Danny & the Prostitutes' Safe Sex Project

Danny founded the Prostitutes' Safe Sex Project (PSSP) in 1986 in response to growing public hysteria that blamed prostitutes for the spread of AIDS. With other members of the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes (CORP), Danny produced pamphlets and buttons which PSSP made available to social service agencies and distributed on the street. But when the Toronto Department of Public Health offered grants for community AIDS education, Street Outreach Services (SOS) (who had been receiving PSSP materials for free) applied for funding to provide education to prostitutes without ever informing PSSP that the grants were available. In those days PSSP was run out of Danny's apartment on Church Street.

In response PSSP was formalized and by March 1988 it had received the first installment of the project's first government grant from Toronto DPH. Danny's first safe sex pamphlets started a tradition with PSSP for piloting and producing educational information on small, colourful bits of paper, with humourous illustrations, photocopied in small batches at a time. He did one for the boys (Men at Work) and one for the girls (Happy Hooking).

How to Have Safer Sex!
How to Have Safer Sex! was produced by Danny Cockerline for the first time in 1987 for the Prostitutes' Safe Sex Project. The pamphlet went through various incarnations in a process of fine tuning. How to Have Safer Sex became the cornerstone of the AIDS and HIV prevention education materials at Maggie's (The Toronto Prostitutes' Community Service Project), which ran PSSP. There was always a huge cardboard box full of them in the storage closet with the condoms. The version represented here is from Danny's last revision in 1993.

Maggie's Operations Manual
Danny, still the world traveller, wrote Maggie's Operations Manual, the foundation documents for Maggie's while passing through Toronto. The manual was adopted by the board and then at Maggie's First Annual General Meeting in February 1993. Danny tightened some screws, particularly to build in discipline for the staff, and the final version of the manual was adopted at the Maggie's 1993/94 AGM. (This document is long! about 90K.)