Proposed Vancouver city bylaw takes dead aim at anyone who might express a contrary view or protest during the Winter Olympics
By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver SunJuly 21, 2009
In
the flush of bidding for and winning the right to host the Olympics,
nobody talked about how staging them might mean limiting civil
liberties.
It's only now, with seven months until the 2010 Winter
Games begin, that organizers and compliant politicians are revealing
plans to make it more difficult to exercise our fundamental
constitutional rights to free speech, peaceful assembly and free
expression.
For months now, police have been knocking on the
doors of known activists and tracking them down in their neighbourhoods
to "chat" about their Olympic protest plans. But that's only part of it.
An omnibus bylaw that staff insists is "critical to the success of the Games" goes to Vancouver city council today.
The
bylaw relaxes rules for Games-related events, limits free expression
and speech in public and private spaces, and grants sweeping
discretionary powers to Mayor Gregor Robertson and City Manager Penny
Ballem to do whatever is "warranted," "necessary or desirable" to
ensure the Olympics' "safety and security" and "protection of
commercial rights."
It also claims none of this is intended to impact political expression or the right to lawful protest.
That
might not be the intent, but it may be the result. And rather
chillingly, we may never know whether any of this is legal because
there's little time left for anyone to initiate a court case against
these rights-challenging changes before the Olympics begin in February.
I had been wondering for a while why the phrase 'civil society' as mis-used and abused by Sullivan and his cronies (and council staff and journalists who sucked up to this phrase) had such a nasty ring to it.
Then I saw this piece in the New York Times and was reminded of Ralf Dahrendorf and his wonderfully stimulating re-working of Marxist theory - it's not so much money as power that is unfairly and unjustly distributed.
This lead to much innovative re-examining of what constitutes true consultation, participatory planning, and even the title of a recent DTES paper - I believe called 'Not about us without us.'
Truly empowering people breaks the power attached to money and indeed removes the power implicitly assocaited woth money.
Time to re-read "Class and Class
Conflict in Civil Society" (1957)
AS you'll seee these ideas are exactly what Fearless, W2 and other groups are achieving in the DTES and why the stale hierachical organizations - Portland Hotel Society as seen two weeks ago - find loose progress and achievment so threatening.
(From the link above:)
Organisations:
These would be voluntary associations, and non-governmental or
non-profit organisations, social movements, networks and informal
groups. These organisations make up the infrastructure of civil
society; they are the vehicles and forums for social participation,
"voice" processes, the expression of values and preferences, and
service provision.
Individuals:
Citizens and participants in civil society generally. This would
include people's activities in civil society such as membership,
volunteering, organising events, or supporting specific causes;
people's values, attitudes, preferences and expectations; and people's
skills and in terms governance, management and leadership.As
an analytic, conceptual term, civil society is very abstract, even
somewhat vague, and certainly highly complex, seemingly resistant to
any precise measurement. Yet as an operational definition, it refers to
the activities, values and other key characteristics of institutions,
organisations and individuals located among the market, the state and
the family. (end quote)
Ralf Dahrendorf, a German sociologist whose
experiences in Nazi Germany led him to develop a theory of liberalism
and human freedom that often went against the grain of German politics
in the postwar period, died Wednesday in Cologne. He was 80.
Roland Magunia/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images
Ralf Dahrendorf in 2004.
His death was confirmed in a statement from Chancellor Angela Merkel,
who said, "Europe has lost one of its most important thinkers and
intellectuals." The cause was cancer, said his wife, Dr. Christiane
Dahrendorf.
Democracy and its problems preoccupied Mr.
Dahrendorf for his entire career as a scholar and as a politician in
West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. As a high school student he had
been imprisoned by the Nazis for spreading leaflets opposing the
regime, and early in his life he developed a deep suspicion of what he
called "closed, encompassing systems."
Mr. Dahrendorf
championed liberal pluralism, which he defined as a social system that
recognizes divergent interests and aspirations and puts institutions in
place that allow them to be expressed.
Democracy is "about
organizing conflict and living with conflict," he told an audience at
the Institute of International Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley, in 1989.
"The world isn't simple, nor should it be
simple," he continued. "It's rich because it's complicated. Let's learn
to live with this."
He explored these ideas in "Class and Class
Conflict in Civil Society" (1957), which famously proposed the
counter-Marxist idea that power, rather than property, defined social
class. Later books like "Society and Democracy in Germany" and "Modern
Social Conflict" pursued similar themes.
"As a scholar he was
always addressing human value problems in democracy, especially
freedom, but he was also deeply involved in the civic life of Germany,"
said Neil J. Smeltser, an emeritus professor of sociology at Berkeley.
"He bridged the gap between social theory and social practice as well
as anyone I can think of."
Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf was born in
Hamburg, where his father, a Social Democratic politician, was arrested
and removed from his job by the Nazis in 1933. The family moved to
Berlin soon after. Mr. Dahrendorf's father was arrested again in 1944,
and a few months later, Ralf was arrested by the Gestapo for anti-Nazi
activities and sent to a concentration camp in Poland. He was released
as Soviet forces advanced in 1945.
At the University of
Hamburg, Mr. Dahrendorf studied philosophy and classics, earning a
doctorate in philosophy in 1952. He went on to earn a second doctorate,
in sociology, at the London School of Economics, where he studied under
Karl Popper. It was Mr. Popper's "Open Society" that provided the
answers, he once said, to the great questions of modern industrial
society posed by Marx.
After teaching at the universities of
Saarbrücken, Tübingen and Konstanz in West Germany, and at Stanford in
California, he ran for a seat in the regional Parliament of
Baden-Württemberg. In 1969 he was elected to the federal Parliament as
a Free Democrat. He was a junior foreign minister in Willy Brandt's
first government and in 1970 became a European commissioner.
At a time when liberal democracy was under attack, Mr. Dahrendorf, as
both a university professor and a politician, held fast to the
principles of pluralism and personal freedom. His convictions were
Social Democratic with a libertarian spin.
He favored laws and
policies that encouraged personal freedom, a sense of citizenship and a
broadening of social, economic and political opportunities. Germany's
problems, he argued, stemmed from a belief in absolute answers and in
the yearning for an all-powerful leader to put them into effect.
In
1974 he was invited to become director of the London School of
Economics, a post he held for the next decade. He later wrote a history of the school.
He
returned to Germany to become chairman of the social sciences
department at Konstanz University, but in 1987 he accepted the position
of warden of St. Antony's College, Oxford. He became a British citizen
in 1988 and was made a life peer under the name Lord Dahrendorf of
Clare Market in the City of Westminster in 1993.
In addition to
Dr. Dahrendorf, his third wife, he is survived by three daughters,
Nicola, Alexandra and Daphne, and one grandchild.
The Grand March for Housing drew support from a wide range of groups and individuals across British Columbia, all of whom have had enough of the pain and distress caused by homelessness they see everyday, and are calling for all three levels of government to stop talking and act.
This shot shows the marchers gathered at the Art Gallery in front of the ironic excesses of the Georgia development.
While this shot is of a white board where people were encouraged to write their comments - the 'shovel' sums it up.
The march was passionate but peaceful, as several streams of marchers united before gathering at the Vancouver Art Gallery to hear speeches and entertainment. More about the coalition and future events can be found here: http://www.citywidehousingcoalition.org/
Outside Pathways as the march assembled, the Streams of Justice group's banner.
Looking east from the steps of the Art Gallery as the crowd grows.
Back in 1989, Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the
European Organization for Nuclear Research outside of Geneva,
Switzerland. On March 13 of that year, he submitted a plan to
management on how to better monitor the flow of research at the labs.
People were coming and going at such a clip that an increasingly
frustrated Berners-Lee complained that CERN was losing track of
valuable project information because of the rapid turnover of
personnel. It did not help matters that the place was chockablock with
incompatible computers people brought with them to the office.
"When two years is a typical length of stay,
information is constantly being lost. The introduction of the new
people demands a fair amount of their time and that of others before
they have any idea of what goes on. The technical details of past
projects are sometimes lost forever, or only recovered after a
detective investigation in an emergency. Often, the information has
been recorded, it just cannot be found."
So he got to work on a document, which is amazing to read with the
benefit of 20-20 hindsight. But it would take Berners-Lee another
couple of years before he could demo his idea. Even then, the
realization of his theory had to wait until the middle of the 1990s
when Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen popularized the notion of commercial
Web browsing with Netscape.
And as prescient as the CERN document was, not even Berners-Lee could
imagine where his basic design was about to lead. To wit, part of his
very modest conclusions:
"We should work toward a universal linked information
system, in which generality and portability are more important than
fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities."
"The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or
reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it
afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it
the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that
the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use."
So it is that on Friday, Berners-Lee and other personages involved in
the development of the Web will congregate at the particle physics lab
to celebrate. I can't make the event, but from one side of the pond to
the other, here's a virtual toast to Sir Tim Berners-Lee on a job very well done.
The number of Canadians who earned most of their income from the
arts topped 140,000 in Canada in 2006, according to a report based on
statistics from the 2006 census.
That made artists more numerous than auto workers -- about 135,000
Canadians worked in the auto sector in 2006 -- according to a report
from Hill Strategies in Hamilton, Ont., created for the Ontario Arts
Council, Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Canadian artists remain among the most impoverished of the working
poor, earning an average annual income of $22,700, about 37 per cent
less than the rest of the Canadian workforce.
And not all of that income is earned in the arts -- the census
doesn't ask how much artists might make as waitresses and busboys, says
Kelly Hill, president of Hill Strategies.
"Those earnings are included in the statistics. It's even more depressing from that standpoint," he told CBC News.
Final plans for W2, a 14,395-square-foot media-arts centre at the
Woodward's project championed by Gallery Gachet executive director Irwin Oostindie, are in the city's hands.
But, according to Oostindie, city council must approve them before the
November 15 civic election if he is to raise $2.6 million for finishing
and operating costs for the facility to open by September 2009.
"They've pushed us back with a whole bunch of more questions,"
Oostindie said, referring to the W2 report submitted September 2. "They
want a lot of detail from us, and we're a bit hamstrung because we're
not able to embark on a fundraising campaign and identify our funders,
because we're still waiting for city-council approval."
A proposal for W2, initially called the Centre for Creative
Technology and Community Arts, was first submitted to the city in 2006,
in response to a request for proposals from nonprofit groups for space
in Woodward's.
Here's
a familiar scenario. Artists band together to open exhibition spaces in
low-rent urban areas. Gentrification creeps in. Landlords raise rents. Studios disappear. Galleries collapse.
Vancouver's
Downtown Eastside is especially volatile, and artist-run centres such
as Artspeak, Access, Centre A, Gallery Gachet, and the Helen Pitt
Gallery, early stakeholders in and around the area, survive through
dedicated boards and staff, energetic fundraising, and occasional
grants. But what about the independent galleries, showing emerging
artists and attempting commercial viability without subsidy? Here are
three new or newish examples. They're some of the best of the Downtown
Eastside--and slightly beyond.
What are the chances of the economy in the
Downtown Eastside taking off?
Wendy Pedersen
Organizer, Carnegie Community Action Project
"I think it very well could take off because of Woodward's and if
there is more condo development that comes into the neighbourhood. I
think we could see Gap stores and bigger places in the neighbourhood
easily, unless there are some tools to manage change. We don't see what
those are. What is going to protect the small-business owner and the
low-income renter in the neighbourhood?"
Jorge Mar
Chinatown shop owner
"Not in the near future. Because of the price of gas and the U.S.
economy, especially in Chinatown here, we are dependent on the tourists
and that doesn't help. The past three years have been going down [in
terms of revenues]. Last year, really, we felt the effects of the U.S.
economy. This year is the worst. I don't think the city can do
much--maybe some cosmetic stuff."
Bernie Magnan
Chief economist, Vancouver Board of Trade
"There are businesses that are already there and doing very well,
thank you very much... What we need to do is help the people--and I'm
not just talking about those who have a drug and/or a mental-health
addiction problem--but also the residents of the Downtown Eastside and
their children in making sure they get a proper education so they can
succeed in life."
David Eby
Council candidate and DTES-Strathcona resident
"I guess that depends on what you mean by the Downtown Eastside
economy. I mean, the Downtown Eastside economy is doing really well.
But until we deal with the underlying issues of homelessness, drug
addiction, and mental health in the Downtown Eastside community, the
Downtown Eastside mainstream economy will never take off."
Fresh from lunch on a balmy Saturday afternoon, Coun. Peter Ladner
strolls westward from the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings and
confronts Vancouver's socioeconomic underbelly.
Already on
this short walkabout, the NPA's mayoral hopeful and two-term councillor
has talked with VPD Sgt. Tim Henschel in an alley, where the officer
had recovered a stolen city engineering truck. Flustered Chinatown
security guard Harold Johnson pulled Ladner aside a minute later to
tell him drug users should "start rehab or serve time".
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."
