Chanelle Gallant’s writing has most recently appeared in the NYT best-seller Pleasure Activism, Beyond Survival, and Defund, Disarm, Dismantle  (the first anthology about police abolition in Canada). Her series Protest and Pleasure was nominated for Best Column by the Canadian Digital Publishing Awards. Her first book “Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice”, with her long-time collaborator Elene Lam, comes out in 2024 with Haymarket Books.  

Chanelle has been an organizer since 2000 when she was part a historic fight against the Toronto police and went on to found or support numerous sex work organizations, the first chapter of SURJ outside of the US and now sits on the national board for Showing Up For Racial Justice, the advisory boards of the Catalyst Project (Oakland) and Resource Movement (Toronto).

Chanelle has been fundraising since 2000 as well and has trained hundreds of organizers who have raised millions of dollars for grassroots organizing, in the US, Canada and the global south. She is now a donor organizer and donor advisor, who focuses on building the leadership of high capacity organizers who want to unlock the power of their wealth to make strategic, accountable and lasting impacts on social movements—and have fun while doing it.

She received a Master’s in Sociology and was a Lambda Literary Fellow.