In the weeks and months preceding the 2010 Winter Olympics and throughout the Games, Vancouver's billboards, airspace, and newspapers have been filled not only with ads for corporate sponsors, beers, and athletic brands, but with images of a darker sort: women beaten and bloodied, young girls looking woefully into the camera lens.

Pivot Legal Society is a non-profit legal advocacy organization located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Pivot's mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins.

We believe that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such as opportunity, respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law.

Join Val Marie Johnson, an University College Toronto Sexual Diversity Studies Visiting Senior Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology, St. Mary's University, to discuss changing policies towards sex work in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.