Christy Clark’s Pursuit of Inequality: The Attack on Public Education

Teachers across the Province went on strike yesterday and will continue for the next two days. With over 41,00 teachers walking out, the industrial action was one of the largest demonstrations in decades. Teachers withdrew services in protest of Bill-22 — provincial legislation against collective bargaining for salary, benefit improvements, class size and quality of education. The bill seeks to immediately force teachers back to work without a contract, but also undermine public education in the long-term.

Yesterday’s demonstrations followed on the heels of a powerful, diverse student walkout last Friday on the Vancouver Art Gallery lawns. Despite uncooperative rainy conditions, the student walkout saw an enthusiastic show of politicization by the province’s youth along diverse lines of class, race and ethnicity. The students made an overwhelming call for justice and equality for fellow students and teachers across the province who have been adversely affected by eleven years of neoliberal austerity measures, cuts to education, anti-union legislation, coupled with generous corporate tax cuts.

REVIEW | Photography between the panorama and the detail

Photography in Vancouver during the 1980s passed through an experimental phase that destabilized the technological determinism and established perspectives of image-making in the 20th century. Against the programmatic wishes of historians of the medium, photography was put in a position to resist the false dialectic imposed on it: neither a distinct, reified museum picture, nor a common, ubiquitous document placed carelessly in circulation. Revealing how the photograph and the practice of photography itself operated as a remnant of concrete social relations and political structures, as well as an extension of an advanced and experimental aesthetic culture, the medium was forced to lose its previous consistency. In this context, photography became preoccupied with expanding the field of the photographic itself through and within its own materiality, embracing its reproductive, serial and discursive qualities.

A fragment of this history is currently on display at the group exhibition c.1983 at North Vancouver’s Presentation House Gallery. Artists included in the exhibition — Marian Penner Bancroft, Stan Douglas, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Laiwan, Michelle Normoyle, Ellie Epp, Ken Lum, Kati Campbell, Arni Runar Haraldsson, (save for Ian Wallace) — answered the earlier international call for critique of the commodification of the art object through the expansion of the photographic image, a movement that found its fluid relevance in Vancouver’s nascent artist run-culture.

Gentrification: Moving On Up

This piece was originally published in rabble.ca here

In the poorest urban neighbourhood in Canada, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), gentrification has been on the move for decades. Plotting these new developments on a map of the DTES and walking along the now unfamiliar streets reveals gentrification for what it is: a form of structural violence.

Gentrification is the social, economic, and cultural transformation of a predominantly low-income neighbourhood through the deliberate influx of upscale residential and commercial development. Encouraged by municipal development policies, economic incentives for investors, and the mythical pull of the creative city, urban land is purchased and developed at low cost for middle class buyers. As urban theorist Neil Smith writes, “As a generalized urban strategy, gentrification weaves together the interests of city managers, developers and landlords, corporate employers and cultural and educational institutions.”

Despite pockets of low-income housing, the transformation of Gastown and Victory Square into a tourist destination with trendy restaurants and boutique shops is almost complete. On the western edge of the DTES is the massive mixed development at the old Woodward’s site/squat with over 500 condos, SFU campus with an arts center funded by notorious mining giant Goldcorp, and retail stores. This has set off a tidal wave of gentrification within a few blocks, with four new condo developments (Paris Annex, Paris Block, 60 W. Cordova, 21 Doors) and countless restaurants and bars, including those owned by barons Sean Heather (Irish Heather, Salty Tongue, Shebeen, Penn Bakeshop, Everything Café, Fetch Kiosk, Bitter Tasting Room, Judas Goat) and Marc Brand (Diamond, Sharks and Hammers, Boneta, Sea Monstr Sushi, Save on Meats), over-priced coffee shops, and designer stores. In symbiotic fashion, retail stores and cultural sites proliferate alongside new housing, rendering the area more welcoming and familiar for wealthier consumers.

Open Letter: Why Vancouver needs an independent COPE

This open letter was originally published in the Georgia Straight. It is a response to a letter originally posted here.

The time has come for Vancouver’s only progressive civic party to stand on its own two feet. The situation is urgent: Vancouver has become the most expensive city on the continent and the second most unaffordable city in the world. Our friends and family are being priced-out, as social housing is privatized and demolished at an unprecedented rate. People are longing for real change and real social justice.

As community organizers, the three of us are determined to turn this situation around and make Vancouver affordable for everyone. To that end, we are running for the executive of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) at this Sunday’s AGM. We believe that renters, who form the majority of residents in this city, need housing stability and firm rent controls. Existing affordable housing stock must be protected through stronger civic bylaws, and new affordable housing created through a robust housing authority. We realize that the only way for this to happen is for COPE to stand strong and independent of the two developer-funded parties — the NPA and Vision Vancouver. A few recent examples will serve to illustrate why.

Just last week, the Vancouver Renters’ Union — an organization to which we belong — successfully worked with 33 brave seniors to fight a 45% rent increase at Lions Manor in Mount Pleasant. The landlord’s rationale for the proposed extraordinary rent increase was that local property values are escalating due to high-end condo developments in this historically working-class neighbourhood. The current developer-backed city council actively facilitates this upscaling, but refuses to use its tools or influence to protect the most vulnerable renters. Unfortunately, Lions Manor is only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout East Vancouver, migrant communities, seniors and those hit hardest by Vancouver’s housing crisis are being displaced. To halt this process, it is essential that COPE withdraw support from developer-funded parties, and present an independent alternative.