Merry Christmas, everyone! OK, maybe a protest by survival sex workers isn't everybody's idea of cheery Christmas news, but it's great to
see this news of some push-back developing among sex workers in the Downtown Eastside.
If anyone's still waiting for our government to address the problems of survival sex workers, best to just let that go. What lingers from the Pickton trial and inquiry is that we'll be waiting a long, long time if we leave it up to the mainstream and our governments to do right by sex workers. It's going to take protest - more than the 75 people who turned up for the DTES protest, it's true. But hey, it's a start.
The fifth annual Red Umbrella Day march last Saturday in Victoria brought out more people than ever for the walk to the legislature, including sex workers. Great to see some of the indoor workers out in support of stopping violence against sex workers.
Kudos to Tracie Fawkes and her crew from
PEERS Victoria for organizing the walk, which also was a chance for new PEERS executive director Marion Little to introduce herself to the community and some of the local sex workers.
Sex workers need mainstream people to walk alongside them if they're ever going to get out from under the stigma and stay safe from the dangerous or exploitive aspects of their line of work. But it's great to see them out there on the front lines themselves, rejecting the stigma that keeps them sidelined and invisible all too often. Here's to many more protests in 2012!
