| Daryl Klassen responded to my recent article "Neighbourhood Threat: Drugs and hookers are making the inner city a dangerous place to live," Viewpoint, October 14-20, 2004, with "heartbreak" and "anger."
Mr. Klassen seems to have missed the entire point of the piece. The thrust of the article was not how the issues affected me, but rather (that) the issues were not on the agenda during the recent civic election.
Yes, I used the terms "crack whore" and "addicts," and I did so advisedly. I am aware the lives of people addicted to crack cocaine and meth are grim. However, nothing is accomplished by employing euphemisms like "sex-trade worker," or by attacking those trying to bring attention to the issues.
Perhaps I shouldn't use the term "crack whore" – fair enough, if it gets in the way of what I am trying to say – but to gloss over what these women (and men) do under the benign phrasing of "sex-trade worker" is BS, quite bluntly.
This is not a "trade." Plumbing is a trade; social work is a trade; carpentry is a trade. To fancy it up under a nice, clean-sounding name is to deny the grimness and abuse of their lives, and the effect of those lives – and the choices made in those lives – on others. The women in my neighbourhood who are working the streets to pay for their crack addiction… are not Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. There is nothing glamorous, or "professional," about what they do.
I did not propose solutions in the article because the article was not about solutions – it was to highlight the problems in Ward 8.
The article was written out of four years of frustration at being, I believe, stonewalled by the city and by the Calgary Police Service. I am not, for the record, particularly concerned about prostitution, per se. I am profoundly concerned about drug dealers and users – many of whom are, in fact, addicts – increasingly taking over my neighbourhood and not seeing anything concrete being done.
The whole point of the article was to highlight that, for those of us held hostage by drug traffickers, those addicted to those drugs, and others, there is little help available (for) restoring our neighbourhoods to safety, and the situation wasn't an issue of any significant profile in the civic election. Traffic and roads were, though.
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