Telus: asparagus and meatballs with a dash of political psychiatry

Last Tuesday was "Telus Tuesday". That's when Telus turns up at the Salvation Army on Cordova near Main to give the Downtown Eastside poor a good feed.

They served asparagus, "overcooked", a homeless man reported. And mashed potatoes. "And meatballs." The meatballs were good and they gave a generous helping of them, he said in a voice tone that sounded pleased.

And black forest cake. He described it as one of those "cheap" ones, but that it tasted good nonetheless.

The homeless man had enjoyed the lunch enough that he was talking about it to some friends about five in the afternoon. By that time, he was trying to figure out where to go for a free dinner.

Telus Tuesday, which comes every month or two and is not advertised, is a hit on the Downtown Eastside.

But Telus' reputation is tainted on the Downtown Eastside due to the fact that 20-yr. Telus employee, Allan Wong, was involved in the use of Chinese communist style political psychiatry tactics to deter political free speech by a Downtown Eastside resident. Although Wong's involvement in political psychiatry has been in his moonlighting role as a Vancouver School Board trustee, he has chosen not to entirely separate that role from his role as a Telus employee. During the two consecutive VSB terms in which political psychiatry was instigated and evidence of it suppressed, Wong had promoted himself to voters in the School Board election as a long term Telus employee.

According to Telus ads, "The future is friendly." But for people targeted by political psychiatry and tagged with life long libelous labels, the future is unfriendly.

Man at Cobalt Hotel Attacked With Hatchet

Why would the cops call a man hit over the head with a hatchet lucky? Because he walked away with only minor injuries. Late Friday night, the 49-year old man was attacked at the seedy Cobalt Hotel at 917 Main St. where he was staying on the Downtown Eastside. A 26 year old man is facing charges for the assault.

Jim A. who has lived at the Cobalt for years was attacked there a few months back. He makes a point of not mixing with the other tenants because many of them are crackheads. But when a native woman asked Jim, a fifty-something caucasian guy, to store a few bags of her belongings in his room, he agreed to help her out. She later returned to pick up the bags and he wasn't there. There has been a misunderstanding. She was angry and told him so later, throwing his dishes and other things around in his room to drive the point home. But Jim is very slow to anger. "I guess she could see she wasn't getting to me," he said. She pulled out a knife and sunk it deep into his forearm. He was spraying blood and as he was pushing the door at the top of the hallway stairs open, he was holding the cut with his opposite hand to stem the flow of blood. He lost his balance and fell, cracking his ribs. He went to the hospital and to this day has a bit of numbness in his hand, although he has made an almost full recovery.

Jim couldn't take a job he had lined up as a forklift operator the next day. He didn't call the cops because he said, "I don't want to be a rat."

Guess what the woman who stabbed him did a week later? She asked him if she could store some of her stuff in his room.

Islamic Terrorists Demand Britney Spears and Madonna Give Them Head

Muhammad Abdel-Al, leader of the Islamic organization, Popular Resistance Committee, has said he would like to personally cut off the heads of Madonna and Britney Spears. "If I meet these whores I will have the honor – I repeat, I will have the honor – to be the first one to cut the heads off Madonna and Britney Spears if they will keep spreading their satanic culture against Islam.”

Before cutting off their heads, Abdel-Al will give Madonna and Spears the option of converting to Islam. But if they don’t, he believes they deserve to be stoned or killed for “tempting men in order to put them far from Islam”.

More on this story at the Vancouver blog, Covenant Zone

Marilyn Whiskeyjack Murdered

Isn't that an interesting name? Whiskeyjack. She won't be using it much now that she was murdered on Friday night.

The 42 yr. old aboriginal woman, raced into the hall of Main Rooms near Main & Powell St. just before midnight, screaming that she had been stabbed. She made it down to the street where she collapsed. Other tenants called 9-1-1 but Whiskeyjack died in hospital an hour later.

Whiskeyjack, according to Carnegie members, was a drug addict. She was stabbed just 2 1/2 blocks away from controversial projects for addicts that have drawn world attention to the Downtown Eastiside: the supervised drug injection site and the free heroin dispensing project. But whether she used these services is unknown.

Several patrons and staff at Carnegie Center knew Whiskeyjack, as she used to come around. She apparently picked up her mail there, as a regular recalls seeing the name "Whiskeyjack" on the list at the reception desk for people who use Carnegie as their mailing address.

Whiskeyjack was stabbed multiple times, according to the media. There are conflicting stories at Carnegie; one story is that she was stabbed in the neck, another is that her throat was slit. Paramedics would have been close by as the Fire Hall is at the end of the block where she collapsed.

Whiskeyjack's boyfriend is a suspect. The word on the street is that he is hispanic, although that has not been confirmed.

[Makes you wonder if he could be one of the many hispanic illegals on the Downtown Eastside selling drugs. Even the other drug dealers are fed up with these illegals. They tell them to scram because they are quick to draw "heat".]

The Main Rooms is a drug scene. About three years ago, just before Christmas, Downtown Eastsiders walking into the Univeristy of B.C. Learning Exchange next door to use the free public access computers saw evidence of this. They watched as half a dozen bodies were carried down onto the street from the Main Rooms. All had died from the same batch of drugs in the same room.

The Main Rooms, like numerous low-rent rooming houses on the Downtown Eastside, is owned by Betty Woo. Woo has a reputation amongst longtime Downtown Eastside residents for being a good landlord, believe it or not. She is occasionally around the Downtown Eastside with her husband Jimmy who sometimes carries a repair kit.

"It was like an episode of CSI," a Carnegie regular repeatedly said of the scene on Saturday, the day after the murder. "People in white outfits were going into the Main Rooms and there were police vans and trucks."

The forensic team was working the scene again on Sunday. "It was like CSI," the Carnegie regular said again. "They were carrying out bags of evidence. There was a woman taking off her white suit. She was real beautiful, just like you'd see on CSI. She was putting on her glasses; I was trying not to stare at her. She was opening little drawers in the back of the police van just like in CSI."

Watching the forensics team back on Sunday, this onlooker, a white guy, said twice that he was pleased to see that the police were not taking the attitude that Whiskeyjack's life was cheap. Vancouver Police have been accused for years of displaying this attitude towards the lives of women in the Downtown Eastside underclass when a serial killer appeared to be targeting them, resulting in the current infamous Pickton trial. "They're taking this real serious," the onlooker said of Whiskeyjack's murder. "They're not treating this like, 'Ahh, just another dead Indian druggie.' "

Whiskeyjack is a bird, a Canadian jay. It is not known whether Marily Whiskeyjack was Cree but according to the Canadian Gage dictionary, "whiskeyjack" is adapted from a Cree word.

Filming Abuses Land Woman in Burger King

Rather than lying in bed Thursday night, a Powell St. resident was sitting in Burger King until almost 11 p.m. That was to avoid being poisoned during the filming of "Psych Season 2" outside her apartment. Last month, she sat in Burger King until almost 11 p.m. on Mon. August 20th. That was to avoid being poisoned during the filming of “Circle” outside her home.

This woman got carbon monoxide poisoning during the filming of a Honda commercial in 2000. She claims that the Vancouver Film Office responded to the poisoning by continuing to create the conditions that caused it.

"The Vancouver Film Office was created in order to ensure that filming
takes place in a way that is least disruptive to the citizens of
Vancouver."
Vancouver Film Office

During the filming of the Honda commercial, the resident alleges, the crew left a generator running just below her window, along with an idling truck, for most of the day. First they put the generator in the doorway of a school just up the street,” she explains, “but a teacher [Richard M.] went out and told them to move it. Then they put it under my window." The trouble was, she wasn't aware that that's where they had put it.

Over the years, she says, she has put in countless unpaid labour hours attempting to prevent the film industry from putting idling trucks and generators outside her windows for hours. Even a fireman at Main & Powell confirmed in 2002 that these conditions were dangerous, that a stream of carbon monoxide will crawl up the side of the building and enter an open window (the only windows in these apartments are facing Powell St.). But the fireman's comments seemed to have little effect on the Film Office.

After the struggle to have health and safety standards recognized on Powell St. had gone on for over a year, the resident did get a letter from Muriel Honey, Manager of the Vancouver Film Office, dated Sept. 24, 2001.

"The complaints you raised during the filming were valid -- specifically the problems with generators spewing fumes right under the window of your home. . . . Please be reassured that neither the City nor the Location Managers we work with want to cause you any grief as far as filming is concerned, and that we will continue to ask film production companies to respect your request that they keep generators and work trucks away from your windows."

It is now six years later and the same conditions continue to be re-created.

The resident did not get much satisfaction from Honda either. She told Honda in writing in 2000 that she had gotten sick. How did they respond? "They didn't", she says. They target their commercials to women and people concerned about the environment, she points out, but when her apartment was pumped full of carbon monoxide fumes, Honda didn't believe it warranted a response.

Mercedes Benz was responsive though, she says. She asked them to cancel plans to film a commercial in the same area where the Honda commercial poisoning had occurred, until the City Film Office started to respect basic health needs of residents during filming. In September 2001, Mercedes Benz canceled a commercial at the last minute. "I bet that cost them something." She believes dealers in the Vancouver area told Mercedes to cancel. She faxed a few dealers a copy of a document summarizing the situation. "I've felt good about Mercedes Benz since then," she says. "If I had the money, I'd buy a Mercedes."

There is no mention of this unresolved issue, though, on the BC Film Commission website which promotes this strip of Powell St. as a prime filming location on their home page. A promotional video appearing at the top of their home page contains footage of the Europe Hotel. The Europe is just meters away from where Mercedes canceled their commercial and it is just a few doors away from where the original poisoning occurred.

The public image promoted by the Vancouver Film Office and the BC Film Commission is that they value cooperation with residents, but this resident told the DTES Enquirer via e-mail that it's been her experience that residents who expect genuine cooperation are seen as "troublemakers". A memo obtained from a Freedom of Information request to the BC Film Commission tends to support her claim; it reveals that the fact that she had spoken up during a previous shoot was used against her during the Honda shoot. "Brian", the location manager on the Honda shoot, ridiculed the resident in an internal handwritten memo dated Aug. 11/2000 to “Pamela”:

"[Name of resident] from 'It's a Girl Thing Fame' swooped into action

causing all sorts of grief. But Jon [Summerland] was able to work things out
with her."

What had the resident done on the set of "It's a Girl Thing" to earn "fame"? She had told the Vancouver Police constable on site that they did not have a permit to shoot outside her apartment. The permit locations were no secret, she says, they were listed on a poster notifying residents in the other building of the shoot. "Some guy was below my window yelling "Action!" at the top of his lungs and I was lying in bed and I couldn't take it anymore." The police constable was standing on the periphery of the set so the two had to holler to hear one another. "I was on my balcony and there was a crowd of people staring at me." The crowd may have gathered because Elle MacPhearson and Kate Capshaw were starring in the film. Capshaw is married to Steven Spielberg and a man fitting Spielberg's description was giving tips to the actors below the resident's window. When the permit issue came up, this man eventually said, "We better go." But the cop seemed "starstruck", the resident says, and didn't ask them to leave.

You have to remember, the resident says, that this was a period of 'film fatigue' on the Downtown Eastside with massive over-filming. In fact, it was shortly after "It's a Girl Thing" that the Downtown Eastside Residents Association held a public meeting on film fatigue in which representatives from the film industry were invited to come and listen to residents. "There was a packed house at the meeting; it was in the theater at the Carnegie Center." Excessive filming is less of a problem now, possibly because overall filming in Vancouver is down 30% this year (even before the strike), according to comments Muriel Honey made to the media.

The resident received a letter from a lawyer, Kim Roberts, for "Girl Thing Productions, Inc." dated June 16, 2000 claiming that, "The permits which our client obtained for this shoot covered the activities you describe...." Roberts added that his client "utilized a Downtown Eastside Residents Association liaison". That liaison, though, disagreed with Roberts' statements.

In a letter to Roberts dated June 23, 2000, Karl Schmidt, the Downtown Eastside film liaison confirmed that "It's a Girl Thing" did not have a permit to film at the resident's address or even on that side of the street:

"It is true that the film shoot did take place in front of [resident's
address]. . . . The second floor is not a true second floor so her apartment is
only a few feet off the sidewalk....Both Mr. Hanley [a DERA rep on the set] and
the Police looked at the permit. It only mentioned 103 and 120 Powell St. For
those of us who live in the neighbourhood and read the address of 103 Powell
[we] would know that it is sufficiently away from [resident's address] not to
have a great impact....Further, the June 5th letter from "It's a Girl Thing"
states the "walk and talk" was to be at the entrance at 120 Powell Street (south
side) in the evening."

And far from the resident being an isolated troublemaker, others had swooped into action about "It's a Girl Thing" before she had followed instructions to put her complaint in writing. Schmidt wrote: "At a meeting at City Hall, on June 12th, before we were aware of [resident's] letter, Dera had brought the problems of this shoot to the attention of the City of Vancouver Film Department."

The resident says the lawyer's behaviour was at odds with the image of cooperation the film industry attempts to project. She stated that although Roberts claimed to have contacted her on behalf of "It's a Girl Thing," when she asked him a question, he wouldn't answer; there was just dead silence on the line. When she asked the same question again, there was dead silence again, and again. He acknowledged in writing that she had told him that she should report his behaviour to the Law Society: "In our conversation in June 16, 2000, you threatened to report me to the Law Society. If you feel there has been any breach by me of the Law Society Rules, I encourage you to make a complaint." I bet the film industry is still using that lawyer, she says.

Although the resident e-mailed Muriel Honey about the filming on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007 and got no response, she largely avoids dealing with film industry managers. She finds too great a discrepancy between what they say they do and what they actually do.

Certainly, she is not the first person to question the professional integrity of Muriel Honey and Mark Desrochers, former Director of the BC Film Commission. Desrochers was fired from his job at the BC Film Commission, along with his wife who also worked there, for "irregularities" which were never disclosed to the public. Muriel Honey, while she was on the City Hall payroll as Executive Assistant to then Mayor Gordon Campbell, was exposed in 1993 by the Vancouver Sun's Jeff for working, along with Campbell's Communication Assistant Jan Fraser, on his leadership campaign for the provincial Liberal Party. According to Lee, Campbell admitted that Honey and Fraser were performing this work, but claimed they were using their vacation and other time off to do it.

The fact that the film industry can be more adversarial than cooperative was not lost on Jenny Kwan, Member of the Legislative Assembly representing the Downtown Eastside. During the period of massive over filming, Kwan told a Downtown Eastside resident in a letter dated May 1, 2001 to "contact Legal Services Society" about abuses.

The resident is no longer interested in contacting anybody other than advertisers. The public, she has noticed, is becoming increasingly interested in how products they consume have been produced. She believes that once advertisers on films airing on television find their names linked on the internet to unfair production practices, the Vancouver Film Office will, as Brian would say, swoop into action.

CUPE Strike: Lucy's Labor Pains

The Carnegie Learning Center is in a tough spot during the current strike of Canadian Union of Public Employees in Vancouver. It is on the third floor of the Carnegie Center, a building operated by CUPE members who have been on strike for the past two months. But the two teachers in the Learning Center, Lucy Alderson and Betsy Alkenbrack, aren’t CUPE members. The two get their pay cheques from Capilano College in North Vancouver, which has jointly run the Learning Center since Carnegie gave the Vancouver School Board the boot a decade ago.

Like most teachers, Alderson was supposed to return to work after Labour Day. Instead, she is planning a trip to Labour Relations to ask them to declare the Learning Center an essential service.

Alderson has done her homework. She invited a bunch of the Center's learners and volunteers to a meeting Thursday at Carnegie to discuss strategy for the request to Labor Relations. With Betsy Alkenbrack doing the writing, they created a "draft" press release. Calling themselves, "Common Sense People of the Downtown Eastside", they included in their press release a list of things that are essential about the Learning Center. But anybody on the Downtown Eastside with an ounce of common sense can see that the list is far from accurate:

- help with resumes and job searches
- help with negotiating government services, including online welfare applications
- access to health information
- high school upgrading
- ESL and computer training for seniors
- courses such as First Nations Journeys, Success Skills for Community Work and ESL literacy
- access to computers for information, training and services

The truth is that kitty corner from Carnegie at Main & Hastings is Pathways, an Industry Canada organization providing roughly 15 public access computers that are specially set up to help with resumes and job searches. If there are empty computers, staff turn a blind eye to people dropping in to use them for other purposes such as checking e-mail. And they have extra services specifically targeting native people.

Many people using Carnegie computers didn't have a clue about what went on at Pathways until the strike. But once they were forced off the Carnegie computers, they discovered it. One guy told the friend who had brought him that he preferred it over Carnegie, "Nobody yells at you here." A woman had earlier said that she found Pathways "more relaxed" than Carnegie. You can get help using computers from staff at Pathways too.

Anybody shut out of the Carnegie Learning Center during the strike also has the option of using the University of British Columbia Learning Exchange, a drop-in center just 2 1/2 blocks from Carnegie, on Main St. near Powell. At the Exchange you can get a chintzy half an hour on a computer. During the strike, there is often a bit of a wait for a computer and if you go after 4:00 p.m., you can forget about getting on to one. If you need basic computer help, they will give it to you. They also offer ESL.

Some users of the Carnegie Learning Center have been showing up at "Free Geek", near Main & 2nd Ave. Free Geek is an organization run by a group of "never say Microsoft" twenty-somethings with a government grant and a storefront. They provide a room full of public-access, on-line, computers on the Linux operating system.

When it comes to high school upgrading, the Carnegie Learning Center is not the only game in town. The Eastside Learning Center at Powell and Columbia St. operated by the Vancouver School Board provides high school upgrading. It's not a drop-in center like Carnegie though. They have a huge banner in the window prompting people walking by to "Register Now."

Lifeskills, an organization run by the Portland Society in the old Cordova St. Clinic building by Oppenheimer Park, has posters up around the Downtown Eastside begging for students. They help people develop computer and other skills. "Anybody can walk in there," says a Downtown Eastside resident.

When it comes to support for native people on the Downtown Eastside, there is a plethora of organizations. Just walk up Hastings St. east of Carnegie and you'll pass several. In addition, the welfare offices at Powell and Main have plenty of programs for native people looking for upgrading and jobs. In fact, they tell people that if you're non-native, they don't have much in the way of courses, but if you're native there are lots.

The list of 'essential' services provided by the Carnegie Learning Center is summed up on the press release with a blatant lie: “For most residents, this is the only place they have access to computers. This is a serious human rights violation, since most government information and access to services is only available on line.”

There is no doubt that early in the CUPE strike, Carnegie patrons missed the computers they had been accustomed to having easy access to at Carnegie. But as the strike enters its third month, many people have discovered other places to go.

In the press release it was stated that the closing of the Carnegie Learning Center is causing “pain and destruction”. If that’s the case, why did Alderson at times lock the doors of the Learning Center or evacuate everyone, always with the same excuse, “A volunteer didn’t show up.” Alderson would sit in the Learning Center by herself while low income people who wanted access to computers peered through the windows at her, resulting in her being described on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer as a “sea otter at the aquarium”. When bloggers began reporting these too frequent closures -- which were also occurring on Saturdays when it was the responsibility of CUPE members to keep the Center open -- Alderson and Alkenbrack participated in a witch hunt for the blogger, interrogating a volunteer about who could be blogging. Then Alderson personally barred a homeless man, Bill Simpson, for suspected blogging.

The barring of Simpson, which was later expanded to include the entire building by City managers under pressure from CUPE members, was criticized by Carnegie Board member Sophia Friegang as a “human rights” issue. Friegang got nowhere and resigned over the issue.

But Freigang's criticism didn't prevent the promotion of the Learning Center in the press release as a place where human rights are respected. The press release began with the headline, "LABOUR DISPUTE PUTS LEARNING AND HUMAN RIGHTS ON HOLD", and ended with an appeal to both sides to resolve the strike so that the Learning Center can operate: “Lives and human rights are at stake.”