By Ann Harrison

Marching proudly in their fishnet stockings and feather boas, members of the Sex Workers Outreach Project had much to celebrate as they escorted assemblymember Mark Leno during San Francisco's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade on June 27.

SWOP's Berkeley ballot initiative, which supports the repeal of prostitution laws, qualified for the November ballot June 22. SWOP members turned in almost 3,200 signatures for the measure, which needed 2,077 signatures to qualify.

If passed by voters, the initiative would direct the city of Berkeley to lobby in favor of statewide prostitution decriminalization and make arresting prostitutes and their customers a low police priority. The measure, which is the first of its kind, is called Angel's Initiative in honor of Angel Lopez, a prostitute killed in San Francisco in 1993.

"Our goal with this initiative is to make women safer," SWOP founder Robyn Few says. "Women who work as prostitutes are now afraid to report abuses or assaults to police because they are worried about being arrested."

According to Few, Berkeley police have arrested more than 40 people in Berkeley so far this year on charges connected with prostitution and received 249 related calls. Those arrested include Alameda County Superior Court judge Jack Gifford, 76, who was busted in March during a prostitution sting on the Oakland side of San Pablo Avenue, which hosts a lively sex trade. Gifford, who allegedly tried to offer an undercover Oakland police officer $40 to have sex with him at his home, pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of disturbing the peace and subsequently retired.

Few says she supports decriminalization of prostitution rather than legalization because it would allow women to work for themselves instead of only in licensed brothels. She says the Berkeley initiative wouldn't end street prostitution, which women are driven to by poverty, but it would help get health and safety information to prostitutes and their customers.

In May the Berkeley City Council refused to adopt a resolution supporting a revised version of Angel's Initiative that removed the requirement that prostitution be a low police priority. While the issue was sent off for study by the city's Commission on the Status of Women, SWOP moved forward, deploying topless signature gatherers at the Berkeley farmers market.

SWOP is currently working to to repeal prostitution laws in San Francisco, and Leno says he would back a statewide initiative if activists generate enough local grassroots support (see "Hookers Unite!," 1/28/04).