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On Sunday at the How Berkeley Can You Be Parade, I engaged in a spirited conversation with Robyn Few, who had a table set up at Civic Center Park. Robyn Few, in case you haven’t heard, is the former sex worker who spearheaded the campaign to get Measure Q on the November ballot. Measure Q, if passed, will make the arrest and prosecution of prostitutes the lowest priority for Berkeley law enforcement—a possible first step, according to measure proponents, to legalizing a profession that no one expects to go away in any case. The measure is garnering widespread attention as yet another wacky, “only-in-Berkeley” concoction, so talking to Robyn while costumed, dreadlocked, half-naked people meandered by seemed fully appropriate. 

I have to admit I approached her table with attitude, although she wore a warm smile and a “Fuck Bush” bumper sticker on her behind. Holding my daughter by the hand, I launched right in asking Robyn where she lived. I ascertained that while she resides not far from a notorious stretch of San Pablo Avenue where prostitutes sometimes solicit in the middle of the day, it is clearly not like the southwest Berkeley Potter Creek neighborhood where my children and I reside. I told her about my 7-year-old seeing discarded condoms on the way to her school bus stop. I told her about the limousine driver who left his engine running mere feet from my bedroom window while he was getting a blow job in the back seat, until I shined a flashlight and he stumbled from the car yanking up his pants. Robyn was a charming, attentive listener, and even allowed as how she’s picked up used condoms herself from the streets of southwest Berkeley. She said Measure Q is designed to open up a dialogue about finding solutions to a problem that is likely here to stay. But when I raised concerns about prostitutes flocking here in droves if Measure Q passes, she poo-poo’d it as unrealistic, saying that there’s a misconception about its impact.  

I said if I were a prostitute and Measure Q passes, then I’d like to be a prostitute in Berkeley. She said that was silly; that prostitutes like everyone else have rent to pay, bills to pay, and they’re not going to just up and leave to come here if they’re already doing OK somewhere else. Measure Q, she explained was really about making things safer for the woman who police rarely arrest anyway. She suggested the way to deal with discarded condoms and their accompanying paraphernalia (empty liquor bottles, needles, etc.) was to push the city to have street cleaning in southwest Berkeley. 

I didn’t tell her it was hard for me to imagine the City of Berkeley picking out used condoms from the bougainvillea bush that grows next to my house, or from the alleyway between my home and my next-door-neighbors. Or reminding her how hard it is to get a good night’s sleep when horny johns are circling the block waiting for their favorite girl. I know she didn’t create the problem. 

I felt like a yuppie—though I’m not—when I broached the issue of possible plummeting property values if the Measure Q passes. Robyn’s demeanor finally changed from patient to haughty, and she accused me of caring more about the value of my home than about women’s rights.  

I became defensive, too, and I said I’d move out of Berkeley if Measure Q passed.  

Then, feeling I was wading into unknown territory, I stated that women always have a choice whether to prostitute themselves or not—though in reality I know that for some women it must seem the only way out of poverty, while others are likely coerced into it by pimps. Still, it’s hard for me to summon up a sort of blanket sympathy for women I don’t know and likely never will.  

I told Robyn I take care of foster kids, who have few if any choices how to live their lives. I didn’t tell her that the young girl—my adopted daughter—who by now was pulling on my hand to get her pizza, had been a foster child abandoned by a mother who had quite possibly been a prostitute at some point in her own life. 

But I want to say this now: I don’t know what will happen if Measure Q passes. I want to believe Robyn, that this is a step in the right direction. I do hope that any woman who doesn’t want to be a prostitute will always be free to make that choice. 

Beyond that, if I never see a discarded condom on the sidewalks of my neighborhood again, I’ll rejoice that even people with questionable morals have an iota of consciousness about our environment.  

Yeah, right. 

Annie Kassof its a freelance writer in Berkeley.