east van

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

SWAV March and Rally

5:30pm
- 7:30pm
Monday December 17 2012

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

5:30pm - Gather at Heatley and Powell

6:00pm - March of red lights and red umbrellas

The Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society (SWUAV) would like to invite your organization to join us in commemorating the 10th International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers with a march of red lights and red umbrellas on Monday, December 17th, 2012.  Sex workers in Vancouver continue to face many forms of stigma and discrimination which contribute to a loss of safety and security.  Recent years have been especially tumultuous, from the dismal failure of the Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry to the unanimous decision on standing from the Supreme Court of Canada, with many peaks and valleys along the way.  SWUAV members have expressed a desire to gather and walk the streets as one, to be loud together while shouting our demands for justice and safety, and to be silent together as we remember sisters and brothers who have been threatened, brutalized or even lost their lives.

The tentative plan for the late afternoon/early evening:

·         5:30pm: Meeting for a press conference and snacks

·         6:00 – 6:15pm: Marching down to the tracks at Raymur and Cordova (under the Hastings Viaduct). 

·         6:15 – 7:00pm: We’d like to spend some time under the viaduct and get creative with the space, including putting messages about sex worker rights and safety on the walls under the bridge.

·         7:00 – finish: A walk with red lights and red umbrellas along Hastings to Clark, then to Venables.  We would then like to head up to the Prophouse Café for the planned event at 8pm, being organized by NakedTruth.ca.

About SWUAV

SWUAV is a peer-based organization of active and former sex workers who live and/or work in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. SWUAV came together in 2005, seeing a need for an organization that could speak directly from the perspective of women who do sex work about issues of their health and safety, as well as general living and working conditions.  Central to the organization is the idea that women can feel supported personally and politically in an organization of peers, and that the issues and ideas most relevant to their day-to-day survival can be at the forefront of the group's agenda.  To this end, the organization incorporate as a non-profit in June of 2007, codifying in its constitution and bylaws principles of empowerment and self-determination that ensure experiential voices are heard.

SWUAV is committed to improving the working conditions for sex working women in the DTES of Vancouver.  The organization does this by working for systemic change - including fighting against poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression that contribute to the violence and lack of safety for sex workers.  SWUAV works to raise awareness among its members of ways in which we can keep ourselves and each other safe, preventing violence in our community as effectively as we can on an individual level, while working together to effect legal and policy changes that will create safer living and working environments for women.

(note: picture used above is of sex trade workers ocuppying a church in east vancouver in 1983 demanding end to state violence)