Carnegie "Kangaroo" Election

Most Carnegie members didn't know their was an election last evening. And that was no accident.

The notice on the bulletin board was small enough that members could be counted on to miss it. "I had to take off my glasses and put my face right up to it to read it", said one member. He said the notice announced, "CCA AGM", letters that wouldn't catch the attention of most members. The election wasn't mentioned until the end of the notice, in fine print. I recall seeing this small notice myself but it was so small, I didn't stop to read it.

They should have announced the election in large print, said one member. "They hang banners over the steps out front all the time" when they want the poor to turn out for their povertarian projects and marches, but when there is an election, they produce only a teeny weeny poster.

Members of the Carnegie establishment such as paid anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson have worked to disenfranchise the poor ever since the poor's choice of Board members -- William Simpson, Rachel Davis -- didn't match their own. They stack elections with their friends and political allies. One member described last evening's election and the prior well-attended nomination meeting this way. "A bunch of strangers showed up, and they voted in their yes-people." He said the result is that longtime members who use Carnegie on an almost daily basis are finding decisions made by people they barely recognize, and at times don't recognize.

Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, the City's representative at the meeting, left early, saying she was "busy". Very little Whitty says is believed by members, many of whom are aware of her well-documented record of lying. "Maybe she didn't want to be put on the spot and have to answer any questions," said one man. A woman said she saw Whitty leaving the building after the meeting in the theater had ended, supporting skeptics' view that she hadn't or shouldn't have been too busy to sit through the Carnegie AGM.

One member later sitting at a patio table at Waves coffee shop in the warm evening breeze, summed up the Carnegie election this way. "They pulled a fast one on us again".

Special Meeting Tonight Over Demand for Recount of Election Results at Carnegie

There will be a Special Meeting at 5:30 p.m. today in the Theatre of the Carnegie Center. Members will vote on whether to have a recount of the June 2008 election results. Members have been demanding a recount.

Board President Mathhew Mathhew has announced that at least 30 Carnegie members have to show up to make the election valid. But Carnegie member, B.B., alleges that number is "arbitrary". Sort of like the arbitrary 150 signatures, Mathhew said members had to get on a petition before the Board would consider a recount.

Even if a recount is granted, it is unlikely that the results will be trusted by members. The election was just too sloppy. One member has pointed out that the ballots are photocopied and that anybody could photocopy a few more, add some Xs, and substitute these ballots for others. This could have been done over the two months that have passed.

Some members such as B.B. say that the request for an election recount is actually pre-mature, that members should first demand that the Board release the results of June's election. To date, Carnegie Board of Directors and Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty (who is given an automatic seat at the Board) have avoided releasing the Teller's Report from the June election that would reveal how many votes each candidiate got. Members have been waiting for two months for this report. The Board is required by Roberts Rules, which was adopted by the Board, to make the Teller's Report public. But fair elections have never been a strong point of the Carnegie Board or Whitty; they after all colluded with the locking of an elected Board member out of the building for a year, denying him access to Board meetings.

Carnegie member, Jim A., who is usually not politically active, is one of several members asking about the Tellers Report. He asked Whitty why the Tellers Report was being concealed from voters. She responded that it was tradition not to release it.

Board President Mathhew Mathhew has told a different story than Whitty. According to B.B., Mathhew said the Teller's Report would be printed in the Carnegie Newsletter. Three Carnegie Newsletters have been published since that promise was allegedly made. No Teller's Report.

A primary reason behind the demand for a recount and for copies of the Teller's
Report is that Rachel Davis, a popular candidate amongst members who frequent Carnegie on a day to day basis, didn't get elected. Davis was the only incumbent who had spoken up -- and continued to speak up -- about the fact that homeless man, William Simpson, was banned from the building two weeks after Carnegie members elected him to the Board last year. Whitty told him he would not even be allowed into the building for Board meetings.

Paul Taylor, Editor of the Carnegie Newsletter who was forced to retract libelous commentary about the homeless Board member, and Jean Swanson, a paid organizer with the Carnegie Center Action Project on homelessness, stacked the election with pals who were instructed to vote for a slate which didn't include Davis. Low income Carnegie members who had not planned to run, report that they were instructed by Taylor or Swanson to show up at the election as they were going to be nominated. Taylor and Swanson were manipulating the poor.

Swanson's stacking, though, also involved bringing unfamiliar faces to the Carnegie election and getting some of them elected to the Board. These virtual strangers will now be making decisions affecting the lives of regular users of Carnegie. So much effort expended by homeless advocate Swanson so that incumbent Rachel Davis, who was speaking up about the banning of an elected homeless man and the banning of other members without just cause, would not get re-elected. Here is one of the few election results clearly revealed: Jean Swanson is not an anti-poverty activist, she is an anti-democracy activist.

Distrust at Carnegie Results in Request for Election Recount

Carnegie members don't trust the results of the June 5th election for Board of Directors at Carnegie Community Center. James A. announced at the meeting that he would like a recount. Many other members who came out to vote for incumbent Board member Rachel Davis, who was defeated, support a recount.

Board member Colleen Carroll assured James A. in front of the audience at the June 5th election that he was welcome to count the ballots, that the ballots would be preserved for 30 days for that purpose. Carnegie Director, Ethel Whitty, with a reputation for involvement in fraud and undemocratic practices -- her reputation can be supported with documentation -- sat at the Board table nodding her head in agreement.

Guess what happened when Carnegie member Audrey Laferriere (pictured above at the election) recently asked for a recount? Board President Matthew Matthew responded that the request for a recount would be granted only if it was accompanied by 150 signatures from Carnegie members.

Laferriere began circulating a petition for signatures and on it she wrote, "We do not need a President who is inflexible and into power tripping. Anyone should be allowed to recount votes without hindrance. He has screwed up my long weekend."

Dag, a blogger at Covenant Zone, who had attended the June 5 election to support Davis for speaking out about erosion of free speech rights under the Whitty administration, suspects Matthew Matthew arbitrarily chose 150 as the number of signatures needed. "It's as if he looked in his hat and saw the number 'one five zero.' "

Paul, a labourer who often has dinner at the Carnegie cafeteria, voted at the Board election but was not optimistic about securing a recount. When Paul learned that his pal James A. was one of several Carnegie members helping Laferriere collect 150 signatures, he signed the petition but said, “If they can only get 75 people out to vote, how are they going to get 150 people to sign.” The 75 people Paul was referring to had made up the unusually high turnout at the June 5th election. That turnout was the result of intense organizing by such members of the Carnegie establishment as Jean Swanson (who doesn’t live on the Downtown Eastside) and Paul Taylor, who got their friends and allies to swarm the meeting and vote for a slate that didn’t include Davis.

The Carnegie establishment, including Director Ethel Whitty, had wanted to get rid of Rachel Davis since she appeared on Co-op Radio and later CBC Radio to question the legitimacy of Whitty delivering homeless man, William Simpson, a letter barring him indefinitely from the Carnegie Center where Board meetings are held. The letter was delivered two weeks after Simpson was elected to the Board and it's content was called "contrary to the rule of law" by lawyer Gregory Bruce. Whitty later appeared on CBC Radio and lied about the reason for Simpson’s barring, presenting this man as a "WorkSafe" risk. Her claim completely contradicted the official reason given to Simpson in the letter, that he operated a website that "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which criticizes Carnegie.

The votes that Carnegie members would like recounted were originally counted by Board secretary Rolph Auer. Rolph is an unfamiliar face to most regular Carnegie members and was elected during a by-election last year after Board member Sophia Freigang resigned due to what she called “human rights” abuses on the part of the Board and City staff. Freigang had pressed for a review of the barring of Simpson and was critical of efforts by Whitty and her cohorts to curb “free speech” by barring a man for being connected to a blog. Jean Swanson (did I mention she doesn’t live on the Downtown Eastside?) had been instrumental in getting Auer elected, using the email list from the Carnegie Action Project to ’remind’ people to come out and vote for him. One of Auer's early tasks as a Carnegie Board member was to show up at a Community Relations meeting and oppose Davis' attempts to curb the use of the Carnegie newsletter for personal attacks. And when the man sitting next to him, Paul Taylor, told Davis to "Shut up!", Auer didn't even flinch.

Even if Carnegie members are granted a recount, they are not convinced they can ever trust the result. James A. said, as a few other members having coffee with him nodded their heads in agreement, that it would be easy for somebody to use a pencil to tick off a few extra boxes on ballots. This possibility exists because many people at the meeting had ticked off far fewer boxes than the 15 they were allowed, as they simply weren’t familiar with many of the candidates. One woman at the table said, "I only voted for Rosetta (aka Rachel Davis) and maybe one other person."

Laferriere wrote towards the end of the petition, "Time is of the essence as the signatures have to be done within three days."

This issue will be raised at the next Board meeting at Carnegie on Thursday evening at 5 p.m.

Contact information for Audrey Laferriere:
audreylaferriere@yahoo.ca
778-329-1250

Carnegie Election Kills Free Speech

Photo by Wilf Reimer. Carnegie members line up outside the theatre where the election was held.

Just one person running in last night’s election for Board of Directors at the Carnegie Centre had taken a stand against totalitarian tactics being used against Centre members. Tactics like launching a witch hunt for bloggers. Or banning homeless man, William Simpson, from Carnegie Board meetings just two weeks after he was elected to the Board of Directors, accusing him of operating a website which linked to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. These tactics weren’t acceptable to Rachel Davis. Last night they got rid of her.

By they I mean the Carnegie establishment, people like Jean Swanson who claims to advocate for the homeless in her paid work with the Carnegie Action Project. And Paul Taylor who edits the Carnegie newsletter and used it to libel the homeless man, claiming he had gotten himself elected through fraud.

One Carnegie member sitting in the meeting said, “Jean Swanson told me to show up; she said I’m going to be nominated. She has a plan but I don’t know what it is.”

She did have a plan. There is little doubt of that.

Unlike most Annual General meetings at Carnegie, this one was packed. Stacked would be a better word. One long term Carnegie member said, “Half the people there, I either didn’t recognize or I hadn’t seen for a long, long time.” A number of candidates nominated said they had a history of work with End Legislated Poverty, the almost defunct organization Jean Swanson founded and operated for years.

Presumably Swanson used the e-mail list she has access to as an employee at Carnegie to contact comrades to remind them not only to show up at the election but of who to vote for. She did that during the last by-election to get her protégé Rolph Auer, formerly a writer for the End Legislated Poverty newspaper, elected. Auer did not disappoint. Like Swanson, he did nothing to get the homeless Board member reinstated. Swanson nominated Auer again last night.

Did I mention that Paul Taylor elected his most loyal comrade, Lisa David? He didn’t mention to voters that she was his wife.

In a handout at the election, banned Board member Simpson was listed as “absent without notice.” That brought to mind the weekly dinners Stalin held where people who were present last week suddenly weren’t present this week, and were never present there or anywhere else again.

"Unity" was the theme pushed at last night’s Annual General meeting; the word was splashed across the cover of a handout. Their idea of unity is to disappear dissidents. They had done it with William Simpson and they would now do it with Rachel Davis. Davis had been on the radio talking about the importance of allowing a duly elected Carnegie Board member in the door. Last night they would push her out the door.

Davis would have been easily elected if it had been up to regular users of the Centre, rather than the swarm of unfamiliar faces. One member, Audrey L., (above photo) pinned handwritten signs, "A Vote for Rachel is a Vote for Transparency". Jim A. said he too had come out to vote for Rachel Davis. But while there, he said, he would also vote for Colleen Carroll because he likes the conspiracy theory documentaries she shows at Carnegie. (Carroll even concocted a conspiracy theory about Davis; asking her at a committee meeting, "Do you work for the Fraser Institute?")

Twenty-three people were nominated and 20 people ran for the Board. Fifteen were elected:

James Pau
Adrienne McCullum
Stephen Lytton
Lisa David
Greg Hathaway
Norma Jean Baptiste
Margaret Prevost
Gena Thompson
Harold Asham
Colleen Carroll
Mathew Mathew
Sandra Pronteau
Joe Leblanc
Paul Campbell

"It was a coup d'etat for Jean Swanson," one member said over coffee after the election.

On free speech, there is nobody left to speak up.

City Admits Screwing Up on Condo Project for Downtown Eastside

The City of Vancouver admits it screwed up. And today groups fighting gentrification in Vancouver in the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympics fought back.

The Carnegie Community Action Project and other groups in the Citywide Housing Coaltion held a rally to express outrage that the City had evaded the legally required consultation process for a 7 story condominium development on the Downtown Eastside. Rick Michaels, the Director of Planning delegate for the City of Vancouver, has already apologized for what he calls an “inadvertent shortfall in the notification process for this application,” and an “incomplete notification process”, according to Wendy Pederson (in photo above with red loud speaker), a full time paid organizer with CCAP.

"The City of Vancouver may have been trying to sneak this proposal past us," Pederson said.

CCAP and the Citywide Housing Coalition, groups fighting loss of housing stock for low income people and pressuring governments to keep their promise to provide social housing as a legacy of the 2010 Winter Olympics, today held the consultation that they say the City of Vancouver was legally required to hold but didn’t. About 50 community members and housing advocates gathered today at the offices of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users on East Hastings and marched to a vacant lot at 58 West Hastings Street owned by Concord Pacific, Canada’s largest developer. The proposed project is called “Greenwich” and contains 154 market housing units, from two-bedroom to studio units. No social housing or other community amenities are currently proposed to be located on the site.

“This project got a rubber stamp from the city, even though it doesn’t comply with the Downtown Eastside housing plan,” noted Pedersen. “How can the City approve this project without talking to the elected officials that set the plan, or the community that relies on that plan?”

Joyce Rock of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House was equally disappointed in the approval, suggesting it would lead to displacement: “In what other neighbourhood in Vancouver would the City tolerate 32% of residents being at risk of displacement because of new development?” A meeting scheduled for today by the City to approve additional density for the site was cancelled after CCAP wrote to the planning department to express concern about the lack of notification that the project was moving ahead.



Taking a jab at the City’s lack of a consultation process for the Greenwich condo project, protesters jotted down answers to questions such as "What do we need on this site?” on three huge signs at the vacant lot where the proposed project is to be built. In the above photo, Jean Swanson, an organizer with the Carnegie Community Action Project, can be seen getting the process underway.

(In the center of the above photo, Citywide Housing Coalition leader Mel Lehan, wearing the red and black jacket, talks to a protester at the site of the proposed Pacific Concord condo development.)

Pederson reminded protesters at today’s rally that the City has also not given up their plan to build highrise towers on the Downtown Eastside. If they go ahead with that, she told the crowd, “we’re hooped!”

Candidates Endorsed by Author of "Poor Bashing" Win Seats on Carnegie Center Board of Directors

The Left got organized to get trusted comrades elected to two vacant positions on the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Center this evening. That’s the same Board that homeless Bill Simpson was elected to in June 2007, only to be banished two weeks later to the sidewalk by the City of Vancouver, denied access to Board meetings as punishment for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

Jean Swanson, author of "Poor-Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion" and an organizer with the Carnegie Center Action Project [CCAP] to end homelessness, sent an email about the election to volunteers on the CCAP mailing list. Swanson, an American ex-pat who spoke to a UN representative about the issue of homelessness in Vancouver but apparently found no time to speak up about the "exclusion" of homeless Bill Simpson from the Center from which she organizes, gave recipients of her email not so subtle hints about who to vote for:

”Hey CCAP folks. A Carnegie board election is coming up, for 2 people, and our very own CCAPer, Rolf Auer, the famous letter to the editor and article writer, is running.”

Rolf Auer wrote in "The Long Haul", the now defunct newspaper published by End Legislated Poverty, a Vancouver organization Swanson helped found, and he knows her well. He continues to write letters to the editor of the Carnegie Newsletter, cookie-cutter left-wing letters. It’s doubtful that Auer can be counted on to protect the right of Bill Simpson and other Carnegie members to freedom of expression. Last summer, the Carnegie Newsletter published a letter of support Auer had written for Paul Taylor after a campaign was launched by Carnegie members to curb Taylor's power as editor of the Newsletter when he admitted libeling Bill Simpson. Taylor had written a column claiming that Simpson had written blog material that was “sadistic” and had relied on fraud to get elected to the Board -- the libel was written after Simpson supporters began agitating about his barring from Carnegie for freedom of expression.

Swanson continued in her e-mail:

“Sandra Pronteau is also running. She is active in Raise the Rates and is going to be part of the Poverty Olympics on Feb. 3.”

Pronteau is part of the group of activists Swanson is involved with, activists who have been publicly agitating for higher welfare rates.

At tonight's meeting, Pronteau, an aboriginal woman with long dark hair, in her thirties, with four children, said she wanted to see the "ongoing trafficking" of drugs outside the building addressed. She closed by saying, "Poverty is another issue that I totally support, and homelessness."

Auer, a tall, bald, middle aged caucasion, was nominated by Paul Taylor. In his brief election speech, Auer said he had been an "anti-poverty activist" for over 10 years. He expressed concern about gentrification on the Downtown Eastside: "I want to see the neighborhood saved and do everything in my power to see that that happens."

Neither Auer or Pronteau mentioned the elephant on the table: the barring of duly elected Board member Bill Simpson from the Carnegie building for daring to operate a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which has criticized Carnegie.

Both Auer and Pronteau were elected to the Board.


See related article, "CBC Interviews Bill Simpson", at:
http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspot.com/2008/01/cbc-radio-interviews-bill-simpson.html