Filed under: B.C, Civil Rights, Criminalization of Poverty, Human Rights, Intolerance, Poverty, Racism, Vancouver
Yet again the do-gooder & busy bodies, backed up by squads of junior “fascists” in red,are on a mission to harass the people of the DTES & the Granville street area.
Their crime,being poor,and daring to walk the public streets & spaces
Security guards in Vancouver are discriminating against the city’s homeless by telling people sitting or sleeping on benches to move along, to stop binning in alleys, and by following and intimidating them.
In response to the tactics of the so called “Goodwill Ambassadors”,an initiative of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA).
The good people of Pivot legal society & United Native Nations have filed a complaint with the BC human Rights Tribunal.
Laura Track, a lawyer with Pivot, said the Downtown Ambassadors program, which is run by Genesis Security and the DVBIA, under the guidance of commissioner Geoff Plant, singles out street people and impedes their legal access to public areas.
The downtown core and in particular the DTES & Granville street happens to be home to nearly all Vancouver’s 6-7000 SOR’s(single occupancy rooms).Therefore if one is unemployed,disabled,living on welfare,trying to survive on minimum wage etc the chances of one ending up in the DTES are quite good.
Imagine leaving your room to walk the street or to just sit ,along comes some junior g-man in a dorky red outfit telling you to move on,like you’re some kind of dog.Or worse…
the guards follow and stare at people they find “undesirable” and take photographs and notes for unknown purposes.
Not because you have done anything wrong but because you are poor .Also if you happen to be native you are even more likely to be harassed
To add insult to injury…
The monies being used to fund,what is in affect a private business program aimed at forcing the poor from Vancouver’s public spaces & streets,are public funds.
Non-Partisan Association councillors “ignored council process and staff recommendations” to force public funding for a private business program through Vancouver City Council, a Vision Vancouver media release has alleged.
Read more here , here, and here
Also be sure to check out ‘Incivilty City‘ over at Creative Revolution.
Filed under: B.C, Criminalization of Poverty, Human Rights, Intolerance, Law & Order, Religion
Do not feed the poor…
At least not in my Christian god fearing backyard.Because poor people, are all just so dirty and scaryyyy.
BOOO…
Working class politics & spirit,that is….
“I’d rather waffle to the left than waffle to the right.”-Ed Broadbent
Shorter Bill Tieleman on the recent by-elections,on the Green party and on why the NDP would be best served by a ‘return’ to their ‘radical ‘ roots.
There was good news for the federal New Democratic Party in Monday’s four byelections — if it gets the message.
The popular perception about the byelections is that the only real winner was the Green Party, appropriately enough for a St. Patrick Day’s vote. The Greens increased their support considerably, more than doubling their vote in Vancouver Quadra, finishing in second place ahead of the NDP and Conservatives in Willowdale, and a very close third to the NDP in Toronto Centre.
That’s all true. But it’s not necessarily bad news for the NDP.
Crazy spin? Demented analysis of electoral politics? Not at all.
Because what both the federal byelections and the provincial poll clearly show is that the New Democratic Party can perform dramatically better — if it does two simple things — move sharply to the political left and embrace populist positions.
First I have to confess that I am some what ‘biased’,in that like Bill I am also of the opinion that the NDP needs to revive and revitalize its leftist credentials.
Anyway back to the Tieleman’s Tyee column.
On class,as the best single indicator of political support….
the basics that seem to have been either strangely forgotten or embarrassingly ignored by the NDP: the biggest single indicator of voting intention still remains class, or for the politically squeamish, income level.
…..recent Ipsos poll shows that. The B.C. Liberals capture a full 54 per cent of all voters who have an income over $80,000 while the BC NDP gets 44 per cent of all voters with incomes less than $80,000
On the Greens and the commonly held perception that they steal votes from the NDP.
In 2004, Liberal MP Stephen Owen took 52.3 per cent of the Quadra vote, followed by 49.1 per cent in 2006. The Conservatives garnered 26.2 per cent in 2004 and 28.9 per cent in 2006, while the NDP took 15 per cent in 2004 and 16.1 per cent in 2006. The Greens took 5.6 per cent in 2004 and 5.15 per cent in 2006.
Then came the byelection — watch what happens with the Green vote.
The Liberals drop to 36.1 per cent and barely win the election by 151 votes, the Conservatives climb to 35.5 per cent, the NDP decline slightly to 14.4 per cent but the Greens almost triple their support to 13.5 per cent.
All of which pretty much point to the conclusion that,Liberal rather than NDP supporters switched their voting patterns…
Where did that Green vote come from? Overwhelmingly just one party — the Liberal Party, which lost 13 per cent of its previous support. The NDP also lost votes but only 0.6 per cent.
…..The Green Party appeals to better-off, higher income voters — voters who in affluent Quadra had previously been supporting the Liberals.
Also when income levels are examined the Greens like the Liberals attract more affluent voters….
In the 2001 BC Liberal landslide, Gordon Campbell eviscerated the disastrous government of then-NDP Premier Ujjal Dosanjh, taking 77 of 79 seats and leaving the NDP with a paltry two MLAs.
But the Green Party, even though it increased its vote, failed to win a single seat again.
What’s more, the Greens didn’t displace the NDP to finish second in any riding previously held by the NDP, coming in second place only in those ridings already held by Liberals in the 1996 election. In other words, the Greens do best in the most affluent ridings, where the NDP is already out of the running, not in seats where the NDP is competitive.
That trend got worse in the 2005 election, with the Greens only second place finish coming in West Vancouver-Garibaldi, one of the safest Liberal seats in the province. Even then-leader Adriane Carr came in third in Powell River-Sunshine Coast.
Bills article then goes on to examine populism,and by using trends and statistics from past elections his position is clarified and in my opinion makes a lot of sense…..
Also worth remembering is that under Ed Broadbent’s leadership the NDP did better than ever.A feat the NDP has since been unable to replicate.
Mostly I believe due to its fudging and blurring of its working-class and radical roots.
A thinking and reasoning that led to,the disaster that was Bob Rae.
After one year on a low carbohydrate diet,60 members of the Namgis First Nation community of Alert Bay,have begun to reap some very positive health benefits.
Confounding diet experts and Health Canada….Benefits that include weight losses and even reversals of diabetes.
Weight problems and above average incidents of diabetes are all to common in the aboriginal communities of Canada.
The problems can be directly linked to the fact that traditional diets have in most part been superseded by the modern high fat diets,of the industrialized world.
Métis physician, Dr. Jay Wortman, believes that the western diet which replaced the traditional diet is the primary cause of the epidemic. “Obesity, diabetes and heart disease were unknown in these populations until very recently. No aboriginal language has a word for diabetes.”
This can only be good news for aboriginal & Metis communities.
Not only do they have a new tool in recovering/renewing their health.
A return to more traditional diets would not only help to revive local economies,but would also help to renew and revitalize indigenous traditions and cultural practices.
Adding more weight to the proposition that positive change,can and will only come through the efforts of indigenous people themselves.
Indeed a revitalization of culture and traditional knowledge is key to many of the contemporary problems facing indigenous peoples.Starting at the individual & local level and fanning out from there.
Every positive is one more step closer to that day,when all the negatives[and god knows there's enough of em] associated with colonialism & settler society will be but a bad memory.
I digress read ; My Big,Fat Diet
Filed under: B.C, Chuckleheads, Government Accountability, Liberals, NDP, Take that"dumb" voters, Transit
And chair,Liberal appointed & mandated “independent advisory committees”that handout tax monies like candy …
Members of a newly-established TransLink board of directors will be paid $1,200 per meeting — a whopping $1,000 more than what directors were paid last year.
To add insult to injury Chairman Mike Harcourt(former NDP Premier) then argues…
….the salary might even be low because the TransLink board is responsible for a $1-billion operation whereas the airport authority only has a spending budget of $100 million.
So let me get this straight not only do the appointed members get a salary for being on the Translink board they also get $1200 for attending meetings ?
Chairman Dale Parker will make $100,000 a year, an amount that is double what his predecessor earned.
Dollars to donuts the number of meetings(which includes teleconferences glorified phone-calls) “magically” go up & up.
Just in case we still don’t get it Harcourt adds…
….the new wage reflects the calibre of the new board.
So the former Translink board was….. ?
Who would have ever guessed ….
A former NDP Premier not only working for the Liberal government.But for the same government which took the accountability and democracy out of Translink.
Much to the consternation of BC citizens,elected Mayors and,the B.C NDP for that matter.
The attack on democracy had transportation groups, unions and the NDP hammering on the “Stop Requested” button. As the NDP’s Norm Macdonald, the MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke, put it during the debate in the legislature Thursday, “What every person who sits in here should believe is that proper decisions are made in the open. They are made by democratically-elected representatives of the people, and those representatives are held directly accountable to the people whose money they take and spend.” The Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Amendment Act, 2007, will reduce TransLink’s accountability, he said.
I guess Harcourt doesn’t have much time for NDP solidarity,never mind loyalty to his former party and comrades.
After all why shouldn’t he provide the Liberal appointed and mandated “advisory committee”, with a sheen of supposed independence.After that 29% pay hike the Liberals gave themselves they couldn’t be seen yet again to be gorging themselves at the public trough ?
Particularly when they can just appoint a lapdog,and an NDP one to boot.
After all why should Mike care that his former party might be facing an election soon,what does he owe the NDP ? Why should Mike care that the Liberal’s track record on accountability and respect for the democratic process is so shoddy?
And yet we wonder…..why apathy & cynicism have reached epidemic proportions.
