By Neal Hall, Vancouver Sun
Fifteen groups, including aboriginal organizations, plan to boycott the policy forums next month of the “flawed’ Missing Women Inquiry.
“The commission has lost all credibility among aboriginal, sex work, human rights and women’s organizations that work with and are comprised of the very women most affected by the issues this inquiry is charged with investigating,” the groups stated Tuesday in a letter to Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal.
The head of B.C.’s Missing Women Inquiry says he is appalled by anonymous allegations that male staff created a highly sexualized work environment at the commission workplace.
The Vancouver police board are considering the adoption of new sex worker enforcement guidelines that will encourage officers to treat sex trade workers with “dignity and respect in order to build relationships and increase the safety and protection of vulnerable women working the streets.”
You can read the full document here.
BY NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN MARCH 17, 2012
BY SUZANNE FOURNIER, POSTMEDIA NEWS MARCH 12, 2012
VANCOUVER — The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry will stand down until April 2, in a last-minute bid to get a First Nations rights lawyer to speak to the social issues that have led to dangerous sex work being dominated by aboriginal women.
BY SUZANNE FOURNIER, THE PROVINCE FEBRUARY 29, 2012
Vancouver sex trade workers are still being told by police to move to dark and dangerous “containment zones” north of East Hastings St., the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was told Tuesday.
BY NEAL HALL, POSTMEDIA NEWS JANUARY 30, 2012
Vancouver police Const. Lori Shenher said she did “John” stings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and, while posing as a sex trade worker, was grabbed by a man in a car.
The man wouldn’t look at her while he talked to her, Shenher told the Missing Women inquiry.
Yesterday was the culmination of a pretty amazing journey for me. I sat in the front row at the Supreme Court of Canada as the as the federal government tried to persuade the country’s top court that Sheri Kiselbach, a former sex worker with 30 years of experience and Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV), a non-profit organization run by and for street-based sex workers in the Downtown Eastside, do not have standing to challenge the laws related to adult prostitution because they are not directly affected. Among the people sitting with me wereSheri and DJ. DJ is a member of SWUAV and has been involved with Pivot since we first started looking at the issue of sex workers’ safety ten years ago.
Sex workers and their allies rallied outside the Downtown Eastside (DTES) police station Saturday, calling on Vancouver police to treat women in the neighbourhood with respect, and to put a stop to violence against people in the sex industry.
It’s been 22 years since the Montreal massacre. We talk violence against women, and ways to end it, with survival sex work organizer Jennifer Allan, founder of Jen’s Kitchen. She experienced violence in the survival sex industry first-hand, but today, she supports those in the trade and pushes for change. By David P. Ball.
Jennifer Allan knows first-hand what it’s like to sell one’s body in order to feed it.
About ten years ago, the 34-year old founder of Jen’s Kitchen – an advocacy, outreach and food relief service for women in Vancouver’s survival sex trade – found herself pacing the streets of Calgary and Vancouver, the pain of hunger in her belly.
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