Olympic Finale: A Mob of Maple Leafers with Digital Cameras

I was in the crowd on Granville St. last night, the last night of the Olympics. Every few seconds, somebody would cheer in celebration of Canada's hockey win. I pointed out to my buddy that by the looks on the faces of many people walking by me, many weren't having that a great time. "Yeah," he said, "It's forced."

There really wasn't much to do, other than wander up and down Granville St. looking at people wearing maple leaf capes or waving maple leaf flags. I pointed out to my buddy that in some countries, like Mexico, people would be dancing in the street.





Those who seemed to be thrilled by the mob of Maple Leafers were small children. A little boy walking through the mob, holding his father's hand, was looking up with a smile. A little girl being pushed in a stroller was looking up with a genuine look of amazement on her face.


It was one big photo op. Digital cameras were as ubiquitous as Maple Leafs. That was the part I found most interesting, because you wouldn't have seen it ten years ago: every body with a camera either snapping or posing. Nobody worrying about the cost of developing film. Everybody a journalist of some sort.

Homeground Festival provides Downtown Eastsiders with "No Media Zone" during Winter Olympics

A Downtown Eastsider took this photo of a woman on stilts standing in the crosswalk next to Oppenheimer Park today. The entertainer was at the Homeground Festival, an event to provide Downtown Eastsiders with "sanctuary" from the media during the Winter Olympics. There was a man at the festival taking video with a sign on his back saying, "Official Photographer", but there was also a sign up announcing, 'No Media Zone'.

I only stayed for a few minutes but I heard a woman singing, "Summer time and the livin's easy", and had a coffee. The singer was good and so was the coffee.

BC Civil Liberties Assoc. on Hot Seat over taking Orders from Olympic Protester

Questions are being raised about the neutrality of the BC Civil Liberties Association and its director David Eby in the wake of Saturday's violent protest by anti-Olympics anarchists in downtown Vancouver.

Eby told CKNW that the BCCLA had not sent "Legal Observers" to the event. He said the organizers of the protest had asked the BCCLA not to send Legal Observers because they were concerned that they had been infiltrated by the police and that any photos they took could be used against them (an indication that they planned to break the law.)

A CTV reporter who had attended the protest, contradicted Eby. Lisa (I didn't get her surname) told CKNW that she had seen Legal Observers there. I too saw them in photos that a blog photographer had taken at the protest. In fact, as the photographer showed me photos and asked me to help decide which to post and which to delete, I pointed out a couple of Legal Observers in their trademark orange t-shirts in one of the photos. I have since asked the photographer about that photo but it was deleted along with most of the others not selected for posting.

When the CTV reporter contradicted Eby, CKNW gave him an opportunity to respond. In a voice that was a tad stuttering, Eby said that after the violence began, "we received instructions" to send Legal Observers. But by the time the Legal Observers arrived, he explained, the violence was over and they got no photos of the violence or of the arrests.

A woman identified as Lauren Gill interviewed on a video shot by Independent Media at the protest, appeared to contradict Eby's claim that Legal Observers arrived after the violence and arrests were over. In the video posted on Youtube, Gill stood on the street in the midst of violence and criticized police aggressively arresting protesters. "They won't talk to our Legal Observers", she said.

The blog photographer recalls speaking to two female Legal Observers on Georgia St. around Nicola or possibly a short time before they got to Nicola, after the window of a bank on Seymour St and a bank window on Howe St. had been broken but well before the protest ended on Robson St. The blog photographer told the Legal Observers that one of the protesters had hit somebody with a hammer, "Well, these things happen," said a Legal Observer who said she was a law student. "No, these things don't just happen," the blog photographer told her. To hit someone with hammer involves lifting it.

Eby's claim that the BCCLA "received instructions" from protesters, raises concerns that the BCCLA is not neutral, that they are taking orders from a group of anarchists known for violence.

The BCCLA, under Eby, has been vigilante in relation to police abuses of power -- I think Eby has been doing an excellent job of attempting to ensure police accountability -- but, it was pointed out on CKNW, the BCCLA doesn't seem as interested in the illegal conduct of protesters. They seem to be taking sides. Is this how the Legal Society funding the BCCLA intends for Eby to act?

Before becoming Director of the BCCLA, Eby was head of Pivot Legal Society, which works to ensure that the civil liberties of the poor are respected on the Downtown Eastside (although they have always appeared to exempt abuses by unionized workers on the Downtown Eastside such as security guards at Carnegie Centre, while advertising for people to come forward with accounts of abuse by private security guards.) These protesters are people they would defend. Eby may not be adequately distinguishing between his old role at Pivot and his new role at the BCCLA.

Riot Promised for 2010 Olympics Happened Saturday

Photo: Demonstrators gather at Thornton Park on Saturday, the morning after the opening of the 2010 Olympics.

Anarchists in Vancouver, Canada have been promising "Riot 2010" for a few years now, and it happened Saturday. A crowd of roughly 200 people, mostly in their 20s, many dressed in full black regalia with their faces covered by cloth masks, assembled this morning at 8:30 at Thornton Park outside the city's main train station in preparation for some post-corn flakes and orange juice state smashing.

Black flags fluttered in the wind and misty rain, and yellow jacketed cops on bicycles circled nervously as the crowd of demonstrators began a confused march within the park trying to find a way onto Main St., a major artery in the city leading to Hastings St., the main route to the central business district, past which the march was to end, at Denman St. in the city's West End.

The marchers found their way to Main St. and onto the road itself, leaving behind at least three people in wheel-chairs, one of whom complained, "These young people move so fast." The youths were in a hurry, indeed, at least to make their presence felt on opening day of Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics. Blocking traffic with their bodies, the marchers also added orange pylons and trash to the scene as they passed, throwing anything they could find onto the street. The crowd surged toward Hastings St.

At the intersection of Main and Hastings, the rotten core of the old city business district, the marchers made their way through the worst of the city's skid road. Seeing them come, the area's street people, ranging from old alcoholics to young crack heads and professoinal povertarians drew back from the black-clad protestors, a few street people hurling insults, one particularly gnarled old drunk yelling, "Get a job." The protest leaders, failing to make the turn, found themselves on a minor street and had to back themselves up to continue down Hastings toward the City centre.

Turning left on Hastings they marched through the guts of skid road, angering those street people who scavenge from dumpsters to find goods enough to sell on the sidewalk by the bottle and can return depot, forcing the street people to gather their goods and huddle over them as the marchers swarmed through and brought a small army of police in tow. Crack-heads too shouted abuse at the anarchists, sputtering and inarticulate cries of anger and outrage at the sight of well-off kids wrecking a morning's commerce.

At the War Memorial at Cambie St. the marchers turned left again up three blocks south and moved right into the first section of the central business district, at which point the newspaper boxes on the sidewalks began to land with regularity on the street, pushed by two young men, neither of them being in shape to push it himself, one metal box going under the front wheels of a city bus. Added to the noise of chanting, drumming, shouting young people and the grating noise of metal scraping across the pavement, the nauseating smell of spray paint permeated the air as anarchist logos appeared on building fronts.

As the demonstrators penetrated further into the central business district there were some arrests for violence, someone reportedly using bear spray on a civilian, some windows being smashed by a man who had earlier found and stolen an aluminum chair. Having lost a few members, the march continued down Georgia St. to Granville, another major intersection in the city and then past Granville into the heart of the business district. Anarchist rioters and police together marched down the sloping street till they came to a halt short of the Denman destination. A confrontation broke out between police and some demonstrators, the police moving along after those who turned south onto Robson St., Vancouver's high-end shopping street. At Robson the march came to an end, the police pinning the demonstrators against the wall of a pizza place, and at the opposite side of the street, police kept order as one irate bystander stripped off his leather jacket and sweatshirt and prepared to pound on a grinning and terrified protestor separated from his fellows, saved by a bicycle cop who jumped the curb and landed between the two men. Seven people were arrested, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu announced later.

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Though some buildings were vandalized, the Tax Department building somehow escaped damage, though nearby there was a scrum of policemen tackling and cuffing a demonstrator in the middle of the street, attracting reporters like... reporters. Others were held back, the police saying that some had been assaulted, one with a hammer.

At that point, police sectioned off three groups of protestors, pinning two groups against walls, a third group moving down an alley to Denman St. as the police, unarmed because, "things could get out of hand and we don't want anyone getting shot," reconfigured their plans.

Regular police in their bright yellow jackets form human barricades to channel the crowd, and behind the regular police, though clearly visible, stood the body-armored and shotgun toting riot squad, sausage-sized rubber bullets in their belts.

Across the street the anarchists chanted about captialism, and as drums banged and flags waved about saving the seals in Newfoundland, victory was declared; capitalism, if not actually destroyed, then at least given a damn good scare by anarchists on the march. The crowd dispersed.

In all, most people, other than those hit by hammers or those maced or whose property was vandalized, most people, and that includes numerous civilians who stood clapping while watching the police acting reasonably under duress, had a good time. Captitalism and world evil still exists, giving the anarchists a reason to continue living so they can continue fighting for ... whatever.

Photo: a newspaper box has been thrown through a window in downtown Vancouver

Homeground Festival: Trial Run for Corralling the Poor during the 2010 Winter Olympics

If you listen to the traffic station on the radio, you would have heard that the section of Dunlevy St. which runs by Oppenheimer Park was blocked to traffic for three days, from Friday to Sunday of this week. That's so the Homeground Winter Festival could be held.

The Homeground festival was billed in flyers as being "for Homeless & Underhoused Downtown Eastside Residents" -- that angle probably appeals to funders -- but the banner hanging at the actual festival billed it as being for "Homeless & DTES Residents".   I talked to a couple of guys who dropped by the festival at about 2:30 this afternoon and they said that there were about 80 people there, including volunteers. But they said more people seemed to be arriving later to pick up free tickets for the Punjabi dinner to be served at 5 p.m.  And the day had gotten off to a rainy start, but the sun was coming out later in the day.     

Photo:  Homeland Festival tents line Dunlevy St. between Cordova and Powell.

 

I talked to a thin native guy in his late thirties who he said he'd been to the festival on each of the three days and enjoyed it.

I talked to a caucasian Downtown Eastsider later at Carnegie and he said what others at Carnegie had said; he hadn't been aware that the festival was on.  He said he doesn't pay attention to posters.  He had bumped into a friend at Carnegie who suggested they walk over to to the festival to see if there was any free food.  When they got there, only festival volunteers were being allowed into the Food Tent.  So he got himself a coffee in the Music Tent and sat down and read the newspaper.  The coffee was good, he said.  And there was real cream to put in it.

While he was sitting in the tent reading the paper, a couple of stand-up comedians came on stage but he hadn't been interested.  I talked to a woman at Carnegie who said she found the comedians  funny in an "amateurish" sort of way.  She said the female comedian identified herself as "three quarters" native and told some native jokes; the male comedian may have been Metis. She repeated some of their jokes:  

The male comedian talked about the practice at Alcoholics Anonymous of giving you a cake for each year you're sober.  He said he had twice gotten sober for six months.  "I figure that should be good for a couple of cupcakes."

The female comedian said, "I've been working for the government for 15 years.  But after a while you get tired of getting a pay cheque for doing nothing.  A couple of weeks ago, that happened to me."  So she decided to rely on "nepotism" to get another job, but that didn't get her anywhere because none of her relatives have jobs. 

She also asked, "Why are there so many white people? Because they don't have any natural predators."  The loudest laughs reportedly came from white organizers.

Those would be some of the same white people who had a hand in putting together the festival programme with the notice at the bottom: "Homeground honours the traditional Territory of the Coast Salish people where we are gathering."  On the Downtown Eastside, you're supposed to act as if you believe that aboriginal people lived a noble, idyllic, life until the white man ruined it.  If you want to score jobs in the poverty industry, you have to pretend you believe that.  It's serious business.  

  

Photo:  Steps of Carnegie Center, Sun. Feb. 22/09

The programme for the festival announced that the "HomeGround Production Team" included Ethel Whitty, Director of Carnegie Community Centre, and Dan Tetrault, Assistant Director of Carnegie Community Centre.  

A Downtown Eastside musician said he was mystified as to the purpose of this sudden festival. But what Whitty wasn't telling Downtown Eastsiders in the flyers was that this was a trial run for the Winter Oasis Festival intended to occupy them during the 2010 Olympics.  Whitty did tell the Carnegie Board of Directors about this trial run in a Director's Report last year. The Winter Oasis Festival was also mentioned last year in a staff report to Vancouver City Council, as organizers were seeking a portion of the $1 million civic fund for Olympic Social Sustainability programs. 

Tonight the Hastings Express band will be playing at the Homeground Festival.  That band includes Rachel Davis, a former Carnegie Board member who got on the wrong side of Whitty. Davis began asking questions about why homeless William Simpson was banned from Carnegie Center just two weeks after being elected to the Board of Directors.  Whitty has never addressed this denial of democracy.  But she's a busy woman, organizing for the "Homeless and Underhoused".   

Fired! Judy Rogers' Legacy of Corruption at Carnegie Center

Judy Rogers has been fired after ten years as Vancouver’s City Manager.Judy Rogers has been fired after ten years as Vancouver’s City Manager. While Rogers acknowledged to the media that it was not her choice to leave the job she "loved", Mayor Robertson was twisting his tongue into euphemisms: “Technically, it’s a cessation of her duties by mutual understanding.”

The firing has swept Rogers off the world stage as the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver approach. She had been a City appointee to the 2010 Winter Olympics Organizing Committee in Vancouver [VANOC]. Robertson told the media that he will announce her replacement soon. She will remain as Chairwoman of 2010 LegaciesNow.

A pattern of human rights abuses at Carnegie Center was ignored by Rogers

Rogers’ removal from VANOC has come as a relief to alleged victims of human rights abuses under her reign as City manager. VANOC Executive Director, John Furlong, was asked last month by an alleged victim of human rights abuses and fraud at the City’s Carnegie Center to remove Rogers as an Olympic organizer. For a decade, Rogers had knowingly allowed human rights abuses to occur at Carnegie Center in Vancouver’s low income Downtown Eastside. Downtown Eastside residents pressing to improve this situation under Rogers had as much chance of success as the Jamaican bob sled team in the Winter Olympics.

Rogers was at the $292,000 a year pinnacle of a triad of women earning six figure salaries under whose supervision the City’s Carnegie Center — the “livingroom” of the Downtown Eastside — has gained a reputation for being Vancouver’s Guantanamo Bay. One of these women, General Manager of Community Services Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, “retired” earlier this year after a lawyer informed the City in writing that her civil liberties abuses targeting a male Carnegie member (which had been widely publicized and were known to Rogers) were “contrary to the rule of law”. The last woman standing is Ethel Whitty, Director of the Carnegie Center.

Correspondence signed by Rogers as early as 2000 leaves no doubt that she was aware of a pattern of civil liberties abuses at Carnegie Center. Yet not one formal recommendation for change by residents has been implemented.

Here is Rogers' legacy: Low income people are routinely barred from City services at Carnegie Center and expected to serve their sentences, sometimes without being told what they are accused of, and virtually always without the right to appeal. In addition, there is evidence that the City Security database is being used to compile fraudulent information about Downtown Eastsiders, an issue that Mayor Sullivan was asked to ensure was criminally investigated. But the Rogers' administration may be most notorious for setting a precedent in allowing interference in election results; a homeless man who accomplished the feat of getting elected to the Carnegie Board was swiftly barred from the building and from Board meetings by City Hall. And let's not forget the atmosphere of blog-burning which emerged at the City under Rogers; a witch hunt for bloggers was carried out at Carnegie to expel those calling for a forensic audit and squealing to taxpayers when the poor found doors locked to richly-funded computer and educational services. And Rogers never stopped allowing the City's official website to provide a link to the Carnegie Newsletter which is subsidized by the City while giving a political opponent labels like “blog bozo”, “slimy”, a “blank”, a “four year old spoiled brat pissing his pants”, a “pest”, a “neighborhood snitch”, a “dismal excuse”.

Not only did Rogers do nothing to curb civil liberties abuses at Carnegie, she exacerbated the problem. She allowed Whitty and Forbes-Roberts to hire a new Security boss, Skip Everall, whose experience had reportedly been at a hospital mental ward. Now a Carnegie member targeted by Security for some real or imagined infraction, has about as much power as Jack Nicholson up against nurse Ratshit.

Rogers allowed confidentiality laws to be ignored when convenient

Not only did the poor who use Carnegie have little protection from civil liberties abuses, they also became accustomed under Judy Rogers to having little protection under British Columbia’s confidentiality laws.Take the case of the barred elected official, William Simpson. As part of a damage control strategy when news media began asking questions about the barring, Rogers apparently had no problem with Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty appearing on CBC Radio to announce that Simpson had been found guilty of posing a WorkSafe risk. Strange, there had been no mention of any WorkSafe risk in the official letter on City letterhead that Simpson had been delivered informing him that he was barred. A year has gone by and he still has not been informed that he posed a WorkSafe risk. But a hundred thousand radio listeners have been informed.

A woman who was barred from the Seniors Center for talking back to a notoriously abusive man has also had first hand experience with the approach under Rogers' reign that confidentiality could be disrespected when convenient. Everall avoided telling the woman that she was barred – even though she saw him at least twice on the date of the barring -- and she was instead informed by an alcoholic dumpster diver. When the woman complained, Whitty told her during a taped conversation that it was “not practical” for Everall to find her in the building to inform her himself. But it is apparently practical to break confidentiality laws.

Again, none of this is news to Rogers. Rewind to a 2000 case involving the mysterious barring that occurred a little too conveniently after a woman had spoken up about ongoing sexual harassment. Rogers personally handled that case and was aware that the barring had been executed on behalf of the City of Vancouver by a self-acknowledged ‘John’ who was vocal about his sex life with a prostitute when he volunteered once a week as a coffee seller at Carnegie.

Rogers lackadaisical attitude toward confidentiality in City institutions under her supervision may have caught up with her when it touched City councilors who have more power to create consequences than low income people with no money for lawyers at Carnegie Center. When City councilors attended an in-camera meeting about a $100 million loan guarantee to the developer of Vancouver’s Olympic Village, Rogers allowed an aide to breach confidentiality by telling the media that Council members had voted “unanimously” to support the loan guarantee.

When a confidential document was taken from that in-camera meeting and leaked to the media, an investigation was launched. Incomplete results of the investigation which was under the control of Rogers were leaked to the media, pointing to Vision Councillor Raymond Louie as the culprit. Louis was put in the position of insisting, ‘I am not a crook’, in the last week of an election campaign. He threatened to sue. Vision won the election. It was time to judge Judy.

It was not only City councilors who appeared ready to judge Judy, but ironically the union representing City staff whose backsides she had covered for years while they subjected the poor to civil liberties abuses. She had angered the Canadian Union of Public Employees during last summer’s strike when she distributed a confidential memo to City staff suggesting that rather than sincerely negotiating a new contract, CUPE was exploiting the strike so that the political left could win the next civic election. When the union-backed Vision-COPE party won the election, CUPE wanted Judy judged.

Rogers continued to cover backsides even when her own was being given the golden boot. The Vancouver Sun's Jeff Lee, who spoke to Rogers after she was fired, wrote, "And she made a plea for her professional staff and colleagues to keep their jobs, saying they were continuing to do good work in trying to wrestle down troublesome issues such as homelessness, poverty and the Downtown Eastside."

Good work? Too often there is no sign of work at all. David McLellan who took over as General Manager of Community Services after Forbes-Roberts got fired....typo, "retired", seems to have done nothing about fraud at Carnegie. Same goes for Deputy Manager Brenda Prosken. Evidence that the Security database to compile fraudulent information about Vancouver residents should have been pounced on instantly by these two. Mayor Sullivan was eventually asked to ensure a criminal investigation into one particular case involving the alleged retroactive entry into the database of 15 allegedly fabricated witnesses without names. A 16th witness -- the only one with a name -- who could contradict this claim of 15 witnesses predictably was not entered into the Security database.

Calls for a forensic audit of Carnegie during Rogers reign may have to be revived now that a taxpayer rip-off at Carnegie is re-emerging under McLellan and Prosken. The problem of Carnegie taking millions a year from the taxpayer but not consistently delivering educational and computer services was curbed to some extent when bloggers persistently exposed it -- but it was not curbed until after a coordinated effort by City staff to, as George Bush would say, "smoke 'em out", and bar bloggers from the building failed. This month and last month -- I've had several reports this week -- low income people have arrived at Carnegie on several occasions to find the computer room locked, even with the weather bitterly cold and people needing indoor activities. McLellan and Prosken have also not reinstated the homeless man who lost his right to enter the building after he got elected to the Board. At least one victim of human rights abuses at Carnegie would like to see McLellan and Prosken's heads roll along with Rogers'.

But that is unlikely to happen. Mayor Gregor Robertson, co-founder of Happy Planet Juice, who fired Rogers just four days after being sworn in as Mayor, says he will not be doing further house cleaning at City Hall. After sweeping Rogers out of the City Manager's office and off the Olympic Organizing Committee, Robertson says he's done.

Sweeping Rogers off the Olympic Committee will be easier than sweeping away the mess she leaves though. One alleged victim will be asking Olympic sponsors such as Coca Cola and RBC to ensure that complaints of human rights abuses at Carnegie are addressed before they lend their names to the Vancouver Olympics. The world is watching, and they may see a less than happy planet.

Anti-Olympics Activists Hang "Riot 2010" Banner in Chinatown Today

This afternoon at about 4:20 p.m., I was walking down Main St. near Pender in Chinatown when I came across this huge "Riot 2010" banner. When I walked back 15 minutes later it was gone.


But a sandwich board on the sidewalk outside remained.

"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.

City Management at Carnegie Accused of Fraudulently Manufacturing 15 Witnesses

It's not the first time City of Vancouver management at Carnegie Center have been accused of faking witnesses to support barrings and it probably won't be the last.

City of Vancouver staff are accused of faking witnesses in the barring of a woman from the Seniors Center on June 18, 2008. Carnegie Security boss, Skip Everall, barred the woman after Devor, a notoriously abusive coffee seller, asked him to. The woman says Devor had yelled at her and swung his arms at her to push her out the door, resulting in her raising her voice and telling him that she had been taking his abuse for ten years and she was "fed up" with it.

Everall barred the woman based on Devor's version of events; he never spoke to the woman even though he saw her twice that day and she remained in the building. When a staff person allowed the woman a peak at the Incident Report that Everall had written to justify the barring -- Everall and Whitty refused to show it to her -- she noticed that he had claimed that there were "witnesses". During her appeal meeting for the barring on June 23, she told Everall that she didn't believe witnesses existed. Certainly Everall could not support the existence of such witnesses. "When I asked him for their names, he told me, 'The only witness that counts is Devor'". She also asked him what these witnesses had said. He couldn't identify anything, not even generally, what they had said.

When neither Everall or his boss Ethel Whitty would give the woman a copy of the Incident Report, she exercised her right on June 18th to request one through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The City has 30 days to respond to such a request. It has now been 2 1/2 months and the woman has not received a response. But a photocopy of the Incident Report was leaked to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog and shown to the woman. She was outraged at what she believed to be retroactive evidence tampering.

Everall was now claiming that Devor's version, albeit a cryptic version, of events entered in the Incident Report had been “corroborated by 15 patrons in the lounge at that time.” The woman says there were nowhere near 15 people in the Seniors Lounge that day. “You won’t find 15 people in the Seniors’ [Lounge] on any Saturday afternoon when the sun’s shining,” says the woman who Everall identified in his report as a “regular in the seniors lounge”. “I went down there that day to use the computer ‘cause I knew the place would be deserted. I got a computer right away; usually there’s a waiting list.”

Not only did Everall and Whitty come up with 15 mysterious unnamed witnesses, they avoided questioning another witness who came forward in this case, one with a name and a face. This witness was a regular Carnegie volunteer who could contradict Everall’s claim that there were 15 witnesses in the Seniors that afternoon. The volunteer regularly goes down to the Seniors Lounge to buy green tea and was there when Devor and Everall were discussing barring this woman. “I tried not to listen,” he said, “I didn’t want them to think I was eavesdropping.” A few minutes later, Devor announced to the volunteer that the woman had been barred. The volunteer passed the message on to the woman later that day, which prompted her to approach Richard, a Security guard, to ask if this was true.

The volunteer/witness estimates there were “four or five” people in the Seniors Lounge that day. He did not see Everall speak to anyone other than Devor. Both Whitty and Everall were given the full name of this witness just after the incident while memories remained fresh, a fact that is confirmed by taped conversations. Whitty stated clearly on tape that she would talk to this witness. The volunteer says Whitty did subsequently bump into him at Carnegie but asked him only “about my music”, not about what he had seen in the Seniors. Since the incident, the volunteer/witness has dropped into Carnegie every day and says Whitty and Everall regularly say hello to him but never ask him what he saw – or didn’t see — in the Seniors Lounge that day.

City Manager Judy Rogers has for years known that staff at Carnegie are subjecting members to fraud and human rights abuses. It is unseemly for a woman with a history of condoning such practices to have been chosen to welcome the world as a member of the 2010 Olympics Organizing Team. Time for Premier Campbell to remove -- let's say "bar" -- her.

Blue-Scarf Housing "STANDS" Spread to 13 Vancouver Street Corners as Olympics Loom

Can’t people think of a color other than blue for a scarf? I thought the Blue Scarves were conservatives who meet at the Vancouver Public Library on Thursday evenings to discuss the threat to modernity by Islamo-fascism. But now people on the political Left are wearing blue scarves too, as they stand on Vancouver street corners to demand social housing.

Blue Scarf Housing “STANDS” are the latest action by the Citywide Housing Coalition, a group started by the Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP] in 2007 to ensure that governments keep promises to make affordable housing a legacy of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Every Saturday people wearing blue scarves and holding blue banners meet for an hour between 1 and 2 p.m. on street corners in Vancouver. They are there to demand that City Council protect Vancouver renters from having their homes converted to condos and that federal and provincial governments restore programs that built permanent social housing for low and moderate income people. They also want welfare rates raised and barriers to getting on welfare removed. “We believe that these changes are the primary means of ending homelessness in our city and beyond”, Wendy Pederson, a full time paid CCAP organizer, wrote in the April 1^st Carnegie Newsletter.

The STANDS began on Feb. 23 on nine intersections and have now spread to thirteen intersections.

(Photo above: A mini house used as a prop for the STANDS sits outside the door of the CCAP office inside Carnegie Center.)

The idea for STANDS came from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo whose children were “disappeared” by the military from 1976 to 1983. “They stood every week in a city square wearing white scarves until the generals capitulated”, Pederson wrote. “The scarves became an international symbol for protests against unjust and inhumane governments.”

Street corners with stands so far are:

• Georgia & Burrard
• Burrard & West 4th Ave
• Arbutus & King Edward
• Edward & Main
• Main St. & 33rd Avenue
• Broadway & Commercial
• Commercial & 1st Ave. (this one may have moved)
• Heather & 6th Ave.
• Broadway & McDonald
• Cordova & Gore
• Oak & W 49th Ave.
• Sasamat & West 10th Ave.
• Burrard & Nelson
  

If you show up to stand with the social housing advocates on the street corner, you will get a blue scarf handed to you. If you show up to meet with the conservatives at the Vancouver Public Library, you have to bring your own scarf. That points to a fundamental difference in the outlook of the two Blue Scarf groups.

City Admits Screwing Up on Condo Project for Downtown Eastside

The City of Vancouver admits it screwed up. And today groups fighting gentrification in Vancouver in the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympics fought back.

The Carnegie Community Action Project and other groups in the Citywide Housing Coaltion held a rally to express outrage that the City had evaded the legally required consultation process for a 7 story condominium development on the Downtown Eastside. Rick Michaels, the Director of Planning delegate for the City of Vancouver, has already apologized for what he calls an “inadvertent shortfall in the notification process for this application,” and an “incomplete notification process”, according to Wendy Pederson (in photo above with red loud speaker), a full time paid organizer with CCAP.

"The City of Vancouver may have been trying to sneak this proposal past us," Pederson said.

CCAP and the Citywide Housing Coalition, groups fighting loss of housing stock for low income people and pressuring governments to keep their promise to provide social housing as a legacy of the 2010 Winter Olympics, today held the consultation that they say the City of Vancouver was legally required to hold but didn’t. About 50 community members and housing advocates gathered today at the offices of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users on East Hastings and marched to a vacant lot at 58 West Hastings Street owned by Concord Pacific, Canada’s largest developer. The proposed project is called “Greenwich” and contains 154 market housing units, from two-bedroom to studio units. No social housing or other community amenities are currently proposed to be located on the site.

“This project got a rubber stamp from the city, even though it doesn’t comply with the Downtown Eastside housing plan,” noted Pedersen. “How can the City approve this project without talking to the elected officials that set the plan, or the community that relies on that plan?”

Joyce Rock of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House was equally disappointed in the approval, suggesting it would lead to displacement: “In what other neighbourhood in Vancouver would the City tolerate 32% of residents being at risk of displacement because of new development?” A meeting scheduled for today by the City to approve additional density for the site was cancelled after CCAP wrote to the planning department to express concern about the lack of notification that the project was moving ahead.



Taking a jab at the City’s lack of a consultation process for the Greenwich condo project, protesters jotted down answers to questions such as "What do we need on this site?” on three huge signs at the vacant lot where the proposed project is to be built. In the above photo, Jean Swanson, an organizer with the Carnegie Community Action Project, can be seen getting the process underway.

(In the center of the above photo, Citywide Housing Coalition leader Mel Lehan, wearing the red and black jacket, talks to a protester at the site of the proposed Pacific Concord condo development.)

Pederson reminded protesters at today’s rally that the City has also not given up their plan to build highrise towers on the Downtown Eastside. If they go ahead with that, she told the crowd, “we’re hooped!”

Protester Lies to Media About Being "Homeless"

Downtown Eastsiders rallied on February 29th outside the office of developer Robert Wilson who owns Archer Realty and Georgia Laine Developments. They accused Wilson of charging rents exceeding the amount people are provided for rent on welfare cheques, forcing them to dip into their food money to cover the rent. They demanded that Wilson return their food money.

Charging tenants more than the welfare shelter allowance is not an uncommon practice. Certainly, Wilson was not the only landlord profiting from this practice.




Wendy Pederson, the woman with the red hair and the "Stop Speculation" sign, was a paid organizer of the event. She works for the Carnegie Community Action Project which agitates for higher welfare rates and more social housing.

Pederson had been expecting to pay the bus fares of the swarm of people she took to the rally from Carnegie Centre via BC Transit. But the bus driver, eager to show his support for the cause, made a snap decision to give them a free ride.

Rally participants and media -- lots of people with cameras -- met at Emery Barnes Park and then marched across the street to the office of Archer Realty, the one with the yellow sign (which can be seen across the street behind Pederson.)

CCAP claimed on posters announcing that Robert Wilson was "Wanted" for "Crimes Against the Downtown Eastside". They claimed on the poster that Wilson "refuses to pay back food money" despite being a "hotel flipper" who had recently sold five hotels for a profit of $10 million. What Wilson did, of course, was completely legal. Most or all of the hotels he sold were to the BC government to create social housing for the poor and mentally ill.




Nobody answered the door at Wilson's office.

A pre-arranged line up of people gave mini speeches in front of an "End Poverty" banner on which the Olympic rings were depicted as hand cuffs. But first the crowd was reminded that we were standing on Squamish land, a reminder that appears to have become obligatory at such events. Speakers accused the government of not doing enough while speculators worsen the homelessness problem.

Participants also sang. In the above photo, Earl Peach a professional musician who is paid to work on music projects with Carnegie Center -- he once sent the welfare poor emails requesting $20 to be in his choir -- is seen playing guitar as a small group sings. The song encouraged people to "rise up" and fight "oppression."



A tenant of the Shaldon Hotel, one of the hotels which Wilson has recently sold to the BC government, wore a "Stop Stealing Our Food Money" sign and spoke to the crowd. According to her calculations, Wilson owes $54,000 to those who had been dipping into their food money for the past year to pay rent. He was charging $450 for rent while the shelter allotment on welfare is $375. Tenants were therefore taking money from the "support" portion of their welfare cheque which is $180 (for food and other basics) to pay the rent.

Holding the microphone for the former Shaldon tenant is anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson, author of "Poor Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion". Swanson is an unpaid activist with the Carnegie Community Action Project and is considered by many Downtown Eastsiders to be a mentor to Wendy Pederson.


Another pre-arranged speaker, Ada, told the crowd and cameras that she had been evicted from 324 Carroll St., a building owned by Wilson and now being turned into condos. Ada emphasized that as of tonight, she had "no place to go" and was "homeless." She didn't mention that her homelessness would last just one night, as she had been accepted into the Ford Building run by Affordable Housing at Main & Hastings, and would be moving in tomorrow. In fact, before coming to the rally, she had moved her belongings over to the Ford where they were being stored until a suite became available the next day. Her cat was facing homelessness though, as the Ford building doesn't take pets.

About 50 people attended this afternoon's rally -- including numerous reporters and photographers, which of course are the ones who really count. " The rally was part of an ongoing effort by the Carnegie Action Project and the Citywide Housing Coalition -- Mel Lehan, head of the Coalition, attended the rally -- to pressure the BC government to keep it's promise to build social housing as an Olympics legacy.


Thanks to D.W. for passing on these photos to us.

Poor Demand Food Money be Returned by Millionaire

Poor people on the Downtown Eastside are demanding that millionaire developer Robert Wilson return the food money he took from them. They allege he charged rents which exceeded the 'shelter portion' of welfare cheques. That meant tenants had to dip into the 'support portion' of welfare cheques, intended for food and other basic necessities, to cover their rent. The Carnegie Community Action Project is demanding that Wilson return a year's worth of this food money.

In fact, CCAP and it's paid organizer Wendy Pederson have put up posters intended to shame Wilson. "WANTED: Robert Wilson, Georgia Laine Developments, for Crimes Against the DTES." On the posters, it is claimed that Wilson "refuses to pay back food money for a year" despite being a "hotel flipper" who made $10 million selling five hotels. It is not, of course, illegal for a hotel owner to charge rent over and above the shelter portion of a welfare cheque. It is not uncommon.

Wilson is also under fire from CCAP because February 29th is eviction day for tenants at the building he owns at 324 Carroll St. (That building at Carroll & Hastings -- see photo above -- was in the news a couple of weeks ago when Nova Scotian Steve Seymour was shot to death in front of it.) Wilson is renovating the suites in this building, turning them into condos.

Ada, a Downtown Eastsider originally from Newfoundland, is one of the tenants who has to pack up and leave Wilson's Carroll St. building today. And as they say in the Maritimes, she is 'right mad' and is going to be speaking out about it to reporters today.

This is all part of a media event organized by CCAP. Poor people will march to Wilson's office at Georgia Laine Developments this afternoon and hold a rally. The usual tactics are being used to entice the poor to show up: free sandwiches and a ride to the starting point of the march are being offered.

One Downtown Eastsider who intends to attend the rally says, "None of this would be happening if it wasn't for the Olympics."


For article and photos of the rally, go to Poor Rally Outside Millionaire Developer's Office

Vancouver Olympics Protesters say: “Free the Fish, Homes for People”

Wendy Pederson, a paid organizer of the protest, is the woman with red hair and a blue jacket in the center with the microphone. The woman sitting at the bottom left in the light blue coat is Sheila Baxter, author of "Under the Viaduct" and other books about poverty.

Ada, who 'volunteers' at Carnegie Center doing dishwashing and other tasks in exchange for food vouchers, holds a fish at the protest. (Ada, your fish is upside down.)

Roughly ten brightly colored cardboard fish were held by people standing on the steps on the Vancouver Art Gallery at lunch time today.

The weather was more suitable to fish than to people, wet with puddles. But the sun appeared shortly after about 60 people gathered in front of the Art Gallery. They listened to speakers protesting the failure of oganizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics to make good on their promise to build social housing.

The protesters wanted the world to know that governments renegging on their promise to make social housing an Olympics legacy were considering coughing up $90 million to expand the aquarium in Stanley Park. In a handout at the protest, organizers summed up their case:
“While more than 2000 people are sleeping on our streets, the Vancouver Aquarium expansion is about to provide luxury homes to captive fish for $90 million. The fish aren’t happy about it and neither are Vancouver residents. “

With the exception of several reporters and tv cameras, the crowd was made up largely of familiar faces from the Vancouver left. Wendy Pederson, a key organizer of the event is becoming a big fish in their little pond. "Our governments are rolling in dough," Pederson, a full-time paid organizer for the Carnegie Action Project on the Downtown Eastside, told the crowd as she held a microphone on the steps. "All of the money they spend on these tourist projects and then on top of that, last year the province had a 4.1 billion dollar surplus. That’s money on top of all of their spending.”

Dag Walker, a blogger at the Vancouver site, Covenant Zone, has a different take on the surplus. "If the government has a 4.1 billion dollar surplus, they should be cutting taxes."

The Carnegie Action Project and the other groups which organized the protest, Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users [VANDU], Citywide Housing Coalition, and Students for a Democratic Society, had one key demand: that the British Columbia government get to work right away and build 3,200 units of social housing.

The handout highlighting key points revealed a sense of entitlement characteristic of such protests: “Do I need to grow gills to get a home?”, Clyde Wright, Vice President, Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction and Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users member, was quoted as saying.

Some taxpayers take issue with this sense of entitlement. An argument heard on talk radio, for example, is that many working people can’t afford to live in downtown Vancouver so why should we build government housing downtown for welfare recipients and drug addicts.

Walker dismisses these left-wing protesters as "Sunday School teachers who think they know best and always need more money from the congregation for missionary work." Statements like the following from Pederson make him wince: "[The hand-made fish] represent our deep concern and love for those who are most harmed by those government policies. And it's shameful that they look after business interests and not after the interests of those who are most vulnerable."

A little girl – protesters say she was Pederson’s four yr. old daughter – stood with her head and arms poking out of holes cut into a big plastic red and gold fish, as her mother and others spoke. But like some taxpayers, she got tired of it real fast. She left with a pouty face.