narrative that massage parlors are hotbeds for trafficking, which is driving more victims to remain underground.
“While it’s true that human trafficking does exist, we’ve seen that it’s actually much, much less common than the police would have us believe. They’re using this narrative to constantly raid and harass massage parlors. This affects their livelihood, affects their workplace, affects their living situation,” Hou said, “Oftentimes, the police come in claiming to be rescuing victims of human trafficking, but without actually asking what they want, and also not supporting them after the raid happens.”
Hou cited the 2019 Seattle raid on the 11 massage parlors located around South Jackson Street. Five spa owners or operators were arrested, and 26 women were removed from the parlors. However, Hou states that the City of Seattle has not provided a long-term solution for trafficking and support victims outside of the carceral system.
Furthermore, Evelyn and Hou both highlighted the need for statewide multilingual testing. In order to become a licensed massage therapist with the Washington State Department of Health, students must complete 625 hours of education and training and pass the Massage & Bodywork Licensing Examination. However, the test is currently only offered in English. Tuition is another barrier—Evelyn said she paid $10,000 for her mandatory massage program.
“One of the big pushes that MPOP is going for is more equitable licensing, because the licensing right now is very inaccessible. They’re primarily conducted in English, but the workers are primarily speakers of Mandarin,” said Hou.
MPOP continues to support worker-led campaigns and help them build collective strategies to advocate for better working conditions and industry standards. With the implementation of practical solutions such as multilingual state testing, fraud and trafficking can be further prevented.
“Our goal is to really uplift them and not be their voices. So building that political education and understanding that they need to be the ones to speak for themselves. They’ve been able to go and deliver like public comment and massage board hearings,” said Sun.
Hong Ta (she/her) is a news writer from South Seattle and grew up going to the CID, specifically in Little Saigon. She graduated from the University of Puget Sound with degrees in Political Science and Spanish. You can read more of her work at thienhongta.com.
