Vancouver is located amidst a temperate rain forest which is, to a large extent being cut down to meet the needs of American and Japanese house builders.
My purpose in assembling this site is to counteract some of what has been written about our city and to call for change. While Vancouver has many worthwhile attributes, the quality of reporting leaves much to be desired. The daily newspapers are both controlled by a foreign resident, (who controls the majority of daily newspapers in Canada) and display a right wing bias.
Our municipal government is largely controlled by business interests. One result of this control is an increasing callousness at our city's council. Recent bylaws limit buskers to one per block, one hour at a particular location, and require the puchase of a licence, at a price which is beyond the means of nearly all of the local buskers. Also from our council is a bylaw to limit panhandlers by, for example, forbidding them from sitting on the sidewalk.
These iniatives have been implemented at the behest of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, some of whose members operate night clubs and trendy restauraunts in the downtown core to the detriment of local residents, who have complained of difficulty sleeping when the bars and clubs disgorge their drunken (and frequently loud) suburban customers at two a.m.
These changes come in a time of hardship for many in Vancouver. An increasing number of people are seen picking cigarette butts from the sidewalks, picking thrown-out items from trash cans, (these items are unlawfully sold by sidewalk vendors), panhandling, and illegally offering bus transfers for sale. "Squeegee kids", who wash the windows of passing cars for a donation of a dollar or two, abound. With the exception of panhandlers these occupations have made their appearance within the last couple of years.
The war on the poor continues on different fronts. The Downtown Eastside, which is the poorest urban neighborhood in Canada, has the highest rates of HIV disease of any of Vancouver's neighborhoods.The criminalization of drug use, which, despite ample evidence that prohibition causes the very symptoms it is supposed to cure, also has made it difficult to prevent the spread of HIV. Prostitutes are sometimes reluctant to use condoms, easily being pressured by customers who frequently do not want them,and the difficulty in obtaining syringes can make it hard for drug users to avoid sharing needles.The war on drugs- a war on the poor- goes on, despite dissenting voices from within the academic community, many of the police, and the community at large.
Legal protest is under threat in Vancouver, in November, 1997, during the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) held here protesters were attacked by police for having diplayed signs which read FREE SPEECH. Display of signs had been limited to a small area where they could not be seen by the press, nor by the world leaders in attendance. Protesters were arrested and released only after agreeing not to protest again during the conference. During the conference,our city looked very much as if a coup d'etat had taken place.There were armed police almost everywhere, helicopters flying overhead at all times and cameras on top of buildings looking down on our citizens.Some of these cameras are still in place and helicopters have since been seen doing search patterns over Vancouver.
More recently, the organizers of protests which occurred on International Women's Day, received a invoice fom the police for the provision of policing during the protests. The bill came to $6,600.00, which the organizers apparently don't have. This calls into doubt the right of anyone other than the wealthier classes to protest acts of government.
And our provincial government has been of little help. Elected as socialists, the New Democratic Party Has turned out to be the banker's best friend. Cuts to health care, education and welfare as well, have taken their toll on our social structures. Now they even speak of cutting corporate taxes!
Our experiences differ little from those of our neighbors in other places. We call for order! We call for the right to walk down our streets unmolested, for the security of our homes, our families and our jobs. We seek a social strucure which will encourage each of us to cooperate, one with the other, rather than engage in the destructive competition that requires so many of us to prey upon our neighbors. The current system, in which a citizen's rights are proportionate to his wealth is a sure sign of disorder.
For 5,000 years governments have promised law and order, and yet in all that time they have brought nothing more than laws. Some of us have drawn the conclusion that governments are, by their nature, unable to bring the order we seek.The answers to our social difficulties lie therefore, not in the political process, but in social action. The call, not for political, but rather social, activism places us squarely beyond both left and right.
THE WESTENDER, October 2, 1997.
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