SWAP - Sex Workers' Action Program Hamilton Inc.

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Thank you to @Eva_Sita @aceciliacr @CBCHamilton for publishing this story. cbc.ca/news/canada/ha…

Hamilton Police Charge Man in Sexual Assault, Seek More Victims hamiltonpolice.on.ca/news/hamilton-… READ MORE:

We at @SWAPHamilton are sharing this information about this person charged in relation to a violent incident against a female sex worker in Hamilton. The police believe that there may be further victims based on information they received, and are looking for this information to be communicated within the sex worker community. Following an investigation by the Hamilton Police Service Sex Crimes Unit, Paul Kimani, 33-years-old, of Hamilton, was arrested on March 15, 2026. He has been charged with: • Sexual Assault • Aggravated Assault • Theft Under $5,000 • Mischief Under $5,000 Kimani is described as a Black male, 33 years old, approximately 5’6” tall, 153 lbs., with a medium build, short dark hair, and a moustache and goatee. The investigation alleges that Kimani arranged to meet female sex workers in the central Hamilton area and became physically violent during these interactions. Investigators believe there may be additional victims and are encouraging anyone who may have had contact with Kimani to come forward. Anyone with information that could assist police is asked to contact Detective Ian Chan of the Sex Crimes Unit at 905-546-8958 or the non-emergency line at 905-540-5553. Hamilton Police wants all survivors of sexual violence to know that they will be treated with respect and supported in choosing if, when, and how to report. Information can also be provided anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at crimestoppershamilton.com. There is no guaranteed way to prevent sexual assault. Sharing this information is intended to support community awareness. Individuals are encouraged to trust their instincts. For confidential support, contact: • Sexual Assault Centre (Hamilton Area): 24-hour line at 905-525-4162 or sacha.ca Sacha Hamilton • Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Care Centre: hhsc.ca/sadv • Centre de Santé Communautaire: cschn.ca

Former Sex Workers’ Rights Advocate Jelena Vermilion Announces Campaign for Mayor of Hamilton, ON archive.ph/dz5Rd Civil rights advocate, YWCA Women of Distinction award recipient, and Executive Director Scarlett Gillespie, widely known publicly under the pseudonym Jelena Vermilion, has officially announced her candidacy for Mayor of the City of Hamilton. For nearly a decade, Gillespie has been recognized locally and nationally under the name Jelena Vermilion for her work as a sex workers’ rights advocate, artist, and E.D. of the Sex Workers’ Action Program (SWAP) Hamilton. She is now publicly connecting her legal name with her well-known pseudonym as she enters municipal politics. “Many people in Hamilton know me as Jelena Vermilion,” Gillespie said. “That name allowed me to advocate safely in difficult and often hostile environments. As I step forward to run for Mayor, I am choosing to stand publicly under my legal name, Scarlett (Jelena) Gillespie, while acknowledging the work and reputation I built as Jelena Vermilion.” Gillespie says her candidacy represents a break from traditional political pathways and a commitment to representing people who are often excluded from decision-making. “My life experience—including my past as a sex worker—has given me a direct understanding of poverty, stigma, and the systems that fail our most vulnerable neighbours,” she said. “Hamilton deserves leadership that understands these lived realities and is willing to confront them with honesty, integrity, and courage. As a resident of public housing in CityHousing Hamilton in Ward 3, I see daily the systemic issues which desperately need solutions.” Notably, Gillespie's public advocacy has resulted in the YWCA Hamilton receiving $100K in City funds to conduct a gender-based safety audit, and the amendment of Hamilton's Municipal Code of Conduct on October 9, 2024, which added Section 14 to By-Law 16-290. This amendment requires members of Council and of its local boards to make honest statements, prohibiting knowingly false or misleading communications, and mandating that elected officials conduct their communications with colleagues and the public in a respectful manner that maintains public confidence and avoids threatening, intimidating, offensive, or abusive conduct. As a researcher, a personal support worker educated in palliative, geriatrics, and psychosocial-spiritual care, and an interdisciplinary artist, Gillespie has spent years organizing around issues including housing, civic engagement, disability rights, harm reduction, community and public safety, and human rights. Through SWAP Hamilton, she has worked directly with marginalized communities across the city and province and has advanced their interests through effective civic engagement. Gillespie’s work in community safety and civic engagement has also been recognized by Hamilton Police Service leadership, including receiving Chief of Police Frank Bergen’s challenge coin. Her mayoral platform will focus on several key priorities, including: • Housing • Tenant protections • Climate justice • Accountability, accessibility, and transparency at City Hall • Community-led safety initiatives • Strengthening local arts and cultural sectors Gillespie says her campaign will center the voices of residents who often feel excluded from municipal politics. “Hamilton is a sanctuary city built by working-class and disabled people, artists, im/migrants, and labourers,” she said. “Our city government should reflect the full lived reality - including the income levels - of people who live in Hamilton.” More details about Gillespie’s platform and campaign events will be announced in the coming months. Media Contact: Scarlett Gillespie (also known as Jelena Vermilion) Executive Director - SWAP Hamilton SWAPHamilton@gmail.com #HamOnt #ONPoli #CDNPoli

Using "strip club owners" to dunk on @FordNation actually promotes stigma against the workers who work in those establishments. Criticise the fiscal irresponsibility, and don't wield the stigma against sex workers for your rhetoric, it's lazy and harmful.

Sex Worker Diaries: Spoken and Sung is a bold, participant-led action research musical project funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Performance Location and Showtimes: Live at the Performing Arts Lodges (@PAL_Canada), 110 The Esplanade, @CityofToronto -April 10, 11, 17, 18: doors at 7 PM, show at 8 PM -April 12 and 19: doors at 3 PM, show at 4 PM FREE ADMISSION (TICKETS): buytickets.at/sexworkerdiari… Part creative performance, part public scholarship, this production emerges from the research initiative Sex Work – The Musical: Altering Societal Perceptions of Sex Work Through Audience Engagement with a Musical Play. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 52 sex workers across Canada, this project explores how stigma shapes occupational health & safety, stigma, social relationships, and everyday life. Their words become lyrics. Their experiences become narrative. Their realities take the stage. We invite you to listen, witness, and engage. Join us for an evening that centres lived experience, challenges assumptions, and reimagines how stories about sex work are told and heard ✨️ CC: @GlobalSexWork @KathleenCherri1

I feel proud of giving my second sex work law guest lecture at @UBC @AllardLaw Dr. Erez Aloni's class, on International Sex Workers' Rights Day, no less! It went very well and I feel I said everything I wanted to say. Tomorrow, the same students will be guest lectured by Janine Benedet (@CrimLawProf), who is reviled by many sex workers for intervening to help institute our current criminal laws, so I am glad I was able to inoculate them from that propaganda, first. I am invited back for the fall, already! 😁 💕 ✨️

Today is International Sex Workers' Rights Day, observed annually on March 3 to highlight the rights, dignity, and safety of sex workers globally. Established in 2001, when 25,000 sex workers in Kolkata, India, rose up to protest against police harassment and to advocate for their social, legal, and labour rights, and to end stigma and discrimination against them. To commemorate the occasion, please enjoy a film from @Carol_leigh "Outlaw Poverty, Not Prostitution" with permission from her best friend and executor of her estate.

Video produced by @RedUmbrellaFund and @GlobalSexWork On March 3rd, Celebrate International Sex Workers’ Rights Day! On March 3, 2021, over 25,000 sex workers gathered in India for a festival. The festival was organized by Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC @Durbar_DMSC) a Calcutta based group with over 50,000 members. DMSC successfully resisted efforts by prohibitionist groups that pressured the government to revoke the permits. Learn more about the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee at dmsc.org Learn more about sex worker days and other upcoming events at nswp.org (@GlobalSexWork) The Red Umbrella Fund is proud to support DMSC and 63 other sex worker-led organisations around the world, including @SWAPHamilton. Follow us as we uplift sex workers’ rights celebrations around the world during the week of March 3rd. Tomorrow, SWAP Hamilton will post films from Carol Leigh (with permission) for the March 3rd celebration and commemorative date.

Happy to announce the launch of Transactional Intercourse, an anthology edited by @MxJackParker! I contributed my chapter "Sublimations of Stigma: The Body, the Word, and the Work of Being Seen" You can Pre-order now: mxjackparker.bigcartel.com/product/pre-or… Transactional Intercourse is an anthology of trans and intersex s3x w0rkers writing, including essays and personal narratives from 30 contributors. People who do not conform to society's expectations with regards to s3x and gender are either overlooked or made into hypervisible subjects of mockery and hatred, and this is compounded further when they engage in stigmatised labour like s3x w0rk. Within this anthology, all aspects of this profession are discussed without censorship. The topics covered include family dynamics, the politicization of trans, intersex and s3x w0rker identity; experiences with clients, intersections between whorephobia and other forms of bigotry; using sex work to pay for gender affirming care, and more.

Today I archived History's Courtroom Episode # 1005: "Trick of the Trade" which details the @SCC_eng R. v. Hutt case involving Debra Hutt, a woman who was just trying to feed her children. Her case decriminalized the solicitation laws in Canada in 1978, which were replaced by C-49 which criminalized "communication for the purposes of prostitution" in 1985. Appearances made by Debra's lawyer Tony Serka, Dr. John Lowman @SFU, and Gordon Price (we don't claim him) and Char LaFontaine of the (former) @PaceSociety #History

Please see @SWAPHamilton's delegation to the @HamiltonPolice Services Board on February 19, 2026. During the delegation I explained about the @BCPoliceChiefs' Sex Work Enforcement Guidelines and Principles which have been in place across British Columbia since 2017, as adopted from the @VancouverPolice in 2013. I underscored to the Hamilton Police how adopting the six recommendations SWAP made including these BCACP Guidelines and Principles would help to professionalize policing and would help best to reduce foreseeable harm to sex workers in @CityofHamilton. pub-hpsb.escribemeetings.com/Players/ISISta… Thank you to @Anjali_Menezes and @CameronKroetsch for putting forward the motion for the HPS to report-back on the feasibility and cost of implementing the six recommendations we at SWAP Hamilton made last year to the HPSB. The motion PASSED! 🙌 #HamOnt #CDNPoli #ONPoli #YHMCC CC: @TheSpec @AndreaHorwath @JohnPaulDanko @DawnDankoOLP @WAWGHAMILTON @Shaw_Sandy @tammyhwang @LisaHepfner @AlexWilson96 @NrinderWard3 @RobinLennox @Ward1Wilson @JeffBeattie2014 @TedMcMeekin @EstherPauls2 @MSpadafora2022 @NeilLumsdenMPP @BCouncillor @TammyHwang @HamOntWard4 @FaeJohnstone @ajesusjoseph @EasyThePianoMan @MCirielloMPP @PascaleHamOnt @BayObserver @TeviahMoro @jonjwells @EmilyNTayler @CHCHTV @CHCHNews @CBCHamilton @KateMccullough @Peesker @McMasterOCE @RabbiMivasair

Forgot to tag @corasottawa in this thread..

Maeve is now pretending to be a victim when being called out for their actions towards a vulnerable and marginalized sex worker - including feeding into the trope of painting trans women as aggressive. In Maeve's efforts to be the victim, she ended up doxxing said sex worker

Indigenous Lawyer (Naomi Sayers) Files Divisional Court Challenge Over Police Database Abuse Investigation [Link in stories]: apnews.com/press-release/… cc @MichaelMotala

BREAKING: Ontario’s inspector general of policing is launching a province-wide inspection into police corruption at all municipal services and the OPP ctvnews.ca/toronto/articl…

The funny thing about outing a sex work archivist's legal name is that the archivist instinctually documents the transgression. The record is indelible and if you continue to fraudulently claim legitimacy in the sex worker non-profit space again, the evidence will resurface.

I appreciate @BCouncillor's principled stance on this issue in the @CityofHamilton. @AndreaHorwath could learn a thing or two. #HamOnt @CDNPoli #ONPoli #Hamilton

Just a heads up that @corasottawa is a sham and is trying to make money off of the backs of sex workers while pretending to be a non-profit. Do not trust them. I brought up concerns to them and they immediately blocked me and pretending to be diplomatic. Not trustworthy.

The lawyer in the Durham Courthouse situation is a Black, Jamaican-Canadian, female, who had on a headscarf in the interview room, where she was catching up on work after being in the Superior Court that day. The appropriate questions are: 1. Did the police have reasonable and probable grounds to arrest the lawyer Sudine Riley for trespassing because she allegedly did not leave the Courthouse immediately after the police asked her to leave right before her arrest? 2. Were race or racial stereotypes used to any degree in the lawyer's treatment by the police? 3. Was using the arrest power against the lawyer, who was entitled to be in the interview room, a reasonable course of action for the police in all the circumstances? 4. Was reasonable force used in arresting the lawyer? 5. Was a Use of Force Report completed as per the Regulations? 6. Why did the police allegedly slammed the lawyer's face into an object causing injury and bleeding? @DRPS @LawSocietyLSO @blsacanada @CMLAACAM @EquityNetworkD @cancivlib @DRPS @LawTimes @ClaOntario @CABLNational @OBAlawyers @BLAC_Ontario @OntHumanRights @HRLSC_ON @jca_president @ABLE_org