It's been very exciting to start promoting the party from the positon of candidate. Many of my friends and family who weren't aware of my involvement with the party now know a bit more about our policies and why I personally find them important.

I first became involved with ASP in 2008 when I was workning as a model and videographer for Abby Winters. I struggled with some peoples negative judgements about this industry and directly felt the discrimination and prejudice our country has towards the adult industry.

I found this workplace to be one of the most supportive and professionally run companies i have worked for. I have joked with my brother that he is more exploited on a daily basis by his IT employer through unpaid overtime and poor working conditions whereas I had never done any work I wasnt paid for or forced into the corner of having to agree to do extra work or risk losing my job.

After running a great company and employing numerous women the director of Gmedia was charged with a range of things, such as producing obcene material and selling x rated movies. I wondered if I would be charged for performing in such scenes if he could be charged for filming them. I offered to give him a character reference and stand up in court to defend our right to produce this content. This didn't eventuate. This company now operates in Holland and a generation of women who could have benefited from the sex positive experiences of AW will instead be waiting tables or relying on pitifal student benefits. This outrages me and I do not want to see censorship in this country increase.

So to start the campaign I ran in the Moonee Valley Fun Run on Saturday. It was pretty miserable weather but I flew the flag with the yellow tshirt and Chris Johnson was at the finish line with another Sex Party member Michelle Flynn with a Sex party sign. We filmed quite a lot of stuff of me for a youtube video to introduce me as the Niddrie candidate and it will be edited and up in about a week.

On Sunday we were up early and out picking up rubbish for the Clean Up Australia Day event. We picked a busy shopping strip and spent a couple of hours there.

It was great to have a second purpose to loitering in the streets and many locals thanked us or made fun of us for looking for winning TAB tickets. We didn't find any. I think it is a great event for the Sex Party to be involved in, especially for ingratiating ourselves in that particular community's eyes.
One thing I think we could do to improve the effectiveness of things like the Fun Run appearance and the Clean Up is to focus on the people we meet. We need to be actively networking, and moving around in small groups helps with the support you need to do this as it is quite confronting. To simply run or clean misses the point.

At the Fun Run it was the first time I had worn the Yellow Shirt outside of Pride March or Midsumma for quite some time. I got some disapproving looks and felt slightly less confident to approach people randomly after that. I guess it is a pretty conservative area and usually I have been at events where we are preaching to the converted. It definately indicates how uneasy some of the public are with the word 'sex' being associated with politics. I don't think they were offended by the rude bright yellow of my shirt anyway....

I think the more we can promote ourselves at events outside of the LGBT communities and get more into the 'mainstream' family conservative community events the more we will broaden our appeal. This is challenging and confronting at times as you do get some criticism. But I will be conquoring this fear as I approach all of the local small businessses in Niddrie to introduce myself and the party.

Any help is welcome!

Warm regards,
Amy Myers
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