DankZedong

Yesterday I made two posts regarding the Belgian municipality elections. They mainly focussed on Antwerp, my city, and the result that we got there (20.2% of the votes).

I felt a little disappointed yesterday because of weeks of talks of possibly becoming the biggest party but after a good night's sleep I feel really proud of managing such a grow and becoming the second largest party.

As a true Antwerpenaar I also need to remind myself of other places in Belgium existing (Belgians will understand this joke) and today the rest of the results are known. I want to highlight some of the other noteworthy results we managed to get.

In Antwerp we also have, as the only municipality in Belgium, elections in our city's district. Last elections we manage to get a really good position in Borgerhout and we even got to govern the past few years together with the socdems. As a reward for the things we achieved, we are now the BIGGEST party in the district. In the district of Hoboken we also managed to become the second biggest party.

In Brussels and its' municipalities we also get really good scores. We keep growing in Molenbeek, Jette, Saint-Gilles, Forest, Anderlecht, Ixelles, Brussels City and Schaarbeek. In Molenbeek, Saint-Gilles and Forest we even managed to get over 20% of the votes. We are able to govern there if other parties want to.

In Wallonia we also keep growing in the big cities of Namur, Charleroi and Liège. In the cities of Herstal and Seraing we even manage to get 30% and 26% of the votes. In places like Saint-Nicolas and La Louvière we also get 20% and 19,2%.

In the city of Moeskroen we got over 20% of the votes, which is noteworthy not only because of the score, but also because it was the first time ever competing in the municipalities there.

All in all we keep growing at a really great pace. We have chances to govern in several municipalities and district. My opinions on electoral politics aside we can be really proud of the results we got. It will give us chances to keep growing and the show what we are capable of.

Belgium is working towards new laws regarding sex work, making the workers eligeble for pensions, healthcare plans, contracts and overall more legal status. This was done in corporation with sex workers, orgs surrounding sex work and my place of work, the Union.

Now, I worked with former sex workers and human trafficking victims myself and I am aware of their struggles. I am not going to outright deny their right to fight for improvement.

What bugs me is the normalization of an industry that is heavily, and I mean very heavily, infested with human rights abuses. For every one empowered sexworker there are a thousand human trafficking victims. Giving them a pension is not helping in the slightest.

And then there is the whole thing of tying things like unemployment benefits to you wanting to look for work. Here in Belgium your benefits can be cut as soon as you refuse a job that is offered to you through government instances. What if we further legitimize sex work and you refuse a sex worker position? There have been caes already of the instances offering unemployed actresses porn jobs, so why not offer them sex workers contracts? And why not cut their benefits of they refuse a fitting job? Right?

And everyone is so happy about it. As if the whole industry is one collective of happy people doing a fun job instead of the horror it is.

Sorry for ranting but fuck me what a mess

I haven't read it and I want to though I don't feel like ordering yet another book as I have done so a few times in the past weeks.

I found a pdf which seems to be the book but I also found that other versions are longer/have more pages.

Anyone that can provide me with a link?