On Monday, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson confirmed his support of the criminalization of dissent. Following the Vancouver Police Department’s recent threat of arrests against peaceful protesters, Robertson stated: “I support the Vancouver Police Department’s prudent steps to ensure that the right to protest is balanced against the right of all residents and businesses to peaceful enjoyment of public and private spaces.”
The Police Department’s “prudent steps” include the publication of a blanket letter warning the public that they may be arrested on criminal charges for “shouting, screaming, or swearing”; VPD Spokesperson Brian Montague’s April 17th announcement that the VPD were “anticipating an arrest” of an unnamed individual on unspecified charges “related to the PiDGiN protest”; armed officers’ surveillance of the PiDGiN pickets, five nights a week; visits to protesters’ homes and workplaces; and the constant monitoring of “all the protests that go on in the City of Vancouver.”
In a written statement released to select media outlets, Robertson attempted to justify Vision Vancouver’s antagonism toward protests in the DTES. “Poverty in the Downtown Eastside remains a very serious issue,” said Robertson, “but the aggressive nature of some of these protests is an unfortunate distraction from getting attention on affordable housing and income assistance in the provincial election.”
For two months, the picketers at PiDGiN have forced gentrification and its effects into the spotlight. Increased public awareness has made it difficult for the developer-funded party to maintain credibility as Vision Councillors continue to deny that low-income people are being displaced. The inevitable resistance to a worsening housing crisis is putting Vision’s pro-gentrification policies and unpopular land-use decisions under greater scrutiny. As long-time community organizer Wendy Pedersen said, “people in the community are paying more attention to the fact that Downtown Eastside developers have given so much money to Vision Vancouver.” Robertson is at pains to pass the buck on housing to the province, but on-going protests prevent him from successfully distracting Vancouverites from City Hall’s own culpability.
Robertson claims that “repeatedly targeting a single new business and its customers with protests is not constructive to solving huge challenges like homelessness and chronic poverty.” The pickets have, however, put a wrench in the City’s plans to profit from the rapid up-scaling of the DTES at the expense of its most vulnerable residents. Marketing low-income neighbourhoods through retail gentrification is essential to increasing property values, without which no profit could be made from evictions, rent hikes and unaffordable developments. Picketers encourage people to reflect on their place in the community and their roles at the front line of this war waged by City Hall. Consumers and entrepreneurs are learning that the DTES is not open for business until housing needs are met.
The Mayor’s critique of this resistance tactic falls flat in the face of his own failure to implement policies that would resolve the housing crisis, such as inclusionary zoning. The Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability and its free-market “solutions” are purely counter-productive. The Vision Council has proven unwilling to address the root causes of the housing crisis: rampant speculation, oligopoly, and corruption. The latest City Hall proposal to create a “technology/innovation hub” at Main and Hastings further exposes their indifference to the community’s concerns.
Consecutive increases in police budget have given the VPD more resources for a dual strategy of heightened ticketing in the DTES and the increased criminalization of protest. Under Robertson’s direction, Vancouver’s police have been pressed into a campaign of harassment and intimidation against democratic protests perceived as anti-business. This misapplication of criminal law, in what is at most a matter for civil injunction, clearly signals political interference by the City of Vancouver.
Brendan Caron
April 26, 2013 at 10:25 pm
The mayor and his crew are corrupt. RAMP in the course of the Public Hearing for Rize filmed the entire proceedings, In it you will find that half of those that spoke for the project either did not live in the community or had a vested interest in making use of the CAC that Rize was attempting to entice the community with. This skewed the numbers which were then followed by the media presenting a picture of there not being a wholesale community against the project. Sort of looked 2 to 1 against. On the smallest site they are going to put the biggest building. Rize had been amassing its land for five years. They had been working with the City Planners for years and when the Planners duped the community into labelling Kingsgate Mall and the IGA property as being ripe for high rise development they cleared the way for the developers.. What they did was take the places where the community shopped and placed the citizens in the reality that there would be no place to shop when development started. They would have to move to where they could do their buying of staples and clothing. They are corrupt and in collusion with the developers. Both the City Planners and the Council have colluded to pay their debt to the developers for giving them the finances to fill their campaign coffers. Rising property values is another aspect of this egregious affront to Democracy.
Leona
April 26, 2013 at 11:23 pm
PROFIT OVER PEOPLE
Lenore Clemens
April 27, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Just so people know, it is open house in “party city” DTES a la Robertson. According to the Mayor of Vancouver, (who doesn’t live here) you are always welcome to come into our neighbourhood, get drunk, yell and shout obscenities or whatever you feel like right outside our homes. You can have your bass music blaring at high decibels at 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m. where individuals, families & children are trying to sleep. That is, you can if you don’t live here. So come on and party down Vancouver, disturb our peace, the police won’t bother you much.
There is no need to be respectful about people’s sleep or well-being or rights, if they are poor and/or live in the DTES because the City of Vancouver agrees with you. No worries, even if called often enough and the police MIGHT come, they will only give you a little warning to quiet down; but they won’t make you leave, shut you up, or take you to jail for disturbing the peace. And they won’t stay to wait to ensure you have stopped disturbing the peace and have left.
However, if you live here, and care about your friends & neighbours, and do some picketing for rights and to get the truth out, beware. Even though any noise you make is during regular hours, even though you do not get anywhere near the decibel level of the party people, you could be arrested and jailed for “disturbing the peace.”
What is really disturbing the peace of our neighbourhood is the constant on-going, nerve-wracking building from gentrification during the day that slowly shifts over into the streams of loud, rude costumers going to restaurants or noveau art scenes, who think the sidewalk is part of their party-zone until whatever time they want to go. Don’t worry, the mayor and police love you, you have money. Don’t worry, people who are poor have no right to decent living situations, people who are poor have no right to call in about disturbing the peace by people who use our neighbourhood for their entertainment zone and get results. Don’t worry, the rights of those who want some peace in their neighbourhood, in our neighbourhood, even the right to speak up against lies, won’t be respected.
Tim
April 27, 2013 at 4:12 pm
Writers Kim Hearty and Nicholas Ellan would have more credibility than they do but for one fact: they carefully omitted to tell Mainlander’s readers that they — personally — are organizers of the Pidgin pickets.
Hearty and Ellan write, “For two months, the picketers at PiDGiN have forced gentrification and its effects into the spotlight. Increased public awareness has made it difficult for the developer-funded party to maintain credibility as Vision Councillors continue to deny that low-income people are being displaced.”
All objectivity flew out the window in that single, self-congratulatory boast.
When they write a piece praising the picketers at Pidgin, they are actually praising themselves. It’s like Conrad Black praising Hollinger. Ridiculous.
Nicholas Ellan
April 27, 2013 at 11:24 pm
Hey Tim, thanks for the feedback – it’s hard to break into claims about oneself in the midst of a journalism piece, but do note that Kim Hearty acknowledged her role in the pickets in a previous article found here: https://themainlander.com/2013/03/04/eat-the-rich-picketers-promise-to-shut-down-pidgin/
I think both of us are pretty self-evident to our readers after a quick Google; there is no intent to deceive or “brag”. While I’m glad you agree that increased public awareness of the negative effects of gentrification is a good thing, I can’t take much credit for it. The picket is the result of the effort of hundreds of people, including residents and workers in the Downtown Eastside as well as their allies across Vancouver.
If you have any issues of fact you can contact the editor at contact@themainlander.com.
Tim
April 28, 2013 at 5:17 am
Thanks, Nick. I read the article you cited, twice. You say that Kim Hearty “acknowledged her role in the pickets…” She did no such thing.
In the article you cite, here’s what she actually wrote: “DTES residents and allies from across the city vow to continue picketing Pidgin restaurant at Carrall and Hastings until it packs up and leaves. THEY [my emphasis] aren’t asking for jobs, sympathy or token charitable gestures…”
Perhaps you could refer me to the article you had in mind? “They” doesn’t cut it. “We” would be more honest.
No one expects perfect objectivity. There is no such thing. We do have a right to expect disclosure of interest. If you read an essay about polygamy, would you want to know its author was Mormon?
Whenever Kim Hearty writes about Vision Vancouver, or the NPA, she is always scrupulously careful to declare that she sits on the Executive of COPE. Anything less would be disingenuous.
Stimpson
April 28, 2013 at 7:36 am
Perhaps its time to ask again how much money is spent annually on the DTES: $200 million? $300 million? Where does the money go? Having COPE trying to ride into 12th and Cambie on the backs of the poorest in the city while screaming for more money is offensive. The Pidgin picket has raised your profile but probably not in ways you want. It has been asked before why don’t you picket the drug dealers, pimps and johns and is answered with silence. Are they just part of the happy family the poverty industry has feeds on? Overly cynical perhaps, but 40 plus years of failed policies can’t continue.
Nicholas Ellan
April 28, 2013 at 10:29 pm
Your complaints were already hashed out in the discussion after the linked article. Kim used plenty of “we”‘s in her responses, and she also acknowledged her participation in municipal politics. None of that is off the record, it’s all available in a simple Google search. She’s been the media contact for the picket, she’s been profiled in the Tyee, she’s on the COPE website, etc: it’s there for all to see. She’s an open book. And she is not remunerated in any way for any of this.
I’d suggest you take your exacting standards for disclosure and apply them to the mainstream media – you might be surprised at what you find.
Tim
April 28, 2013 at 11:55 pm
You rush, chivalrously, to the defense of Ms Hearty’s position; in the process, you fatally undermine your own.
Your joint byline, ‘Vision’s VPD fails to silence dissent’, takes pains to congratulate the Pidgin picket on its success. You wrote, “The pickets have, however, put a wrench in the City’s plans to profit from the rapid up-scaling of the DTES at the expense of its most vulnerable residents.”
Strangely, you failed to mention — anywhere — that you and Ms Hearty are congratulating yourselves. You walk the very picket line you laud, without anywhere admitting it.
In reply, you refer to an another article in which — once again — Ms Hearty fails to provide full disclosure of her actual role. I gather you believe that your readers are entitled to no more disclosure than they can find through other sources, and by reading online commentary from other writers. This is a very, very weak position, Nick. And you know it.
It is PRECISELY because the mainstream have, historically, been so poor at self-declaration that we expect more from you, and from the alternative media generally. You have been as disappointing as they.
Consider: if Allen Garr wrote a Courier piece defending the recent changes to election procedure at Vancity, would you want Garr to acknowledge that he sits on the Board of Vancity? Of course you would, and correctly so.
You called your article of April 26 a “journalism piece”. In this, you are fatally wrong. It was an opinion piece, written by two of the Pidgin picket’s protagonists. You are entitled to defend, but obligated to disclose.
You expect no less of The Sun and the CBC. We expect no less of you.
Tim
April 29, 2013 at 12:17 am
According to the Globe & Mail [Robert Matas, Feb 13, 2009] in the previous decade the astounding total of $1.4 BILLION was spent in the DTES.
This figure, meticulously researched, is the sum of all public and private investment in Canada’s most troubled neighbourhood. To quote from Matas:
“I’ve worked in the Downtown Eastside for a long time, since before I got into politics, and I have never seen our community this bad,” says Jenny Kwan, the NDP cabinet minister who led the province’s involvement in the agreement, signed in 2000.
“I can say that honestly, politics aside, I have never seen such desperation on the streets. I walk down there in the early hours, I go down to the community, and I am literally stepping over bodies.”
This does not sound like money well spent, nor progress on any human front.
The Pidgin picket occupies the tragic ground of those who defend the status quo, and want more of the same, $1.4 BILLION later.
MANY people are asking your question, Mr. Stimpson: why does the Carnegie Action Project and its allies attack restaurants, and ignore drug dealers?
Nicholas Ellan
April 29, 2013 at 2:35 am
Tim, I appreciate your concerns, but they have nothing to do with the core of the article. Either the VPD’s conduct is legal or it is not. Our personal backgrounds are utterly irrelevant. And I do not believe our legal analysis, nor that of lawyers who have been kind enough to weigh in, is in the wrong. There is no conflict of interest here, and no disclosure needed; all that is present is a shared interest in maintaining our collective rights as private citizens. Illegal institutional infringement of Charter rights affects you, just as much as it affects me.
Anyway, I’m overcommenting on my own article here now, but please feel free to get in touch with me directly if you’d like to discuss this further.
Lenore Clemens
April 29, 2013 at 2:44 pm
That whole “this singular amount of money poured in and things aren’t better” when thought about in depth is rather meaningless argument for the DTES or any neighbourhood.
First there is no information so please specify:
what amounts of money are going where, to do what and over what exact period of time? What do you expect the outcome of a certain amount of funding, going where, to be?
Do people somehow expect a flow of a certain amount of money over one period of time to stop all problems for everyone? As if the DTES is a static entity which once “fixed” is done with; unlike other neighbourhoods? People come and go, it is community where many hurt & damaged people, poor artists, and many others live because there often is nowhere else affordable with some resources nearby, but it isn’t the same people always, and addiction & mental health issues are ongoing and will never stop completely no matter how wise or compassionate a society we become.
The same people must think, “oh, we’ve put this amount of money into education & health in the past so now all people will be healthy & educated & we don’t have to keep putting money there”. They may not understand it is the same, but it is. Why are things worse? Do some research.
Lenore Clemens
April 29, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Addendum: If all neighbourhoods were mixed, then what would the money flow look like?
Beatriz
April 29, 2013 at 2:53 pm
It is a fact that poverty is on the rise, the lack of housing a mayor cause of poverty, much of the poor’s income goes to pay outrageous rents for obscene accommodations. The recent increase of 20 dollars for people on welfare is horrible, do you truly expect politicians who cause poverty to eliminate poverty?
And as a poverty increases so do the laws criminalizing poverty, it is illegal to camp, to ask for money on the street, etc. etc. and now Mayor Robertson wants you to suffer in silence. I wonder why….
Tim
April 29, 2013 at 3:37 pm
You have answered your own question, Lenore. You just don’t like the answer.
Those who defend the status quo in the DTES want more of everything that has already been tried: more public money. More public housing. Massive public investment on every front. And zero private investment on any front.
If you read the Globe & Mail piece, you already know where $1.4 BILLION has been spent. If massive public investment were the answer, don’t you think that $1.4 BILLION might have done the job already?
And if $1.4 BILLION could not change the outcome, maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. As so many people have admitted, what we have been doing in the DTES has been a massive failure. Did you read what Jenny said?
Drug collectors still push women out of 5th floor hotel windows, and swarm Pigeon Park Savings every Welfare Wednesday. Drug dealers still command Hastings Street. Pimps and johns still exploit prostitutes 24/7. We still have an HIV/AIDS rate worse than Botswana.
And the Carnegie Action Project complains about restaurants and donut shops — and never never never goes after drug dealers.
Maybe it’s time to change the fundamentals of this losing equation, and turn away from those whose only answer is to pull up the drawbridges and defend the status quo.
And that may be the obvious answer you just don’t like. So, please think anew. Think originally. Human lives depend on it.
Theo LK
April 29, 2013 at 8:15 pm
Do you expect CCAP to dress up as superheros and serve justice to the evil-doer drug dealers?
Your analysis of and solution to the problems of the DTES is simplistic and naive.
Tim
April 29, 2013 at 8:59 pm
Today, they dress up as superheroes and serve justice to the evil-doer restaurant owners.
Why not take on a REAL source of human suffering? You know… people who sell heroin. Crack. Speed. The bodies of women. Perhaps CCAP knows the drug dealers and pimps will fight back…
Real naivete, Theo, lies in believing that people who sell heroin are no worse than people who sell sandwiches.
You picket sandwiches, and ignore heroin — and then wonder why you have no support.
the ghost of emma goldman
May 2, 2013 at 11:01 am
The juice king is a sell-out and the over-achievers attempting to shut down a business are a little bit, well, childish. Being born and raised in Vancouver I’ve seen this city go through some extreme changes. This latest attack on business is ridiculous. If you want to make a difference in the way in which this city operates then I suggest you: 1. shut down the Police by way of direct action; 2. shut down city hall by way of direct action; 3. shut down the financial center by way of direct action. Historically, a functioning and healthy economy is maintained by neighborhood business and the general care for the neighborhood by those who have a vested interest in its up-keep. If you want the drug addicts gone than go get yourself a weapon and get rid of the drug dealers, or, legalize the drugs so that distribution is controlled. If you want the sex-work gone than either legalize sex work or, again, head on out and bust open the head of every john and pimp you come across.
Politics is not going to save the residents of the DTES. The residents will save it by admitting that the institution has failed and it is time to run the community from an independent perspective. Stop taking hand outs and start running shit collectively, which includes the business owners of the community as well as the residents.
ACAB