Hookers Organize:
At home in the house of the Lord
from Open Road: Issue 17 – Winter 1984 [a Vancouver-based anarchist newspaper]
by Marrianne van Loon
CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL OCCUPIED: Only De Quadros [left] and Arrington [right] remain unmasked
The weekend of July 21 and 22 is the Feast of Mary Magdalen, the woman reputed to have been the lover of Jesus, and a prostitute. This is the weekend that Vancouver hookers and women supporters occupied Christ Church Cathedral in the city’s West End.
The occupation was the latest in a series of actions prostitutes and supporters have taken to make the British Columbia government lift a recently imposed injunction against soliciting, and to decriminalize prostitution.
The injunction is particularly oppressive and the courts may well find it unconstitutional. It names prostitutes as public nuisances, and anyone who police deem to be soliciting in the city’s West End can be arrested and jailed for up to 2 years if unable to pay the $2,000 fine. The onus is on the accused prostitute to prove her innocence, and it comes down to her word against the cops’. It is left up to the cops to decide whether or not she was hooking at the time. Despite a lockout that halted all buses for 3 months, hitchhiking is cited as soliciting. Talking to male friends is also regarded as soliciting.
In a city where police harassment and brutality against prostitutes is common, the intent of this injunction is clear; to stop all street prostitution without providing any economic alternatives to the adults and children who must sell their bodies to survive.
“Open season”
The occupation, organized by the Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes (ASP), began Friday noon as we arrived for the 12:10 service with our sleeping bags. The church was not caught entirely unawares: supporters within the church knew that something was afoot. After the service the Archbishop of BC and the Yukon left the microphone open for us to speak. But they were taken unawares when Sally de Quadros, ASP organizer, took the microphone and announced that we would be staying until Monday. She said ‘Prostitutes and supporters are occupying Christ Church Cathedral to protest the passing of the interim injunction on July fourth, 1984, declaring prostitutes a public nuisance, which in essence makes it ‘open season’ on prostitutes, thereby stripping us of what little human and civil rights we had.’
‘We are also protesting the violence perpetrated by the pimps and tricks. The harassment by the police has increased since the passing of the injunction.
The church was chosen for this action, as historically the role of the church has been to act as a sanctuary for the oppressed. And we wish to bring to public attention information that has been withheld from them by the media,’ said de Quadros.
The church agreed to give sanctuary, but under the numerous restrictions they imposed, it was more like jail. No supporters or interested parishioners were to be allowed [inside].
The first day of the occupation [no one was allowed] inside the church to talk, telephone access was extremely limited, and any of us going outside for a breath of air would not be allowed back inside. Doors wouldn’t be opened until regular church hours on Sunday, but a ‘dialogue’ would be organized for Sunday afternoon. Fearing repercussions for sisters on the streets if we were to be hauled out by police, we agreed to the demands, albeit not without strong reservations and some internal conflict.
US Pros, a San Francisco prostitute collective, stormed the Canadian embassy to demand the lifting of the injunction. They sent telegrams and also registered an official complaint at the United Nations against the violation of human rights in Canada. Later telegrams of support arrived from US Pros in Tulsa, the Australian Collective of Prostitutes, Philadelphia Wages For Housework and the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP). Monday the ECP organized a support protest in London.
The media jumped into action with amazing speed. Obviously, prostitution is a hot item; sex and violence. A single phone call to the national wire service produced four TV crews, plus numerous radio and print parasites for the Friday press conference.
Their favorite question, one that would hound occupiers for the duration: ‘How many of you are actually prostitutes?’ and even more obnoxious, ‘Which of you are prostitutes?’.
Patiently de Quadros and Arrington explained that the question is irrelevant. Also they added that by exposing identities they would endanger those of us working the streets. Except for de Quadros and Arrington, the women wore black masks when dealing with the press.
Outside, supporters leafletted passersby. Most people they talked to on the street were interested and sympathetic. They also organized candlelight vigils every evening of the occupation. At some risk, small groups of prostitutes left their street corners and strolled across the Granville Street border into forbidden territory. Various individual men and men’s groups organized food. The one organizer who was allowed in and out of the church, Marie Arrington, ran errands, arranged media coverage, and spoke with women’s and prostitutes’ organizations around the world.
Coverage that night was surprisingly fair, given the obnoxious attitude of most reporters. The action was obviously successful in attaining media exposure for the concerns of prostitutes and women in general. Though later coverage was less favorable as media competed in trying to discredit the action and find out which of us were prostitutes, the action forced the media to present the demands of a group that has historically had little power and virtually no ability to gain press coverage.
Very little of the coverage of prostitution in Vancouver has even acknowledged the existence of ASP, let alone come to ASP for comment.
The fact that this action had international connections contributed to forcing the media to pay attention. Not only were there pickets at Canadian consulates in San Francisco and London during our occupation, but this was the third such action taken by prostitutes. In 1975 prostitutes occupied churches in France, in 1982 the English Collective of Prostitutes did the same in London. These earlier actions, and the traditional role of the church in providing sanctuary, were the reasons a church was chosen for the occupation.
Sanctuary or occupation, Christ Church preferred to put on its best face and insist that we were their guests. That was obviously not true but we went along with it to protect the safety of the women on the streets.
Friday night we were threatened with eviction if we attempted to communicate with our supporters through the small openings above the frosted glass windows. We had a long day of confinement until the next night, when supporters finally discovered where we were being kept and moved the vigil to the alley so that we could join in.
Supporters brought flowers, also banners proclaiming ‘Mary Magdalen Was A Right On Woman’, ‘No Cops, No Pimps’, and ‘Free the Five‘, which was promptly followed by ‘Free the 13’ (referring to the occupiers).
Sunday was the day of the promised dialogue, the one small concession we had gained. After the late-morning service, in which priest Barb Clay and the Archbishop spoke much of loving, accepting each other and working for change, the dialogue began.
Many parishioners and supporters attended, sitting facing the row of who had taken off their masks as no media cameras were present.
One of the first questions asked was ‘Is prostitution really the only option for those who are on the streets?’.
Not all women, we explained, turn to prostitution. Some steal, some have supportive families, some have male friends, some work under the table, some subsist on the margin. Though the unemployment rate here is one of the highest in North America, the welfare system is entirely inadequate, especially for women with children and teenagers too young to qualify. Estimates indicate sixty per cent of Vancouver prostitutes are single parents. For prostitutes who are women of colour, employment prospects are particularly grim. Under all these conditions, it is not surprising that prostitution is one of the only options for women: it is survival.
De Quadros underscored these facts with the story of how she became a prostitute. Pregnant by a gang rape, she found abortion impossible to obtain. On a meagre hairdresser’s salary, she could not support her twin children. She turned to prostitution.
It’s not a glamorous occupation, nor is the money anywhere as plentiful as many people believe, said de Quadros. ‘It is hard and degrading, and prostitutes are among the most vulnerable, oppressed and exploited of all women,’ she said. A prostitute must not only deal with an average of 10 rapes a year, but she is a social outcast at the mercy of any man who chooses to abuse her, be he pimp, cop or trick.
With the injunction against hooking in the West End, police harassment of hookers is increasing, said ASP organizer Arrington. Prostitutes who have stood up for their right not to produce identification unless under arrest have been threatened and assaulted by cops. ASP has also heard reports of prostitutes being tied up and thrown in a nearby pond. Cops harassed and assaulted Arrington and de Quadros, and warned hookers not to talk to those ‘ASP bitches’, Arrington said.
The noise and harassment that spark complaints from West End residents are in fact caused by ‘hooker lookers’ and punks from the suburbs, she said. The complaints, which have become the public pretext for the anti-hooking injunction, could be easily resolved, ASP maintains, if police enforced existing laws against noise, traffic and littering. But the cops ignore these laws with the intent of making the situation intolerable so they can crack down on the hookers.
After the short service we attempted to leave the church, only to find that the media had apparently conspired to find out once and for all which of us were hookers. Two women were backed into a corner and admitted to being prostitutes. The rest of us remained silent, except when the media’s comment that we didn’t dress like prostitutes made us laugh derisively. Finally they’d had their fill of blood, and we picked up our sleeping bags and were filmed leaving while a few supporters clapped loudly near the microphones.
This action is not the last action which ASP plans against the injunction and to improve the situation for prostitutes. Neither was it without problems. We occupiers had not worked as a group before, and, at times, the group processes were poor. We had also underestimated the blood thirstiness of the media, and we hadn’t been prepared to deal with the church.
Despite these problems, the occupation succeeded in forcing the church to examine the issue of prostitution and to begin developing a new stand. Prostitution received nation-wide coverage from the view-point of the prostitutes, and we clearly made the connection between radical feminism and prostitution, forging a new alliance. Instead of the established ‘radical’ forms of protest, we had taken a risk by taking direct action, and although only time will tell for sure, we think it worked.
For more information, write to the Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes, Main Post Office Box XXXX, Vancouver, B.C., V6B 3W5, Canada
Also
Vancouver Sex Workers Rights Collective written submission to the MMIWG National Inquiry (PDF)
Protecting the health, safety, and human rights of sex workers – Pivot Legal Society
Service Work, Sex Work, and the “Prostitute Imaginary”, by Annie McClanahan and Jon-David Settell
Our Constitutional Challenge to PCEPA – Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform
Sexual sovereignty, by Adrienne Huard and Jacqueline Pelland
Canada 150 and the decriminalization of Indigenous Sex Workers, by Naomi Sayers
Canada’s Anti-Prostitution Laws: A Method For Social Control, by Naomi Sayers
Writings of the Vancouver Five
NATO Fighter Planes Invade Innu Territory, by Open Road (1987)