Downtown Eastsider who sent Obama a Threatening Letter Arrested

Photo: George stands in front of the UBC Learning Exchange. He asked a Downtown Eastsider with a camera to take this photo; I think it was taken in early 2009 but I haven't had a chance to talk to the photographer. George was wearing his Alaska t-shirt but did not yet have his Sarah Palin glasses.

I asked Dale, a homeless guy with a shopping cart who hangs out in front of McDonalds restaurant at Terminal & Main, where George was. "You know George, the guy who wears the navy blue t-shirt with FBI on the front," I said, prompting Dale's memory. "The cops picked him up," said Dale who used to sleep in the same spot as George under a bridge. "He was threatening people."

Don't get me wrong, George wasn't threatening his friends and acquaintances around the Downtown Eastside. He was actually quite affable, always quick to call out, "Hi!"

Downtown Eastsiders had cautioned George, who was a fixture around the Downtown Eastside with his shopping cart -- "my carriage," he called it -- that he couldn't go around threatening people. You just can't send President Obama a letter warning him,"You're dead", he was told when he showed the letter with the fax receipt stapled to it. You can get arrested for that; you can do jail time, people warned him. But George would remind people of the reason he was immune from prosecution. "I'm George Washington incarnate."

George had recently been notified that he had inherited money from his half-brother. He showed the will to people on Whopper Wednesday at Burger King, and at other places too; it had an official red seal in the upper corner. He said that when he got the inheritance, "I want to get a room in a rooming house." On the front page of the will was the name of a Montreal law firm, along with their address and telephone number. George said he phoned them and threatened them.

Long before George learned of his inheritance or threatened Obama, he had been regularly dropping into the University of British Columbia Learning Exchange on Main St. near Keefer to use the free phone. He would phone the Canadian Security Intelligence Service [CSIS] and threaten to bomb them. Once CSIS returned the call and spoke to a staff person at the Learning Exchange, according to George. The staff person told George not to use their phone again.

But George needed access to a telephone on another day, so he told staff at the Learning Exchange that he just needed to make a quick call. He made it quick, the call to CSIS, threatening them.

UBC Learning Exchange staff banned George from the premises. I know that because I was walking past with a couple of friends in the spring when George, standing out front on the sidewalk, asked a woman with us if she would do him a favor and go inside and fill up his coffee cup. The Learning Exchange provides free low quality coffee to attract the poor, keep the sign-in numbers up, and keep the funders believing they are helping ahelluvalot of down and outters turn their lives around.

UBC President Stephen Toope who helped himself to $565,000 in income and perks last year will never mention George, the guy they kicked to the curb. All the networking these UBC povertarians do at their catered openings and socials at the Learning Exchange -- Toope gave a speech at one last November -- you would think they would have a few names in their Rolodex like homeless advocate Judy Graves to call and ask, "Is there anything you can do here?"

Standing on the sidewalk out front of the UBC Learning Exchange, George was always friendly, stopping people to chat, most recently about his new Sarah Palin rimless glasses that he got a kick out of wearing with his Alaska t-shirt. Dionne, the Learning Exchange Co-ordinator, a white woman who likes to remind people that's she's really Black -- a sort of Michael Jackson in reverse -- would stand just feet from him when she ducked outside to stand in the sunshine on her breaks, taking long drags from her cigarrette, escaping into her novel.

"They were looking for him," Dale said. Vancouver Police spotted George standing with Dale last month on Hastings St. across from the First United Church. They grabbed him. They told him they were sending him back to where he'd come from; George had always claimed he had been born in the U.S. and had Canadian status. The police took the cheap handcuffs George carried with him -- he claimed to be an under cover FBI agent, which would explain the handcuffs -- and handcuffed his shopping cart to Dale's, creating a headache for Dale. The police told George, "You've been threatening people," Dale recalls. "The cops were laughing at him."

Lies Telus Tells

Remember the hippopotamus who used to prance across the tv screen in Telus commercials, the one who eventually ended up dead due to poor treatment. That's my neighbour.

I warned her not to order internet from Telus. But she went ahead, saying they were cheaper than Shaw, and besides she'd had a Telus telephone land line for 20 years.

But after ordering internet service from Telus, she couldn't get the service up and running because she couldn't get through to the technical support line. Her friend who is more tech savy had offered to spend a Sunday evening at her house to help her set it up, but he too became frustrated that they couldn't get through to the tech help line.

My neighbor phoned Telus the following week and cancelled the service. An agent told her she now owes Telus a $120 cancellation fee, that she had a verbal contract with Telus that she must honor.

She says Telus did not honor their verbal contract with her: the contract to provide technical service. She says she emphasized her need for technical service when she spoke to the Telus agent Jeremy who sold her the Telus internet service. Jeremy even checked with one of their technical staff to make certain they could meet her technical needs. He got back to her saying, "They'll walk you through it; just phone the number that comes in the box with the modem."

When she disputed the $120 cancellation fee, a young female agent transferred her to a department with an Orwellian name, "Loyalty and Retention".

Natalie was the agent who took the call in Loyalty & Retention. She had what my neighbor guessed was an Australian accent. Natalie told the customer that she would give her a special phone number -- other than the official one printed on the instructional disk that comes with the modem -- to phone for technical support. "It's like they have this special number to give people who are ready to cancel after they've been put on hold for too long," said my neighbour. Too little to late. "I had packed up the modem and all the cords; everything was back in the box." Telus had lost my neighbour's loyalty.

Natalie was domineering, says my neighbour. "She said I'd be billed the $120 disconnect fee. The customer told her that she had never for one minute actually had an internet connection. Natalie said the internet signal had been running through her line all this time.

My neighbor told Natalie that she was going to fight this as she hadn't agreed to anything, she hadn't signed anything committing to a $120 cancellation fee. But in the interim she felt she couldn't pay her telephone bill because that money might be applied to the disputed internet cancellation fee. "She said I had to pay it or it would be sent to Collections."

Natalie asked her if she wanted to cancel her phone service. She told her she could do it right then and there. "I'll cancel it right now!", she said. That's the loyalty they have to a 25 year customer. "I thought if I cancelled I'd lose my voice mail," says my neighbour, "I had important messages saved and I didn't want to lose them." So she told Natalie, "I'd like to speak to a supervisor first." Natalie said there was no supervisor to speak to, that she was the end of the line. "She was mad", says my neighbour. Natalie asked several times if she wanted her telephone service terminated. "She had her finger on the button", says my neighbour. Disloyalty and Detention.

I later told my neighbour, "Phone back and bypass Natalie." She talked to a young male agent and told him she was afraid to pay her telephone billl for fear the money would go to the disputed $120 fee. He told her to just send the modem back to the Alberta address and give Telus the tracking number so they could confirm it was received. He assured her that then the $120 charge would be taken off her bill. She had no idea he was lying.

She phoned back a week later and gave the tracking number to a female agent. The agent reminded her that she owed a $120 fee. My neighbor explained that the previous man had told her that the cancellation fee had been waived. The agent assured her that she understood and would now waive the cancellation fee. My neighbour had no idea she was lying.

When the customer got her telephone bill, the $120 fee was owing. So she phoned Telus today. She got a female agent with a french accent who said there was a note on the file from Natalie saying that this customer had admitted entering into a verbal contract to pay a $120 cancellation fee. :"I didn't tell her that," my neighbor says.

It was this agent with the french accent who revealed that the previous front-line agents had been lying. She said those agents did not have the authority to waive any fee over $100 and they knew that. My neighbour concludes, "They were just telling me what I wanted to hear and getting me off the line".

Today's agent explained that only the Help Desk can authorize the cancelling of the $120 fee. She went off the line and asked then if they would do it. No way, was their response, the $120 stands. My neighbour asked for the name of the person who had made that decision, so that a record could be kept. The agent said she could "not divulge" that information. She told my neighbour that somebody from" higher up" -- sounds like Loyalty & Retention -- would get back to her today or tomorrow either by telephone or email. Nobody has contacted her yet. But she suspects one thing:

The future is not friendly.

Fight Breaks Out in Carnegie Kitchen

Photo: Opening of the Community Court in 2008. Judge Thomas Gove stands on the far right of the photo taken in the internal courtyard.

It's not easy getting volunteers to work alongside well paid union members in the Carnegie kitchen for 80 cents an hour in food stamps. Now the kitchen has started to take "volunteers" who are sentenced to community service by the new Community Court.

A fight that broke out Monday morning in the cafeteria reportedly involved at least one of these petty convicts/volunteers -- although that hasn't been confirmed, the kitchen definitely uses convicts from the Community Court. A volunteer with a long brown ponytail (he is a good volunteer, congenial with customers) and a customer buying breakfast (he also volunteers at Carnegie) started yelling at one another. The volunteer came around the counter to the side where the customer was standing. It got loud -- "Let's go outside!!" And there was a lot of aggressive gesturing.

But there was no actual violence. So spectators were surprised when police showed up later. Maybe if the Community Court is involved, police have to be involved.

Any defense lawyer, though, would be remiss if he or she didn't look closely at the records of staff and management at Carnegie who are writing reports or providing testimony about their clients from Community Court.

At Carnegie, the cons are not only in the kitchen.

There is evidence that when Director Ethel Whitty and Security Co-ordinator are producing reports on low income people, they allow politics to overshadow facts. If a CUPE member is involved in any sort of conflict with a volunteer, the CUPE member will be exonerated. As Whitty stated at a public meeting, "I have to support my staff." Management has been known to be selective about what witnesses they talk to, ignoring any who won't give them the slant they may find most politically desirable. And it is old news that management has been prone to manufacturing witnesses when convenient, not one or two but huge groups of them conjured up after the fact from an almost deserted room. There is even radio tape of Whitty manufacturing false accusations -- accusations that can be indisputably demonstrated to be false -- against a low income man who happened to have fallen out of favor with a CUPE staff person. Both Whitty and Everall should have been disqualified from any involvement with a Community Court.

Not only are convicts placed at risk by being sent to Carnegie for supervision by management staff with a record of operating in a manner, as lawyer Gregory Bruce put it, "contrary to the rule of law", the public is being put at risk by this joint venture between the Community Court and the Carnegie kitchen. A man who uses Carnegie on a regular basis has reported seeing a man injecting drugs into his arm in the alley next to Carnegie and, two or three days later, seeing the same man working in the kitchen at Carnegie. He told kitchen coordinator, Catriona, "You're putting us at risk!"

Judge Thomas Gove designed the Community Court. He got an award for innovation. What can eaters expect to get?

The food at the Carnegie cafeteria is actually good, much better than most cafeterias. They use lots of healthy stuff like kale and chard, which they reportedly get from stores when it is too old to be sold but still good enough to toss into salads.

Would you like the hepatitis dressing?

Michael Jackson Memorial Watched at Pigeon Park

I walked by Pigeon Park this morning and there was a cluster of people sitting on park benches in the drizzle watching Michael Jackson's memorial. They were watching it on a television parked on the sidewalk in front of the second hand store.

I stopped and the words, "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" appeared on a red strip across the bottom of the screen. A native guy standing up close to the tv set turned to me and said, "That's Stevie Wonder singing."

A woman stopped and stood watching. Tears streamed down her face.

As I walked up Hastings St afterwards, I was thinking of Michael Jackson and the presumption of innocence. The enormous resources of the state of California were used in an attempt to convict him of child sexual abuse and he was found not guilty. I don't know what the evidence against him was. When I watched more of the Memorial later on the internet, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee was on stage saying that she was following the American way, which is to consider somebody "innocent until proven otherwise".

I didn't like the way Jackson got mixed up with the Nation of Islam though. They're anti-semitic. The bio-mom of Jackson's two oldest children reportedly disapproved of their influence; she's Jewish. Stuart Backerman in Vancouver, who moved to Neverland for three years to be Jackson's publicist, said in a local interview that he left when the Nation of Islam started taking over Jackson's affairs as he didn't agree with their views. In another interview, he said he got "pushed out" by them. But he still "loves" Jackson and prizes the black signature hat Jackson gave him as a gift.

Overall, I find the media hype around Jackson's death and the endless parade of sordid details less captivating than his dancing. (Although I was momentarily captivated by the sight of his two older children with hair obviously died darker for his Memorial, making them match up better with the Jackson family.) I've been largely ignoring the television coverage but I still watch the video of his Bad Tour Live in Japan.

The Way You Make Me Feel

"The way you make me feel ... you knock me off of my feet." That's one of my favorite songs. When I hear it, I feel like dancing.

I'll never forget where I was when I learned that Michael Jackson was dead. I was at home yesterday listening to CBC when Carol Off mentioned in a disinterested tone of voice that Michael Jackson had died of "cardiac arrest".

Last night at the Metropole hotel on the Downtown Eastside, they were playing Michael Jackson music and videos. I was watching him in his prime. What a dancer he was.

I saw an interview with Jackson once where he talked about dancing. He explained that you have to feel the music in your body, that sometimes a performer dancing on stage is counting the steps instead of just feeling the music in their body. You watch them, he said, and "you can see, they're counting".

Now his time is up.

VPL Asked to Suspend Library Assistant Wanda Power over alleged use of Carnegie "Security" for Political Ends

Shelagh Flaherty, Director of the Vancouver Public Library, has been asked to stop allowing Carnegie library staff to call "security" to repress freedom of expression. "I'm calling security" is a shortcut regularly taken by Carnegie staff unwilling to communicate effectively with the low income people they are well paid to work with, preferring instead to turn assertive people over to security forces for bullying.

Flaherty has also been asked to ensure that a recent alleged offender, Carnegie library assistant Wanda Power, is suspended without pay for a minimum of two weeks. Power is accused of acting with malice in lodging an unfounded security complaint against a non-violent female for purposes of intimidation and defamation.

Photo: Shelagh Flaherty, Library Director

The pattern on the part of Carnegie library staff of calling security on non-violent people makes a mockery of the VPL vision statement: "The library inspires and enriches the human spirit."

Carnegie "security" forces which are plain-clothed guards with a plain-clothed boss, are routinely called by CUPE members at Carnegie Library and throughout Carnegie Center in response to assertiveness in low income people. The Vancouver Public Library branch at Carnegie Center has been participating in this type of abuse for years. For at least a decade, denial of access to VPL public-access computers has been used at Carnegie to punish assertive individuals, individuals who have dared speak up about issues such as sexual harassment. Even daring to get oneself elected to the Board of Carnegie can, if you're politics don't match those of Carnegie staff, get you barred from all Carnegie services, including all VPL services.

For years a library assistant (now retired) -- a short female with dyed blonde hair -- would call security multiple times a day as a substitute for communicating with Downtown Eastsiders. When Larry, a fork-lift operator at a fish plant, had to interact with her at the book check-out counter and told her politely that he was finding her rude, her only response was to walk out to the lobby of Carnegie Center and get a security guard. The security guard whispered to Larry, "What did you say to that bitch?" Security guards seem weary of well-paid staff steadily delegating the work of communicating with Downtown Eastsiders to them. There was a sense of relief when this library assistant retired. But a new library assistant, Wanda Power, is exhibiting the same tendency to call security as a substitute for doing the work of communicating with Carnegie members, work she is paid to do.

A recent incident with Power began in the upstairs cafeteria at Carnegie on the afternoon of Sunday, June 7 and ended in the library with her announcing that she was calling security. Power allegedly used her status as a staff person to incite a man who was yelling and berating a woman with a skateboard in the food line-up, repeatedly poking his cane at her.

The man, in his late 70's with a German accent, began yelling at the woman after she set her skateboard on the counter in the cafeteria momentarily as she searched for money in her bag. The wheels were not touching the counter, she says. "I knew I shouldn't do that. I picked it up right away," she insists. (I have seen people set all kinds of things on the cafeteria counter, from large bags they drag back and forth from homeless shelters to pack sacks with shoes and cups dangling off them, even bags of cans they have collected on the streets or from garbage cans. People don't set food directly on that counter; they set their trays on that counter.)

After the woman picked up her skateboard from the counter and was again holding it in her arms, the elderly man began yelling at her that she shouldn't have set it there. She said it was a mistake and that she was now holding it, that there was nothing that could be done about it now. But he continued yelling. He continued making the same point over and over and over, jabbing his cane toward her face each time he made it. He made one additional point too, that she should carry a bag at all times and put her skateboard in it, according to one of the numerous witnesses in the line. The skateboarder told him to stop yelling at her, that he had made his point. He continued. She raised her voice and told him, "I don't need your opinion." They went back and forth like this.

Wanda Power, a notoriously officious library assistant trained to check-out and re-shelve books, was up ahead in the line when this incident began. Almost immediatedly after the man started yelling, witnesses say, Power called out to him that she supported him, that she had seen the skateboard on the counter. "It was like a game of 'I spy my little eye' that kids play", the skateboarder recalls. By this time, as the skateboarder was reportedly holding her skateboard, the rantings of the cane-rager and the support he was getting from Power were gratuitious, not to mention disruptive to others standing in the line.

The skateboarder alleges that Power's conduct served to reinforce the cane-rager. "The more she told him she agreed with him, the worse he got. He was enjoying the attention." The skateboarder stepped out of her place in the line to avoid his cane.

There is no doubt that this cane-rager knew that his behaviour was being legitimated by a staff person. Power's I.D. card was dangled from her neck as she encourged him. Even without her I.D. card, many of the people in the line would have recognized her as staff. I rarely go into that library but I knew immediately who she was when people described her as being short, fortyish, with shoulder length wavy dark hair and a spare tire. Wanda allegedly continued to abuse her position of authority to incite this man, even when the skateboard had been off the counter for several minutes.

After Power paid the cashier, witnesses say, she picked up her tray and turned to leave, then stopped. "It was like her grand finale," says the skateboarder. Power held her chin in the air like she is prone to do -- I've seen her do this Obamaesque chin-to-sky pose too, even when she's walking along the sidewalk -- and announced once again that this man had her support. She then looked back the cafeteria cashier and encouraged him to support the man too as, "He has a point". The fact that he was using the end of his cane to make his point over and over again apparently didn't phase her. Neither did his verbal abuse. Once again he was reinforced and continued his tirade as Powers exited stage left. "What a fcukin' drama queen," one man said of Power, having previously witnessed her interventions over the slightest infractions in the library.

The skateboarding woman had the confidence -- confidence is barely tolerated by Carnegie staff -- to go to the library afterwards and tell Wanda Power that she had been wrong to intervene in that situation and encourage the cane-rager. Power said it was within her rights as, "I'm Center staff." The skateboarding woman responded, according to a man standing around the corner listening, "You're Vancouver Public Library staff; the library is separate from the Center." Power had no reply to that.

The woman asked Wanda for the name of her supervisor. It was there that Wanda got slippery. That fish called Wanda reportedly said, "Come with me to security, now". The skateboarder refused. Only at the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Center is female assertiveness considered a "security" issue. And only at the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Center does expressing concern about the conduct of a staff person make you a candidate for a meeting with "security".

A meeting with security generally results in a report being written on you -- never on an offending staff person -- and typed into the City of Vancouver "security" database. It is impossible to have such a report expunged. Should you even start asking questions about this report, you may find that anonymous witnesses will suddenly be entered into the report. You will never, of course, be given the names of these anonymous witnesses, never be told what they said, and never be able to adequately defend yourself. In fact, demonstrating persistence in clearing your name is deemed an additional offence, justification in the eyes of "security" of barring you from the entire Carnegie building including the library. This is the Guantanamo Bay in which the fish called Wanda swims.

Power responded to the skateboarding woman's request for the name of her supervisor by giving her the name of the Carnegie librarian, Beth Davies. When it comes to civil liberties abuses at Carnegie, Davies has shown about as much spine as an oyster buried in the sand of Guantanamo Bay.

Powers, of course, knows that Davies will hold her accountable for nothing as the two are pals. At the library they spend extended periods of time, along with other library staff, laughing loudly and socializing behind the partition that serves as their office.

Like most women who go to Carnegie though, the skateboarding woman is capable of looking after herself, setting boundaries, that sort of thing. She told Power not to interfere in her life in future, that she had no reason to interact with her and that if she had a grievance against her in future, she could communicate it through one of the other library staff. (She alleges that Powers has interfered with her previously over petty issues. Power twice told a man talking to her in the library one evening to be quiet, while allowing other people to whisper or even talk loudly in the library. As mentioned earlier, Power herself regularly laughs and talks loudly with other staff for extended periods of time. Power also told the skateboarder on a previous occasion not to bring food into the library; the skateboarder complied only to witness Power bringing the full meal deal on a tray into the library. Mice in the library don't distinguish between crumbs left by staff or patrons.) Power responded that she had a right to interact with her if she was in the Library. Rather than discuss this issue further, Power announced, "I'm going to talk to security." Power strutted out of the library and up to the front desk in the lobby and spoke to a security guard sitting with the websurfer-boy receptionist.

The skateboard did not take the bait. She left.

The skateboarder knows what many Carnegie members know, that "I'm calling security" is code for, "I'm arranging to have you bullied." Carnegie security staff have no more ability to work out Power's dispute than she does. A grade ten education is required to work as Carnegie security, as confirmed by job postings that appear on the Centre bulletin board. Some of the security people have been fired for drug problems. One is an alcoholic routinely seen cavorting with prostitutes in the neighborhood, at times with his Carnegie security I.D. dangling from his neck. Being ill-equipped to deal with disputes, Carnegie security men routinely resort to bullying tactics, giving orders like, "Another word out of you and you're barred!". If you ask Security boss Skip Everall his name, he may tell you, "You're barred from the building now!" And security personnel are in no position to give a fair hearing to any complainant; they're CUPE members and the union would be displeased if they started writing-up fellow CUPE members.

To be fair to security guards, they are being used and abused by the higher ups at Carnegie. It is not part of the job description of security guards to have contentious issues between staff and Center patrons delegated to them for resolution. They haven't taken the social work courses or advanced communiction skills -- "I hear you" -- that Ethel Whitty and other staff have taken. But staff from Director Ethel Whitty to Library Assistant Wanda Power have images as "progressives" that they won't tarnish by telling low income people to put up and shut up, so they delegate this dirty work to the rough-around-the-edges security personnel. Then if Whitty gets a complaint about abuse by security personnel, she concludes that she can't take sides because, 'I wasn't there, I didn't see what happened'. But she knows exactly what is happening.

It is time the Vancouver Public Library pull out of Guantanamo Bay. And it is time fundraisers such as the Libary Foundation and Friends of the Vancouver Public Libary start fully disclosing to donors the rampant human rights abuses being perpetrated by libary staff. (We previously reported that Library assistant, Johann, called security on a man who farted in the library. He didn't have time to communicate effectively with the man because he (Johann) was in the middle of a chess game.)

If you don't have the communication skills to deal with people at Carnegie Center -- in other words, if you lied in your job interview about how much you 'enjoy working with people' -- request a transfer to the basement of the Central Branch and finish out your career reinforcing book spines. It's time those at the VPL crushing the spirits of low income people with their addiction to calling security and those telling library donors about the VPL's committment to enriching the human spirit made an effort to get onto the same page.