11th Annual RED UMBRELLA MARCH
For Sex Work Solidarity, June 10, 2023

Becki Ross at 3rd annual Vancouver Red Umbrella March, June 13, 2015. Photo: Elaine Ayres

Becki's reflections for Red Umbrella March
Read by: Andrew Sorfleet, June 10, 2023

Thank you for gathering with Andrew Sorfleet, and friends, on the ancestral, unceded, and stolen territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil Waututh, and Squamish Nations. We come together to honour and celebrate the lives of sex workers past, present, and future. In varied ways, we continue the collective fight for de-criminalization, de-stigmatization, integrity, and sex workers' sovereignty.

Andrew Sorfleet reading from Prof. Becki Ross at West End Sex Workers Memorial for Red Umbrella March on June 10, 2023.

The late Jamie Lee Hamilton and Becki Ross co-founded this majestic West End Sex Workers Memorial. Jamie Lee was Becki's cherished kin and comrade for 23 years. She was smart, sexy, and sassy. A Cree, Trans, Two-Spirit, and proud sex worker, Jamie Lee fought vigorously and tenaciously for the rights of sex workers, trans folks, low income, Indigenous, and racialized people, for almost 50 years.

In 2008, Jamie Lee and Becki co-founded the West End Sex Workers Memorial Committee. It was our goal to push the City of Vancouver for reparations and an official apology. Years earlier, in July 1984, sex workers in the West End were violently expelled from living and working here, in their own hooker-hood. Jamie Lee was part of this diverse community almost 40 years ago. Back then, she, alongside members of the Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes, developed innovative, life-saving strategies of harm reduction, safety planning, and economic security on the West End strolls. At the same time, powerful, well-financed forces, including CROWE — Concerned Residents of the West End — flexed their anti-prostitution muscle. They sought to cleanse and whiten the West End in anticipation of the world's fair, EXPO 1986.

In 2016, Jamie Lee and Becki secured the resources necessary to install this monumental lamppost — the first, and only one of its kind, in Canada. For Jamie Lee, this commemoration was, and is, symbolic of sex workers' resilience, moxie, and courage in the face of pernicious whore stigma, erotophobia, racism, vulture capitalism, and criminalization.

In July 2019, Jamie Lee returned to her beloved West End, after 35 years of exile. For five months, her active, artistic, and nurturing Mole Hill community was idyllic. Before Jamie Lee died of cancer in December 2019, she relished her Mole Hill neighbours and her garden-level home, a short block from here.

Today, Jamie Lee's spirit prevails, to guide, to inspire, and to embolden us all. May we always seize opportunities, like Red Umbrella Day, to advance our passionate global struggle for sex workers' liberty, justice, inclusion, safety, and recognition. In the face of ongoing violence and dehumanization, we must accelerate and enlarge our efforts. Let's March!

Thank you very much.

Becki Ross, Victoria, BC

West End Sex Workers Memorial, Est. Sept. 16, 2016. Illustration: A. Sorfleet