Today it is an unremarkable thoroughfare, littered along isolated stretches here with used drug needles and liquor bottles, a place where prostitutes entice customers from gritty curbsides.
San Pablo is also at the heart of a bid to decriminalize sex for sale in California. That campaign, the brainchild of a former prostitute, Robyn Few, seeks to gain ground through an initiative on the November ballot in Berkeley to direct the city police to treat prostitution as their lowest priority.
Known as the Angel Initiative, for Angel Lopez, a San Francisco prostitute murdered in , it also instructs city officials to lobby the State Legislature to decriminalize prostitution. Few first pitched the idea to state lawmakers and officials in San Francisco and Oakland last year but was turned away.
The City Council here also rejected it, but Ms. Few led a petition drive, collecting more than the 2, signatures required in Berkeley to qualify for the ballot. Even in ever-open-minded Berkeley, though, the measure has prompted anger and opposition, including among residents worried about crime and city officials frustrated by Berkeley's reputation for embracing any and all politically novel ideas. It's the wrong message to say, 'Come to Berkeley, we're wide open. Few concedes that the initiative, even if approved, would not be likely to lead to changing state law anytime soon.
But she and supporters identified on the ballot - including prominent Bay Area politicians like State Senator John Burton and Terence Hallinan, a former San Francisco district attorney - see it as important in the battle to shield prostitutes from violence while securing workplace protections. Backers of the measure insist that prostitution is a societal mainstay, a commodity in perennial demand. Therefore, it should be treated like any other job and have unions, government workplace protections, fair wages, insurance and legal recourse for workers who face abuse or civil rights violations.
