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Triple-X First Directors
On Location
First Directors 2012
(At the 1st Triple-X Board BBQ)
Triple-X First Directors at the 1st Annual Board Barbecue at New Brighton Park, Tuesday, August 14, 2012.
PHOTO: Elaine Ayres |
Tracy Petersen
(Treasurer)
Tracy Petersen was born in Vancouver and lived here all her life. For more years than she would like to mention she has worked in some kind of financially related job from retail to public practice bookkeeping, financial statement and tax preparation. Tracy is currently the bookkeeper at UBCP/Actra and has been there for 11 enjoyable years. She is a member of Canadian Auto Workers Local 3000.
Tracy is grateful to have been given the opportunity to come together with some caring, compassionate and informed people who are dedicated to furthering the rights and safety of some of our least represented members of society and looks forward to seeing how this might change the way the world views the sex worker.
Kerry Porth
(Secretary)
Kerry Porth was born in Vancouver and completed an undergraduate degree at SFU in 1986. After years working in university administration, Kerry worked in the sex trade for four years leaving her with a lasting passion for improving the human rights of sex workers. After exiting the sex trade in 2004, Kerry was the Executive Director for PACE (Providing Alternatives, Counselling & Education) Society in Vancouver's downtown east side from 2006 to 2012. A passionate human rights activist, Kerry is a well-respected educator who regularly lectures at colleges and universities about the sex trade. Kerry is also a Board Member at Pivot Legal Society and sits on the steering committees for Living in Community and their demonstration project, SAFE in Collingwood — both projects which address sex work issues in Vancouver. She also takes a keen interest in harm reduction, drug policy, poverty, housing issues and adoption.
Triple-X First Directors on the Ballantyne Pier memorial, New Brighton Park, August 2012.
PHOTO: Elaine Ayres |
Will Pritchard
(Director)
Will Pritchard has been an effective and steadfast activist for sex worker rights since 1990. While working as a young escort from the pages of NOW Magazine in Toronto, he excelled as a street outreach worker for Maggie's — Toronto Prostitutes' Community Service Project, distributing condoms and promoting safer sex practices. After moving to British Columbia in 1991, he co-founded the infamous Sex Workers' Alliance of Vancouver to coordinate response to vigilante Shame-the-Johns campaigns emerging in Mount Pleasant and Strathcona neighbourhoods. For more than ten years SWAV successfully rebuffed stigma and hatred through grassroots organizing and sex-worker education as well as in the media.
Will's labour moment came while working in Prince Edward Island in 2002 when he intervened on behalf of a teenage co-worker who had been directed by the manager to use her hand in an industrial food processor. In 2005, he was back in Vancouver hired by the Union of B.C. Performers where he led the membership department. As a shop steward with the Canadian Auto Workers, Local 3000, he quickly earned his stripes in key roles negotiating with senior management in mediations, arbitrations, and collective bargaining. He was top of class at the 2008 B.C. Federation of Labour Organizing Institute, earning the coveted PSAC cap.
Will is a creative partner at the venerable Walnet Institute (http://walnet.org), an online arts and activism resource he co-founded in 1995. He is currently a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 15, employed as a city planner.
Anna Smith
(Director)
Anna Smith is an artist who has worked for more than twenty years in the sex and entertainment industries. She creates visual art, writes comedy and has performed striptease and live art on four continents. She was one of the first female comedians to work in the early British alternative comedy scene. In London she co-produced Open Heart Cabaret — a weekly cabaret featuring original stage artists.
Anna frequently uses her talents for sexual education projects including: the AIDS Committee of Toronto, Options for Sexual Health (Planned Parenthood Vancouver), Sex Workers Alliance of Vancouver, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, American Physicians for Social Responsibility. She has worked extensively in the environmental and social justice movements (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament U.K., Oxfam in Belgium and Canada); and she produced research and publicity material for the Canadian Lightkeepers Association.
She has collaborated on several films including:
- "Out of the Blue". 1988 (co-direction, cinematography, actor) Sex worker produced fantasy;
"Life and Death with Gideon Vein," 1986, (Horror spoof) Royal College of Art (actor, several roles);
- "Safer Sex," 1986, (producer, director, actor), cinematography by Gerald Packer Condom ad;
- "Here Are The News," 2010, (researcher, advisor) documentary by Cathleen Smith about Edith Josie, First Nations journalist from Old Crow, Yukon territory;
- "Flying Tables," 2007, (in post production, director, cinematographer, editor), documentary about high-rise construction
Her writing includes "More to Le Strip than Stripping," (Globe & Mail); and "Goodbye to a Queer Pioneer" an obituary for "Canada's only lesbian," Chris Bearchell, Xtra! West, March 1, 2007. Some of her comedy memoirs have caused uproar recently, by appearing in John Fleming's blog: http://blog.thejohnfleming.com.
Anna is valued for her honesty and objectivity as a consultant to writers and educators, the film industry, and the theatre. In 2012 she was a consultant for the multi-award winning play by Janet Feindel, "A Particular Class of Woman."
Anna is particularly proud of having danced at the opening of the retrospective show of artist Harold "the Kangaroo" Thornton in Sydney Australia. Other interesting places that Anna has performed include: The Gargoyle Club, London; The Penthouse, Vancouver; Le Strip, Toronto; The Toronto Public Library (Don Mills branch); Cinema Paris, Brussels; Cinema ABC, Antwerp; Bondi Pavilion, Sydney (RAT party — documented in the Sydney Powerhouse Museum collection); The Pink Panther, Sydney; Hotel Mechinta, Malaysia; and La Scala, Helsinki.
Triple-X First Directors at New Brighton Park, August 2012.
PHOTO: Elaine Ayres |
Andrew Sorfleet AOCA
(President)
Andrew Sorfleet is a five-year program graduate of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. He has worked in the sex industry for more than a decade and was a founding member of the Sex Workers' Alliance of Toronto (1992-1995), and of the global Network of Sex Work Projects (1992-2006). He was also the education coordinator for the Toronto Prostitutes' Community Service Project (Maggie's) from 1992-1995. Following a move to Vancouver, Andrew became coordinator of the Sex Workers Alliance of Vancouver from 1995-2005.
In 2003 Andrew was awarded a contract from the Law Commission of Canada and produced $ex, Work, Education, Advocacy & Research! ($WE@&R!) Sex Workers' Workbook: Where YOU regulate the sex industry. Andrew was invited to the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration in Brussels in 2005 as the rapporteur and edited and produced, Sex Workers' Rights: Report of the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration, Brussels (2005).
Andrew Sorfleet is still a dedicated and outspoken activist for sex workers' rights.
Howard Storey
(Vice President)
At very nearly 65 years old Howard Storey has had a long career on stage/screen/voice overs and commercials, and a long career representing the best interests of performers, their industry and their Union. As serendipity would have it, long periods of advocacy for performers were interspersed with long periods as the President of the 170 Unit False Creek Co-operative Housing Association.
As a performer advocate Howard has been a National Councillor for ACTRA on the Prairies, Secretary Treasurer-Actra BC, National Councillor-Actra BC, Founding Vice-President-Union of BC Performers, Treasurer and National Councillor-UBCP/Actra and two terms as President of UBCP/Actra. He was the founding performer member of the BC and Yukon Council of Film Unions and a long time member of the Motion Picture Production Association. In the Co-op, besides the broad range of challenges that so many people living together in alternative housing generate, Howard has overseen and presided over approximately 11 million dollars in leaky co-op repairs.
Howard is interested in fostering a healthy and dynamic coming together in order to provide innovative alternatives in human collaborations and better outcomes in human relations.
Triple-X First Directors at New Brighton Park, August 2012.
Photo: Elaine Ayres |
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