Last week, CNN did a 3 minute story on Insite, Vancouver's controversial supervised drug injection site. They were duped.
As Insite spokespersons listed key benefits the facility brought to the community, they trotted out the same old, same old. They claimed that Insite had resulted in the reduction of discarded used needles in parks and school yards.
What did they leave out? The fact that there are hundreds of needles discarded on the Downtown Eastside every day but people are paid to quietly walk around and pick them up. That's the main reason there is a reduction in needles on the street.
In fact, in a previous post, the DTES Enquirer pointed out that one needle-collector told us that he had picked up about 200 needles discarded in a pile of garbage in an alley less than a block away from Insite.
As Insite spokespersons listed key benefits the facility brought to the community, they trotted out the same old, same old. They claimed that Insite had resulted in the reduction of discarded used needles in parks and school yards.
What did they leave out? The fact that there are hundreds of needles discarded on the Downtown Eastside every day but people are paid to quietly walk around and pick them up. That's the main reason there is a reduction in needles on the street.
In fact, in a previous post, the DTES Enquirer pointed out that one needle-collector told us that he had picked up about 200 needles discarded in a pile of garbage in an alley less than a block away from Insite.
According to a Dec. 8, 2006 Vancouver Sun article, "Our Four Blocks of Hell", 8,300 intravenous syringes were found within four blocks of Insite over a three week period by an independent City work crew. The work crew, accompanied by bylaw and police officers, had been assigned the task of cataloguing litter and garbage in the four blocks surrounding the intersection of East Hasting and Columbia St. -- that's the intersection closest to Insite -- from Aug. 14 to Sept. 8, 2006. That means 8,300 people chose not to walk the short distance to Insite. They instead chose to toss their needles on the ground or in the garbage bin in the alley.
Not only are needles being picked up on the Downtown Eastside by a range of publicly-funded workers, needle-drop boxes have been installed in recent years in alleys, on park fences, and in public washrooms on the Downtown Eastside. Street workers with buckets regularly empty these boxes.
Spokespersons are lying by ommission when they cite fewer needles on the streets as a key benefit of Insite. Rule of thumb: if people lie about one thing, they are likely to lie about another.
For the real story on the massive number of discarded needles being collected daily on the streets of the Downtown Eastside, see "Vancouver's Other Olympic Sport".
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Thinking of donating to United Way? Read Fraudulent Evidence Found in United Way Police Complaint on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer
Not only are needles being picked up on the Downtown Eastside by a range of publicly-funded workers, needle-drop boxes have been installed in recent years in alleys, on park fences, and in public washrooms on the Downtown Eastside. Street workers with buckets regularly empty these boxes.
Spokespersons are lying by ommission when they cite fewer needles on the streets as a key benefit of Insite. Rule of thumb: if people lie about one thing, they are likely to lie about another.
For the real story on the massive number of discarded needles being collected daily on the streets of the Downtown Eastside, see "Vancouver's Other Olympic Sport".
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Thinking of donating to United Way? Read Fraudulent Evidence Found in United Way Police Complaint on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer
8 comments:
Around the year 1440 J. Gutenberg got the world's first genuine printing press in practical operation, and from that time on the world has never been anything like it was the day prior. That was the day people in general, the so-called masses, got their first step toward being fully free to exercise their Humanness in spite of the drive that exists in people to enslave and cow the world at will. People who can read, those with access to material and ideas are able to think for themselves and conclude as they will if they wish. Gutenberg gave it all the first push, the birth of public freedom to know whatever they feel the desire to pursue, or simply to express some unknown thought in the hope of knowing later, to question, to seek, to ask. If they choose. People can, they can write, they can read, and they can spread their writings as they wish once the press allowed them the means to do so with easy and relative economy. Ad it just keeps on getting better.
Literacy is not the secret power held in monopoly by the clerisy; the ability to read and write is not kept from the masses, mystification as a tool of oppression, a way of tormenting the gullible and of controlling them, compelling them to self-destructive actions in favor of the ruling classes. No, literacy is in the tool box of every workingclass person who cares for it, and today, now that the the means of production have fallen into the hands of the people rather than being kept in factories and publishing houses beyond the means of private man, with the computer in the home and office, everyman is able to publish like Luther. The howls! The rage of the obscurantists! The hatred! The Stalinist Taylorism of the petty controllers amok in their fury!
Well, no longer, and no more forever. Blog, ye mighty private people.
Publishing for the masses is not the privilege of the priestly classes: it is the prerogative of anyone who cares, well or ill. Publishing rests rightly in the marketplace of ideas where it sells or not according to those who choose to buy whatever words are on offer according to the time one cares to invest. Not money, not title, not a matter of royal dispensation: to read, to write, to publish; to blog is public for all, and the screams of the entrenched echo from the darkness even into the realms of the lighted world of ordinary people who just don't bow and scrape.
For those who publish in the public realm there is survival in writing well, in being honest, in being interesting. In that there is little special. Most people can do it. Some do so very well. But nearly everyone has a chance. Taylorism is a dog that's had its day. That dog is dead, and the body stinks on the wayside. We are the media. We stride across the aether clad in glowing prose, in purple, in gold, royal couriers of the rational and the real, straight from the heavens of human freedom.
Hacks can pound their heads and wail, but the people are the media, and this starburst will not again be boxed.
Blog on, Everyman.
Juris a du jour.
Let's blame it on the 60s. Somewhere along the line some reporters of the daily news confused their job of journalism (diurnalism) with "jur-nalism," with law (juri), with being a jurist or a jury.
Reporting is wonderful as a means of finding out the latest capitalist conspiracy if we start from the premise that reality is a social construct, some bullshit pile of lies concocted by really smart people to fool us really stupid people into thinking life is as it should be with the bad guys in control and forever suppressing the other really smart guys like Libby Davies and Paul Taylor who would, could, and do "deconstruct" all the capitalist lies so we the idiot people can find out the "real" truth, such as it is. So journalism is only for stupid people, reporting the made-up lies of the capitalist oppressors. "Jur-nalism" is for the smart one who tell us how stupid we are and how, if only other stupid people would give them more tax money they, the really smart people Like Libby Davies an Paul Taylor, will run our lives for us and do a far better job than we do, they being experts in running other people's lives. Yup, let Ethanol run your life. Obviously you're not capable of running your own life or you wouldn't be a victim. Let the povertarians be the judges and juries. I mean, who da fuck are you? Do you understand the conspiracy to make your life a wreck? Of course not, which is why people like Ethanol need $104.000.00 per year (that we know of) to figure it out for you.
You could, actually, get away from those Gnostic parasites. But then what? Who'd tell you how to live? And if that's what you think, you must be getting your view of your own life from "jur-nalists."
Hey, turn a page once in a while.
Interested in the issues around the Carnegie Newsletter?
Come to the Publications Committee meeting on Wednesday the 14th at 1:00 in the Association office,
It has been stated by Ethel Whitty and others that the Publications Committee is the Editorial Board, so if you are a member who comes to the meeting, you will be automatically on that Editorial Board and have a vote about what goes on concerning the Newsletter.
"It has been stated by Ethel Whitty and others that the Publications Committee is the Editorial Board...."
I'm lost here. What is the Publications Board? Who is eligible for membership? Is it restricted to so-called board members? And if so, is Bill Simpson allowed to attend meetings or is he still shut out for no legitimate reason?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Recently, the Publications Committee ( subsection of the board) voted for the idea of an Editorial Board, form as yet to be determined. Then, at the next meeting, they voted against the same idea. Part of their reasoning was that they remembered they already had an editorial board, it was the Publications Committee.
Since any member of Carnegie who shows up at a Committee meeting is a automatically a member of that committee and the Publishing Committee is the Editorial Board.....There you go. Anyone can have a vote in how the Carnegie Newsletter is run.
To me it reads like a recipe for anarchy. If The Tayorites can stack a meeting one week and the Simpsons can get off the couch to stack a meeting next, then back and forth with no result worth having.
Why should the people rely on a petty Stalinist wanna be to write for them? If he chooses to? If he doesn't decide to censor them? If he doesn't feel that they've offended against the Marxist hegemony of the Carnegie? Why should the people rely on a Gnostic minder to write anything at all other than thinly veiled hate mail? Yes, the man definitely needs a hobby, and why be so cruel as to take it away from him? But why indulge this fool? Write for yourselves. You are the media. You have the power of the press. Taylor and Ethanol and the like have the power to oppress-- but only if you allow them that power.
Write the wrongs. Write Back for your rights! Don't agonize, organize. do your own writing. Create your own People's Newsletter.
Don't forget that Insite is unfortunately closed seven hours a day/nite every day/nite from 3am to 10 am. Drug users don't exactly stop injecting for that period of time so of course there will be needles in the street. However, if you look at the sheer volume of syringes discarded in those biohazard bins at insite - that's thousands and thousands of syringes NOT being discarded in the streets - so you gotta give em some credit.
-Boris
I'll give credit to drug addicts the day after their dealers give them credit. Then we'll know what a lovely lot they are.
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