Scarlett Gillespie, also known as Jelena Vermilion, is a 33-year-old trans woman and founder of the Sex Workers’ Action Program (SWAP), and is running for the Hamilton Mayorship. With an unshakable sense of duty and a steady gaze, the loud and proud Gillespie sets out to overtake the competition and dethrone incumbent Andrea Horwath, former leader of the Ontario NDP and current Hamilton Mayor.
A staunch activist, Gillespie says her working class background sets her apart from the field and this would make her uncompromising as a leader.
Community organizer
“I’m an activist labour leader. I have been organizing with sex workers for a decade and advocating various social issues for the same amount of time,” Gillespie says. “I am the only candidate that will not be purchased, bought or bribed.” She adds, “We need a Vanguard for working class rights in city council, and we don’t have that right now.”
Gillespie is the founder of SWAP in Hamilton, an organization that serves to advocate for and provide services to the sex workers within the city. At one point the program operated a physical community space that provided supplies for safer sex, Naloxone/Narcan kits, clothing, food and resources to find mental therapeutic care, housing and childcare. This on top of community outreach/education and public awareness campaigns to combat stigmas against sex work.
“I’ve organized around communities that don’t have as much solidarity.”
Gillespie’s muckraking is well documented even before her move to Hamilton, in her first action challenging an MP from her hometown.
“I was friends with a person who had an abortion in Kitchener Waterloo at the time. Stephen Woodworth (Conservative MP for Kitchener Centre 2008-2015) came to the university to have a discussion about the definition of life because he wanted his role as a politician to change the definition of life from a religious standpoint to make it such that it would be a crime to have an abortion or to terminate a pregnancy.”
Woodworth was slated to deliver a lecture at the University of Waterloo but Gillespie, her friend and a handful of comrades decided to use theatrics in order to challenge his misogyny.
“He was using University space to spread this hateful rhetoric and so we didn’t feel it was appropriate,” says Gillespie. “We had one of our members in a felt vulva suit, so they were like a person-sized vulva and I was wearing a red dress to represent menstrual blood.”
Gillespie then gave Stephen Woodworth a trophy that declared him Kitchener-Waterloo’s Nastiest Misogynist.
Supporting the working class and fighting oppression
The self described “lover, carer and fighter” says she wants to build better relationships if she were to become mayor.
“I feel that Andrea Horwath (current mayor) has really neglected the relationship-building side of being a mayor,” says Gillespie. “I was the victim of two hate crimes in City Housing Hamilton and when Andrea Horwath had her safety summit this year ahead of the election cycle, I went to speak with her and tell her about my experience.” Gillespie says there was a graph with the numbers of hate crimes based on protected status and that she was the only person counted on the graph for gender identity that year.
“I went to go speak to her and she had her communications person step in between us and basically dismissed me and treated me like I was nothing. And here she is using my community, the trans community, as political fodder.”
Gillespie’s social background informs how she will build those better relationships.
“I’m the only candidate who is working class. I am the only candidate who has experienced homelessness, the only candidate who is willing to admit that I live with disabilities much like 40 percent of the population in Hamilton,” Gillespie says she will make a priority to focus on those issues she knows affects people in the public like herself. “So housing is number one, we need to look at triaging and prioritizing the repair and maintenance of our current housing stock before developing new housing that only offers politicians photographs and red ribbon cutting but doesn’t sustainably house people long-term in a rental rate that is sustainable or affordable either practically or by the legislation of 30 percent of one’s income.”
Community safety, not police
Gillespie also plans on reducing the police budget and keeping balance between municipal police and community programs to create a sustainable public safety.
“Specifics would be reducing their Cogeco cable TV subscriptions as well as their horsing program. They don’t need Clydesdale’s to properly respond,” she adds that creating a safer feeling community may rely on ideas like cultural competency. “Not just policing because policing often increases feelings of unsafety for many communities and marginalized people, including myself.”
She also doesn’t keep it a secret that she has experienced suicidal ideation in the past, so she relates with others who’ve experienced police interactions while dealing with that kind of crisis.
“We also need to look at the way that safety is experienced for people in crisis. So if people are suicidal, the police banging on their door and demanding to do a safety plan with them is not going to help people necessarily, but someone accessing the Barrett Centre (for Mental Health Crisis Support) speaking to a counsellor and having an understanding context, it would be more helpful.”
Scarlett’s previous experiences with police have informed her politics, and she is no stranger to them. After she won the YMCA Hamilton “Woman of Distinction” award in 2024 she was very publicly critical about the Hamilton Police Service and police violence experienced within her communities during an acceptance speech she made.
“Because of the fact that my speech was critical of police, the police (HPS) removed their funding from the YWCA like little babies. I got a bunch of flack for it and it was a big controversy,” says Gillespie. “There was like an unmarked car outside my door at 4 in the morning one night at my previous residence just outside my window with a huge CB antenna. So I thought they had a private investigator on me. I thought, am I going crazy? Am I being paranoid? And then I spoke to some lawyers and it turns out I wasn’t. I got the information request and it turned out that over 65 police officers were searching my name in 2024.”
Instead of backing away, she decided to go on the offensive.
“I had a meeting with the chief of police with the head of YWCA Medora Upple and I was like, ‘Here’s the fucking proof. Your officers are harassing me and looking, and using your databases illegally. Work with SWAP Hamilton and take our training to reduce harm to sex workers.’”
Gillespie was awarded a challenge coin after that confrontation with Police Chief Frank Bergen. She describes this challenge coin as something that sets her apart from making her a force to be reckoned with even when faced with police pressure.
“He basically gave me the challenge coin, basically being like you won.”
Gillespie now looks forward to the October 26th election with hopes that she can use her activism to affect the local governments policies. If elected, she’ll shore up inefficiencies within administration while creating social programs and policies that are inspired by her core activist values.
For more information visit scarlettformayor.ca
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