Dan Rather, formerly the news anchor at CBS, is doing a story on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He has reportedly been examining issues such as poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction, including the supervised drug injection site, Insite.
There are questions that the Carnegie administration and other Downtown Eastside povertarians would rather Dan not ask. They would rather he have a 'don't ask' policy on certain issues, just as they have a 'don't tell' policy.
1. CAPP is Hypocritical when it comes to the Homeless:
Jean Swanson of the Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP] is a media go-to person on issues of poverty and homelessness. In fact, she briefed the United Nations representative who was just in town. But Swanson was silent when her colleagues in CCAP supported the barring of homeless man, William "Bill" Simpson, from Carnegie Center.
Simpson was elected, by largely low income people, to the Board of the Carnegie Center in June 2007 and, two weeks later, was delivered a letter by Carnegie Manager Ethel Whitty barring him from the entire building indefinitely. Whitty told him that he would not be allowed inside even for Board meetings. Simpson was accused in the letter on City letterhead of operating a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside blog.
There are questions that the Carnegie administration and other Downtown Eastside povertarians would rather Dan not ask. They would rather he have a 'don't ask' policy on certain issues, just as they have a 'don't tell' policy.
1. CAPP is Hypocritical when it comes to the Homeless:
Jean Swanson of the Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP] is a media go-to person on issues of poverty and homelessness. In fact, she briefed the United Nations representative who was just in town. But Swanson was silent when her colleagues in CCAP supported the barring of homeless man, William "Bill" Simpson, from Carnegie Center.
Simpson was elected, by largely low income people, to the Board of the Carnegie Center in June 2007 and, two weeks later, was delivered a letter by Carnegie Manager Ethel Whitty barring him from the entire building indefinitely. Whitty told him that he would not be allowed inside even for Board meetings. Simpson was accused in the letter on City letterhead of operating a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside blog.
Swanson and her CCAP colleagues are conspicuously quiet month after month when this homeless man stands outside Carnegie on the sidewalk as Board meetings take place inside.
2. Povertarians in the "socialist experiment" of the Downtown Eastside have turned into "blog burners" with the support of City Hall
Months before Simpson was barred from the entire Carnegie Center, he was barred from the Carnegie Learning Center on the third floor. He was told by Co-ordinator/teacher Lucy Alderson that it was because he had blogged on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. Alderson had been criticized on the blog for too often locking the poor out of the Center. Roughly eight months later, Whitty completely 'disappeared' the issue of Simpson blogging. She announced at a community relations meeting that he had been barred from the Carnegie Learning Center because he was "not a student". He was in fact a registered student with a man named Chad as his tutor. (Chad later resigned over the Simpson barring, calling Carnegie's treatment of the poor "oppressive".)
Earlier Whitty had personally interrogated a volunteer at Carnegie about who he might have seen blogging. Whitty damaged his relationship with his best friend by attempting to get him to turn her in for blogging. She is not a blogger. Whitty also allowed her staff, Dan Tetrault, Rika Uto, and Colleen Gorrie to separately question this volunteer about who was blogging, leading to accusations of a witch hunt. The guy ended up suicidal.
Whitty also repeatedly slandered DTES Enquirer bloggers at public meetings, claiming that they were engaged in "defamation" and "character assassination." Never once did Whitty provide an example of this -- because none exist.
Board member, Sophia Friegang, announced at a meeting that the blog was well within the boundaries of "free speech". She believed that a "mistake" had been made in barring Simpson. [Friegang later resigned from the Board over this issue.]
In two separate issues of the Carnegie Newsletter produced by CCAP, Simpson was libeled. In an issue this summer, Editor Paul Taylor accused Simpson of writing "sadistic" material, "slime", and having gotten himself elected to the Board through fraud. Taylor later printed a retraction. In a previous issue, Taylor called Simpson -- in that issue, he didn't name Simpson but people knew who he was referring to -- a "blog bozo" and other names.
Earlier Simpson, who supported the DTES Enquirer blog, had kidded Taylor, "Finally, some free media on the Downtown Eastside." Taylor is notorious for censoring any submissions to the newsletter that do not jive with his own hard left political views.
3. Where did the first Insite Report go?
During the first year Insite operated, reporters with questions about its success were constantly told by then Mayor Larry Campbell to wait for the report that would be produced based statistics collected internally. The report was indeed produced based on the first year of operation. Campbell told the media that he was disappointed that the report did not show more dramatic results. The report revealed that Insite staff claimed to have saved just one life. And Campbell, a former coroner, admitted when pressed that they could not even be certain that they had even saved that life; the individual may have survived without intervention.
Where did that report go? You never hear about it now.
4. Insite is part of a Medical-Industrial Complex eroding Civil Liberties on the Downtown Eastside
There is big government money coming into the Downtown Eastside. Every day a swarm of workers arrive from other neighborhoods to collect pay cheques in the lucrative poverty industry. But the emerging medical-industrial complex -- the interfacing lucrative poverty industry and the medical industry on the Downtown Eastside has resulted in the erosion of civil liberties.
Povertarians create case files at every opportunity. The case file economy has gotten so out of control that speaking up about a political issue can get a Downtown Eastside resident a visit from Car 87 -- a police cruiser which carries an armed constable and psychiatric nurse -- and tagged with a mental health smear that remains on their record for life. Car 87 assesses people for "apprehension" to a mental hospital and is supposed to be reserved for people at "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. Car 87 tactics on the Downtown Eastside have been compared by the ad hoc group, Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry, to tactics of political repression employed in China.
Carnegie Center street workers and nurses who roam the Downtown Eastside handing out clean needles have been compared to the KGB. A paper trail obtained by the DTES Enquirer reveals allegations outstanding with the Health Authority since 2004 that they worked with VPD Detective Dormand to track a woman intending to publicize Car 87 abuses on the Downtown Eastside. [The abuses publicized were well supported with documenation.] Medical
2. Povertarians in the "socialist experiment" of the Downtown Eastside have turned into "blog burners" with the support of City Hall
Months before Simpson was barred from the entire Carnegie Center, he was barred from the Carnegie Learning Center on the third floor. He was told by Co-ordinator/teacher Lucy Alderson that it was because he had blogged on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. Alderson had been criticized on the blog for too often locking the poor out of the Center. Roughly eight months later, Whitty completely 'disappeared' the issue of Simpson blogging. She announced at a community relations meeting that he had been barred from the Carnegie Learning Center because he was "not a student". He was in fact a registered student with a man named Chad as his tutor. (Chad later resigned over the Simpson barring, calling Carnegie's treatment of the poor "oppressive".)
Earlier Whitty had personally interrogated a volunteer at Carnegie about who he might have seen blogging. Whitty damaged his relationship with his best friend by attempting to get him to turn her in for blogging. She is not a blogger. Whitty also allowed her staff, Dan Tetrault, Rika Uto, and Colleen Gorrie to separately question this volunteer about who was blogging, leading to accusations of a witch hunt. The guy ended up suicidal.
Whitty also repeatedly slandered DTES Enquirer bloggers at public meetings, claiming that they were engaged in "defamation" and "character assassination." Never once did Whitty provide an example of this -- because none exist.
Board member, Sophia Friegang, announced at a meeting that the blog was well within the boundaries of "free speech". She believed that a "mistake" had been made in barring Simpson. [Friegang later resigned from the Board over this issue.]
In two separate issues of the Carnegie Newsletter produced by CCAP, Simpson was libeled. In an issue this summer, Editor Paul Taylor accused Simpson of writing "sadistic" material, "slime", and having gotten himself elected to the Board through fraud. Taylor later printed a retraction. In a previous issue, Taylor called Simpson -- in that issue, he didn't name Simpson but people knew who he was referring to -- a "blog bozo" and other names.
Earlier Simpson, who supported the DTES Enquirer blog, had kidded Taylor, "Finally, some free media on the Downtown Eastside." Taylor is notorious for censoring any submissions to the newsletter that do not jive with his own hard left political views.
3. Where did the first Insite Report go?
During the first year Insite operated, reporters with questions about its success were constantly told by then Mayor Larry Campbell to wait for the report that would be produced based statistics collected internally. The report was indeed produced based on the first year of operation. Campbell told the media that he was disappointed that the report did not show more dramatic results. The report revealed that Insite staff claimed to have saved just one life. And Campbell, a former coroner, admitted when pressed that they could not even be certain that they had even saved that life; the individual may have survived without intervention.
Where did that report go? You never hear about it now.
4. Insite is part of a Medical-Industrial Complex eroding Civil Liberties on the Downtown Eastside
There is big government money coming into the Downtown Eastside. Every day a swarm of workers arrive from other neighborhoods to collect pay cheques in the lucrative poverty industry. But the emerging medical-industrial complex -- the interfacing lucrative poverty industry and the medical industry on the Downtown Eastside has resulted in the erosion of civil liberties.
Povertarians create case files at every opportunity. The case file economy has gotten so out of control that speaking up about a political issue can get a Downtown Eastside resident a visit from Car 87 -- a police cruiser which carries an armed constable and psychiatric nurse -- and tagged with a mental health smear that remains on their record for life. Car 87 assesses people for "apprehension" to a mental hospital and is supposed to be reserved for people at "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. Car 87 tactics on the Downtown Eastside have been compared by the ad hoc group, Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry, to tactics of political repression employed in China.
Carnegie Center street workers and nurses who roam the Downtown Eastside handing out clean needles have been compared to the KGB. A paper trail obtained by the DTES Enquirer reveals allegations outstanding with the Health Authority since 2004 that they worked with VPD Detective Dormand to track a woman intending to publicize Car 87 abuses on the Downtown Eastside. [The abuses publicized were well supported with documenation.] Medical
confidentiality was also disregarded by Dormand and the street workers.
The woman became a target of Dormand immediately after she faxed a letter to the office of Ida Goodreau, CEO of the Health Authority, indicating a determination to seek full accountability for Car 87 fraud and abuse. Half an hour after faxing the letter, the woman received the first of a barrage of voice mail at her unlisted home phone number from Detective Dormand. He revealed that he was under pressure from the Health Authority lawyer at Bull Housser & Tupper. The woman saved the voice mail from Dormand, alleging that the messages were "harassing" and clearly intended to intimidate her into silencing herself. One of the last voice mails from Dormand is alleged to be "tantamount to extortion". There has never been an investigation into the alleged role of the Health Authority in influencing Dormand's conduct, which included the offer of a deal which would see Car 87 documents destroyed -- documents which just happened to be evidence against the Health Authority that the woman wanted criminally investigated. Did I mention that Goodreau's office is the ultimate overseer of Insite.
Players in the poverty industry play dirty. It is a big money game. The stakes are high. Messages that come out of the neighborhood are controlled -- which is why blogging is such a threat -- and povertarians are ruthless with anybody who deviates from the script.
Players in the poverty industry play dirty. It is a big money game. The stakes are high. Messages that come out of the neighborhood are controlled -- which is why blogging is such a threat -- and povertarians are ruthless with anybody who deviates from the script.
For more on the medical-industrial complex on the Downtown Eastside see: http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspot.com/2007/10/safe-injection-site-part-of-medical.html
5. Why is Insite a family affair?
Insite, the supervised injection site on the Downtown Eastside, is run by the Portland Hotel Society. That would be Mark Townsend and his wife Liz Evans and her sister Sara Evans.
Left-wing Member of Parliament (federal) Libby Davies was a proponent of Insite and guess who turned up working there? Her only child, Leif Erickson.
And then there is Member of the Legislative Assembly (provincial) Jenny Kwan, whose husband, Dan Small, turned up as Director of the Portland Hotel Society.
5. Why is Insite a family affair?
Insite, the supervised injection site on the Downtown Eastside, is run by the Portland Hotel Society. That would be Mark Townsend and his wife Liz Evans and her sister Sara Evans.
Left-wing Member of Parliament (federal) Libby Davies was a proponent of Insite and guess who turned up working there? Her only child, Leif Erickson.
And then there is Member of the Legislative Assembly (provincial) Jenny Kwan, whose husband, Dan Small, turned up as Director of the Portland Hotel Society.
It will be interesting to see if Dan asks inconvenient questions rather than airing the dog-eared script of the povertarians.
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