Sudbury activists demand video with images of people experiencing homelessness be pulled from social media

A videofeaturing images of Sudbury people experiencing homelessness has divided the community.

The video shows images such asa team of people working to bring a man back from an apparent overdose (his face is blurred), a person injecting what appearto be drugs and a man dejectedly sitting on a sidewalk.

Melissa Poitras-Belanger whosings a song that plays along with the images says her videohas helped raise awareness and support for people experiencing homelessness, and most feedback has been positive.

She says she obtained permission from everyone featured in the video, and issurprised that groups object to it.

Those groups include Black Lives Matter and the Sex Workers Advisory Network of Sudbury, whichfeel she's exploiting the vulnerable. They have posted demands on social media that the video be taken down.

"Their hurt has not gone unnoticed, a hundred per cent, I have pure empathy for these people,"Poitras-Belangersaid.

"But the project was done to create awareness and change and we did it with respect and we did it with permission."

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Outreach worker Marie Pollock is in the video. She says she's shown from the chest down, along with a couple of clients. Pollock says they had no idea they were filmed until she saw the video on Poitras-Belanger'sFacebook site. As a former sex trade worker, she says she feels violated.

"We don't need people to tell our stories. We can do that ourselves and that's been the struggle for many decades."

Poitras-Belanger says she's been volunteering to help the homeless since the end of August, andsays she's come to know these people and wants to tell their stories.

"We have respected every single one of those people with their express consent, and I stand behind that 110 per cent."

Tracy Gregory, the executive director of the Sex Workers Advisory group in Sudbury, says some of her members came to her saying they were filmed without their permission. Gregory says they felt exposed and powerless.

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"When people are coming together at the expense of peoples' privacy and their confidentiality and their feelings of safety. that's not okay, that's actually causing more harm and that's not the way we need to be doing community service."

Poitras-Belanger says she has strengthened the privacy settings for the video on her Facebook page in response to the criticism. But she maintains the video is successful in raising awareness and empathy for people experiencing homelessness.