Photo: Carnegie Seniors Lounge
There have long been stories from people barred from Carnegie Centre that when they didn’t grovel during their appeal process, they were instantly told that their barring had been extended. Exhibiting confidence or knowledge of one’s rights is considered insubordination in this "residential school" environment, an observation made by William Simpson who was barred from the building after getting elected to the Board. Finally, there is taped evidence that Carnegie Security boss Skip Everall and security guard Ted Chaing are engaging in such human rights abuses.
The tape capturing Everall and Chaing abusing power was made on June 22, 2008 while a woman was meeting with them to appeal her barring from the Carnegie Seniors Lounge. She had been barred for raising her voice at a notoriously abusive coffee seller, Devor, who was yelling at her. The woman believed she had a right to know the name of the Security boss who had barred her. She did not at the time know Skip Everall's surname and she couldn't be sure that "Skip" wasn't a nickname. When she asked him twice for his name, her barring from the Seniors Lounge in the Carnegie basement was extended to the entire Carnegie building.
Transcript:
Woman: (speaking to Everall in a soft tone, almost a whisper) What is your real name by the way? You’ve made a decision about me and you’re not telling me your name. I’m asking you your name Skip. [She remained polite.]
Chaing: We call him by Skip.
Woman to Everall: What is your name, your last name?
Everall: It doesn’t matter.
Woman: You barred me….
Skip interrupts: My name is Skip, alright?
Woman: But if I want to appeal it to the City I have to know your name….
Skip: I’m sorry, you’re going to be barred from the building. [speaking forcefully] The meeting’s over!
[…]
Woman: I’m going to be barred from the building because I asked you your name?
Skip: We’ll just discuss the matter some other time.
Woman: Am I barred from the building now?
Chaing [as Everall listens]: Yes, yes.
When Everall responded to the woman asking him his name by barring her from the entire building, Chaing added that she was also being barred for raising the issue of sexism. Chaing was referring to her earlier statements that she believed Security had been sexist not only in barring her from the Seniors Lounge for talking back to a man, but for assuming that only the man’s version of events needed to be obtained before a decision was made to bar her from the Seniors Lounge. She claims Everall saw her twice after the incident but didn't speak to her,and that she remained in the building for the remainder of the afternoon, a fact that is supported by her signature on the sign-in sheet in the 3rd floor computer room.
Transcript:
Woman: Am I barred from the building?
Chaing [as Everall listens]: Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I don’t want to do that. [uses broken English here] Because you’re not in an appropriate behavior to talk. All your head is sexist, male and female. And then the name; we pay him by that name. What’s the problem here; it’s you, not us.... All you’re thinking is the name and then the male and female thing....Next time, I hope you change a little.
The woman hopes Judy Rogers changes a little. Rogers, in her role as City Manager, has over the last decade allowed human rights abuses in the barring process at Carnegie Center to become an epidemic.
8 comments:
If a serious boycott Vancouver 2010 movement got started, in the name of the human rights that our civic, provincial, and federal governments are eroding, Skip Everall could become a name known in many countries.
truepeers,
Skip could become a household name, like Skippy peanut butter.
Think of the "diffusion of responsiblity." No, I din't think of it. I thought you thought of it. No? Well I didn't because I thought someone had. So, no one thought of it? Well, then it got diffused, and no one did anything at all, everyone expecting someone else to have done something. Next time, I expect you to do something. I hope we're clear on that. And if you can't, then make sure someone else does. I would but I can't.
dag,
You're right about "diffusion of responsibility".
City Manager Judy Rogers, after lying outright to cover up a barring by former Carnegie Director Michael Clague back in 2000, told the barring victim at the time that she should go to meetings that Clague was holding with interested Carnegie members about changes to the barring procedure. (Most members didn't know about these meetings, and certainly most barred people didn't know about them.) This woman who'd just had her civil liberties suspended by Clague without due process and who had enduring Clague peering at her through a window as a substitute for talking to her during an appeal meeting at which she had waited almost 2 hours. for him to arrive (L.M. was with her and witnessed this "odd" behaviour), was supposed to now trust Clague. The woman knew Clague had no intention of changing the barring process, that he and Judy Rogers were toying with people. She didn't attend what she knew to be a sham.
She was right about it being a sham: not one of the recommendations for changing the barring process that came out of those meetings has been implemented at Carnegie under the Judy Rogers administration.
The problem is that Judy Rogers, and Ethel Whitty (who replaced Clague) ARE COMFORTABLE WITH DOWNTOWN EASTSIDERS BEING SUBJECTED TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR.
During the latest barring victim's meeting with Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, the victim told Whitty that she didn't believe that Whitty intended to do anything about the fact that Everall had barred her without due process. That was June. It's almost September. Looks like the victim was right.
Thanks for keeping up with this story and others of it's ilk. I've been gone for a a while but it was great to be able to check in and see what's going on at the Carnegie when I'm out of town. Great story about the recount meeting. I, too, have been threatened by the Head of Security for asking questions. Once I asked if a meeting between Skip and Colleen couldn't stop taking up the entire theatre and be moved to his office, thus allowing the music program to go on. He said it couldn't.
I asked why that was, and was told I was going to get "written up" for it. "You're going to write me up for asking a question?!" I exclaimed, "I'm going to write you up for not listening!" he replied.
Grant Chancey came upstairs with me immediately and we complained to Dan Tetault about it.
That was when I learned that there was no way a patron could put a complaint about staff in the "Incident Report Book", according to Tetrault.
I had recently been trying to get an incident of Carnegie Staff swearing at me in the incident book, only to be told by Ethel Whitty that since it happened off site it could not be entered. I knew of other "off site" incidents that had been entered, so it was interesting to hear from Dan that it's inadmissability was not due to it's happening "off Site" as she claimed, but because the complaint was about a staff person.
According to Dan there is no way for a patron of the Carnegie Centre to get a complaint about a staff person put in writing.
By the way, the rules are that incidents in the Book stay on the computer for three years, and I do think they are expunged after that because I've checked to see if my "Record" was expunged three years after being secretly written up by a security guard ( I was not barred, and didn't know about this write up until another guard told me I was in the book) and sure enough this write up was gone.
Also, I put in an annotation refuting this guards report, and it was stapled to the page. This is the only recourse, apparently, when one feels that a guard has erred in their report.
When, in a public institution, publicly funded, tax-payer-funded, city-run, when civilians are treated like prisoners under guard, it's time to think about regime change.
Obviously the Carnegie Centre is of a unique sort within the matrix of city run programmes; but it is not so far from the mainstream of government programmes that it shouldn't have a reasonable respect for common civility, not to mention common law applicable to all citizens and residents. Yes, the Carnegie Centre is of a unique sort, but the people who frequent the place are still human, still have basic rights, and do not desrve, under any form of law in this nation that I am familiar with, deserve to be treated like farm animals. And yet that is exactly what happens, if even half the tales of misery and woe this blog details are even half true. Civilians outside the Carnegie milieu would not for minute stand for the blatant abuse at Carnegie that we witness in reading this blog.
There's nothing new in the Human experience here, and what we see is not limited to people marginal in economic respects if not others. This kind of abuse of power is the norm in defeated nations, abuse of people by foreign occupiers. One might look upon Ethanol et al as foreign troops occupying a nation of people without recourse to law. Look to Johann Fichte, for example, living in Germany during the Napoleonic invasion
"If the majority of people continue in their previous state of heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and lack of concentration, this very result may be expected as inevitable. He who lets himself go without paying heed to himself, and allows himself to be molded by circumstances just as they please, soon accustoms himself to any possible order of things. However much his eye may have been offended by something when he first saw it, let it only present itself anew every day in the same way and he accustoms himself to it. Later, he finds it natural, and in the end he even gets to like it as something inevitable; he would not thank you for the restoration of the original and better state of things, because this would tear him out of the mode of life to which he has become accustomed. In this way men become accustomed even to slavery, if only their material existence is not thereby affected, and in time they get to like it. It is just this that is the most dangerous thing about a state of subjugation: it makes men insensitive to all true honor, and, moreover, for the indolent man it has its very pleasant side, because it relieves him of may a care and of the need of thinking for himself."
Johann G. Fichte, Addresses to the German People. 1808. Rpt. Trans. R.F. Jones. Chicago, London: Open Court Publishing, 1922; pp. 206-07.
By chance I left a comment at this blog a week ago on the same topic, ie, that one can grow used to horror, and that only strenuous effort will break the chains of oppression brought on by apathy and custom. Whether 1808 or 2008, only a desire to control ones own life will change ones own life for the positive good. Anything else, anything done "for" is merely a moralistic and lucrative conceit on the part of Povertarians acting on behalf of Human farm animals.
If no one cares for anything more than worthless food stamps, then Ethanol and her Povertarian clique will continue this Reign of Terror. Those who fall into the prison camp of Ethanol's domain will sink ever further into slavery and a slow, lingering, dirty death by humiliation and abuse. Those who practice this evil control of the people, these Death Hippies, are master manipulators, and they manipulate the lives of those who will not assert themselves as Human. Let it happen? Then you die. Then you are replaced. The cycle continues. And Ethanol laughs all the way to the bank.
You may want to write about the sick attitude of Carnegie to its members in that it has done bery little and it will not do anything further to lobby for Storyeum to become a Shelter. Matthew Matthew told me that Carnegie has higher priorities and they have to worry about funders. What can be higher than making sure no one in our jurisdiction has to sleep outside. Since Carnegie doesn't want to offer its two auditoriums to the street homeless at night they could at least push for Storyeum to be a Shelter. Audrey laferriere 778-329-1250 audreylaferriere@yahoo.ca
You might want to look into the coalition of like minded people who oppose making Storyeum a Shelter. They include every single agency and advocate in the DTES. The ring leader is our own Jean Swanson.
Post a Comment