More information on the Outcasts Project can be found at outcastsproject.com.

Cheryl prepares to use drugs in her apartment in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

We need for you people to see that we’re not stereotyped monsters. We’re people just like you, just with an addiction. Something that we do a little bit more than others… When you look at this, take it with a grain of salt, because it could be your own daughter, it could be your own son out there doing exactly what I’m doing, but they had the door closed.

A drug addict’s world is not just the drugs, it’s how they get them, what you gotta’ do to get them. Sex trade, you know. Stealing, killing, whatever it might take just to get that extra dollar to get that extra fix so you can feel numb for the rest of the day. Not necessarily it’s always that, but in my life, I just want you to know that I’m struggling and I need that extra help.

Cheryl cries in the yard of a church where her father’s funeral was held.

I hope the people see through this [essay] all the points, all the emotions and desires, needs, and wants that we need, that you can help us down the road be able to successfully show our governments that people need the extra bit of help because we can’t do it on our own.

Cheryl self-injects her medication at Providence Health Care’s Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver.

I want to show the people that this place is where we get our injections for our heroin opiate program, just show them that we need these places so heroin addicts can get off the streets. Heroin can be contaminated with many different poisons out there that can severely give us infections, because they put hog dewormer in the heroin on the streets. The clinical heroin here, there’s no bad chemicals or poisons in the drug. It helps us through the day, takes our aches and pains away, everything that heroin used to do.

In other places of the world, they had this study and it’s helped them, that’s why they brought it to Canada, here to [British Columbia]. And for us, the people who are in it, we’re so lucky and should be so grateful to have such a great program.

Cheryl paints her nails prior to a court appearance for a sexual assault she experienced.

I’m sure there’s hundreds of photos that could show my life different. But my life today is a recovering heroin addict. I’m 124 pounds. I used to weigh 97 pounds. There’s so many good things, and positive ways of looking at my life. If a picture could show all that emotion in one? That would be great, but it won’t and that’s all that my voice could tell you.

Cheryl self-injects drugs in her apartment in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

I think that people see a girl looking in the mirror, looking in fear, like what is she doing with the needle in her neck, sticking in her neck, that’s a pretty dangerous site to be injecting. But that’s the reality of that picture. It’s me being all strung out on dope, trying to get that shot into me, and it’s filled with blood and I’m trying to plug it into my vein cause I need that drug that’s in there so I can get off and get high, numb whatever pain I’m going through in that moment.

I was all fucked up on drugs that day, yeah. It shows my emotion, my fear, my determination. [I wish the photo had] maybe a little bit more light… Just to show it’s hard to inject into your neck like that. Just to show the picture more. To see what kind of struggle it is to inject in your neck. And to show maybe just a little bit more emotion to the people just to show what and why I’m doing that to myself.

Cheryl returns to an alley in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where she lived for several years.

People viewing this photo might see some young girl, downtown, in a back alley. Looks like it’s a rough alley. A young girl, maybe she’s strung out, or maybe she’s determined to find drugs or who knows what they see in this photo. They just see a young girl smiling and looking down the alley.

Yeah, it shows all of me. I just hope the people see me in this photo—that I’m a striving, struggling drug addict. That I’m trying to better my life.

First up: when he questioned whether a video about homosexuality should receive city grant money: “I have no problem giving money out to physically or mentally handicapped children or seniors, but spending $5,000 on this video is disgusting, it is absolutely disgusting to spend this amount of money on this, whatever it was called, video.”

Then, in 2006 at a Leafs game he asked a man if he wanted his “little wife” to be raped and shot in Iran.  The year before, he spoke out at a council meeting while discussing grants for transgender individuals: “I don’t understand. No. 1, I don’t understand a transgender, I don’t understand, is it a guy dressed up like a girl or a girl dressed up like a guy? And we’re funding this for, I don’t know, what does it say here? We’re giving them $3,210?”

Since 2008 calls have been made to the police by Ford’s wife, Renata, as well as her mother, reporting the mayor’s alleged abuse. (The charges were later dropped.)

He’s called fellow female politicians a waste of skin and allegedly groped mayoral race rival Sarah  Thompson.

Oh, and, he’s also said many things like this: “If you’re not doing needles and you’re not gay, you won’t get AIDS, probably.”

Drug addiction and alcoholism—for anybody—is an illness; sexism, homophobia and abuse are not. If we’re going to scrutinize Ford, let’s take the time to examine his entire terrible track record. Certainly, we’d like an apology for his sense of entitlement, which seems to make him believe it is OK to tell women to get raped or deny opportunities to others according to their sexual orientation.

Hillary Di Menna is a former This Magazine intern. Check out her new blog Gender Block every Monday at this.org

The almost-bare shelves of Toronto's Pages Bookstore in its final days. Daniel Tencer writes about the plight of independent booksellers in the November-December issue of This Magazine.

The November-December 2009 issue of This Magazine is now snaking its way through the postal system, and subscribers should find it in their mailboxes any day now. We expect it to be available on newsstands next week, probably. (Remember, subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too.) We’ll start posting articles from the issue online next week. We suggest subscribing to our RSS feed to ensure you never miss a new article going online, following us on Twitter or becoming a fan on Facebook for updates, new articles and other sweet, sweet This action.

This issue is our annual mega-hyper-awesome edition (64 pages instead of 48!), as we bring you a special supplement with the winners of the 2009 Great Canadian Literary Hunt.The winners this year were:

On the cover this month is a special package of articles we call Legalize Everything! — five writers tackle five things that should be legalized, and the activists who are fighting to make that a reality. Katie Addleman witnesses the madness of the drug trade, and the misbegotten “war on drugs” that criminalizes the mentally ill, funnels billions of black-market dollars into the pockets of narcoterrorists, and never actually reduces drug use. Tim Falconer asks our politicians to legalize physician-assisted suicide and allow Canadians to die on their own terms. Jordan Heath Rawlings meets the artists who believe that online music sharing may actually be the future of their industry, not its end. Laura Kusisto says criminalizing hate speech erodes Canadian democracy and offers no meaningful protection for minorities. And Rosemary Counter hunts down the outlaw milk farmer who wants all Canadians to have the right to enjoy unpasteurized milk, even if he has to go all the way to the supreme court to do it.

Elsewhere in the magazine, Meena Nallainathan surveys the state of Canada’s Tamil community following the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam last spring, and meets four Tamil activists who may hold some answers for rebuilding a Sri Lankan nation tormented by decades of civil war.

All that, plus James Loney on the Canadian government’s attitudes towards its citizens trapped abroad; Bruce M. Hicks on what Canada’s new Mexican and Czech visa restrictions are really about; Paul McLaughlin interviews B.C.’s Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, on the eve of his American incarceration; Dorothy Woodend on a new crop of documentaries that dissect the workings of our capitalist world; Darryl Whetter gives his picks for the must-reads of the first decade of the 21st century; Navneet Alang warns that when it comes to online charity, sometimes clicking isn’t enough; Lisa Charleyboy profiles Nadya Kwandibens and her photographic exploration of the urban Aboriginal experience, “Concrete Indians”; Aaron Cain sends a postcard from San Salvador, after a chilling meeting with some right-wing politicians on the verge of a losing election; and Jen Gerson ranks Canada’s political leaders on their Facebook and Twitter savvy.

PLUS: Daniel Tencer on the plight of independent bookstores; Sukaina Hirji on Vancouver’s Insite safe injection clinic; Lindsay Kneteman on Alberta’s Democratic Renewal Project; Melissa Wilson on getting the flu shot; Graham F. Scott on Canada’s losing war in Afghanistan; Jorge Antonio Vallejos on a remembrance campaign for Canada’s missing Aboriginal women; Jennifer Moore on an Ecuadorian village that’s suing the Toronto Stock Exchange; Cameron Tulk on Night, a new play about Canada’s far north; Andrea Grassi reviews Dr. Bonnie Henry’s Soap and Water & Common Sense; and Ellen Russell on Canadian workers’ shrinking wages.

Insite provides a vital service for the most marginalized. From Flickr.

But for Insite, this is a reprieve and no salvation. The case the plaintiffs have launched in an effort to save the Vancouver facility is a bold one. They argue Insite’s exemption from anti-drug laws isn’t just a good idea; it’s constitutionally protected by the charter right to life, liberty and security of the person. Shut Insite down, they warn, and drug addicts will die. To make their case, they cite the federal government’s own 2008 report. It found that 87 percent of IV drug users on the downtown east side were infected with Hepatitis C and 17 percent with HIV-AIDS. Nearly 60 percent had had a non-fatal overdose – meaning the next time they might not be so lucky. The government side replies, however, that drug laws are reasonable and necessary given the harmful effects of drug addictions on society overall.

Even if Insite wins the appeal this summer, the Conservatives have vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court. This means months or possibly years of legal purgatory for a place that was supposed to be, of all things, secure. And as the legal battle continues, the Conservative PR machine has already started spinning the line that courts are apolitical bodies with no business interfering in the decisions of popularly elected officials on this controversial issue. Let’s pause for a second and ask, what if they’re right? Ultimately, Insite’s future doesn’t depend on a charter right. It depends on funding. And courts forcing the government to fund services is tricky at best, invasive at worst.

Insite has received widespread admiration from national and international civil rights, medical and law enforcement organizations. It is considered the gold standard in addiction treatment. There has never been a single fatal overdose on Insite’s watch. For a group of drug addicts on Vancouver’s east side, that isn’t an accomplishment. It’s a miracle. Moreover, according to the Conservatives’ own polling, 60 percent of Canadians support safe injection sites. The legal case in favour of keeping Insite open may be close, but the political one shouldn’t be.

As Canadians, we rightly celebrate the role courts have in protecting minorities when no one else wants to. But that shouldn’t stop us from fighting long and hard and loud in the political arena . Whatever the courts decide in the next couple months, let’s hope the public outrage is so resounding that the government has no choice to keep Insite open – if not as a question of justice, as a question of politics.