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he Free Speech Coalition has launched FSC Speak Out, a media campaign built around a premise that should not be radical but somehow still is: the people who do this work should be the ones talking about it.
The campaign, developed in partnership with EPA United, kicks off with interviews from 22 creators who spoke about how they entered the industry, what their day-to-day work actually looks like, what opportunities it has opened up, and what navigating stigma costs them in practical, concrete terms (such as housing, banking, healthcare, legal protection, and access to social media platforms).
This is the part that tends to get flattened in mainstream coverage, where the story is almost always told by someone with a pre-determined narrative: politicians who need a villain, avocacy groups with a hidden religious agenda, or journalists parachuting in for a think piece. The performers themselves show up mostly as data points or cautionary tales, rarely as the most informed people in the room, which they are.
FSC Speak Out is structured as an ongoing campaign running through the summer, with short videos, interviews, and creator-led content rolling out across platforms. The FSC will also be amplifying videos from creators who join independently, posting under the hashtag #FSCSpeakOut and tagging the coalition directly. The ask is simple: a roughly one-minute video on something that feels true to your experience. What the work has given you. What the attacks on the industry have taken. What people get wrong. What a Tuesday actually looks like.
The Free Speech Coalition has been fighting legislative and legal battles on behalf of the industry for decades, and that work matters. But courtroom wins do not automatically shift the cultural conditions that make performers' lives harder, and the FSC clearly understands that. Cultural change requires different tools, and one of the most effective is letting people speak for themselves without an intermediary deciding which parts of their story are acceptable to share.
If you are a creator and you have something to say, this is a decent place to say it. The industry has spent long enough letting other people do the talking.
Learn more and participate at freespeechcoalition.com/speakout.
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