CBC duped about Downtown Eastside homeless

Don’t believe everything you read. Particularly what you read about Condemned: A work in progress, musical theatre about tenants evicted from a rooming house slated for demolition, which had a three day run at Carnegie Hall last weekend. Whether you’re reading the CBC website, the Vancouver Courier newspaper, the glossy catalogue for the Heart of the City Festival of which Condemned was a part, or even the Program you were handed as you walked into the performance, be skeptical.

Ethel Whitty, Director of Carnegie Centre at Main & Hastings, wrote in Condemned program notes: "The presentation of Condemned - a work in progress is the first time that community members actually took it upon themselves to create their own opera." A reader is left with the impression that most of the participants in the opera are Downtown Eastside residents.

Sucker.

Prominent roles, even lead roles, in the opera were played by actors who don’t live in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. One woman owns a condo in Kitsilano. Another lives with her physician husband and two kids at an address nowhere near Main & Hastings. Another woman, along with her steady stable husband, is a homeowner in Burnaby; she’s the one who played the panhandler. For these people and others in the opera, the Downtown Eastside is Poverty Playland.

In discussing the opera with the Vancouver Courier, Whitty said, "There's a lot of talent in the area just itching to get out...." And just itching to get in. Look at the numbers. Forty-five percent of the actors-singers who performed in the opera this weekend live in other more affluent neighbourhoods. None of the seven opera band members live in the neighbourhood, and neither does the Music Director whom Whitty identified in both the festival catalogue and opera program as a “community member”. And despite Whitty’s claim in both these publications that the opera was written by "dedicated community writers", only two of the five listed, which included a writer/mentor, have DTES addresses.

Despite this reality, the CBC made the following statement in the article, “Opera tells tales of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside”, on their website:

"The cast of Condemned is mainly homeless and low-income people . . . "

There is only one performer in the cast who is homeless and he is homeless by choice. He is a man who reportedly has a Bachelor of Science degree and has held down decent jobs. But he’s now on a sort of spiritual quest and has detached himself from material things, including money. DTES residents talk about him as though he's one of the wonders of the world: “He doesn’t get welfare. He lives without money.” He eats at free places. He sleeps in shelters.

The CBC is accurate in claiming that many in the cast are low income. Certainly the DTES residents who acted and sang in the opera are low income, with the exception of one who works as a welfare advocate for a church. But they are the upper crust of the welfare poor, what an organizer at End Legislated Poverty referred to as "the high-functioning poor" -- the better educated poor with the social skills to negotiate their way through bureaucracy to get the highest welfare rates and to network themselves into social housing. In fact, all of these actors, with the exception of the welfare-free man, are securely ensconced in social housing apartments.

The CBC, in the sentence immediately following their announcement that the cast consisted primarily of homeless and low income people, introduced Debbie Gosselin -- the implication being that she fell into this category:

Debbie Gosselin is making her stage debut as a panhandler in the opera. "The
things that happen in this play happen every day in this community and I
just want people to know that what I'm acting is reality for people," she
said.

Who is Debbie Gosselin? She is the homeowner in Burnaby.

Next the CBC introduced their website readers to opera performer Bharbara Gudmundson:

Poor and disabled herself, Gudmundson has seen her once-affordable
neighbourhood squeezed by condo development until she fears there is nothing
left for people like her. "As far as I've seen here, if you follow that path
just a little bit further, there is no room for us," she said.

Us? Gudmundson does not live on the Downtown Eastside. Gudmundson confirmed that fact this week to a Carnegie member who asked her point blank. But this has never been a secret: in October 2005, Gudmundson told the Vancouver Courier newspaper during an interview about federal election voting, that she no longer lived in the Downtown Eastside. She did at one time live in a social housing building across from Oppenheimer Park but now lives in the more fashionable Grandview Woodlands area, reportedly in social housing.

The portrayal of Gudmundson as poor and disabled to CBC website readers may have been an attempt to elicit a Dickens Tiny Tim image from their collective liberal unconscious, but it made Downtown Eastside residents roll our eyes. Whatever Gudmundson’s disability is, it was well hidden when she was prancing onto the opera stage. And it is well hidden when she occasionally shows up at Carnegie cabaret night to perform her Janis Joplin knock off. Gudmundson attended Simon Fraser University and is rich with intellectual capital. She has earned a reputation as an effective activist. Please adjust your set.

In addition to the above performers, the CBC reporter interviewed Patrick Foley. If the CBC – which appears to stand for Couldn’t Bother Checking – had asked Foley if he was a DTES resident, he would have told them that he lives in the Grandview Woodlands area.

Foley deserves credit though. He is the only outsider who has publicly acknowledged tensions about people from other neighbourhoods collapsing themselves into the DTES “community". At a recent Downtown Eastside Poets night at Carnegie, he read a piece he had written entitled, “What makes somebody a Downtown Eastsider?"

So it was not surprising too see Foley tread carefully when speaking to the CBC, presenting himself as an observer: “I can imagine some people who sleep on streets or viaducts ….[italics added]” Even when Foley mentioned his own experience, he avoided exaggerating to turn himself into a stand-in for the down and out; he accurately described himself as having been “semi-homeless – couch surfing and stuff….” It was the CBC that rounded his experience up to full blown homelessness: “Patrick Foley, one of the writers, has been homeless himself.”

One can hardly blame the CBC for assuming that the opera was teaming with homeless people. The opera’s organizers did little to discourage that impression. The opera's Director, Susanna Uchatius, wrote the following in the program:

At the first full cast rehearsal I read a piece by playwright Howard Baker
concerning "a woman from the street" attempting the work of theatre. It ends
with her stating, "this is art, it is hard work (and) because I found it hard I
felt honoured." More than anything this is what I witnessed again and
again....

There was not one street person in the Carnegie opera.

One might call the guy who has detached himself from material things a street person, but it would be a stretch. He sits for hours practicing music on the third floor at Carnegie and volunteers in the Carnegie kitchen in exchange for food vouchers. He doesn't live his life on the streets.

Not only the CBC but the Vancouver Courier provided the public with information about the opera that left DTES residents rolling our eyes. According to the Courier, Music Director Earl Peach stated, "There are people who are participating in the production who are perennially sleep deprived. Some of what they go through is absolutely unimaginable.” In social housing?

Let’s get one thing straight. The social housing in which these performers live is some of the best and newest Canada has to offer. It is not American-style ghetto housing, not at all dangerous -- it is the new Lori Krill Housing Co-operative, Solheim Place, or the Four Sisters Housing Co-operative which once got a United Nations housing award. The only person who may have been sleep deprived is the guy who sleeps in shelters.

Peach claimed, according to the Courier, that he had the utmost respect “for artists in the Downtown Eastside" because they do their art while struggling with not only lack of adequate housing, but drug addiction and mental illness. Now there's a script that was written long before the opera. There isn’t a person working in the poverty industry who doesn’t know these lines; they better know them or they won't get hired again in the heart of the poverty industry, which is first and foremost about attracting funds.

For the record, there were no drug addicts performing in the opera. There is one middle-aged actor who "may have had a problems in that area when he was younger", according to another actor. And there is only one participant in the opera known to have a mental illness, an actor from the Grandview-Woodlands area who claims to be bi-polar, a diagnosis so commonly issued that it is becoming meaningless.

At the Carnegie Learning Centre this week, Brian, a retired Edmonton businessman who now lives on the DTES, listened to comments about the skewed portrayal of opera participants that had found its way into the media. He offered a simple explanation: “Politics is a blood sport.”

human being said...

Petty and bitter. Ill informed bias not worth the effort to read.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 2:36:15 PM

human being said...

I dont suppose this will reach posting but I must comment that your bitter fingerpointing is anything but constructive and less than worthwhile reading. Pity.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 2:39:24 PM

reliable sources said...

human being,

You’re speaking the language of a poverty pimp.

Your dismissal of concerns expressed in the article “CBC duped....” as “petty” and “not worth the effort to read” is one which is all too familiar to Downtown Eastside residents. Consistently, when DTES residents speak up, they are told to put their concerns in writing; then what they write is treated like it is not worth reading.

The recent experience at Carnegie of an Edmonton businessman who now lives on the DTES is typical. He drops into Carnegie to use the internet and buy a coffee and was twice told by the administration to put in writing his experiences of abuse at the hands of a coffee seller. This is the same coffee seller against whom the Carnegie has received countless previous complaints of misconduct ranging from verbal abuse, threats, and asking women to go home with him to watch pornography. Nothing is done. Finally somebody, took the situation into their own hands and punched the bully in the nose.

Anyone who attempts to seriously pursue issues of concern elicits hostility – not unlike that displayed in your comment.

Your claim that the article was "ill informed" is unsupportable though. Unlike the Carnegie 'agit-prop' opera, the article entitled "CBC duped...." relied exclusively on the voices of Downtown Eastside residents, some of whom have roots in the neighbourhood going back decades. Documented evidence also exists to support claims made in the article. The article was well researched, with even individuals inside the opera supplying information, when it was solicited.

There may be some accuracy to your claim that the article has a "bitter" tone. Downtown Eastside residents are definitely becoming bitter about the -- I'll steal your phrase here -- "ill informed bias" fed to the media on our behalf.

There is one area of bitterness that was not touched upon in the "CBC duped...." article, though. That is the bitterness about the fact that the ideological arm of the Carnegie Centre is always in full swing while basic services are allowed to crumble. You should hear the bitterness expressed by Downtown Eastside residents when they arrive at Carnegie to use the Computer lab or the Learning Centre and find the doors locked. (People are desperate for computer services and put their names on long waiting lists to get access to a computer for an hour.)

The Learning Centre alone was closed two Mondays and two Saturdays last month. The roughly $750,000 worth of staff which sits across the hall from the Learning Centre do little to prevent such semi-regular closures of services. They simply walk around low income people who sit, stand, or lie in the hall outside closed doors in the hope that the door might be opened eventually. (Once a Carnegie Board member, Bob, unlocked the Learning Centre door in front of people who had been waiting in the hall for an hour; he walked in to get himself a prop for 'agit-prop' theatre in which he was performing, then he left and closed the door again in the faces of DTES residents in the hall.) The taxpayer has already paid for these services. I suspect the taxpayer would be a little bitter if he or she knew how often people were locked out.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 4:27:37 PM

reliable sources said...

Human being,

At the time the response to your comment was written, I was not aware that you worked for a major federal government funder of arts projects. This was brought to my attention later.

I didn’t realize that your comment that the “CBC duped” article was “not worth the effort to read” was a response to an e-mail you had received just minutes earlier from an individual on the Downtown Eastside who had specifically requested that you read the CBC article.

The fact that a major government funder would consider an article about duping of the public via a publicly funded project to be “not worth the effort to read”, leads to an obvious conclusion: voters got rid of the Liberals, but we did not get rid of their bureaucrats.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 11:29:08 AM

Leona Shapeshifter said...

I am curious to know how the anonymous "Reliable Sources" managed to get so much personal information (incorrect though it may be in some cases) about my friends and neighbours and our work in the community.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 2:50:33 PM

Leona Shapeshifter said...

I am curious to know how the anonymous "Reliable Sources" managed to get so much personal information about my friends and neighbours without revealing him/herself.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 3:32:50 PM

Anonymous said...

I think it's the big guy in the Learning Centre every day, obviously, now that timetender.ca is defunct.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 6:20:49 PM

Anonymous said...

Your assumptions about mental illness point to the fact that you know very little on the matter. Your critque is weak and that is being generous. It seems to me that any good that is done often becomes the target for armchair critics. Grinch

Thursday, November 16, 2006 6:30:10 PM

Seymour Butts said...

reliable source I would be interested in discussing the opera over lunch at Carnegie my treat. I would be interested in finding out the answer to leona shapeshifter's question. I hope you are free on Tuesday because I really enjoy Hamburger day. I'm not kidding about meeting you. Let's do lunch.

Thursday, November 16, 2006 7:43:53 PM

Terri Williams said...

Robin, the only reason you diss the opera is because no one asked you to help write it. You are wrong. ALL the cast, musicians, director of music, writers & the writer/mentor, ARE members of this community and part of our extended family. Can you tell me of anyone from Shaughnessy who would dare to enter the doors of the Carnegie Community Centre, let alone be MEMBERS?

Everything in the opera HAS happened down here, from hotel closures, to police brutality, to the crooked landlords, to the poor & disabled being ousted from their only homes. The only thing not mentioned is the fact that 75 people have gone missing from this (Canada's deadliest) neighbourhood since Willy Pickton was arrested. Police still don't care and have a long list of crooked reasons why they will not take a report from anyone with real information about the abductions that continue to happen every welfare week. It is the police who are 'delusional'.

Don't you live in the West End?

Thursday, November 16, 2006 10:41:47 PM

reliable sources said...

TO: leona shapeshifter

You write that some of the personal information in the article was "incorrect". Not one claim made in that article has ever been refuted.

Your question about methods used to collect information can't be answered too directly. Suffice to say that all of the information in the article was provided by longterm Downtown Eastside residents with intimate knowledge of the Carnegie Centre and the agit-prop opera. (A couple of them have come forward with leona shapeshifter's real name.) Facts were double checked.

Friday, November 17, 2006 2:47:47 PM

reliable sources said...

Note:

There are more comments from Downtown Eastsiders about the article, "CBC duped...." on the news site NowPublic.com, in the Vancouver section.

Go to:
http://www.nowpublic.com/cbc_duped_about_downtown_eastside_homeless?comment

Friday, November 17, 2006 3:02:41 PM

Seymour Butts said...

I'm still waiting for you to respond to my invitation for lunch. Come on be real stop hiding behind you blog. Lunch is still my treat. Leave a message for Seymour B with the Carnegie information desk with a number where I can reach you so we can arrange a time to meet. I'm looking forward to meeting you.

Saturday, November 18, 2006 2:30:11 PM

Anonymous said...

though some of your facts are wrong, i can agree there has been some hype created that leans to a false impression. anyone who knows the DTES, or bothers to try, can see that the Carnegie is the country club of the neighborhood, and that those who are homeless to the most desperate degree and not allowed through the doors, but can be found at other agencies that provide services for these individuals. now, i'd really like to see the shaunessey types in those places.

Sunday, November 19, 2006 5:00:58 PM

reliable sources said...

anonymous,

You mention, "i can agree there has been some hype created that leans to a false impression." Thanks. That's what the article was intended to demonstrate.

You qualify the above statement with, "though some of your facts are wrong." The facts are not wrong. Witnesses who were directly involved in the opera as well as some who are familiar with the Carnegie scene and the Downtown Eastside community have confirmed the accuracy of all facts. Certainly, the fact that there was just one homeless person in the opera -- a man who is homeless by choice -- has been repeatedly confirmed.

Just one minor fact in the article was demonstrated to be inaccurate: the identification of the opera's director, Susanna Uchatius, was a member of Vancouver Moving Theatre. She wasn't. While directing the opera she did have a working relationship with Vancouver Moving Theatre's Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling though. Vancouver Moving Theatre's Hunter was the Artistic Director of this year's Heart of the City Festival of which the opera was part -- he stood up in front of the audience during at least one of the performances of the opera at Carnegie and introduced it. This led to the misidentification of Uchatius as being a part of Vancouver Moving Theatre.

In the introduction in the opera program written by Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty -- just above the introduction written by Susanna Uchatius -- Vancouver Moving Theatre was identified as having not only co-produced the first community play but carried out subsequent "evaluations" that had lead to such collaborative efforts as this year's opera. Hence, the confusion.

The misidentification of Susanna Uchatius as a member of Vancouver Moving Theatre did not in any way undermine the argument made in the article. It was a rather insignificant inaccuracy. But the inaccuracy was immediately corrected. And any other fact that could have been demonstrated to be inaccurate would also have been corrected -- but none have been demonstrated to be inaccurate.

Thursday, November 23, 2006 5:12:24 PM

Anonymous said...

funny, the inaccuracy i did point out, you chose not to post, which was the one pointing out that mike does not volunteer in the carnegie kitchen, but that people often bring him food for being who he is. maybe i didn't post it correctly.

Friday, November 24, 2006 2:41:35 AM

reliable sources said...

anonymous,

You mention that I may have not gotten your original posting of the above comment, that you may not have posted it correctly. I didn't get it.

I agree with your comment that people often bring food to the guy I referred to in the article as "homeless by choice". People regularly see him eating his free food on the third floor at Carnegie. You 'out' this guy as Mike, which indicates that my account of his life was accurate enough that you could identify him.

But your claim that "mike does not volunteer in the carnegie kitchen" is simply not accurate. He does occasionally volunteer in the kitchen. Actually, on the weekend the opera was playing, Mike was doing some volunteer work in the kitchen with a long white apron on.

In the sentence you're referring to, I also mentioned that this homeless-by-choice guy "sits for hours practicing music on the third floor at Carnegie". The point I was using this info to support was that: "He doesn't live his life on the streets."

We can fine tune every detail, but the basic point I was making does not change.

Friday, November 24, 2006 11:47:19 AM

Brawl at Carnegie Centre raises questions about fairness of barring policy

The corner of the Seniors Lounge in the basement of the Carnegie Community Centre, where three Vancouver Public Library computers with internet are tucked, is a tight squeeze for a brawl. The computers are wedged between two plate glass windows, and a couch where people sit to watch tv.

This is a busy corner. The VPL computurs are much in demand. Seniors -- anyone 40 years of age or older qualifies for a Seniors membership card -- wait an average of an hour to get their turn on one. [A little geo-positioning: Carnegie is on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, just up the street from North America's first state-funded supervised injection site where, incidentally, you can inject drugs 22 hours a day without being inconvenienced by a long wait.]

The two men who got into a fight at one of the computers on Wednesday night at around 9 p.m. are both regulars at the Lounge. They're both around 40 years old. One of them is Andy, a tall, red-haired guy who has been coming to Carnegie for a few years. The other has only recently begun coming to Carnegie so his name is not known. He never has a membership card -- a constant source of friction -- which would indicate either that he is not quite 40 years old or he doesn't have the $1 to purchase one. These two men will be referred to here as the white guy and the black guy.

The incident began when the coffee seller told the black guy to leave for not having a membership card. This coffee seller can be counted on to yell when kicking people out for not having, what he calls in his broken English and Croatiion accent, "memberships card". The black guy was taking his time following orders and the situation was becoming disruptive to people watching tv and using the computers. It is believed that the white guy made a comment encouraging the black guy to get a move on – but nobody seems to know exactly what he said.

As the black guy was leaving, he walked over to the white guy at the computer and punched him in the head. The white guy turned around and held the black guy’s arm in the air, presumably to avoid being hit again. The black guy, according to a witness, "starts whining about how the white guy wouldn't let go of his arm."

Another witness arrived to late to see the first punch thrown. But he recalls seeing the black guy gripping the white guy by the collar.

The coffee seller came over to the men, gesturing a ‘time out’ signal with his hands. "Like a referee," said one witness. The coffee seller was yelling over the blaring television, "Time out, time out!"

One of the other computer users in this corner, Dean, a musician, told the two guys to take it outside.

A security guard -- Ted Chaing who has worked at Carnegie for years -- showed up. The other security guard was on his break, but a private security guard from neighbouring Chinatown who had dropped in to chat with Ted tagged along.

The white guy insisted that he wanted the police called. The black guy tried to exit the Lounge but Chaing told him he couldn't leave the building until police arrived. Chaing stood in the doorway blocking his exit, but the black guy kept walking and backed him out into the hall.

As the black guy stood in the hall with the security guards, beside a row of booths where people sit to drink coffee or play Chinese checkers, the white guy came up behind him. "He yoked him," a witness said, describing how he had grabbed the black guy's throat. Then he grabbed the black guy by the collar and threw him into the wall. Then he threw him into a booth; the black guy landed backwards on the seat. He kept hitting him. As the fight progressed, Chaing and his buddy stood watching.

Two police officers arrived. They separated the two, talking to the black guy outside the building and the white guy inside. The white guy attempted to interject statements into the black guy's conversation with the police officer. He insisted he wanted the guy charged with assault. But one of the officer's explained, according to a witness, that he could not do that as it was a mutual assault – actually, the eyewitness admitted that he had picked up that term from American tv but it summed up what the police officer had said.

The black guy did not re-enter the building. Speculation is that he was barred.

What happened next amazed members of the Carnegie Centre. The white guy sauntered into the library of the Carnegie -- a branch of the Vancouver Public Library is housed in the Carnegie -- in full view of the Security desk. Why was a guy who had just engaged in vigilante violence while waiting for police still inside the building, privileges intact?

Why wasn't the white guy barred? People are regularly barred for much less at Carnegie. Mere freedom of expression can get a member barred. Take Larry. He is a longtime Carnegie member who was barred for almost a week in August after a Carnegie field trip to the Mission Folk Festival. When a group of evangelistic Christian singers came on stage, Larry, who was raised by strict Christians, flipped them the bird. He was in the dark, at the back of the crowd, so it is unlikely that they saw him. But the Carnegie head of security, John Ferguson, heard about it from another member and called Larry into his office. Larry told him he had the right to express himself in that manner and would do it again -- by now he was flipping the bird to John. He was barred for about a week.

Bill, who goes to Carnegie daily to use the internet, also found himself barred for freedom of expression. In June, a man punched the Seniors Lounge coffee seller -- tonight's referee -- in the nose. Now most members of the Carnegie do not condone violence but, as word spread about that coffee seller getting a punch in the nose, there were hints of smiles on faces. Bill put his feelings into writing: the City of Vancouver -- Carnegie is staffed by the City -- had allowed this volunteer coffee seller to bully people for years until finally he got what was coming to him. Bill showed the staff his written commentary, even took the liberty of posting it on the bulletin board -- and found himself barred indefinitely.

Bill responded by standing on the front steps of the Carnegie, handing out leaflets about this community center being part of the lucrative poverty industry on the Downtown Eastside which has generated an epidemic of civil liberties abuses against residents. The fact that a Carnegie Board election was just hours away may have influenced the decision by Assistant Director Dan Tetrault to get Bill off the front steps by re-instating his privileges. But Bill's privileges were re-instated with a condition: he had to refrain from distributing his literature in the building.

The man on the steps was a minor embarrassment compared to the surfacing of Carnegie’s controversial barring policy in the mainstream press. This occurred a few years ago, during a period when the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users got a lawyer to threaten Carnegie with legal action if they continued to prevent their members’ from entering the building for meetings. Their members were being barred for what they might do inside the building, for offences they had not yet committed -- this is unconstitutional in Canada. Carnegie apparently resolved this issue.

Another case has never been resolved though. It was the case of a woman who was barred several years ago after she spoke up about sexual harassment she was experiencing when she went to the Seniors Lounge to use the computers. She alleged that she was being asked by a coffee seller to go home with him and watch pornography – a female Board member confirmed that she too had been asked – and instructed to die her hair and lose 20 pounds to be more attractive to men. After she lodged a formal complaint, she found herself barred from all computer use for 4 days. No reason was given, and she has a letter from the former Director, Michael Clague, to prove it.

The fact that the brawling white guy was allowed last night to retire to the library to enjoy reading the newspaper caused a spike in the level of chatter about Carnegie's barring policy. Resentment surrounding this issue never dies, with concerns being that it is too often politically applied, too often applied in a manner reflective of a double standard. The barring policy was designed ostensibly to keep violent people out of Carnegie, to at least give them a detention for a few days so that such behaviour was not reinforced.

Carnegie Security is not without their supporters, though, in their handling of the latest incident. Bill, the former pamphleteer on the steps, was in the Lounge when the fight broke out and believes that Security made the right call in not barring the white guy. Bill stands firm: the white guy was provoked to an extreme degree.

posted by reliable sources at 3:17 PM

Carnegie Learning Centre teacher: a sea otter in an aquarium

The Learning Centre closed around noon on Monday. Lucy, the teacher who gets a five figure salary from Capilano College, sat in the centre with the doors locked. She gave the usual excuse: the volunteer didn't show up.

Students came by, peered through the plate glass windows to get a glimpse of Lucy, to see what she was up to. She was hired to be a teacher at the Learning Centre, but today she was a sea otter at the Aquarium.

Carnegie Community Centre members consider pressing for forensic audit

Next Wednesday is welfare day. As welfare cheques appear, services at the Carnegie Centre will begin to disappear. It happens every Welfare Day and continues throughout Welfare Week. When Downtown Eastside residents arrive to study in the Learning Centre, use the 3rd floor Public Computer Lab, surf the internet or read the newspaper in the Seniors Lounge, it is not uncommon for them to be told to take a hike. "We're closed. It's welfare Day."

If a member arrives at Carnegie Centre on the morning of welfare day, they will ocasionally find themselves locked out of the building entirely. The usual crowd will congregate on the steps, noses pressed against the glass doors, watching the clock until 12 noon when the Security guard arrives to open up. For the remainder of welfare day and welfare week, services at Carnegie will be sporadic at best. Even if members manage to get their foot inside the door of the Learning Centre or some other facility, they may be ordered at any moment to evacuate. It's reminiscent of fire drills back in elementary school; one minute you're immersed in your work and the next minute you're being herded out the door.

Welfare week evacuations at Carnegie commonly take place during prime daytime hours when you would least expect an educational institution to close. On welfare day in June at around 1:30 p.m., I had just settled down in front of a computer in the Learning Centre to study web-page design, when I heard the familiar call: "Pack up! We're closing." The monitor was leaving; he was itching to play Poker. It was Welfare Day after all, we were reminded.

On the following welfare day in July, I was again working at a computer in the Learning Centre in the early afternoon when the monitor hollered, "We're closing in 5 minutes! Finish what you're doing!" He was going for a beer. Across the hall were $300,000 worth of management staff, yet delivery of services hinged on whether a drunk went on a binge.

In a second attempt to access a computer on Welfare Day in July, I dropped by the public Computer Lab. Like the Learning Centre, the Computer Lab is on the 3rd floor, just metres from the offices of management staff such as Director Ethel Whitty who commands a $104,000 annual salary. On this day though, computer services would be as scarce as Whitty herself who rarely surfaces at Carnegie. The Computer Lab was shut tight. I tried the Seniors Lounge in the basement two evenings in a row. Ditto.

The Seniors Lounge in the basement is just metres from the office of yet another City supervisor, the Seniors Coordinator. She is perched behind a big-windowed office, commanding a big City salary for keeping Seniors services up and running. She succeeds three weeks a month, but on welfare week all bets are off. The day after last welfare day -- a day which feels like Boxing Day at Carnegie since welfare day has taken on the aura of a statutory holiday -- it was about 4 p.m. and I was immersed in internet research while the man next to me took a spin on the Mavis Bacon Typing Tutor. Then came the call to evacuate. The coffee seller announced that we had five minutes to leave. He emptied the coffee pots and switched off the big screen TV to encourage people to get a move on. Actually, this was my lucky day. The next day, I wouldn't even get in the door. The place was in darkness, the glass doors locked, the much-in-demand Vancouver Public Library computers sitting idle in the corner.

Not only is the Seniors Lounge too often in the dark but so are funders. Funders are led to believe that this Lounge is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. They are fed the standard 'poverty pimp' line that the Lounge provides a safe place for DTES residents wishing to bypass the bar and street scene. Yet on the Friday and Saturday night following welfare day, a critical time for recovering alcoholics and addicts wishing to stay clean, the Lounge can't be counted on to be open.

The sudden withdrawal of services on welfare day and welfare week at Carnegie not only affects members arriving for computer, educational, or seniors services. It affects those who arrive for a meal or a cheap 75 cent bowl of soup. Food services become unstable at Carnegie during welfare week. Actually, they are becoming increasingly unstable throughout the month, a deterioration that coincided with the arrival of Director Ethel Whitty and her super-sized salary. There was a time when the government-subsidized cafeteria closed at 9 pm., then closing time was moved up to 8:30 pm., now it is not uncommon for closing time to be shortly after 7 pm. On welfare week, it closes much earlier. It has even been known to close in mid-afternoon for a few hours.

Arriving to find food services closed is particularly frustrating for the working poor who live in rooms with only hotplates and rely on Carnegie. They can't always make it back to the DTES from work on the bus before the cafeteria closes. People don't stop eating because it's welfare day.

If a member questions the lack of services on welfare day and during the subsequent week, they are encouraged by the almost one million dollars worth of Carnegie staff, from clerical up to top management, to blame the "volunteers." Volunteers are people who perform labour at Carnegie for 80 cents an hour, despite the fact that the Centre is obscenely overstaffed with CUPE members and management on every floor, with the exception of the 2nd which houses the kitchen. The 80 cent per hour wage is paid in the form of two coffee tickets, worth 40 cents each. These tickets can be exchanged in the cafeteria for either a coffee or, if 7 or 8 are saved up, a meal. At a time when Nike is distancing itself from the slave wage business, the lefties running the Carnegie are in it knee deep.

And the Canadian Union of Public Employees are in it knee deep too. They allow these people to work for 80 cents an hour alongside CUPE members, apparently placated by the greasing of their palms with union-dues from the bloated workforce supervising and entertaining these "volunteers". CUPE has been placated as well by the operation of the Centre as a front organization for the perennial re-election machine of labour-friendly politicians, Libby Davies and Jenny Kwan.

How can a Centre with a wage bill approaching a million dollars make public services dependent on whether people earning pennies an hour turn up? Yet that is exactly what Carnegie Centre services depend on. Ask any staff person why a given service is closed down and you will get the same answer: "The volunteer didn't show up." You are encouraged to take your concerns to the next "Volunteer Meeting". Blame the volunteers.

Carnegie staff are of course aware in advance that volunteers will be scarce during welfare week. They have learned from experience that people working for pennies an hour will have better things to do when they have anywhere from $150-$550 (depending of which of the 3 welfare rates they get) in discretionary income in their pocket after their rent is paid on welfare day. Staff know from experience that these people will be trekking out to Save On or down to the Army & Navy to stock up on food before the cheque gets frittered away. And they know that a few will top off their shopping spree with a cold draft at the Pacific pub.

One would expect that the roughly half a million dollars worth of management talent stretching from the 3rd floor to the basement at Carnegie would prepare for the monthly shortage of cheap labour by doing what skilled managers are expected to do: make contingency plans. But they don't. I have gone to Carnegie Centre for 18 years on and off and have never seen a contingency plan in place for a welfare week.

One would think that contingency plans for welfare week would at least cross the mind of Carnegie's Volunteer Coordinator with her five figure annual salary. But this 'shop 'til you drop' kind of woman who manages to have an outfit for every contingency, has never applied her skill set to welfare week. And neither has the Assistant Volunteer Coordinator.

The same mistakes are made month after month, year after year. Take the repeated scheduling of a self-described recovering alcoholic and drug addict as the monitor in the Seniors Lounge on the Friday and Saturday nights immediately following welfare day. This woman's attendance record has established that she is otherwise occupied on the weekend following welfare day. Yet staff blithely schedule her for the same shifts, knowing that the Lounge is as good as closed on those weekend evenings.

In fact, services are all too often available in the Seniors Lounge not because of the half a million dollars worth of management talent but in spite of them. Members were rescued last month when a volunteer -- a crusty Croatian who is reportedly the only one who regularly balances the cash register -- stuck around to do double and triple shifts. Another volunteer also pinch hit by doing a double shift, but by 4 p.m. he was burned out and closed shop.

A former Board member at the DTES Women's Centre who arrived to find the Carnegie Learning Centre closed twice last welfare week, is all too familiar with the problem of government-funded services not reaching the targeted DTES population. She played a central role in cleaning up corruption at the Women's Centre and got the top brass fired. She believes that there is nothing complicated about the resistance of Carnegie staff to reversing service shut downs during welfare week. It's self-serving, she believes. "They just want a week off."

With a multi-million dollar annual budget to operate the Centre and a membership too often standing on the outside looking in, the Carnegie Community Centre is becoming a microcosm of a third world country. There are those in the top echelons with the bloated earnings who insulate themselves from the masses. There are the people working for peanuts. There are the puppet elected officials. And there are the government funded services which never fully trickle down to the people who need them. Did I mention that the Carnegie Assistant Director has bought himself a yacht?

How can we ensure that publicly funded services no longer get disappeared during welfare week? That is the $104,000 question that Ethel Whitty does not dare answer. The answer is of course obvious to taxpayers. Staff could easily fill in for the pennies-an-hour workers who don't show up. They could take some paper work and sit in a corner of the Learning Centre or Seniors Lounge and keep these services open. The Volunteer Coordinator and the Assistant Coordinator could be the first in line to fill in. Other supervisory and management staff could be next in line, taking turns being on stand by.

The hours of some daytime staff might have to be altered during welfare week to make them available to fill in for evening no shows. A few job descriptions could be altered to make select staff persons permanent floaters during welfare week.

Let's talk turkey. If one of the top level managers was laid off and the funds diverted towards increasing coffee ticket currency provided to volunteers, they would be more likely to show up for shifts. To have both a Director and an Assistant Director at Carnegie -- the Assistant Director presents himself to members as running the place -- is excessive. For three months, there was an obscene doubling up of Directors, with the former Director taking 3 or 4 months to lead the new Director around on training wheels. Come on. The population of regulars using the Centre is no larger than most high schools, and there are no parents to deal with.

You know that you've got Directors with less than a full plate when they find time to permanently bar the husband of a supervisor whom the Assistant Director is in a sexual relationship. You're tax dollars at work.

The denial of services by Carnegie to the DTES population is actually more broadly executed than through the closing of facilities during welfare week. It is executed daily through forced membership attrition. Trivial excuses are used to bar people from the Centre, a problem that has reached an epidemic level. A Cobalt Hotel resident who has lived on the DTES for 30 years and used the Carnegie almost daily since it's opening, notes that that none of his friends use Carnegie anymore -- they've all been barred. This man himself was once barred; despite no history of violence, he was barred for playfully performing a meme of a punch to the side of the head of a friend who had burped in his face.

Verbal freedom of expression is most often the basis for barring a member. Phil, a security guard who has in the past functioned as Acting Manager, last year demonstrated how readily this abuse of power is resorted to when he publicly scolded two women in the cafeteria: "One more word out of either of you and you're barred." Such chronic culling of the membership is a reflection of the lack of commitment on the part of supervisory and management staff to maintaining the link between DTES residents and services taxpayers have purchased for them.

Year after year Carnegie management contracts with government funders to provide services to the DTES population 365 days a year from 9 am. to 11 pm. Year after year, they re-neg. This constitutes theft of services from low-income residents who buy Carnegie memberships. Lately, there has been an increase in chatter around the Centre about the need for a forensic audit. The time has come.

Update as of November 31, 2006:
This article was posted in July 2006 and since then there has been some improvement in the provision of services at Carnegie during Welfare Week. Over the last two or three months, sporadic closing of the Seniors Lounge during Welfare Week has ceased. [There are still major problems though. There is rarely more than one woman using the Seniors Lounge, more often none, due to the male oriented programming -- at times shockingly misogynous -- played on a surround-sound tv at deafening noise levels. Even many men claim they can't stand the noise and the mindless programming -- some claim they would prefer to watch political or science shows -- leading to the Seniors Lounge being dubbed the Lowest Common Demoninator Lounge.]

There is still much room for improvement at Carnegie in maintaining access to public computers. This past welfare week, the computer room was closed for two shifts, each shift being 4 hours in length -- there may have been more closures of this service that weren't reported to the DTES Enquirer. On welfare morning, the Carnegie Centre was closed entirely from 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. This evening, the cafeteria closed an hour early, which is hard on the working poor trying to make it to the cafeteria at a time when, as Ethel Whitty is aware, the snow has slowed down bus and skytrain service.

Safe Injection Site part of Medical-Industrial Complex eroding civil liberties on Downtown Eastside

I live a couple of blocks from Insite, the Safe Injection Site on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. I welcome Prime Minister Harper's announcement that his government is not committed to it and will subject it to a review.

I would like Harper to review Insite in the context of the monstrous Medical-Industrial complex of which it is an integral part on the DTES. This complex consists of a myriad of medical organizations interfaced with a burgeoning poverty industry. It constitutes virtually the entire economy in this neighbourhood which is often referred to as a socialist experiment. Those profiting from this medical-industrial complex -- most of whom live outside the DTES and are referred to by residents as “poverty pimps” -- must constantly manufacture case files to attract public funding. The result is a case file economy.

Everyone is a potential case file. First they case-filed welfare recipients, a population prone to accepting dubious diagnoses that could be exchanged at the welfare office for a higher rate. Then they case-filed the junkies. And now they are case-filing you, Joe and Jane average Canadian. Freedom of expression by average people is now routinely medicalized in the DTES, viewed by poverty pimps as yet another case-file opportunity. Try speaking up or writing a letter on a political issue, criticizing a non-profit organization, or even querying a health professional about the side-effects of blood pressure medication. You may find a nurse on your doorstep announcing that you have been targeted for “assessment”, psychiatric or otherwise. Even after you are “cleared”, your new case file remains permanent. Try complaining about this gratuitous case-filing and a nurse may arrange for a police constable to show up at your home to deter such “harassment”. And you may find that the swarm of street workers dispensing needles to injection drug users have been briefed on your file and encouraged to monitor you.

Show me a spokesperson touting the success of Insite and I will show you someone economically invested in the medical-industrial complex. A regular media spokesperson is Mark Townsend who, along with his nurse wife Liz Evans, is Co-Executive Director of the Portland Hotel Society. In addition to operating Insite, the Portland Hotel Society operates or has tentacles into so many other organizations that the DTES is virtually a company town. Public accountability is not Townsend's strong point though; he has refused to release a special audit by BC Housing on the Portland Hotel Society.

Maybe it is this uncomfortable refusal by Townsend that makes it expedient for Gillian Maxwell to now act as media spokesperson for Insite -- as indicated from her quoted comments in a recent Metro News article -- during the run-up to Harper's decision on whether to shut it down. Maxwell receives a hefty pay cheque in the medical-industrial complex. She has never displayed much interest in the majority of residents in the neighbourhood who saw ourselves in Harper's election promise to start rewarding “people who play by the rules”.

Maxwell's spiel, like Townsend's, is that research into Insite favours preserving it. But how neutral are the numbers? Hopefully, they haven't been influenced by MP Libby Davies' son, Leif Erikson, who was parachuted into the facility to work.

Watching the medical-industrial complex in action has cured myself and several other long term residents of the DTES of one thing, our socialist leanings. I’d like Harper to give civil liberties a shot in the arm and dismantle it.

posted by reliable sources at 7:43 PM 0 comments links to this post