more on prostitution and 2010

On Jan 29, 2008, at 8:54 PM, BETTY KRAWCZYK wrote:


Dear Esther,
I have heard all of your arguments before. I was a friend of the woman who first started PEERS in Victoria. My daughter also worked with this organization as a researcher, later moving on to work for SAVE THE CHILDREN. Due to her work there she was later commissioned to write a government report on the subject of aboriginal children and youth and the sex trade. I found her report in the Alouette prison library under the title "Sacred Lives" when I was serving time there just recently for blockading at Eagleridge Bluffs. My daughter continues to do research on women in the drug and sex trades and I have a third book coming out soon on this subject myself entitled OPEN LIVING CONFIDENTIAL. I know enough about this subject to impress upon you that I know a con when I am in contact with one, whether in person or through the mail. If I become mayor I promise you this...what you envision as upper scale brothels serviced by beautiful mature women to cater to upper scale men will never happen.
First, because this category is already being filled by call girls. The second category of men with money want very young girls. The younger the better. Well, lower class men do too, but they have a harder time with it. Do you doubt this? Do you really? So children would be drawn into these brothels no matter how much you protest you wouldn't like it. And if you listened to the aboriginal women such as the woman at Aboriginal Women's Action Network you would think twice before you brag that you have the consent of the women on the East Side. They hate you. Well, certainly they oppose your organization veraciously. It might be because your racism surfaces in your casual assumption that you are working for them, too. They know you don't give a tinker's dam about their lives.
And even if you did, it wouldn't matter because your solution is one of managing (to your advantage of course)a pus pocket in society, not to try to eradicate the wound, much as the way Gordon Campbell tries to manage the downtown east side. As mayor I will insist that every child in this city has a decent place to live, decent food, and decent treatment from the adults entrusted to care for them. I will insist that the billions spent on needless waste like the Olympics be spent on affordable housing and educational programs. I will insist that young people work with me to present a challange to all levels of government that university fees be brought down to a reasonable level, and that we all have the physic space to learn about organic gardening, about conserving waste, and considering how to do with less as we reconnect with nature. I will push for the legalization of marijuana which seems to be a rather innocuous herb compared to alcohol as this would curb much of the crime and violence in the city and fund long term drug treatment programs for hard core addicts. I will push for the age of consent to be raised to sixteen at least, and I will work for a society where men and women can come together as equals, not as one in a position of sexual servitude to the other. Yes, there will be much to do as Mayor, much to champion, but consenting to the sexual servitude of children and women will not be one of them. But you say a mayor can't do all of these things I claim? I quote the poet Goethe... "whatever you dream you can do, begin it. Begin it now. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." Betty Krawczyk