Whitty gets Elderly Man Barred from Carnegie after he gives her "Hitler Salute"

David Wong, a Chinese-Canadian man in his eighties who works his ass off as a bus boy in the Carnegie Cafeteria for eighty cents an hour in food vouchers, was barred from this City building for two days.

That was after he gave Director Ethel Whitty the "Hitler salute".

Presumably an Incident Report was entered into the City of Vancouver-Carnegie "Security"database or big black binder. Security Incident Reports are written up on Downtown Eastsiders guilty of assorted forms of freedom of expression in relation to Whitty, her security boss Skip Everall, or other staff. But often what is written in the binder is City staff's self-serving version of the event.

When I think of David Wong, the phrase "elder abuse" crosses my mind. A few weeks ago, Wong got into an argument with a woman in the Carnegie cafeteria and when she walked past him afterwards, she shoved him out of her way and he went flying. He flipped backwards in the air, landed on his ass and banged his head on the floor. He made such a thump that security staff from the first floor came running up to the second floor. The woman who had shoved him was barred. Wong emerged from the incident unharmed. Amazing, since just a few months ago he was in the hospital as his health was poor.

David Wong is not always easy to get along with, to be honest. He's not violent but sometimes he gets overzealous about taking people's dishes off their table, and if somebody says, "Hey, I haven't finished eating yet", he can get upset and give them a loud calling down. But he can also be charming, especially to some of the women. Because his English is poor, it's difficult to know whether he's senile. Lots of people like him though. And of course CUPE likes him because he slaves away for crumbs and keeps the cafeteria running smoothly.

David Wong will no doubt survive into the new year to be barred yet again. And the Whitty-Everall barring projects that fill up their big black binder will survive well financed now that the City is imposing an increase in the head tax ...excuse me, property tax.

Man Stabbed Near Carnegie Center This Evening

A man was stabbed in the back on Main St., just a little south of Carnegie Center where Chinatown begins, at around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.  The victim was pressing his hand against his wound.  

Smokers sitting on the Carnegie outdoor patio went over to the railing to gawk at the police and amublance arriving.  Police had yellow tape around the crime scene but have since taken it down.

Drug dealers and users hang around on that area of the sidewalk.  

Waves of Gentrification

photo: Waves coffee shop at Main St. & Cordova, Mar. 2/09

They say that with gentrification comes dog walkers and specialty coffee shops.

Another Waves coffee shop is opening on the Downtown Eastside, just two blocks from the first one that opened last year at Main & Pender.  The new Waves at Main and Cordova will open on March 16th, in the now renovated space that used to house Vic's Coffee Shop, where you could get good coffee and the occasional bout of e coli.

There were lots of staff in Waves today, all wearing the same dark uniforms.  At first, I thought the place was swarming with cops.  

The new location may prove profitable if the Vancouver Police building across the street once again becomes police headquarters, a move Chief Chu supports.  Chu told the media last month that he would like to move VPD headquarters back to the Downtown Eastside, as the move to Cambie St. allowed the Downtown Eastside to deteriorate.  Even police officers driving to and from work in the neighborhood, Chu said, can deter open crime.

Waves has free internet access which there is never enough of on the Downtown Eastside.  An increasing number of Downtown Eastsiders, frustrated with the unreliable access to Vancouver Public Library computers at the Carnegie Center computer room where Director Ethel Whitty too often allows staff to lock the poor out, are purchasing netbooks now that the prices have come down. But often they don't have internet connections at home.

Remember Carnegie's Living Dead in the Women's Memorial March

Since the annual Women's Memorial march to remember missing or murdered women on the Downtown Eastside began today with opening ceremonies inside Carnegie Center, it would be fitting to use it to remember the living dead in Carnegie Center too.  

They are women whose liberties and reputations have been killed off by Big Brother Skip Everall or Big Mother Ethel Whitty at Carnegie Center because they dared speak up about human rights or due process.  They are the women on whose necks the guillotine slammed down.   

 
These women are noticeably missing from Carnegie events.  Driven out.   

Just hours before the Valentine's Day Women's Memorial march began, a male musician from Carnegie was talking about how a female musician who had spoken up about human rights violations at Carnegie, tried walking into the music jam next door at the Health Contact Center. A staffperson who has worked both at Carnegie and the Health Contact Center arranged for her to be ushered out.  No singing, no music, for her.   Banished to the world of the living dead.  

As today's march proceeded down Main St. and then over to Oppenheimer Park, I remembered the women who have spoken up.  And I remembered their attackers, Skip Everall, Ethel Whitty and other povertarians.  They will strike again.

Harassment Campaign Continues Against Woman Who Challenged Use of City Security Database to Compile Fraudulent Information

Photo: Snowing Outside Carnegie Center, Wed. Dec.17/08

A harassment campaign at Carnegie Center continues against a woman who challenged the use of the Carnegie Security database to compile fraudulent information about members who speak up.

On two recent Saturdays, she was denied access to Vancouver Public Library computers in the Carnegie Learning Center. A witness has confirmed that recently the computer monitor was hostile to her the minute she walked into the Learning Center. The monitor said he was not going to allow her to use a computer. She left without saying anything but she was upset.

The same thing happened last Saturday. The monitor allowed men to use the computers who were not students -- one was a guy who uses the computer to monitor the stock market -- explaining, "It's Saturday. It's my choice." She was not one of the chosen few.

She says the monitor "tried to pick a fight" the instant she walked in the door last Saturday. He barked, "Sign in". She returned the same treatment, barking "Can I put my tray down first!" [She was carrying a tray with soup on it from the cafeteria.] The monitor then called over the young Asian volunteer at the reception desk and told him to watch her...and call Security on her. Part of the conversation was inaudible to her but "He said 'Call Security' loud; he wanted me to hear".

I asked her if she reported this incident to Security and she said, "No, they would write me up." But she wanted this latest round of harassment to be on record, so she asked me to publish a report.

She said that over the past ten days or so, she has also been twice driven out of the Seniors Center when she attempted to use a Public Library computer. The first time, when she sat down the coffee seller, Devor, turned on a war movie with a lot of shooting and noise. He didn't turn it on at the beginning of the movie, she explains, he turned it on in the middle of a gun battle scene. And he turned up the sound on the surround-sound tv. She got up and left. But before leaving she crossed her name off the list of people who had used a computer so that she could have her turn later. Devor got angry and told her not to cross it off. "They don't want me in there," she says.

This weekend, she went to the Seniors Center again to use a computer. The hockey game wrap-up was on, she says. "It wasn't loud." Devor saw her and changed the station to the middle of another show, which she thinks was a sit com. He cranked up the sound loud. She left.

She is not the only Carngie member who has told me this goes on. When I recently bumped into a union tradesman who frequented Carnegie after work until he retired, he was chatting about Carnegie and mentioned Devor. He didn't know his name but he called him the 'goof' in the basement or something like that -- I can't recall the exact word he used-- but he echoed almost exactly what the woman had said, "He turns the tv up loud to get you to leave." He said it had never actually happened to him -- he had stopped going into the Seniors Center out of fear of bed bugs -- but had heard others at Carnegie talking about Devor doing this.

Another Carnegie member, Jim, also finds noise a problem when he's using a computer in the Seniors Center. But he believes that if Devor wasn't there to man the Seniors Center, it would be worse; management would often just lock the doors. On the issue of noise, Jim shakes his head. "You're trying to concentrate," he says laughing, "and there's huge explosions going off."

Whitty ackowledged during a taped conversation that having the Public Library computers in the same room as the tv was a constant source of conflict. She mused about moving them. She has been musing for years.

Ethel Whitty and her City Hall supervisor David McLellan have lost control of Carnegie.

Volunteer of the Year Barred from Carnegie Center

Ada D. returned to Carnegie Community Center yesterday after being barred from this City of Vancouver building for two weeks.

Ada (pictured in bottom right of above photo), a middle-aged woman with long brown hair originally from Newfoundland, was barred when another kitchen volunteer, Dominick, alleged that he had seen her take some sugar home. If she stole sugar once whose to say she wouldn’t be stealing, as the song goes, “sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at supper time.”

Last year Ada got the Carnegie Volunteer of the Year award. Translation: she had put in hundreds of hours of labor in the Carnegie kitchen for 80 cents an hour in food vouchers. She once spent 12 hours in the Carnegie kitchen preparing a Thanksgiving dinner. CUPE members who work in the kitchen and assign work to volunteers would have pocketed well over $200 for those Thanksgiving hours.

Not only is Ada a hard worker, but in a neighborhood where people are often identified by what they don’t do, she is known as a person who does not use street drugs. You won’t see Ada smoking crack. I wonder if she could have worked that into her defense: “I steal but I do not inhale.”

When you are barred from Carnegie, you can’t just walk back into the building when your sentence is up. You have to go to the office of the Security boss, Skip, and act contrite. Skip was the guy who supervised the barring of homeless Bill Simpson from the Carnegie Learning Center, when he was accused of blogging about union members locking the poor out of services funded for them. But the word at Carnegie was that Ada would have no difficulty getting permission to re-enter the building because her name is linked to two magic words: dish washer. Carnegie is always short of dishwashers who will work for 80 cents an hour.

In the months before getting barred, Ada had been getting peeved about the fact that, even though she would do her scheduled dish washing shifts, she would be button-holed by staff to do another shift when she would drop by Carnegie to socialize. Ada didn’t always mind doing another shift of dish washing but, being a Newfoundlander, she was thinking for herself; she thought staff should give volunteers extra vouchers to compensate for grabbing them at the last minute to do a shift that wasn't theirs. She started saying this out loud to other volunteers. A long term Carnegie member commented that if she said that within earshot of CUPE members, it could cause her problems.

You nevah, nevah say the niggahs deserve mo’ whattamellun.

But Ada’s position in relation to Carnegie staff is getting stronger. “She’s getting her DB 2”, one member said under her breath. That means she’ll be getting the Disability welfare rate, a little over $900 a month, putting her on the top rung of the welfare ladder. Not only that, but she just got into subsidized housing. Her emerging relationship to Carnegie staff was best summed up by a Carnegie member who knows her: “She don’t have to suck hole to them anymore.”

Taxpayer Rip-off at Carnegie Center Continues

Carnegie staff got the big raise CUPE insisted they deserved, but they are still not doing their jobs on a steady basis. Services at Carnegie are too often hit and miss.

Last Friday evening and the Sunday evening before that, Carnegie staff locked Downtown Eastside residents out of the computer room which contains much-in-demand public access computers. That's two four hour shifts, a total of eight hours of computer services, lost. Sunday evenings are the busiest time for the computer room with people preparing to start the new week. This evening the room was open.

There is no excuse for those responsible for keeping the computer room open -- Colleen Gorrie and Sindi, along with Director Ethel Whitty -- to be operating by the seat of their pants. When they lock people out of services, they always have the same excuse: "No volunteer showed up." They have a multi-million dollar budget but they can't function without a volunteer. Why can't Colleen or Ethel sit in the computer room themselves? After all, they're getting a pay cheque to keep those services open. There are surprisingly few services at Carnegie considering the millions that the taxpayer sinks into that place. The third floor has only a computer room and a Learning Center, the latter being co-operated by Capilano College. The second floor has a gym which is generally deserted except for a volleyball game once or twice a week, and a cafeteria which gets a lot of traffic.

Even the cafeteria has a performance problem, although it is still one of the most reliable services in the building. It often has good soups and recently I was told they had a good roast beef dinner. But there have been times in recent weeks when the cupboards have been bare. I went in one evening after the dinner hour and all they had to feed the line up of people was breakfast cereal and a few pastries. No soups. No sandwiches. Then they ran out of cereal!

A friend of mine went into the cafeteria today to buy a muffin for fifty cents but they were out, so she bought a piece of chocolate cake for eighty cents. It was so stale, she couldn't eat it. I tasted it too. Deadly stale.

That is not to say there are not people working tirelessly behind the scenes at Carnegie. The Board of Directors recently arranged a secret meeting for which minutes, if they exist at all, are unavailable. And Board members won't say what the topic of the meeting was. Either the Carnegie Director or Assistant Director would have attended this on camera meeting, as a City representative attends all meetings involving Carnegie Board members.

Speculation is that the meeting was about Rachel Davis, a Board member who was not able to attend, but has irked Carnegie Board members and management by speaking up on behalf of low income Carnegie members who elected her. Davis has been ostracized for speaking up in defense of Bill Simpson when he was banned from this City building, accused of doing what we are doing here, tattletaling to the taxpayer via a blog about services that are paid for but not delivered.

Stephen Seymour's Killer was a "Good Shot"

Photo of Earl "Steve" Seymour: CTV News

"He was a good shot." That's what one Downtown Eastsider said about Matthew Ryan Wall, who has just been charged with first degree murder in the shooting death of Earl Stephen Seymour. To shoot a moving target with a handgun and manage to get several bullets into the guy's head, you have to be a good shot, explained the Downtown Eastsider who has practiced using handguns.

Wall, 26, is known to police as a drug dealer on the Downtown Eastside. He was arrested, according to CKNW radio, in a "rooming house" on Cambie St. That could explain why there was such a strong police presence around the Cambie Hotel & Hostel just after the shooting.

Any lawyer representing Wall will be banging his head against a wall. How do you help a client who walked up to a minivan near a busy corner and said "The war is on", then started shooting a man in front of a woman sitting in the front seat?

Not that people are feeling sorry for Seymour. One long time Downtown Eastsider said, "He got what he deserved." According to the Vancouver Sun today, Seymour had been one of the kingpins in a drug dealing operation based in the Station Inn on Cambie. The operation involved the sale of crack cocaine from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., pulling in an estimated $300,000 per month. The ChronicleHerald in Halifax put it this way: "For five years starting in the late 1990s, Mr. Seymour ran a gang that sold crack on Vancouver’s east side. The operation intimidated rivals with gunfire and beatings."

But CTV reporters had no difficulty finding people on the streets of the Downtown Eastside who had good memories of Seymour. On last night's news, an aboriginal man who had the gaunt look of an addict said he had known Seymour's ex wife; Seymour had taken a liking to him and would hand him "a five here, a ten here." You have to read between the lines though: that guy may have been a good customer on welfare cheque day. All of the comments from Downtown Eastsiders aired on CTV about Seymour were positive; people remembered him as a likeable guy.

Steve Seymour was not the first member of his family to be gunned down though. In Dec. 2005, Ken and Don Seymour, cousins with whom Steve Seymour and his brother Cliff Seymour had run the West Coast cocaine ring, were gunned down. The shootings occurred in 'the Hub', a run down neighbourhood of Glace Bay, the ChronicleHerald reported. Ken Seymour died and Don Seymour survived with serious damage to his liver and other organs. Both had done six years in prison for their roles in the West Coast cocaine ring. The shootings were over a drug debt. The shooter, a fellow associate of the Hell's Angels, was recently sentenced to 15 years.

Some of Steve Seymour's relatives have insisted in internet comments that he was turning his life around since being sentenced in 2001 to six years and four months for cocaine trafficking. When he was sentenced, his lawyer Glen Orris told the judge that he wanted to get a regular job to support his four children, all under the age of six at the time. But there was no sign of that regular job when a CTV reporter asked a Downtown Eastsider, two days after the shooting, what Seymour did on the Downtown Eastside: "I'm not at liberty to say," was the response.

One woman with the hollowed out cheeks of an addict, told CTV that the shooting had left her feeling that you have to be careful what you say to people because you can never tell how they're going to react.

My guess? Wall will end up being convicted of second degree and will be eligible for parole after ten, since the killing took place in the context of the drug trafficking world. But you never know. Judges are under pressure now to take seriously these shoot 'em ups on Vancouver streets. The man who shot Lee Matasi just a few blocks away had no record of criminal involvement but didn't get off easy. When the judge sentenced him, just the day before Steve Seymour was shot, he told him he would not be eligible for parole for 16 years.

Order of Canada Awarded to Carnegie Chronic Civil Liberties Abuser

Canada's Governor General, Michaelle Jean, has just announced that former Carnegie Director, Michael Clague, will receive the Order of Canada. Just a moment. . . .

I had to vomit on the sidewalk.

Michael Clague gained a reputation for civil liberties abuses while Director of Carnegie, a job he left less than two years ago. Low income people were routinely barred from the Center without due process. Ask anybody on the Downtown Eastside and they'll tell you that either they have been barred from Carnegie or know somebody who has.

A conversation today amongst a few Carnegie regulars revealed that they were not pleased to hear that the Governor General had selected Clague for the Order of Canada. "Does she not do back ground checks?", a woman asked. "It's a committee that decides," a man named Nick responded. "They're the bend over team," joked Louis M., a Montreal native who swore upon hearing the news about Clague said. A woman told him, "I swore too when I heard it; I swore twice." She never swears. These people know Clague much better than Michaelle Jean and her "Bend over team" will ever know him. They experienced his policies on a daily basis for years while he was Carnegie Director. Several of them were barred from Carnegie while he was administrator.

Nick, a middle aged man who immigrated from Eastern Europe 20 years ago, recalled Clague barring him for a month. He says he told Clague that people in the Centre had to be allowed to express conflicting opinions, to debate. "He called me a troublemaker", Nick says. Nick was barred for a month. Clague seemed to take the position, Nick says, that he was going to create an "upheaval" in the Centre. He points out that this is a time worn tactic: whenever Carnegie wants to get rid of a member, they portray them as a threat. "You can portray anybody as a threat", he says.

An "incident report" exists to confirm that Nick was in fact barred for a month. But you can bet that the version of events in that report differs from Nick's. And that's part of the problem. When people are barred, the administration's version of events is written up in an incident report and later typed into a computer data base to be forever used against the named individual by City staff.

"Do you think Clague deserves the Order of Canada?" Nick was asked. "No," he responded calmly.

If Jean had done any real background checking she would have discovered that one case of civil liberties abuse under Clague's administration has been fought for eight years. And is still being fought. In fact, a complainant on this particular case corresponded with the City of Vancouver about it as recently as last summer. [The City of Vancouver was Clague's boss when he was Carnegie Director.]

The case involved a woman who lodged a complaint when she arrived to use one of the three Vancouver Public Library computers in the Carnegie Senior's Lounge and was told she was barred from using the computers. No reason given. She went upstairs to use one of the VPL computers in the third floor computer room and was told she was barred from there too. When she asked a Carnegie Security guard, Phil, to give her a reason, he said he didn't know why she was barred, despite the fact that incident reports are supposed to be filed to justify a barring from City property. Phil arranged for Director Michael Clague to speak with her.

She sat with her friend, Louis M. for a couple of hours waiting for Clague. When Clague arrived with a security guard in tow, he peeped through the window of the room in which she was waiting, gazed at her up and down, and skittered away. Louis, at the time, described Clague's behaviour as "odd", according to a written account on record with Carnegie and the City of Vancouver. Minutes later, Phil arrived to tell the woman that Clague had left her a letter at the front reception desk.

In the letter dated Saturday, January 15, 2000, Clague wrote, "Either Sandy [MacKeigan, a supervisor] or I will be back to you on Tuesay." The woman wrote in a document summarizing the case, "I was expected to serve my sentence for at least three days without knowing what I was accused of."

The woman found it a noteworthy coincidence that she was barred after lodging complaints about the fact that when she would go into the Senior's Lounge to use a computer, she was asked by a coffee seller to go home with him to watch pornography, or advised to die her hair and lose 20 pounds to make herself more attractive to men. [A female Board member at Carnegie said that she too had been asked by the coffee seller to go home with him and watch pornography.]

The woman pressed for answers about this abuse of civil liberties. She accused the Clague administration, in writing, of keeping the population of the Center down through forced "attrition", barring so many people that a large number simply never returned. One man who has been going to Carnegie for 30 years, says that he and everyone of his friends has been barred, most of them never returned, some got more involved in street life and died of AIDS or drug overdoses.

Two months later, the woman got a letter dated March 3, 2000 from City Manager, Judy Rogers, stating that if she wanted access to computers, she would have to respect Carnegie's policy of having no food or drink at the computer. "I would encourage you to accept this policy...." The woman says she had not violated any such policy and even individuals who do are not barred; they are given a warning.

The fact that Clague has a double standard for how women are treated and how men are treated is clear from an incident that occurred when the above woman was in the Seniors' Lounge some time later. A man whose offers to buy her coffee, etc. were declined became enraged kicked a coffee table into her kneecaps -- she moved her knees just in time to avoid serious injury -- and called her an "old cow" in front of a room full of witnesses. The incident was reported to a security guard and Clague was made aware of the event. But the man was not barred. He was simply told not to do it again.

"Do you think Clague deserves the Order of Canada?" she was asked this evening as she sat at McDonald's chatting with friends. "Noooo!," she said.

If the Governor General had done any real background checking such as speaking to low income regulars at Carnegie, she might have learned that, in the above woman's file, there is a document describing an assault of another woman under the Clague administration. A fifty-something woman with a British accent, had wanted to go into an AIDS banquet in the Carnegie Theatre. The "doorman" was an elderly woman who has been in and out of hospital with mental health problems. She decided she didn't want to allow the British woman entry. But she offered to allow the woman accompanying her to enter. The British woman protested verbally and security was called. Security are routinely called on people at Carnegie who raise their voice in protest.

Two security men grabbed the British woman and dragged her by the arms and legs out of the building as she continued to loudly protest. Nothing was done about this assault.

Such scenes are not uncommon at Carnegie.

Although the incidents described above could create the impression that women were prime targets for Clague's barring practices, it was primarily men whose civil liberties were abused at Carnegie. That remains the case. Single men make up the bulk of the membership.

During Clague's administration, barring became a contentious issue and he was under pressure to address it. Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users threatened to take legal action as their members, when they were not out of their minds on drugs, were denied access to VANDU meetings held in the building. How can you hold a meeting if your members aren't allowed to come? Although many Carnegie members were not particularly sympathetic to a bunch of drug addicts, VANDU did bring to public attention a barring policy which was affecting non- addicts as well. They began to embarrass Clague.

A Committee was struck during Clague's tenure to grapple with the barring issue. The Committee put in many hours, Carnegie Board member Peter Fairchild recalled at a meeting this summer, as members demanded an explanation as to why a homeless man, Bill Simpson, had been barred. Despite the work of the Committee, the barring policy remained largely unchanged.

And now Clague is awarded the Order of Canada, an award given to people who have achieved the highest level of lifetime achievement.

Clague's failure to make serious changes to curb civil liberties abuses at Carnegie Center is viewed by several longterm members as having laid the groundwork for the current "police state" environment occurring under his successor, Ethel Whitty. "He was her teacher!", Bill Simpson emphasized this evening as a group of Carnegie regulars had coffee at a nearby McDonald's restaurant. Clague stayed at Carnegie for two months after Whitty arrived in order to train her. Even after he officially left, he remained connected to Whitty, being Carnegie's arts funding "bag man", sometimes returning to the Center to speak with her.

With Whitty as Director, homeless Bill Simpson was barred from the Carnegie Learning Center in January 2007. He was told that he was barred for blogging on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer. He wasn't even a blogger for the DTES Enquirer. Then, two weeks after being elected to the Board of Directors in June 2007, Simpson was barred from the entire Carnegie Center indefinitely. Whitty personally delivered him a letter informing him that the barring was due to the fact that he operated a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog.

Simpson asked Whitty if he would be allowed to enter the building to attend Board meetings and she told him no. Poor people were being denied representation by the man they had voted for. But the Whitty adminstration is being exposed for the environment of civil liberties abuses that exists at Carnegie in a way that Clague never was. There is a reason for that.

Blogging.

Downtown Eastsiders have discovered blogging. And bloggers haven't let the issue of unfair barrings go. Now the mainstream media is onto the story. The Vancouver Sun published an article on the Bill Simpson case on Dec. 24/07. CBC radio's Morning Edition with Stephen Quinn has arranged to interview Simpson on Jan. 2/07 at 6:55 a.m.

Previously, Michael Clague deftly deflected media interest in this issue. When the Georgia Straight newspaper contacted him about the unfair barring of low income people from Carnegie, they reported his response being that this was a "dated" issue. "There was nothing dated about it", says one woman who was still fighting her case at the time. But what could the victims of unfair barrings do, other than write a letter to the editor and hope it got published. They didn't know about blogging at the time.

Although the barring of members without due process is a major issue that the Governor General should have reviewed before awarding the Order of Canada, it is not the only issue. Bloggers have been reporting that low income people are too often locked out of services such as the computer room and Learning Center, which the taxpayer richly funds Carnegie to keep open. This problem, which bloggers have called "The Great Taxpayer Rip-Off" did not start under Ethel Whitty. It was an ongoing problem under Michael Clague's administration. Key services at Carnegie were routinely locked during welfare cheque week on the Downtown Eastside. "They seem to have a stereotype that everybody on welfare will be drinking and drugging until their welfare cheque is spent," says one woman. When the computer room is open on Welfare Wednesday, it's going full tilt, often with a waiting list.

Michael Clague and Ethel Whitty and other povertarians claim, especially when they have the ear of funders, to give a voice to the poor. Well, the poor now have one. They got it from Google Blogger. Get used to it.

Man Throws Soup, Gets Arrested

On Sunday night, a French guy who sometimes volunteers as a dishwasher at Carnegie Center in exchange for food vouchers, got into an argument with Anthony, a kitchen supervisor and CUPE member.

The French guy was heard yelling near the cash register while buying soup. He then walked into the larger cafeteria area which was crowded with people sitting at tables eating their dinner. it was roughly 6:30 p.m.

Security guards, all CUPE members, were already in the cafeteria. It is possible that Anthony had called them when the argument started. Carnegie staff are quick to call security when an argument erupts.

The French guy threw his ceramic bowl of soup at Phil, a veteran security guard. There was soup on the floor, spread across the length of the room. Phil and a new security guard grabbed the guy. Phil called John, a security guard who was in an adjacent dining area, to come and help.

The three guards held the French guy down. One was holding his legs, one his arms, one his shoulders. A witness said, "It was like everybody was remembering the tasering [death] at the airport and they made sure to give this guy space to breath."

Security called Vancouver Police who arrived in less than 5 minutes and put handcuffs on the guy.

Man Asks Woman For Date At Carnegie, Gets Barred 1 1/2 Years Later

John, a member of the Music Program at Carnegie, was recently barred for something he claims he had done a year and a half ago. He had asked Sindi, the Assistant Volunteer Co-ordinator, for a date.

Sindia apparently told the Volunteer Co-ordinator, Colleen Gorrie, and then others got involved and John got barred.

Board member Rachel Davis, a.k.a. Rosetta, who is also a member of the Music Program, started asking questions -- just as she had asked questions when Bill Simpson was barred for allegedly blogging. John was reinstated.

One question raised here is: Why the double standard? When a female worker at Carnegie was accused of serial sexual relationships with vulnerable clients, she was never genuinely investigated. Witnesses weren't contacted. In fact, Director Ethel Whitty acted as though the people who spoke up were the problem.

Another question: Since Sindi and Colleen lock the doors of the computer room on a semi-regular basis, claiming that they couldn't manage to get a volunteer, couldn't their labour time have been put to better use?

CUPE Continues to Lock Poor Out of Services at Carnegie -- as Mayor Sullivan Cowers

Canadian Union of Public Employees has been back to work at Carnegie Center on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside for some time, but they continue to lock the poor out of services.

These povertarians got themselves a 20% raise -- that's what their 17.5% raise works out to with compounding -- which means that after a period of five years, they will have pocketed an extra full year's pay. So why are the services that they are being paid to provide still not being consistently provided at Carnegie Center. This problem began long before the strike and led at one point for calls for a forensic audit.

Striking Vancouver Public Library workers, the last to settle, returned to work at the Carnegie Center branch on Wednesday. But they took the morning off, along with other CUPE members in the building. It was Welfare Day and that is a day when CUPE members and City management refuse to consistently keep services open for the poor. Every Welfare Wednesday, the Carnegie Center closes down for the entire morning until noon; neighborhood residents showing up to use computers or the library stand on the steps. The staff congregate in the theatre for what Carnegie members call a schmoozefest; staff call it a meeting. One woman who has lived on the Downtown Eastside for 35 years and has sat on numerous Boards sees through this. "They just want time off." There are people on welfare all over Vancouver, yet no other community center uses welfare day as an excuse to leave members standing on the front steps.

Not only does Carnegie staff lock the poor out of taxpayer-funded services at the Carnegie Community Centre for the entire morning on Welfare Day, they repeatedly lock them out during "welfare week". A woman went to Carnegie on Saturday, three days after Welfare Day, only to find the Learning Center locked up tight. CUPE members are responsible for keeping it open on Saturdays; on weekdays CUPE members share that responsibility with two teachers paid by Capilano College.

On Thursday, the day after Welfare Day, a woman went to Carnegie to use the 3rd floor computer room which houses nine much-in-demand Vancouver Public Library computers. She found it locked tight and in darkness, in the middle of the afternoon! There were numerous staff persons on the 3rd floor, just meters from the Computer Room at the time. But the excuse is always the same for locking doors: "A volunteer didn't show up." Carnegie has roughly a million dollar wage bill, yet whether services remain open depends on whether some volunteer has gone on a drunk on welfare week.

Even if a volunteer is not drinking, they often have better things to do during welfare week than volunteer for 80 cents an hour in food vouchers at Carnegie. Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty who is paid $104,000 and Assistant Director Dan Tetrault, a CUPE member, have been reminded in the past that they should have contingency plans in place. In a pinch, they could sit in the computer room themselves and keep it open. Or CUPE member and Volunteer Co-ordinator Colleen Gorrie and her assistant Sindi, could sit in there for a few hours. They could use the computer reserved for the monitor. (Sindi could show off her new diamond ring to the people in there, just as she does in her office.) But they never do.

As the poor looking for jobs, or wanting to check e-mail, do course work, or just spend time on the information highway are frustrated by locked doors at Carnegie, Ethel Whitty is at times attending plays performed during the Heart of the City Festival. But her own performance back at Carnegie is what she should be focusing on.

It's not that Whitty and CUPE members such as Colleen Gorrie lack initiative. They started a virtual witch hunt at Carnegie for bloggers who were whistleblowing about locked doors last year. This witch hunt resulted in the barring of homeless man and elected Board member, Bill Simpson, for allegedly being involved in a blog. Whitty has persistently slandered bloggers at public meetings, of course never once providing examples to support her false claims. The police were even called to intimidate bloggers as an apparent favor to a CUPE member, but police admitted in the end that what bloggers were writing was accurate. So much taxpayer funded labour time expended on a 'kill the messenger' strategy, but the poor continue to find doors of services at Carnegie locked in mid-day.

Mayor Sam Sullivan has known about the great taxpayer rip-off at Carnegie since last year and has done nothing. Nada. Sullivan now says that the CUPE strike will not be over until the 2008 Civic Election when he intends to challenge CUPE's attempts to run rough shot over City Hall. But Sullivan is going to have to explain why he has been essentially covering for CUPE at Carnegie.

Related articles:
Carnegie Director Accused of Failing to Deliver Services to the Poor

Food Poisoning: Burger King or Carnegie Center?

Have you eaten at Carnegie Center or Burger King recently and ended up with these symptoms: vomiting, diarrehea which may contain blood or mucus, cramps, achy joints and muscles? If you have, head to a doctor. You may have shigella, a rare food borne bacteria -- in other words, food poisoning -- for which Carnegie and Burger King have been pinpointed as possible sources.

Why is Carnegie suspect? Because a Downtown Eastside resident who got the rare food poisoning had been eating there regularly before coming down with it the Saturday before last. This person's case of shigella has been confirmed by lab tests.

A volunteer who regularly bought soup at Carnegie had the same symptoms, only much milder. And this volunteer, long before learning of the confirmed food poisoning case, mentioned that there was talk at Carnegie about people there having "the runs". Whether any of these people had food poisoning was never confirmed. Their symptoms are easy to brush off as the flu, but they may not be the flu.

Why is Burger King suspect? Because the night before vomiting, the person with the confirmed case of food poisoning had eaten a small burger at Burger King on Main St. near Terminal. The burger was eaten about 8:30 p.m. and the next morning at 8:30 a.m., the person was vomiting. The person says the burger had been made fresh; it hadn't been sitting under the heat lamp. The victim of food poisoning had been feeling dragged out, though, "like I was fighting something off" for several days before eating at Burger King. (The victim did come down with a cough too, so maybe that's what they were fighting off.)

About a week before getting sick, the person confirmed to have food poisoning had also eaten some pre-cooked barbeque salmon purchased from the cooler at Metrotown Superstore. The person also ate some fresh kale purchased at Superstore.

The DTES resident confirmed to have the food poisoning says that in the past they have not had a problem eating at Carnegie. In fact, in 20 years they have heard of only one person getting sick there; a woman vomited after eating a greasy soup there. [Update: Since this post was published, a Carnegie staff person gave a few people photocopies about shigella. She said there was an outbreak in the neighborhood. According to the handout, shigella often has a 2-3 day incubation period but it can be as long as 7 days or as little as 1 day.

One doctor who discovered that the patient had shigella or "shigellosis" said she has not seen a case of this in a decade. But shigella has recently been turning up in clusters around Vancouver, she said, so Public Health officials are attempting to track it. Public Health officials have not yet had a chance to speak to the Downtown Eastside resident whose case of shigella has been confirmed. But the doctor said they will want to know where this person has eaten.

The person with the confirmed case of shigella is still weak and sleeping every few hours through the day. The doctor prescribed antibiotics to be taken three times a day. She assured the patient, "You'll get better."

Vancouver Rookie Cop Enters Women's Washroom With Gun Pulled

Over the weekend, a guy got stabbed in the leg in front of Carnegie Center, where a swarm of people sell drugs or just hang out. The guy appeared to have been stabbed in a major artery.

A Carnegie Security guard, a tall guy with white hair, was helping the paramedic by holding the torque on the injured man’s leg.

Then a rookie Vancouver Police officer comes along. He tells the plain clothes security guard to back off. But the Security guard was preventing the guy from bleeding to death, so he tells the cop that he works on security.

The cop asks where the guy was stabbed. The security guard told him that it was by the women’s washroom, although the trail of blood made it obvious where he had been stabbed. There is an underground women’s washroom near the Carnegie front steps; women say it’s a clean washroom and a City worker sits down there to make certain nobody shoots up or causes trouble.

"The cop pulls out his gun," said a Carnegie regular in amazement,"and goes down to the women’s washroom." As if anybody would get away with hiding in the women's washroom with so many people standing around, he added.

Another guy from the neighborhood said, “That cop has been watching too much tv.”

Flood at Carnegie Center Last Evening

The basement of Carnegie Center flooded last evening. A patron said, "They kicked everybody out at 8:30." Usually people are allowed to sit around in the building playing board games or talking until 11 p.m., although most services such as the library, computer room, and basement tv and computer lounge close at 10 p.m.

The flood occurred in the area of the washrooms, across from the weight room in the basement. Staff had to shut off the water in the entire building. So toilets couldn't be flushed and dishes couldn't be washed.

Carnegie is staffed by CUPE members who are on strike, but food service workers, as well as a few janitorial and security staff and a front desk receptionist are still on the job. That's because the cafeteria and related volunteer program have been designated essential by Labour Relations.

Carnegie was open again this morning.

See more CUPE strike-related stories on this site, such as:
CUPE Boss Asked to Settle with Secretary
Striking Librarians Should Look Up "Fair"

Anti-Semitism from a Carnegie Board member and Mr. Dress Up

The woman in front of me in the cafeteria was buying a banana and a potato salad -- they make a nice potato salad with the skins left on -- in the Carnegie Center yesterday. An aboriginal guy, a Carnegie Board member who sometimes volunteers at the cafeteria, was operating the cash register and jokingly asked her how much she owed him. She said "$1.15". He said it was actually $1.50. He then added jokingly, "You don't have a bit of Hebrew in your blood do you?" She said, "Hebrew?"

An aboriginal woman ahead of her, who had just gone through the cash, looked at the woman and laughed, as though she expected a bonding moment on this humor. The laughing aboriginal woman is well known at Carnegie, having been recently held up as a role model by Carnegie staff and management as "Volunteer of the Year". Before that the povertarians got her a job a the now defunct Four Corners Community Bank that Jim Green started.

The cashier had by this time had turned his attention to ringing in the purchases and, when he did so, realized that the woman had been right. He announced that she actually did owe just $1.15.

I thought of yesterday's anti-semitic moment at Carnegie when I was reading a post on Covenant Zone blogspot this morning about how Palestinians are using Western children's programming -- Mr. Dress Up, Mickey Mouse, etc. -- to indoctrinate children into hatred of Jews and Israel.

The "Hebrew" comment at Carnegie didn't come out of a vacuum if you ask me, but from an environment in which ones-sided information is provided encouraging disdain for Jews and Israel. Upstairs the Carnegie Center has hosted pro-Palestinian talks inviting speakers, some of them Jews and one of them a Palestinian, who make a hobby of criticizing Israel. There have also been movies shown on this theme. Never has there been anything to my knowledge that would be sympathetic to Israel. The Carnegie newsletter, subsidized by the City of Vancouver, also tends to be pro-Palestinian. The joking cashier/Board member has been around for years so it would be hard to believe that he hasn't been exposed to this.


A change of topic -- Bored by Mr. Dress Up, fascinated by Ooglie Wooglie

Reading about Mr. Dress Up and the Friendly Giant on Covenant Zone blogspot brought back memories of the crappy children's programming I was exposed to. As Paul Simon sings, "It's a wonder I can think at all."

I remember being a kid and thinking that Mr. Dress Up talked in a phony way. Years later, I read about some popular children's television entertainer who didn't realize he was being broadcast and he said what he really thought of the kids viewing, calling them little bastards, etc. I immediately wondered if that's the attitude Mr. Dress Up was suppressing behind his phony voice.

Mr. Dress Up bored the daylights out of me. I learned nothing because I just got too bored to sit in front of the television and watch him. I didn't find Finnigan interesting either; he was some sort of puppet figure who Mr. Dress Up chattered to.

I was bored with the Friendly Giant too. But I liked him a little better than Mr. Dress Up. I liked the way the furniture on the set was built to different scales, some huge and some miniature. Years later, as an adult, I was watching the news and they played a clip of the Friendly Giant sitting in the rocking chair and announced that he'd died. I was sad, but just for a minute. I thought of the deprivation of my childhood in Ottawa, sitting in front of the television trying to glean something from the Friendly Giant.

There was another children's show that I used to watch. A woman would stand in front of the camera beside a huge sheet of paper hanging on a tripod, and she would tell a story about a worm named Oogly Wooglie. She used a black felt pen to sketch illustrations as she told the story. When she finished one picture, she would flip the paper over the back of the tripod and she would start drawing on a fresh piece. She was calm but fast in the way she would keep the pictures coming.

Even then, I knew that this was a very cheap way to do a television show. But I liked it. I liked the way she drew Ooglie Wooglie's head with one quick line in a half-oval shape, and then two eyes with two more quick lines in half-oval shapes. Sometimes she would underscore each eye with a quick, loose, horizontal line. No extraneous detail at all. I don't remember her name. I think it was "Miss" something.

A Thelma and Louise Moment

There is considerable evidence that Colleen G., an employee at Carnegie Center, had input into relentless barring of homeless man, Bill Simpson, from the Center. And there is evidence that she had input into the recent unfounded police complaints against Simpson and other suspected bloggers.

Immediately after Bill was barred on June 21st, Colleen returned to work at the Center, after not having been seen for awhile.

A few days before Simpson was last barred on June 21, 2007, Colleen passed him "in a car with a Carnegie kitchen worker wearing a bandanna", waving vigorously and hollering, "Hi Bill!" Simpson was nonplussed. But being a born-to-be-polite Saskatchewanian, he returned the greeting.

It has been pointed out by a Carnegie member watching the Simpson barring case that this attempt to connect with Simpson should be put on record -- since the latest story, the third version now, from the City of Vancouver is that Simpson was barred because employees felt "unsafe". And who would those employees be? Thelma and Louise?