City Workers Force Low Income Man to Eat Cabbage Rolls Instead of Turkey Dinner on Christmas Day

A Downtown Eastsider who had not had a turkey dinner in several years, didn't want to miss out this year. He had been told by other Downtown Eastsiders that the Christmas dinner at the Salvation Army can be counted on to be good, and the volunteer servers are always eager to ensure people enjoy their dinner. So he headed over there today. But he got there too late; the security guard told him the dinner ended at 1:50 p.m.

Another Downtown Eastsider suggested he head over to the Evelyn Saller Centre cafeteria, "the 44". It's not free though, it's two dollars. He had three dollars and something in his pocket. His father had sent him money this Christmas but he was broke; his money got stolen. He has a mild head injury and seems to often get money stolen from his room, or he gets pick-pocketed, or "rolled" as they say. "I've been feeling jinxed", he said.

He headed over to the 44 where a female security guard in a blue "Security" jacket, young with blonde hair in a pony tail, was warmly greeting people with, "Merry Christmas", at the door. But the Christmas spirit ended at the door (except for Santa who was in the back of the Centre giving out gifts.)

The man waited for his turkey dinner in a long line-up stretching outside the cafeteria, and when he got inside, two City workers were shoving plates of turkey dinner onto the glass counter over the steam trays. People in the line-up would grab a plate as they passed, pushing their tray along. The counter is above eye level unless a person is tall, so some people have to crane their necks to see what's on the plate. Anyway, this guy saw the person in front of him take a plate of turkey so he took the next plate. "All I saw was the brussel sprouts", he said. As soon as he picked up the plate, he realized it wasn't even close to being a turkey dinner. It was cabbage rolls, two of them with tomato sauce, and three or four brussel sprouts on the side. So he went to set it back down on the counter and take a turkey dinner. "Too late," said one of the City servers, "You touched it, you have to eat it."

These servers would have known that the guy they were stickin' with cabbage rolls on Christmas didn't have a second $2 for Christmas dinner. They know their clientele. It's not uncommon for diners to have no money and have a welfare account there; the government prefers to finance meals when possible, rather than hand out cash to people who may have difficulty handling money. This guy doesn't have a welfare account, but he does eat there occasionally and he certainly looks poor. Compare the clientele to the servers who are at roughly the same educational level but make, according to a regular diner who chats with one of the staff, $22 an hour. Double that for Christmas. And their contract allows them to close an hour early on Christmas, 5 p.m., to eat with their families.

So the low income guy with the head injury ate the cabbage rolls. "They were awful," he said. He left quickly, forgetting to pick up his gift from Santa. He was edgy with his friends afterwards.

There were two witnesses to the CUPE members' cabbage-rolling this guy on Christmas. One of them was mistreated by the same two surly servers. She asked if she could have dark meat. One of the servers, an Asian woman, possibly Filipina, reportedly said, "No, we give half and half", but then proceeded to put mostly white meat on the plate, as if to be spiteful. Her co-server, an even more surly older white woman, snarled, "We don't do special orders." The woman told her that she wasn't expecting a special order, that half and half would have been fine, and that they were being pretty mean considering it was Christmas."

Then came a bit of a miracle. The guy who got cabbage-rolled on Christmas walked over to the Dug Out Drop-in centre where they were serving free coffee and pastries, and spotted a guy outside with a big plate of turkey dinner. He asked him where he got it and was told the Chinese Christians were giving them out at Potters Mission over at Hastings at Carroll St. So this guy went over there with a couple of friends and they were each served a heaping plate: turkey and gravy, lots of green salad with chopped red peppers, mashed potatoes, and in the centre of the plate, pieces of oranges, and chopped apples and banana. And a gigantic piece of pumpkin pie.

The Potter workers were able to actually communicate with Downtown Eastsiders. Like when they got questions about whether people could have an extra empty plate to cover their heaping plate of food so that they could take it out, or whether they could have a bag or a container, a female server would explain that they really preferred that people eat their meal there rather than take out. They had lots of chairs to sit in and a live band to listen to.

But the Potter's Mission dinner was not the last served to the cabbage-rolled man. He was told that if he returned to the Dug Out at 7 p.m., they would be serving a Christmas dinner. There was a long line-up along the back of the building, but it was worth it. They served him a heaping plate of food and put tin foil over the plate for anyone who wanted to take it out, as it's a small place and couldn't seat everybody. The volunteer server at the meat tray was asking, "What's you're preference, white meat or dark?" And even after one of the men helping out said they'd now served 100 people, each server continued greeting each person in the line with a warm, "Merry Christmas!"

Two cabbage rolls, and two Christmas dinners. Merry Christmas.

Sixty Santas Show Up At The Ivanhoe Hotel

On Saturday evening, Dec. 15, 2007, roughly 60 Santas swarmed into the Ivanhoe Hotel, adjacent to Pacific Station on the Downtown Eastside.

Let Them Eat Turkey

At noon today, about a thousand people showed up for the film industry's annual outdoor Christmas dinner at Oppenheimer Park on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Turkey is what Downtown Eastsiders are left with since the povertarians stopped the trickle of film industry wealth that reached the poor. A few years ago, for example, there was a Claude Van Damme film on the Downtown Eastside and the film company gave people whose lives were severely disrupted $100 each. That doesn’t happen any more.

Povertarians at the Downtown Eastside Residents Association and some of the housing co-ops made deals with the film companies, supposedly “on behalf” of people whose lives are disrupted. A guy who has lived for years at a housing co-op on Powell St. explains that the film industry has at times given his co-op $1,500, selling out residents whose lives are disrupted by filming, particularly residents who have apartments at street level. They get nothing now. Except a headache from sleep cut short and noise, lights, and constant exhaust fumes from idling trucks. In exchange for the donation from the film industry, the Co-op appoints a "film liaison" to handle complaints from residents. Any resident living in a small suite, putting up with filming just meters from their bed and fumes coming through their only window, is no longer individually factored into the production costs of a film. To the film companies, they seem to be nothing more than, to use an expression made popular on Coast to Coast radio, "useless eaters".

A few years back, the film industry was printing the newsletter for the cash-strapped Downtown Eastside Resident’s Association. Not surprisingly when residents came out to a town hall meeting to air grievances about the film industry, DERA’s then Executive Director, Terry Hanley, opened the meeting by asking them at the beginning of the meeting to “be nice” to film industry representatives. It was at this meeting that one resident recalls first learning that turkey was what the film industry would be 'giving back' to the community; compensation to individual residents seemed to be off the table.

DERA also arranged for the film industry to hire Downtown Eastside residents, which translated into their friends and political allies, not to mention Hanley’s brother and common law husband. Such deals became a substitute for the film companies giving a few bucks compensation to residents sucking tail pipes or being kept up late by the film crews. I could go on for pages about this. But what it has all boiled down to now is:

Let them eat turkey.

So I went for turkey. My friend and I stood in the line up today – it had stopped raining by this time but the ground was thick with mud -- for about 10 minutes. The dressing was tasty, lots of mushrooms in it. It’s the best stove-top dressing I’ve ever tasted. With the turkey (I was pleased to get some dark meat), there was gravy and a heap of cranberries, mixed corn and carrots, and mashed potatoes. The meal, served in styrofoam, was steaming hot.

The guys handling the turkey and other hot food inside the catering trucks – there were several catering trucks -- were working their asses off. I noticed it. Another guy noticed it too. “See how fast those guys are moving,” he said.

There were also two clothing tents, one for women and one for men. The line-ups to the tents were long. It was about a 40 minute wait. Some of the people – correction: many of the people – in the line-up were rough. They were occasionally yelling at one another while grabbing clothes inside both the men's and the women's tents.

The clothes were decent. One long time Downtown Eastside resident pointed out that the drug users will sell them for crack or something. Staff gave everyone a black garbage bag to fill with clothes. That was your limit. A women who came out of the women's clothing tent with a full bag told me that there was one man in there -- all the rest were women -- and he was the 'enforcer', telling women, "OK, you're bag is full. You have to go now." He was mostly targeting the women who were getting unruly, she said. She is not a drug user and got a few sweaters, and dressy cardigans which she intends to wear if she finds a job next year. She also got lots of second hand socks. "I really need socks," she said.

A middle-age man got the first pair of dress pants, grey, that he’s had in years. And he got a pair of black wing-tip shoes.

As people stood in the line-up for food or clothing, volunteer staff walked back and forth handing out raw carrot and celery sticks, pretzels, Nestle’s lemonade coolers, Coke Zero, oranges and bananas, even tailor-made cigarettes. They also gave out brand new winter hats and gloves, and plastic baggies containing, shampoo, toothpaste, and soap. One woman, the same one who needed the socks, was happy to get some shampoo. She also got a black hat with stripes that had a “Dollar Giant” tag still on it.

The staff and volunteers working at the event were all fresh-faced, middle-class. They were pleasant and patient, even when people in the line ups occasionally lost their tempers and started yelling at one another.

There was a live band too. Not a band hamstrung by political correctness either. They were daring to sing songs containing the words “Christmas” and “Jesus”. Like the song that goes, "Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born." I would bet that most of the people in the workers and underclass people in the line ups were raised Christian. Most were white or native, with the occasional Chinese person.

The Turkey tactic has worked. Most Downtown Eastside residents no longer ask for compensation for having lives disrupted by the film industry. They seem resigned to the fact that the povertarians who run their lives, have shut down any semblance of a free wheeling market in the film industry. They line up for turkey in the drizzle and the mud. Don't get me wrong; there are still some old cases being fought. Like the one of a woman who felt that the filming of "It's a Girl Thing" starring Kate Capshaw -- with a guy who looked like Steven Spielberg, helping to direct the actresses -- turned into an abuse thing. And there's the case of the woman made ill by a generator during the making of a Honda commercial on the 100 block Powell St. Let’s just say she sees Muriel Honey at the Vancouver Film Office not as Santa, more as Freddie Kruger.

The fact that Downtown Eastside residents are supposed to be satisfied with turkey as payment in kind for film disruptions is not subtle. In one of the above complaints, a woman was told in writing by an industry spokesperson that the industry hosts a turkey dinner every year to give back to the community. She resents the assumption by the film industry that junkies and low lifes are her "community" and she does not believe that lining up with such an unpredictable crowd at the park in the rainy season should be a substitute for compensation. When residents of Kerrisdale were irritated by fake snow dropped on their houses, a female resident complained about it to an news television crew but added, "Of course, we got compensation." Kerrisdale residents were not told to line-up for turkey.

A guy dressed up like Santa was standing near the band at the turkey dinner today. But Downtown Eastsiders know the truth; there is no Santa in the film industry. He's been hijacked in his sleigh.

Vancouver Public Library stays open Christmas Day

What do you do on Christmas Day when you have no money but time to kill between free turkey dinners on the Downtown Eastside?

You go to the library.

"I'm glad the libary is open," one guy said as he walked into the Vancouver Public Library in the Carnegie Centre. "Everything else is closed."

The Library is paying a staff person to keep the library open, one of those Library Technicians who don't cost as much as a real librarian. She is not actually alone though. The Carnegie security guards are hanging around in the lobby just outside the wide open doors of the library.

The Library staff person looks sullen on Christmas. She's twenty-something; she looks like she's of hispanic descent. But the thing that stands out most about her is that she does not go out of her way to fuck with people. Not like the other woman who worked there for 20 years, who I haven't seen lately. She was a middle-aged, white woman with dyed blonde hair. She was wicked. You wouldn't want her around on Christmas.

This woman was rude to a Carnegie regular who works as a fork lift operator in an nearby fish plant -- $14 an hour, non union -- when she was checking out his books. So he told her that he was finding her rude. I believed L.M.'s version of events because this woman has been rude to me to; she's rude to everybody.

According to L.M., the wicked library worker responded to his complaint by marching out to the lobby to complain to Security about him. I believed that part of his story too because that's the way the Library staff and most other unionized staff at Carnegie operate: they've long ago forgotten the "enjoy working with people" emphasis on their resumes; they more often than not opt to call security rather than talk things through with Downtown Eastsiders. And if there are complaints about their work performance, who they gonna call? CUPE, to cover their asses. That's what they pay union dues for.

But even the security men were getting fed up with this wicked Libary worker asking them to run interference over every little thing. So one of the security guards, after listening to her and showing her the utmost respect, said under his breath to L.M., "What did you say to that bitch?" I laughed when L.M. told me. Bitch is a sexist word that I would be the first to say is best avoided. But I'll make this one exception.

There is another Library staff person, Johann, who worked earlier today. Johann, is generally respectful toward the public. But one evening a few months back, he was playing a game of chess with his pal at the end of the check-out counter when a man farted at the nearby open window. Johann jumped up and ordered the guy to leave, according to eye witnesses. 'I told you before not to do that!', Johann yelled. The guy yelled that Johann should take a walk through Canada Packers sometime. Johann kept telling him to leave the library and the buy, obviously feeling humiliated, kept repeating the Canada Packers suggestion. Johann called security who escorted the farter out of the Library. The security guards and the library clerk are both CUPE and the farter knew and the witnesses knew that he has no recourse.

But today there was no trouble in the Library. There were candy canes and an assortment of other candies provided free at the check-out counter, a tell tale sign that today was a special day. There seemed to be a temporary suspension of the practice by staff of having Security bully people who talked back or farted, people who could only wish for the protection afforded by union dues. They are no match for CUPE members for whom every day is Christmas.