Yes there were some “fuck yous” thrown around. But they were deserved. I’m pretty sure I know the person who wrote a lot of the more inflammatory statements - she’s a sex worker, and a huge asshole commenter was calling her all kinds of names and basically saying she should not exist. And you’re going to try to say someone should remain totally detached and not angry in the face of that? Fuck that noise. Sometimes? Anger is JUSTIFIED and NEEDED.

“Reactive anger?” Um, yeah, it’s going to be reactive when people are basically telling you you should not exist and are being downright threatening. If getting angry in those circumstances is a “disservice to the cause” then I don’t want to be part of whatever the cause is.

Unlike some people, I’m not going to sit here and blame prostitutes for these things. And as much as I believe MPSA is putting a little too much faith in a single public safety tool (fixing broken windows), I remain in support of my condo association giving its financial support through membership.

Whether it’s a cute, little conceptual thing or not, there is a human rights issue, as you pointed out in a previous post. The response I’ve seen to the CL article by the folks who commented directly on CL’s website was a major disservice to the cause — they did a better job of turning human rights into a cutesy thing than I could ever do. They were insulting to the people who live in the neighborhood and dismissive of legitimate public safety concerns. As long as the response is this sort of reactive anger, then the best response is no response at all.

That does not mean “don’t speak up.”

Uh, hell no. Real people’s lives are at stake RIGHT NOW. This is not some cute little conceptual thing. This is real people, being harmed, right now.

Nothing changes if people do not speak up!

But most of what I have to say has more to do with the way other people have responded to Andisheh’s article than the way you’ve responded to it.

Reading through the responses on CL’s website, I was struck at how much the activists’ voices drowned out their own message… and at how perhaps the best response would’ve been no response.

But more on this later, when I’m not running late for work.