Jamie Lee Hamilton and Becki Ross
Op-Ed

Opinion: Sex workers seek apology, reparations

History: Dehumanizing domestic terrorism of 30 years ago is a wrong that must be righted

JAMIE LEE HAMILTON

There is a piece of Vancouver history that not many know about. About 30 years ago, industrious, community-minded "hookers on Davie" street were banished from living and working in the West End. Violently cast out as disposable trash, these sex workers are long overdue for official truth, reconciliation, and reparations.

The Chief Justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court, Allan McEachern, ruled on July 4, 1984, that sex workers on the Davie Street stroll were a "blatant, aggressive, and disorderly public nuisance." He chastised those who "defiled our city" by "taking over the streets and sidewalks for the purpose of prostitution." To remedy what he called the "urban tragedy" of the West End, McEachern banned female, male, and transsexual prostitutes from their neighbourhood.

BECKI ROSS

His ruling was championed by then-mayor Mike Harcourt, attorney general Brian Smith, and Vancouver Centre MP, Pat Carney. Concerned Residents of the West End and their vigilante posse, Shame the Johns, were elated about the purge of a "de facto red light district" from their seaside, middle-class enclave. Civic officials of all political stripes and moral entrepreneurs keen to cleanse and whiten the city in advance of Expo 86 celebrated an end to their "war on hookers."

To the estimated 200 sex workers targeted for this legal expulsion, the B.C. Supreme Court ruling was a crushing blow. Since the early 1970s in the West End, many had built stable friendships, a clientele, community connections, and economic capacity as independent, pimp-free contractors. Their earnings enhanced the bottom line of the West End's four national banks and the myriad businesses they patronized.

Co-workers often shared apartments, worked in pairs, recorded license-plate numbers of clients, and protected each other through the bonds of their outdoor brothel culture. To improve working conditions, they developed strategies for risk assessment, safety planning, and harm reduction.

Details of "bad tricks" and violent police were communicated by Vancouver's first sex workers' rights organization, the Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes, in their newsletter, The Whoreganizer.

After McEachern's callous injunction in 1984, on-street sex workers were forced to relocate east of Granville Street, first to working-class Mount Pleasant, and then to what became the killing fields of the city's Downtown Eastside, with 65 women murdered since the mid-1980s. Back then, outdoor sex workers had little political, economic, or social capital to mount a legal counter-challenge. They lacked support and resources from logical allies such as gay liberationists, second-wave feminists, labour leaders, and progressive lawyers who dithered in the face of what many believed was a contentious issue.

To right this historical wrong we seek a formal, public apology from Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. Also, because Harcourt collected $28,000 in fines from sex workers charged with soliciting under a municipal "street activities" bylaw later ruled illegal, we seek financial reparations. We would use refunded monies for a permanent memorial near the corner of Bute and Davie streets. We envision a plaque affixed to a wrought-iron lamp post with a bronze, stiletto-heeled shoe at its base.

As co-founders of the West End Sex Work Memorial Committee, our aim is to remember and honour those hos and hustlers who were subjected to an act of dehumanizing domestic terrorism. We believe that this moment is ripe for redress.

In December 2013, justices at the Supreme Court of Canada bravely declared prostitution-related laws unconstitutional. "Sex for money is not a crime," said Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. However, federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay announced in May he is hell-bent on jailing sex workers who advertise to solicit clients, and clients (mostly men) who purchase sexual services. His Bill C-36 will make it impossible for adults to negotiate safe, legal sexual commerce anywhere in the city, indoors or outdoors. Instead of spurious rhetoric about all prostitutes as exploited victims and all customers as evil villains, what do sex workers want?

Since prostitution was decriminalized in New Zealand in 2003, sex workers have successfully established worker-run co-operatives, paid taxes, insisted on freedom from police intimidation, and pursued legal recourse in the event of sexual harassment.

Sex work professionals in Vancouver, including survivors of the West End's mass eviction, have enacted similar strategies of self-governance. Yet their rights to life, liberty, and security are again in grave danger.

On the 30th anniversary of McEachern's devastating ruling, and on the cusp of MacKay's punitive new law, sex workers and allies warn of atrocities looming on the horizon. A memorial in the West End would remind us collective respect for sex workers is essential to a world unencumbered by fear, shame, and stigma.

Jamie Lee Hamilton is a long-time advocate for Downtown Eastside residents, sex workers, and Aboriginal citizens. Becki Ross is a professor in Sociology and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at UBC.