Downtown Eastside: July 2008 Archives

Interesting how the final impetus was the pathetic tokenism of a monthly visit by a planner to the DTES for supposed 'consultation' and even that was rejected.

Whether running on the Vision ticket or the COPE ticket or the Wallabies ticket I don't really care.

A good man with heart, courage and imagination putting himself forward is excellent.

It's the imagination he has shown which is the greatest asset.

The DTES does not need more $$$, but simply imaginative ideas involvingly implemented and David Eby I believe gets this.

From the Metro......

Lawyer in running
JEFF HODSON/METRO VANCOUVER
14 July 2008 02:12

Pivot lawyer David Eby, a well-known Downtown Eastside housing advocate, on Commercial Drive yesterday, is seeking a city council nomination with Vision Vancouver.


JEFF HODSON/METRO VANCOUVER

A well-known Downtown Eastside housing advocate has his sights set on Vancouver's City Hall -- hoping to effect more change from within the system than he did as an outsider looking in.

Pivot lawyer David Eby, 31, announced Thursday that he would be seeking a city council nomination with Vision Vancouver in November's civic election.

"That was a real struggle for me, deciding whether I would be more effective on the ground or in council," said Eby, at Grandview Park off Commercial Drive yesterday.

"I realized that as much work as we did (reaching out) to the community, going to council and in the media, we weren't getting as far as we should have."

The event that convinced him to run was a proposal by Vision Coun. Tim Stevenson to locate a city office in the Downtown Eastside.

The proposal, Eby said, was whittled down to having a city planner work one day a month out of the Carnegie Centre. In the end, even the reduced proposal was defeated.

"That was incredibly frustrating," Eby said. "The NPA was not interested in input from the community or reaching out to the community. And that's not just the Downtown Eastside, that's all over Vancouver. I really want to be a part of changing that."

by Kevin Griffin
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, July 12, 2008


Karen Jamieson's Stand Your Ground II, part of Dancing On The Edge 2008.
CREDIT: Handout

Stand Your Ground - Act II
By Karen Jamieson Dance
Part of the Dancing on the Edge Festival

Karen Jamieson's Stand Your Ground - Act II wasn't a traditional dance performance. Performers and audience members often mixed and mingled, most venues were outdoors, and more than half of the performers were dancers with minimal training.

So if you judged Stand Your Ground by the same criteria as a professional dance production at a venue such as Playhouse, you'd have to say it didn't measure up. But that wouldn't be fair to Stand Your Ground. It would be more accurate to say that it was more of a community experience.

Stand Your Ground started with a brief introduction and solo dance on the back patio of the Firehall. Behind the audience, there was a loud metallic rattling sound: the rest of the performers were at the fence waiting to be let in. The 11 performers fanned out and personally invited each of the 20 or so audience members on a journey through the Downtown Eastside.

by Kevin Griffin
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, July 12, 2008


Karen Jamieson's Stand Your Ground II, part of Dancing On The Edge 2008.
CREDIT: Handout

Stand Your Ground - Act II
By Karen Jamieson Dance
Part of the Dancing on the Edge Festival

Karen Jamieson's Stand Your Ground - Act II wasn't a traditional dance performance. Performers and audience members often mixed and mingled, most venues were outdoors, and more than half of the performers were dancers with minimal training.

So if you judged Stand Your Ground by the same criteria as a professional dance production at a venue such as Playhouse, you'd have to say it didn't measure up. But that wouldn't be fair to Stand Your Ground. It would be more accurate to say that it was more of a community experience.

Stand Your Ground started with a brief introduction and solo dance on the back patio of the Firehall. Behind the audience, there was a loud metallic rattling sound: the rest of the performers were at the fence waiting to be let in. The 11 performers fanned out and personally invited each of the 20 or so audience members on a journey through the Downtown Eastside.

The next performance was at the corner of Gore and East Hastings in front of First United Church. Four performers splayed their bodies against a wall as if listening to the stories in the bricks while a dancer pirouetted and danced on the sidewalk.

On the other side of East Hastings, the entrepreneurs who sell second-hand shirts, bracelets and books on the street were honoured with songs and attention.

A few doors west, a first nations woman blessed the audience with pungent burning sweetgrass. In front of the Ovaltine Cafe, a part of the community since 1943, we were served water from handleless ceramic cups used for Chinese tea.

Around the corner on Main, we all stood in a semi-circle in front of The Listening Post on the ground floor of Bruce Eriksen Place, the social housing complex named after the social activist and Downtown Eastside champion who died in 1997. From the mural on the side of the building, likenesses of Eriksen looked down on us standing on the sidewalk. Standing with three other drummers, a first nations woman drummed and sang a song of thanks in her native language, stopped, and asked audience members why they were thankful for being there.

The final venue was in the Carnegie Community Centre. We all marched up the beautiful winding staircase past the stained glass windows depicting Shakespeare, Milton and Spenser to the airy gym where we sat in chairs around the perimeter. What followed was a step dance and follow the leader, all movements originating with the participants who were part of the Carnegie's Dance 101 workshop. At the end, each performer thanked each audience member for being there by shaking hands. Being personally touched and looked at by each dancer was unexpectedly moving. Stand Your Ground created encounters between different classes and backgrounds that would not otherwise have occurred.

That was clear by an experience that happened to me. The day before, I had an hour to spare between performances. From the Firehall, I went on a speed-walk through the neighbourhood. The streets were full of invisible acrid odours, staggering people and loud arguments.

It wasn't so much frightening as extremely unpleasant.

With the Stand Your Ground group passing through much of the same terrain, it was very different. When we stopped at one of the street vendors I spotted the distinctive cover of the first Dark Knight Batman comic book from 1989. I bought it for $2.

Without the artificiality of the performance, I wouldn't have been comfortable enough to pause and find something valuable. Stand Your Ground  allowed me to look at a neighbourhood I'd rather avoid. 

The last performance of Stand Your Ground - Act II takes place today at 5 p.m. at the Firehall, 280 East Cordova.

kevingriffin@png.canwest.com
© Vancouver Sun


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Just ask the police and doctors on the front line - harm reduction doesn't work

MARGARET WENTE

The Globe and Mail

July 12, 2008

VANCOUVER -- Sergeant Mark Steinkampf knows every back alley in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He greets the regulars by name and doesn't miss much. On street patrol one balmy evening, he spots a new face - a young, attractive woman on a bicycle. He motions her to stop.

"I can see that crack pipe in your bra there," he says. He pulls it out and dangles it in the air. "You're under arrest. Let me read you your rights." He drops the crack pipe and crushes it beneath his shoe.

The woman doesn't have drugs on her. If she's smart, she'll get out of here fast and he'll never see her again. If she's not, her prospects aren't good. A year from now, she'll likely be ravaged by drugs and infections, turning tricks to get the money for a fix. If she's very unlucky, she'll wind up like another girl, whose body was found by a dumpster, stuffed into a plastic bag like so much garbage.

Vancouver is famous for its innovative approaches to drug treatment. Twenty years ago, it launched a bold experiment to tackle the problems of the notorious Downtown Eastside. The guiding idea was harm reduction. If you couldn't cut off the drug supply or jail all the addicts, then at least you could reduce the secondary damage - HIV, hepatitis and the like - by giving people clean needles. You would surround them with medical and social services. Addiction, all agreed, was an illness, and addicts deserved compassion and respect.

Intense, uplifting and ultimately heartbreaking performance
 
Kevin Griffin
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, July 05, 2008

On a warm summer evening, Kokoro Dance summoned the ghosts of the Downtown Eastside. Using bagpipes and drums and Japanese butoh-style movement, they made the ghosts substantial for 45 minutes to open the Dancing on the Edge Festival.



Barbara Bourget performs in Kokoro Dance Company's production of Ghosts by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi.

Then they disappeared, to return for two final performances Friday and again this evening.

The first performance took place on the rooftop parking lot of the Sunrise Market at 300 Powell. As a backdrop, an existing mural of tomatoes, peas, strawberries and other colourful fruits and vegetables, along with neighbourhood landmarks, stretched the entire width of the adjacent building's west-facing wall.

Several minutes before Ghosts started, the performers walked up the alley entrance and took their positions on the pavement. In the centre were the musicians. Surrounding them all were members of the audience, standing and sitting on the edges of the outdoor performance area.

Vancouver's wildly successful restoration program raises questions about trade in 'density bonuses'

VANCOUVER -- Robert Fung is the most active player in Vancouver's hugely successful heritage restoration program, undertaking six of 25 buildings that have been saved in the past five years. He spearheaded multimillion-dollar projects on the promise of incentives from city hall intended to help pay extra costs associated with preserving the city's history.

But Mr. Fung now suspects the city may have a memory problem, forgetting its commitments to those who took risks on heritage restoration.

A proposal to modify the program to help other neighbourhoods would be a betrayal to those who invested in the projects, he said in an interview.

"We negotiated in good faith years ago," Mr. Fung said. Any move by the city to alter the nature of the program "is really reneging on a good-faith arrangement."