Man Banned from City Services Without Evidence

One would think that while the 'Fraud Foursome' -- Mayor Gregor Robertson, Penny Ballem, Ethel Whitty, and Skip Everall -- face a criminal complaint for knowingly allowing the City “Security” database to be chronically used to make fraudulent entries about Downtown Eastside residents, they could resist recidivism. But last week another Downtown Eastsider became the target of security fraud.

"J" was barred from all City services at Carnegie Centre last Friday, including the Vancouver Public Library and Capilano College Learning Centre housed in the building. "J" who unloads trucks on call and depends on Carnegie for food services as he lives in a room where the mice eat his food and even chewed the pocket out of his coat, was sitting with his pal "L" on the outdoor patio of Carnegie having a smoke and a coffee. "It was a cold morning", he told one of our contributors.

John, a Carnegie security guard with a British accent marched onto the balcony and asked J if he had a mickey of alcohol on him. "What makes you think that?", J asked. John didn't give him an answer. As usual, the security guard appeared to be relying on hearsay evidence: somebody thought they saw something and ran to security. This policy of informing on one another is encouraged by City security staff as part of the make-work for CUPE culture at Carnegie.

Witnesses will confirm that John made no attempt to actually determine whether J had a mickey. He didn't ask him if he would mind if he checked his bag. He didn't lean over and sniff his coffee to see if it was spiked. J's breath did not smell of alcohol, according to a witness. Instead of attempting to obtain evidence, John leaped to the next step: sentencing. He banned J from City services at Carnegie Centre. J was not allowed to so much as enter the front door of the building. He told J he could return in one day.

J returned the next day and was stopped by receptionist Dan Feeny, and told that he was not allowed in the building, that he remained barred. That would indicate that a formal security report had been typed into the City Security database where it will remain for a minimum of two years but probably much longer (one woman discovered a false report filed ten years ago being used against her recently); Feeney is one of the receptionists who types the reports into the Security database. Feeney told J that it was against "policy" to allow him to re-enter the building without the approval of head of security Skip Everall.

But Everall was not available to meet with him. Everall is only on premises four days a week and is often difficult to locate.

These barrings are upsetting to people in the neighborhood. A witness dropped by J's room unannounced yesterday, saying, "Are you barred from Carnegie?!" and complaining that Everall was abusing power. "He used to be an orderly at Riverview," the witness told J. The witness said he wished the previous security boss, John Ferguson had remained at Carnegie (If you ask me, Ferguson was not much better. But the rumour that he resigned because he didn’t get along with Ethel Whitty, would suggest he was better.)

J remained barred until yesterday, almost a week. He returned to Carnegie looking for Everall, and was at the front desk when Everall came down the stairs. Everall was preoccupied with something, a meeting he had just been to, and he told J his sentence was up. J was once again allowed to access City services that he had been paying for. Everall was dressed in black when he made this ruling. “Thank you, your honor”, J said. Another security guard overheard him and laughed.

A review of the numbers: Six days without City services. Two years with a report in the City database that he posed a “security” risk at Carnegie. Three employees contributing labour time to this case. Zero evidence.

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.

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.

"Missing Woman" Traced to Ethel Whitty

There is a woman who for ten years has regularly dropped into the Seniors Center in the basement of the Carnegie Center to use the public access computers. She hasn't been seen there for six weeks. She is missing. Her disappearance has been traced to Ethel Whitty.

Whitty, Director of the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Center, made an example of the woman. Through this woman, Whitty sent a message: A woman talking back to an abusive man will not be tolerated.

This woman has now been banned by the Whitty administration for over six weeks from the Carnegie Senior's Center for daring to talk back to the notorious Devor, a tyrannical coffee seller from Croatia who Whitty unleashes on Carnegie members at least once a day in the basement Seniors Center. When Devor went into his usual rant one Saturday in June and then pushed the woman who dared talk back out the door by taking swings at her (although not actually making contact with her body), Whitty made certain the woman was punished. The fact that Devor was yelling much louder than this woman was of no concern to Whitty.

Whitty will not be out done by former Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitten known for saying, "A woman has to be twice as good as a man to be considered half as good." Whitty's rule of thumb is that a woman has to raise her voice half as loud as a man to be considered twice as bad.

As the woman's banning from the Seniors Center had reached five weeks last Saturday on July 19th, she went to Carnegie Center to deliver a letter to Head of Security, Skip Everall, insisting that he inform her in writing when the banning would be up. "He wouldn't take the letter," she said as she sat outside the Waves coffee shop next door today. "He ran upstairs to get Dan Tetrault [Whitty's Assistant Director]." Tetrault came downstairs with Everall and the two jointly refused to sign for the letter "unless I let them read it first". She told Tetrault that as a City of Vancouver administrator he was required to acknowledge receipt of a letter and not screen it out if he didn't like the content. She explained to Tetrault that if she could afford a courier, he and Everall wouldn't have the option of reading the letter before deciding whether to sign for it. But the two were intransigent on this point so she allowed them to read the polite, brief, letter. Tetrault then gave Everall "the go ahead". Everall photocopied the letter and signed, using only his initials. [At an earlier date, he refused to say whether "Skip" is his real name.]

Yet another week has gone by and the woman has received no response to her letter, even though she provided her home address on it. "I think a City lawyer is helping them write a response," she said.

Every day that the banning is extended, this woman is deprived of access to public computers in the Seniors Center. She is essentially deprived as well of access to the computers on the third floor of Carnegie because Whitty and Everall have created such a hostile environment that she feel uncomfortable going there. "I don't know what they'll do next."

When delivering her letter, this woman also asked Tetrault and Everall whether they would ban her from the entire building if she gave an interview to the media. She reminded them that they had banned William Simpson, a duly elected Board member from the building for being merely associated with media. "Tetrault winced", she recalled. Tetrault evaded the question, turned his back and walked out of Everall's office. She followed him. She asked him again if she would be banned and he responded, "No." Everall would not give her that assurance.

She also asked Tetrault and Everall to tell her who had taped the meeting she had with Everall. (Everall had met with her after she served her initial sentence of five days, Saturday to Wednesday.) Tetrault said the meeting had not been taped. But she told him that a tape was circulating and she had been contacted to confirm it's authenticity. Everall did not say much. "I'd like to hear the tape," she says, "because I want to use it against them. They've been lying."

Hacker smears blogger as "child porn watcher"

There seems to be no end to the harassment of homeless blogger Bill Simpson.

Just hours after the article, "Homeless man barred for blogging, Part 2", was published on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog and NowPublic.com, a hacker struck. The hacker was obviously displeased with the article which exposed the Carnegie Learning Centre, operated by Capilano College and the City of Vancouver, for barring a homeless man for daring to blog. The hacker attempted to discredit Simpson by criminally libeling him.

The hacker periodically altered text in the article. The article opened with Simpson being falsely identified as a "child porn watcher". His website, timetender.ca, was falsely identified as "yougboyz.ca".

Here's another example of altered text:

Original text: Simpson was a computer student, showing up regularly to teach himself how to build a website.
Altered text: Simpson was a computer student and a racist, showing up regularly to masturbate himself....

Simpson wasn't the only student at the Carnegie Learning Centre to be maligned. The word "fat" was inserted in front of the name of another student mentioned in the article. This indicated that the hacker was not an outsider, but someone familiar with the student body inside the Carnegie Learning Centre.

In addition to altering text of current postings, the hacker added their own posting, claiming, "BILL IS A FAG!". For the record, Simpson is a heterosexual guy with an ex-wife and two grown children. The imposter signed the posting with the name of a person who originally set up the Enquirer's blogger account, a name that had not previously been made public.

Even the news site NowPublic.com, which gave the Enquirer article exposure and ran a photo of Simpson, was hacked into. The "homeless" blogger became the "homo" blogger in the blurb promoting the article.

A racist comment was also inserted on NowPublic.com by the hacker. Breaking into an account held by "jr" who posts articles from the Enquirer, and signing with Bill Simpson's name, the hacker suggested that Carnegie: "Ban some of those chinks for gambling and drunk Indians."

The Downtown Eastside Enquirer has had an ongoing problem with a hacker, since criticizing the Carnegie Centre and the poverty industry on the Downtown Eastside. Last fall, the name of the blog was tampered with and two postings deleted. When the postings were restored, the hacker returned and deleted the entire blog. Due to the level of defamation this time around, it is being treated as a criminal matter.

The Enquirer is also asking Google blogger.com to take an interest in this professional hacker making a mockery of their system. When the hacker originally struck last fall, Google was notified but gave no help in restoring the deleted blog postings -- even though they have a copy of everything. Some old postings have still not been restored. The Enquirer did, on the advice of Google, change the password - but a password is a mere speed bump to a skilled hacker.

Downtown Eastside sources to the Enquirer insist on anonymity, claiming that people who speak up about the Carnegie Centre or the poverty industry on the Downtown Eastside are vulnerable to harassment. Their fears do not appear to be unfounded.