Communication from the edge

Those living on the fringe of society – sex trade workers, the poor, and the drug addicted – don’t have much of a voice, and those who speak face running battle to be heard.

Creating awareness about the plight of the marginalized to an impatient public is difficult, but not impossible. Jody Paterson, Mavis Henry and Rev. Al Tysick, three veterans from the trenches of social advocacy, spoke to Royal Roads University bachelor of applied communication students Aug. 13, detailing the struggle to win the hearts and minds of the Greater Victoria community.

Rev. Al Tysick, Jody Paterson and Mavis Henry shared their thoughts on communication strategies to bachelor of communication students at Royal Roads.

Paterson, the former executive director of PEERS Victoria, a sex-trade worker support society, said speaking about prostitutes to local service groups initially earned her disdain or outright hostility. She says prostitutes were so stigmatized that audiences tuned out and turned off. After 65 fundraising talks in her first year as executive director, she needed a better communications strategy.

“The stigma was much greater than I gave credit for. People didn’t like it. They actually wished I would go away. They didn’t feel empathy, they felt apathy and felt judgemental,” Paterson said. “It was a tough slog that first year.”

Paterson changed tack and started talking about sex trade workers as if explaining the health risks of working the asbestos industry. She spoke about safety regulations, reducing demand and keeping youth from entering the trade.

“I had to wrap it in a normal perspective. You need the government to believe in it to give funding, and have the pubic agree the government should give money,” she says. “You have to be very strategic to get people to engage in social issues.”

But despite the success of PEERS in transitioning sex trade workers out of the industry and the society’s relatively high profile in Victoria, Paterson said the sex trade remains a high-risk and highly vilified profession. “Nothing has changed in three years. Things may have actually regressed and gotten worse,” she said.

Henry, the executive director of Nil-Tu,O Child and Family Services, which provides support services to seven south Island First Nations, spoke of the long road to overcome racism and discrimination. The problem still exists, she says, but is less overt.

She said her father joined the Canada military before the Second World War because businesses wouldn’t hire aboriginal people. In the same era, the government appropriated property for a growing population in Victoria. Deals with the government to protect First Nation traditional lands were broken, she says.

“For me that’s why private land should be in the mix with treaties. We’ve lost so much,” Henry said.

When studying at the University of Victoria years ago, Henry says academics were resistant to ideas of aboriginal rights and title, but slowly ideas of aboriginal perspective and decolonisation became part of mainstream academia.

“Not just me but everyone uses the lens of decolonization,” she says.

Rev. Tysick, a self-described “panhandler at heart” and tireless champion of the homeless and downtrodden through the Open Door ministry, says as social issues become worse, poverty advocates need to communicate a clearer message to the public.

“Praying doesn’t bring in the money,” he quipped.

With Tysick’s gregarious, emotive style, he told the students effective communications could employ powerful imagery and symbols. In full Catholic cardinal garb, Tysick brandished a large knife, chopped an apple in half and silently held aloft the rotten core, a recreation of his favourite anecdote from his childhood in Montreal.

“Sometime silence can be the best communication,” he said. “Use communication wisely and clearly. My communication is mainly to tell stories. That is extremely powerful if you can tell a story well.”

Royal Roads University - News and Events