Carnegie Staff Thumb Noses at Jenny Kwan

What Jenny Kwan did, Carnegie management has undone.

Last November, Jenny Kwan, MLA for Vancouver East, got a call from a Carnegie member, also named Kwan, who had been unjustly barred from the Carnegie for four months. Jenny said she would help him. He believes she had one of her staff call Carnegie, as his barring was lifted and he wasn't required to go through the usual meeting with Security Coordinator Skip Everall. When Kwan attempted to talk to him, Everall said, "I don't want to talk to you."

Anyone who has ever reported Carnegie corruption to the outside world knows that Carnegie staff retaliate. Kwan said he noticed a young security guard glaring at him (he didn't know that the guard is reportedly the son of Everall.) Then Everall got the opening he needed. "I was feeling good it was New Year's day," says Kwan, who explains that he was joking with some old Chinese guys who sit in the Carnegie lobby and made a sex joke. He made the joke in Chinese and they were laughing, and then he translated it into English. Everall instantly gave orders to security guard Ted Chaing to bar Kwan for a month.

Chaing issued the barring. But Kwan has no hard feelings toward Chaing. "He had to do it; that's his boss; he would have been fired." The exact reason Kwan was given for the barring was that Everall considered him "loud" and "corrupt". Carnegie is an adult centre; you don't see kids around there much, so who is going to be corrupted by Kwan?

Kwan's plan to begin going to the Carnegie Learning Centre this month to improve his English literacy, a plan that he had already run by Learning Centre teacher Lucy Alderson, has now been nixed by Everall. One less student in a learning centre that is already clinically dead.

The barring of Kwan would have been rubber-stamped by Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty and Assistant Director Dan Tetrault. All barrings are rubber-stamped by them.

Funny, Everall, Whitty, and Tetrault didn't see the need for such an extreme response last year when a 50 year old male staffer was having sex with a teenage female client.

An Ethel Sighting on Boxing Day

After a year of sitting in her office rubber-stamping barrings of Downtown Eastsiders from Carnegie Centre, Ethel Whitty was spotted on Boxing Day. She was in the Carnegie theatre helping to serve turkey dinner to those still allowed through the door. The dinner was free but you had to have been given a ticket by staff.

It was a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Instead of the brussel sprouts they served for years, they made the switch to mixed vegetables this year and last, carrots and peas this year There was also apple juice. Fruit cake for dessert. And all the coffee you could drink for as long as you were allowed to sit in the theatre, which wasn't long because there were three sittings so there was a new crowd waiting to burst through the doors.

Rudy, a musician, was Santa. The real Santa Claus couldn't be expected to work on Boxing Day, having gone full tilt over Christmas. So Rudy who has a natural long white beard gave out the gifts.

Jenny Kwan Helps Man Unjustly Barred from Carnegie

A Chinese man who has been going to Carnegie for 20 years, says Carnegie Security boss Skip Everall told him, "You have a big mouth." The Chinese man who speaks broken English, responded, "A lot of people around here don't like you." Everall barred him.

The barred man's last name is Kwan, like the MLA, Jenny Kwan.

When Kwan was barred, he recalls, "I was really angry." He called Everall a "bully" and an "asshole" .....in Chinese. He said it in both Mandarin and Cantonese, which got the attention of the Chinese people who sit around in Carnegie.

After being barred for 4 months, it was time to have a Kwan to Kwan talk.

Kwan spoke to Jenny Kwan and told her about the unjust barring. He believes she had a staffer call Carnegie. He went back to Carnegie and was allowed in. He tried to talk to Everall who told him, "I don't want to talk to you."

Barring is going full tilt at Carnegie. Kwan says they have now barred a short, middle-aged, Jewish woman, from a middle-class background. The barred woman had been going to Carnegie for years for the arts programs. A woman who sometimes comes to our blogger meetings knows her, and says she's quite assertive which is probably what got her barred. Kwan says the barred woman doesn't want to go back to Carnegie now that she's been barred. It's common for people who are barred to never go back.

"They bar all the good people," says Kwan.

The names of the hundreds of people who are barred each year remain on the membership list though, as they have paid their $1 membership fee and been issued a membership card. They are included in the stats Carnegie gives to the government to justify funding.

City Staff at Carnegie Go on Name Calling Rampage

As the City of Vancouver hikes residential taxes and community centre fees, we are reminded of the "services" being funded.

A City staff person at Carnegie Centre left a series of comments at this blog last week in response to our latest post, "Man Banned from City Services without Evidence." It is obvious that the comment was written by a staff person as they referred to "J", a barred man discussed in the post, by using his legal name, the name in the Carnegie security database, not the name patrons at Carnegie use for him. The commenter also appeared to have familiarity with the barring, which few people knew about as "J" had left Carnegie immediately after being told he was barred. Bloggers did not initially publish the comment because the staff person had breached confidentiality legislation by naming a banned patron.

Following is the comment, with the barred man's name edited out. Note the presumption of guilt despite the fact that City staff lacked evidence to bar this man from City services at Carnegie:

"[His] simple 4 day barring from Carnegie is totally acceptable and understandable. Carnegie is a "clean and sober" community centre where patrons, including women, children, seniors and handicapped persons, can be quite upset by displays of public drunkenness and consumption. As well, there are many patrons who struggle with sobriety and can have adverse responses to such behavior. If [he] is in such dire need of Carnegie resources, he needs to be prepared to abide by some simple rules that were created with ALL in mind - not just to preclude [his] poor behavior. Shame on you [Name] - and the writer of this post - for trying to make it sound like he was poorly treated."

Note also the fact that this staff person portrays people who speak up about barrings as the problem, not City of Vancouver staff who are denying taxpayers access to services without grounds.

When we failed to publish this comment, the Carnegie staff person escalated the smear tactics, which staff routinely do, and falsely suggested the barred man was gay and attracted to the Security Supervisor, which would be Skip Everall. Again the staff person used the barred man's legal name which we have edited out.

"Rumor has it that [Name] has a "thing": for the Security Supervisor and British accents! "

When we didn't publish that smear, the Carnegie staff person left yet another comment:

"If the BLOG had any sense of commitment to the DTES, it would print my post below which I have submitted numerous times. But you obviously do not care about the 1000's of patrons of Carnegie as a whole." The commenter ignores the fact that easily a 1,000 people have been barred from Carnegie since it opened, and then does what abusers typically do, minimize the abuse. "You only care about the fuck ups who - "fuck up" - the enjoyment of the Centre for all - namely...."

Here the commenter discloses first and last names of people who have been barred and/or spoken up about the unfair barring process. Again, it was obvious that the comment was coming from a staff person as they named a person whose barring case is known only to Carnegie staff, and one blogger. Confidentiality legislation was not only disregarded by the staff person in disclosing names, but insults were then attached to those names, "Rich Bitch", "Boozy", "Madder than a Hatter"....

And of course a staff comment wouldn't be complete without libeling William Simpson, the man who has been banned from setting foot in Carnegie Centre since he exercised his democratic right to get elected to the Carnegie Board. The commenter falsely claimed that Simpson had lied about the fact that he was homeless. 'Bill "I'm homeless? but have residence in a nice coop".' Bill did not lie. He was sleeping in Crab Park for months.

In closing, the commenter again portrayed people who speak up as being the real problem, not City staff inflicting an epidemic of barrings on Downtown Eastside residents attempting to use City services. "You are all in need of a metaphorical kick in the ass."

Ad hominem attacks are always quicker and easier than supporting claims with evidence. And evidence has never been City staff's strong point.

For 57 Days City Hall has Avoided Giving Barred Carnegie Member Reason "in writing"

A witness who has spoken up about the use of the City of Vancouver "security" database at Carnegie to make fraudulent entries about critics, has found herself barred from Carnegie Centre for 57 days now, with no end in sight. She is not allowed to enter the building, not even the Vancouver Public Library branch there. She was notified of the barring on April 25, 2010 and immediately asked to be given the reason "in writing". Her request was instantly refused by the security guard who informed her that she was "barred", a guard who identified himself as "Ty" only after she asked his name.

There is evidence that the ban was pre-meditated and politically-motivated. From the beginning of the process of being informed that she was barred, the fact that she had been one of the Carnegie members who made complaints to Penny Ballem was referred to by Ty as the "problem." [If I obtain a copy of the statement she submitted to police, I will quote Ty's alleged comments more completely.] A few minutes later, when Ballem's name came up again, Ty reportedly claimed he didn't know who she was. Toward the end of the barring, after he had followed the woman to the bathroom, Ty revealed that the barring was a result of pressure from Penny Ballem and Gregor Robertson to clear her out of the building. "I guess, they don't want witnesses around", says the barred woman.

Police have been made aware of everything from verbal abuse to assault experienced by this woman since coming forward as a witness to fraud and other abuses involving the City's "security" database at Carnegie. A male Carnegie member recalls eating dinner with this woman at Carnegie in the spring, when a volunteer took her photograph, using a flash, without her permission -- she would later be told that the photo had been taken on instructions from Tio, a City staff cashier on duty, a fact she says Tio did not deny when she asked him about it -- and then stood yelling insults at her at the top of his lungs, grabbing the attention of the crowd of diners in the cafeteria. "Why isn't security doing anything!" the witness demanded to know. A security guard stood beside the yelling man, just inches away.

She was also at Carnegie having dinner -- she had just finished -- on the evening in April when Ty told her she was now barred from the entire building and refused her request to "put it in writing". At a later point, she asked that he at least allow her to read the "Incident Report" so that she could counter false statements. He refused. He told her that he did not need input from her. She told him she wished to sit down and write her own incident report about what she was experiencing, but he refused, ordering her out of the building. Such biased practices -- including outright fraud -- had been previously brought to the attention of Penny Ballem, once during a meeting in January at City Hall. The Mayor was also made aware of these practices.

Shortly after being barred, the barred woman mailed a request to City Hall and requested, under the Freedom of Information & Protection of Privacy Act, a copy of the incident report and a copy of entries made in the City's electronic "security" database. She then telephoned the Freedom of Information office twice to see if they had received it. She spoke to a male assistant to manager Paul Hancock. The assistant told her on April 29th that he had finally received her letter. She explained that she needed a copy of the incident report quickly so that she could appeal the barring; she asked him to keep in mind that for every day that passed without this Incident Report, she was denied access to City Services in her neighbourhood, such as the public library at Carnegie. She told him that there should be no reason for extensive delay in getting the incident report to her, as it was easily retrievable from the Incident Report binder which sits on the front reception desk at Carnegie for all staff to review. The assistant reviewed her request letter and said it seemed straight forward to him and he didn't anticipate it taking long. He said he would "send it out" that day.

Shortly after speaking to the assistant, the banned woman received a letter dated April 30th from Paul Hancock, Manager, Corporate Information & Privacy, City Clerk's Office. Hancock wrote:

"This will acknowledge receipt of your request dated April 26, 2010. . . for a copy of an incident report written about you by Ty, a security person at Carnegie Centre at approximately 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 25, 2010."

"Under the Act, we have thirty (30) business days to respond to freedom of information requests. The City received your request on April 29, 2010 so we are required to respond by June 11. 2010 at the latest."

I ran into her on Sunday, June 20th, at Sunrise market and she said she had not received it. Even if the City had mailed the Incident Report on the last possible day, June 11th, she would have had it last week as Vancouver has over night delivery.

Hancock ended his April 30th letter to her with,

"We understand that this is an urgent matter for you so we will do our best to expedite this request for you."

That was 52 days ago, as of Sunday.

Hamburger Helper

Have you heard the one about the guy who got barred from Carnegie Centre for the crime of free speech in the theater program?

A woman eating with us on Sunday night at Carnegie said she had run into a guy at Tim Hortons who she used to see at Carnegie a lot. I recognized his name, but I won't use it. She asked him why he didn't come to Carnegie much any more. He said he couldn't stand the dirty politics, that it was run like "a kingdom" for staff. And he said he had been barred a couple of years ago for speaking up.

He was barred when he spoke up about the fact that Jay Hamburger, who was paid to spend a few hours a week working on lefty theater productions with the poor, was charging people $20 to enter their theater script in a contest. The winner got money. The guy who was barred took the position that marginalized people shouldn't be asked to fork over $20. Carnegie is after all richly funded to provide programs to low income people.

I won't know until I get a chance to interview the guy whether Hamburger, who was not a regular well-paid employee but was paid $12 an hour in grant money, arranged for him to be barred. My guess is that Hamburger did not explicitly say,"Bar this man!" There is no need to. Staff know that security guards will apply the one size fits all solution -- "You're barred!" -- to poor people who aren't pushovers.

Barrings generally work this way: a low income Carnegie member raises a concern with a staff person and is brushed off; they exhibit perseverence, a trait considered healthy in the population at large but not in the Carnegie low income population; the staff person doesn't want to have to do the work of communicating so they raise their voice slightly to announce, "I'm calling security." The task of communicating is then off loaded to a security guard who often has little education and even less communication skills, and can be counted on to do what's quick and easy.

Barring has become a staff convenience.

"We're fuckin' closed!": Courtesy of a Carnegie Cafeteria Cashier

Message from Dan Tetrault of the City of Vancouver: a man can abuse a woman at Carnegie and it's not a problem.

The attitude of Carnegie management is that we won't talk about abuse, we'll keep it quiet, keep it in the "family" -- successive Carnegie managements have actually referred to Carnegie members they are regularly stripping of human rights as "family".

A couple of months ago, I asked a Carnegie member if anything had come of her complaint about verbal abuse by a Carnegie cashier. "Nothing," she said. Unless something has been done since I last talked to her, the one year anniversary of the City stalling on that complaint is just around the corner.

The incident with the cashier occurred at the beginning of a long weekend last year. The Carnegie member walked into the cafeteria, the door was open; it wasn't closing time, but she had no way of knowing that staff were closing so that they could presumably sneak out early. A relatively new cashier, Brent, marched up to her and barked, "We're fuckin' closed!"

Since abuse by staff was becoming a recurring problem, she reported the incident to a security guard and asked that he ensure it not happen again. The security guard was new on the job and he was considering writing up an Incident Report. He opened up the black binder on the front desk where Incident Reports are filed, when Head of Security Skip Everall, came along and intervened.

Everall held the huge black security binder in the air -- it's attached to the front desk with a chain -- and slammed it shut by the ear of the female member. (She has become accustomed to physical aggression from Everall. Last summer, she walked by his office where he was on the phone and he got up and slammed the plate glass door closed.) Later, as she talked to Everall at his offfice, he scolded her for making a complaint to a security guard about Brent. "You shouldn't be talking to security about him!", he told her. She responded that if a man walks up to her and curses in her face, she had every right to talk to a security guard.

Everall told her that a complaint about staff must not be mentioned to a security guard, that it could only be heard by a bureaucrat, Dan Tetrault. Tetrault, the Asst. Director on the third floor, has a reputation for covering for fellow CUPE members. He after all stood on picket lines with them during the last strike. It's a situation of gross conflict of interest. I have never known one complainant who got a satisfactory result.

Further, to talk to Tetrault about a complaint, a complainant might have to wait days for him to come to work, especially if the abuse occurs on a weekend -- Carnegie is open 7 days a week -- or, in this case, at the beginning of a long weekend.

The female Carnegie member put her complaint in writing, got Everall to initial her copy, and got a verbal promise that he would pass it on to Tetrault. She was fair in the complaint, saying that this was the first time he had been rude to her. (She believes he was motivated by the fact that she had raised concerns about another staff person's conduct. It is common for CUPE members at Carnegie to mistreat people who have complained about one of their fellow CUPE members.)

Tetrault has never responded to that complaint. It disappeared into thin air. The anniversary of it's disappearance is coming up.

Tetrault's suppression of that complaint about verbal abuse by Brent, must be contrasted with his past conduct. Tetrault previously demonstrated that he supports the use of the draconian tactic of "barring" as a means of teaching a woman the lesson that raising her voice to an abusive man to tell him that she is tired of his abuse -- she talked back to Devor, the coffee seller, "Coffee Nazi", in the Seniors Lounge who yells at hundreds of people a year -- is not an acceptable response, even if he is yelling at her at the top of his lungs.

By not dealing with the abuse complaint, Tetrault sent the wrong message to Brent. Brent has been rude to her every time she has attempted to use the cafeteria since. City Manager Penny Ballem was told about Brent's conduct and the fact that it was part of a pattern of retaliation (which has more recently included assault) to deter members from raising concerns about staff. Ballem did nothing, except pass the buck to Brenda Procten who in turn did nothing.

Total bill: half a million dollars in salaries for these people.

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 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?