Frustration Mounts at Carnegie over Blocking of WiFi Access to Poor

John B. is one of many Carnegie members expressing frustration at the decision by City management at Carnegie to block the poor from accessing WiFi at Carnegie. As reported earlier on this blog, people like John can no longer sit on the third floor at Carnegie and access WiFi with their laptops or netbooks.

The only WiFi access remaining at Carnegie Centre is in the tiny Vancouver Public Library reading room on the first floor. But John points out that the library WiFi is "not designed to carry the load". He says that after 4 or 5 people are signed on, he can't even get on.

Another man who regularly volunteers in the Carnegie computer (desktop) room for 80 cents an hour in food vouchers, says he is frustrated at the blocking of WiFi access at Carnegie for people with laptops. He now has to go to Waves coffee shop with his laptop. He sits in the back and avoids purchasing a coffee.

John hopes to start a petition to take to City Hall to have Carnegie staff share the WiFi signal with the poor.

But John has decided that his first step will be to talk to Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty. He did not know Whitty's name until today when another Carnegie member gave it to him. The member reportedly warned him that he would get nowhere with Ethel Whitty.

A third man, a longtime Carnegie member sitting in Waves using a laptop, was pessimistic about getting Carnegie staff to share WiFi access with the poor. "They don't care. From Whitty on down, they don't care."

Recession Showed Up at Christmas Eve Dinner Hosted by BC Federation of Labour

Jim Sinclair, President of the BC Federation of Labour dished up turkey at the event.








The recession was evident at this year's 15th Annual Labour Community Christmas hosted by the BC Federation of Labour at the Maritime Labour Hall on Vancouver's east side.

The portions were smaller and they discouraged people from going back for seconds, although one man and woman told me they did sneak back. Organizers had planned for more people this year, but they had still underestimated how many would show up. Guests were lined up outside the door before the dinner opened. The wait to get in was about 40 minutes.

A woman said the turkey was cooked just right; it was tender. A man agreed, "The food was well prepared."

Union organizers gave everybody a ticket for a food hamper as a gift, but they ran out of those too, so some people with tickets left empty-handed.

There was no live band this year either.

Santa did show up as usual though. The children all got gifts.

The volunteer servers were all pleasant, as they are every year.

There was a free bus to the event and back, provided by the unions. The bus kept circling from the Downtown Eastside to the Maritime Hall, picking up people at the Dug Out Drop-In Centre and Carnegie Centre. When transporting the last load of passengers of the night, the bus driver went out of his way for a woman who didn't speak much English by giving her a ride to her destination at Kootenay Loop, after he dropped off his Downtown Eastside passengers.

Photographer with Zoom Lens Creates Discomfort at Christmas Day Dinner at Sally Ann

On Christmas Day, the Salvation Army, Harbour Light, on Cordova St. near Main in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside served their annual free Christmas Dinner to anyone who wanted it. The turkey dinner with all the trimmings was reportedly tasty, with pie for dessert.

A man volunteering as a server walked around squirting extra whipped cream on everyone's pie, exclaiming, "It's Christmas!"

Some people were uncomfortable with the newspaper photographer (above) with a long zoom lens.

The tension between the need of the Sally Ann for publicity and the need for the poor to have privacy is ongoing. A man in a wheelchair told me that at a previous Sally Ann Christmas dinner, he had put his hand over his face and asked a television camera man to stop taking his photo.

Too Pretty to be Poor

Garrett used to be homeless, going through McDonald's garbage cans for food. But he never had the ragged, dirty, down and out look.

It was during Garrett's homeless period that he discovered that you could drop into the St. Vincent de Paul store on Main St. on a Monday and they would give you one of the bags of canned food that they kept in the back. They had some sort of food bank operation going.

Earlier this month, I ran into Garrett who now at 44 yrs. old has a place to live; he gets free rent in exchange for a bit of maintenance work. And he gets casual paid work as a self-trained mechanic. But money is tight so he dropped by St. Vincent de Paul for a bag of food. They turned him away. There would be no canned food for him; they would give him only a bag of scones. "If I was unshaven, and smelly, and if my clothes were rumpled, they would have given me a bag [of canned food]," he blurted out. That was the second week in a row that he'd been turned away. Two women working there have separately turned him away. "They must think I'm a scammer," he says.

Garrett said that the two women working there are immigrants. They probably got help when they arrived, he says. And now they're in the business of cherry-picking who gets help. And their method amounts to eye-balling.

Just after getting turned away from the food bank, Garrett went to the IGA on Main St., bought a can of tuna and a loaf of bread, and sat inside McDonald's making himself a couple of straight tuna sandwiches, no mayonaise. He had a bit of money in his pocket, but he said that bag of food would have fed him for about three days.

I ran into Garrett again today. He said he's trying to sell his car which he doesn't drive, but he's not optimistic about finding a buyer in this recession. I asked him if he has been turned away from St. Vincent de Paul since I last talked to him. He shook his head. "I never went back."

Jimmy Pattison has a Spot for Ethel Whitty

Sunday night is the busiest night of the week in the Carnegie Computer Room, as people prepare for the new week. So what did City staff do?

Believe it or not, they turned out the lights and locked the door.

After the door had been locked for a couple of hours, a volunteer opened it as a favor to people in a jam with no internet access. But he is not a regular volunteer in the computer room.

That's the problem at Carnegie with its multi-million dollar budget: the poor have to beg and cajole somebody into providing computer services that the Center is richly funded to provide.

Staff always have an excuse for not opening the doors. The current flavor of the week is that staff person Colleen Gorrie is off sick. They're like children; they must be watched constantly. The only excuse they haven't yet used is that the dog ate their homework.

Did I mention that the Sunday evening before last, the poor were locked out of the computer room as well?

The Great Taxpayer Rip-off at Carnegie continues. It is not only CUPE members who are responsible but the City's manager at Carnegie, Ethel Whitty, and her City Hall boss Jacquie Forbes-Roberts.

If you are even suspected of tattletaling to the taxpayer about locked doors by discussing the issue on the internet, Forbes-Roberts will succumb to pressure from Carnegie staff to bar you from the building. Don't believe me? Ask William Simpson who was barred "indefinitely" in a letter signed by Forbes-Roberts and hand delivered to him by Ethel Whitty and CUPE member Dan Tetrault.

Billionaire Jimmy Pattison, who has an office about ten blocks west of Carnegie, should now have spots for the likes of CUPE, Whitty, and Forbes-Roberts. He just bought "Ripley's Believe It Or Not".