Uncomfortable Question: Why are People Shooting Up at Carnegie Instead of the Safe Fixing Site on the same Block

Operation Pheonix, the media project focusing on the Downtown Eastside, promised to ask "uncomfortable questions" of Downtown Eastside povertarians.  We're still waiting.

I have an uncomfortable question. During the cold spell recently, Carnegie members were finding it difficult to get access to a washroom in the late evening. The washrooms -- particularly the women's washrooms, I've been told by 3 women -- were being used as shooting galleries.  Three women told me that the first floor washroom at Carnegie had a steady flow of women going in to shoot up at night.  If a straight woman was using the washroom, a junkie would too often be outside the door pestering her to "hurry up" or asking, "How long are you going to be?"  People waiting for washrooms -- including those who support the safe injection site -- were commenting about those shooting up, "Why don't they use the safe fixing site."  It's on the same block. 

The fact that people are choosing not to use the safe fixing site was reinforced by a comment dag from covenantzone.blogspot left at the Downtown Eastside Enquirer today. 

"I asked the fellow picking up discarded needles and other fixings on the streets how business was yesterday. He told me it was good, that he'd gotten by then over 150 needles...."

Out of the Fire, Onto the Front Page

In the above DTES Enquirer photo, a Vancouver fireman helps a woman stand upright yesterday as she speaks to an ambulance attendant.  She had just been brought down the smoky fire escape of the Washington Hotel, housing for the addicted or troubled, as firemen doused a serious fire.  Firemen must have found her in the building because she was brought down at least half an hour after the fire started; that was after the flames visible in one of the hotel windows had been doused by firemen.  The woman got into the ambulance.

This morning she was on the front page of the Province.  

The Province ran a dramatic photo, obviously taken with a zoom lens, of her looking scared as a fireman helped her down the fire escape.  (You can see her crouched on the right side of the photo.)

She was also the focus of the lead photograph on both the Sun and the Province websites.

Hi mom.

Major Fire in Washington Hotel Fills Streets with Spectators on Downtown Eastside

Yesterday a Downtown Eastsider was eating lunch at the Carnegie Center at Main & Hastings when it became obvious there was an emergency nearby.  "I heard siren after siren after siren." The Downtown Eastsider rushed outside and saw fire fighters at the Washington Hotel next to the Balmoral Hotel near Main & Hastings. The air was filled with smoke.  

People poured out of Carnegie Center and the nearby hotels and povertarian organizations and lined the sidewalks near Main & Hastings, to watch the fire fighters.  A crowd also stood on Cordova St. watching the fire from the rear of the Washington.  Flames and smoke were visible in a room with a window facing Cordova St. 

The Downtown Eastsider took a few photos and emailed them to us.  

 

The photo above was taken on Hastings St.  The Washington Hotel is the one with the ladder leaning against it. 

Update:  It has since been revealed that the Washington Hotel fire left 100 people homeless. City Emergency Social Services arrived to help Washington tenants find emergency shelter.

Main & National

Photo taken Wed., Feb. 4/09 at roughly 5:30 p.m.

Province Dupes Readers with Ethel Whitty "Interview"

This is an example of why the mainstream media is going bankrupt.  Media outlets involved in "Operation Pheonix" promised to ask "uncomfortable questions" of those running things on the Downtown Eastside. Instead they have published what amounts to a press release from Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, with no mention of the fact that she has been accused of everything from slander to fraud. 

Yesterday, Carnegie member Wilf Reimer drew Whitty's interview with the Province newspaper to the attention of the DTES Enquirer.  It's actually not an interview at all.  There is no reporter named in the byline, just "STAFF REPORTER".  There is a formal, 'canned', quality to Whitty's responses which makes it virtually certain that she obtained the questions in advance and was allowed to produce written responses.  A press release.   Perhaps Whitty can no longer risk agreeing to a face-to-face interview where uncomfortable questions could actually be asked.  

In Whitty's press release, she used the buzzword "dignity" when discussing the homeless. Province readers were taken for suckers with this.  

Here's the real story:  Whitty's idea of "dignity" for homeless William Simpson was to deliver him a letter barring him from Carnegie Center after he got elected to the Board last year.  As Simpson stood on the sidewalk outside Carnegie during Board meetings, Whitty wouldn't even allow this elected official the dignity of having input via a cell phone that had been loaned to him.  Then Whitty appeared on CBC to slander this homeless man, but wouldn't appear along with him to allow him the dignity of being able to respond to her accusations.  

In the CBC interview, Whitty attempted to strip this homeless man of his dignity and reputation by announcing that he had been barred from Carnegie for posing a "WorkSafe" risk.  That was the first Simpson had heard of any WorkSafe risk.  No WorkSafe risk was mentioned in the letter Whitty had personally delivered to him, a letter in which he was informed that he was officially barred from Carnegie for operating a website which "features links" to the DTES Enquirer blog. (The blog had reported that Whitty was taking educational and computer funding, while the poor were too often finding the doors to these services locked.) Whitty has never to this day provided Simpson with evidence that he posed a WorkSaferisk, but that didn't stop her from breaching confidentiality by telling the world via CBC.  So much for "dignity".  

Whitty's willingness to falsely present Carnegie members as a risk is not restricted to homeless people.  Any garden variety poor person can become a target.  Like the woman who challenged the fact that she had been barred from a Carnegie facility and a slanderous report written on her for the City Security database, without her version of events being sought.  After challenging the barring, the woman alleges that "15 witnesses" were manufactured against her and entered into the City Security database.  Whitty has not been able to name even one of these witenesses.   

Allegations of fraud against Whitty extend to funding as well.  Whitty has been repeatedly accused of obtaining funding on the condition that it will be used to hire Downtown Eastside residents.  Truth is, it has been used to hire people as far away as Vancouver Island.  The person hired from Vancouver Island was even paid $500 in travel expenses, according to former Carnegie Board member Rachel Davis.

Whitty has a Masters in Social Work.  But the breaches of confidentiality in the CBC interview alone should be enough to get her license to practice social work suspended.  And the Province newspaper should stop passing her off to their readers as a credible commentator on the poor and homeless.     

  

Scottish Bagpipes a Hit at Chinese New Year Parade

Umbrellas lined Pender St. today as spectators watched the Chinese New Year parade inVancouver's Chinatown.

A few of the dragons in the parade wore plastic to keep the rain off their heads.

I thought I heard bagpipes. "Scottish bagpipes for Chinese New Year?"  But I knew that in multi-culti, multi-grant Canada, anything was possible.  

There were other cultures represented in the parade too, from Vietnamese to Haida.

I was looking at the CKNW mascot and then I said, "Hey, that's Christie Clark."  I listen to her talk show sometimes.  

 

The guy in the cap in the above photo was a 'rain on the parade' type of photographer.  The parade was an event made for photographers and there were many bending the rules by going into the street to get a closer shot.  Eventually a parade crowd-control Chinese woman came around with a loud speaker and started moving photographers back toward the yellow line by the sidewalk.  So a bunch of photographers were backing up all at once and the guy with the cap decides to squat on the street and change his camera's memory card.  Then he got angry at another photographer, saying that her umbrella could have poked his eye out. She was carrying a closed umbrella by her side and it didn't have a pointed tip.  That's the first time I've seen a photographer get nasty to another while covering a news event; I've always been amazed at how cordial photographers at these events are toward one another.       

I recognized these musicians, The Carnival Band.  They played at the bandstand next to Science World last November at the party finishing off 'Bike to Work Week'.