A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

     This new "homeless" life that my partner Paul and I now live is marked by many moves during our times back in Canada, when we shuffle like urban nomads from one housesit to another. Since returning to Vancouver Island five months ago, we have relocated 10 times.      It stressed me out when we first started doing it last spring after returning from two years in Honduras. But do anything for long enough and a routine seemingly always starts to emerge. We've now grown quite adept at constant relocation.       We've been doing Cuso International volunteer work in Central America for most of the last three years, first in Honduras and now for shorter postings in Nicaragua. While we still have a small storage locker here in Victoria, we've mostly given up all our stuff so that we're free to go wherever a posting or a whim takes us.      The periods in the south are relatively stable in terms of housing; we rent a place...

    This is an amazing day for the sex workers' rights movement with the news that Amnesty International has approved its draft policy supporting decriminalization of adult sex work .      "What will it all mean?" asked one of my friends. I admit to not being sure what it will change in the immediate future. But as a symbol, it's significant when the world's most recognized human rights organization acknowledges that criminalizing sex work violates the rights (and threatens the lives) of sex workers.     I've had the good fortune of getting to know a lot of sex workers over the last two decades, so for me it hasn't been a stretch to understand that criminalizing sex work increases the dangers, the sense of isolation and the stigma for those who work in the industry. It sorts sex workers into a different category of human - one who lives and works alongside the rest of us every day, providing us with services that we want, yet is denied the most ...