"Don't Believe the Truth": Oasis for Poor during Olympics to be Photo-Op for Media

The nerve. Ethel Whitty, Director of Vancouver’s Carnegie Community Center who has established a reputation for banning poor and homeless people from Carnegie quicker than you can say “Nixon’s enemies list”, has now announced that she is a prime organizer of a “refuge” for the poor and homeless at nearby Oppenheimer Park. It is called the Oasis Winter Festival and will occur during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Whitty announced the Oasis Winter Festival in her Director’s Report at the Carnegie Board meeting membership of Carnegie Center at the Sept. 4 meeting of the Board of Directors. The Oasis will be held on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for 7-10 days in February 2010, during the Winter Olympics. A trial-run Oasis will be held in 2009.

“We’ll set up two large tents,” Whitty wrote in her Director’s Report. “One tent will be a source of nutritious food and beverage for participants and one for art activities and entertainment. ….” Whitty, who knows the poverty game as well as any Olympic athlete knows their game, is aware that a sure way to draw a crowd to any event on the Downtown Eastside is to offer free food. The other tent at the Oasis will be “for art activities and entertainment.”

Totem pole in Oppenheimer Park where the Oasis Festival on the Downtown Eastside will be held. Photo taken Oct. 2008.

“The intention”, Whitty writes in her report, “is to give homeless and poorly housed residents of the Downtown Eastside a chance to receive support from the community at a time, during the Olympics, when they will otherwise be the subject of media scrutiny and tourist interest.”

That’s not the real intention though, according to poverty industry watcher Dag Walker. The intention is to create “a sea of poor people” in plain sight of the media. “It’s not nearly as effective if the media just sees a few homeless people here and there,” Walker explains, “It’s more effective to attract a huge number of the poor and homeless to a small space.” Whitty and her povertarian partners will essentially be telling the media, ‘Don’t look at the elephant on the table’, but they know that the media scouring the notorious Downtown Eastside during the Olympics in search of stories will take photographs of this large congregation of poor people, photographs that will be transmitted around the world. The povertarians are arranging a media event, a photo op, with the intention of embarrassing the government globally.

The message transmitted through the global media will be the same as that regularly transmitted by the povertarians through the local media: “Poverty is an out of control problem on the Downtown Eastside and the government must direct more money toward this problem.” More money directed toward the Downtown Eastside means more money for povertarians who make their living in the lucrative poverty industry here.

Box for discarded needles of drug users attached to the fence of the baseball diamond at Oppenheimer Park. Photo taken Oct. 12, 2008.

Anyone unaware of Whitty’s record of human rights abuses targeting the poor and/or homeless — she was even caught feeding fraudulent “evidence” to a CBC Radio interviewer about the reason for the barring of homeless man, William Simpson, from Carnegie after poor people elected him to the Carnegie Board — could get the impression from her Director’s Report that she cares about the poor: “This event will be ongoing everyday and will provide a refuge and a comfort zone where participants can be entertained or take part in organized art activities arranged by those who know them best; their fellow community members.” Arranged by their fellow community members? Most of the people working at Oasis will be well paid unionized povertarians who, at the end of their shifts on the Downtown Eastside, can’t get out of the neighborhood fast enough.

Just look at the groups Whitty lists as being recruited to operate the Oasis: “We hope the community partners will include Carnegie Centre staff from Oppenheimer [Park] and the Outreach teams, Aboriginal Front Door, VANDU [Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users], VCH, Pivot, DEWC, Community Arts Network, Gallery Gachet, etc.” The overwhelming majority of workers in these groups do not live on the Downtown Eastside and their loyalty to one another is stronger than their loyalty to poor people.

Take Pivot Legal Society, a group of radical young lawyers who claim to be committed to improving civil liberties in the poor Downtown Eastside neighborhood and creating “trickle up” benefits for everyone else in society. When homeless William Simpson asked Pivot for help after Whitty hand-delivered him a letter banning him from the Carnegie premises and Board meetings just two weeks after poor people had elected him to the Carnegie Board – the barring was carried out under the supervision of City Manager and Olympic Organizing Committee member Judy Rogers – Pivot turned him away with the response, “But they’re our friends.”

All of these “friends” running grant guzzling organizations on the Downtown Eastside are experienced in dealing with media; they can be counted on to have designated spokespersons at Oasis who can be trusted not to veer off the message about the government obligation to give more to their assorted projects. Those projects range from a supervised drug injection site a few blocks from Oppenheimer Park to the annual Heart of the City theater production by Carnegie in which Whitty has been exposed for passing off actors from more affluent neighborhoods to the media as Downtown Eastside poor people speaking on behalf of their fellow poor people — not unlike the way Whitty is passing off Oasis as a refuge for poor people “arranged by those who know them best; their fellow community members.” Let the games begin.

On the morning of Oct.12, 2008 when this photo was taken, there was one person sleeping in Oppenheimer Park.

Pouring Rain

It was pissin' down rain late yesterday afternoon as this pedestrian walked across the Georgia Viaduct toward Main St.

Just Desserts at the Downtown Community Court

Usually when a Downtown Eastsider walks into a courthouse, they expect to be served something other than jumbo chocolate chip cookies. But that's what they got this afternoon at the opening lunch of the new Community Court on Gore St. near Cordova, beside the Sunrise Market.


The Community Court, which began operating earlier this month and is modeled on one in New York City, will offer a quick, "integrated" response to people nabbed for petty crime in downtown Vancouver. There will be a welfare worker, a housing worker, a forensic psychiatrist, to name a few, in the court house to connect people pleading guilty with services that might help them. The idea is that helping people with some of their underlying problems such as being broke, addicted, homeless, might diminish their temptation to break into your car and mine. Sentences will often involve community service such as cleaning alleys or working in kitchens.


Today, sheriffs standing at the front door of the Community Court were calling out to people walking by on Gore St., "Come on in! Have a burger!" Inside the building, a corridor led past the closed door of a court room and on to an outdoor court yard. Some Downtown Eastsiders recognized it as the courtyard of the old pre-trail jail. Today, it was the site of a lunch catered by the Bread Garden: hamburgers with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, pickles, etc., hot dogs, potato salad, caesar salad with large croutons, bags of potato chips, cans of pop and bottles of water. For dessert, there were assorted fresh jumbo-size chocolate chip cookies with huge chunks of chocolate in them. There were other varieties of jumbo cookies too, like chocolate with almond slivers sprinkled on top.

The guy in the off-white suit and green shirt just left of center in the above photo is a judge in the Community Court. A guy walked up to him and said, "You look sober, you must be the judge." The judge laughed and said, "It's early in the day."

Photo above: Guests mingle in the outdoor court yard where the lunch was held inside the Community Court building.

Photo above: A sheriff in dress uniform stands at the back of the food line up in the outdoor courtyard.


Here a sheriff chats with people lined up for food. Early on, the crowd was made up largely of people who worked in the neighbourhood, with just a smattering of the low income population. But word soon got out that there was a free lunch at the community court -- somebody yelled it out at Main & Hastings -- and a crowd of poor people showed up. The food quickly ran out as they had catered for just 300.

Another Two Million Dollars from Michael Audain Can't Paper Over his Devaluing of Women

Condo developer and philanthropist Michael Audain, ducking criticism for giving the Audain Lifetime Achievement Award to Jeff Wall who allegedly operated a sexual harassment ring while head of the Simon Fraser University Visual Arts Department, has given more money to a cause he has named after ....himself.

Audain has slapped down $2 million for The Audain Emerging Artists Aquisition Fund at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The Fund will allow the Art Gallery to purchase art works from British Columbia artists, 35 years old and under, considered promising.

Who would be considered promising? Young artists who spread their legs for Jeff Wall or his underling professors Greg Snider, or David McWilliam, and zipped their lips? To a survivor of advanced sexual harassment by both Wall and Snider at SFU, this is no joke: "I doubt Audain could afford to see an artist as promising if she's been talking about what went on at SFU. He and Wall are friends."

The survivor sees Kathleen Bartels, Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, as part of the problem too. As long as Audain is throwing money at the VAG, Bartels seems willing to allow boys to be boys. Bartels allowed Audain, Chairman of the Vancouver Art Gallery Foundation, to hold a party on VAG premises to present Wall with his Lifetime Achievement Award while he remained uninvestigated for the sexual harassment ring he allegedly operated. Just two weeks ago, Bartels told the Globe & Mail, “If we only had five more Michael Audains, we'd be in a more significant place.”

"All I've asked for is an investigation", says a survivor, adding that it's difficult to get one when Audain and Bartels are essentially covering for Wall. Never once has Audain called for an investigation in the sexual harassment environment at the SFU Centre for the Contemporary Arts under Wall. [Audain also donated money to a Gallery to be named after himself at the soon-to-be-opened SFU Centre for the Contemporary Arts which has been accused of attempting to bury their sexual harassment history in the foundation, like the mafia buried the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa.] Bartels is certainly not in the dark about the allegations against Wall. A survivor briefed her assistant after she took the job as Director of the VAG.

Bottom line: All the money Audain throws at the new Audain Emerging Artists Acquisition Fund can't paper over his devaluing of young women.

Raise-A-Reader

September 24th is Raise-A-Reader Day.

This reader was snapped today on the 6th floor of the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch on Robson St.

Who's he reading? Karl Popper, who wrote that Plato was the first fascist.

Former Premier Glen Clark's Teenage Daughter, Layne, Lands Newspaper Column

The last time I saw Layne Clark, it was years ago on the evening news. Her father NDP Premier Glen Clark was in the middle of a scandal so a Vancouver news crew went to the airport to meet him. Layne was just a kid and when she saw her father get off the plane, she ran into his arms.
I remember the reporter saying her name was "Layne"; the name stuck in my mind because I thought it was unusual but I liked it.

Well, Layne has grown up faster than a fast ferry. She's just started her first year at Simon Fraser University. I noticed yesterday that she's started writing a Monday column for 24 Hours newspaper called "Campus Life".

This week, Layne wrote about her battle with procrastination. "...I still like to come home and, instead of researching for that essay thesis due next week, I'm more interested in, say, going to McDonalds to eat with my friends before sitting down and watching the newest episode of So You Think You Can Dance."

Layne is no doubt benefiting from her father's connections. When Glen Clark stepped down as Premier, billionaire businessman Jimmy Pattison hired him. When the Pattison Group and Sun Media started 24 Hours as a joint venture, Clark had the job of managing it. Pattison sold his share of the Vancouver edition in 2007.