Take Back the Power to End Poverty

The Canadian Government is matching donations to Haiti dollar for dollar. A good idea I’d like to see more of. How about the same thing happens to fund a national poverty reduction strategy? How about we have a huge nation-wide fund-raising campaign to finally improve the housing conditions on the reservations?
At the risk of sounding xenophobic or protectionist, I really feel that all the attention put towards Haiti relief efforts serve to reinforce the notion that our own domestic situation is something less than a crisis.

Off The Street and Onto the Farm

By Chris Johnson, Victoria Independent Media Collective
January 22, 2009

A dream is taking shape on the Saanich Peninsula. Inspired by the work of the San Patrignano Farm in Italy, Richard LeBlanc and a team of dedicated volunteers are converting a piece of farmland in Central Saanich into a therapeutic community that will become a refuge for people experiencing homelessness.

LeBlanc and the Creating Homefulness Society took possession of the198 acre property in June of 2009. Woodwynn Farm, which has recently been used for mostly for hay crops, was developed by the Woodward family, formers owners of a department store chain.

Food Disaster Alert

Just a reminder that the disaster alert we issued in May of 2008 is still very much in effect. Please read the disaster alert we issued at that time, and take immediate action:

Ending Homelessness in Victoria

by Chris Johnson

As a stand-alone document, the Mayor’s Task Force Report contained some challenging objectives for dealing with homelessness. As a blueprint for ending homelessness in ten years, it was woefully inadequate, to put it politely.

What’s missing from the Coalition’s efforts is a clear plan outlining it’s objectives, such as Calgary and Edmonton have.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (down in the States), which started the trend in municipal ten year plans back in 2000 with it’s report “A Plan Not A Dream: How to End Homelessness in Ten Years” followed up on that report in 2006 with “A New Vision: What is in Community Plans to End Homelessness”. In the report the NAEH surveys some of the 350+ municipal Ten Year Plans that are now in existance.

Rewriting History

More than a week has passed since the Olympic torch left Victoria on it’s journey across the country. Reports of the torch’s progress continue to appear daily in the local media, as I assume it will for months. With that in mind, I don’t consider it unreasonable to devote a bit more space in the public discourse to the actions of the protestors, and I don’t mean the marbles.

In response to Jody Patterson’s column in which she a mentions ‘a ridiculous debate over whether protesters or undercover police threw marbles under the police horses’ hooves’, I would point out that organizers were misquoted as saying the police may have thrown the marbles. This mistake was remedied by the Times Colonist editors, who removed the article and issued a correction.

Anti-Olympic Festival and March disrupt Torch Relay send-off

Video produced by Victoria Indymedia in co-operation with B Channel News, Vancouver Media Co-op and subMedia.TV
No2010 Victoria calls event “a victory for rights and justice”

From No2010Victoria:

Victoria, Coast Salish Territories, November 1, 2009 – Over 400
people gathered to oppose the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay in Victoria on
Friday, October 30th at an “Anti-Olympics Festival” and “Zombie
March” organized by No2010 Victoria. The march succeeded in
disrupting the relay, and security personnel were forced to
extinguish the torch, load it in a van, andreroute it in order to
reach the Legislature.

“Our events were a victory for rights and justice,” said No2010
spokesperson Zoe Blunt. “We took a strong strand on respecting
indigenous rights to land, defending civil rights, and ending
poverty, and people across the country are thanking us for our
dedication.”

Homeless woman’s cart at centre of coroner’s report

(The BC Government is using this woman’s death to introduce legislation that would force people to go to a shelter (but not force them to stay). When all they need to do is provide storage for belongings. Who’s to say that if the police were able to force this woman to a shelter that she wouldn’t turn around and leave…. The difference here is she would at that point be without her belongings. When will we learn to listen to what people say they need instead of forcing them to accept what they don’t need?)
Dawn Bergman, who burned to death, turned down police offers of help because she was reluctant to risk losing belongings, report says

By WENDY STUECK, Globe and Mail

When British Columbia Housing Minister Rich Coleman last week introduced the Assistance to Shelter Act, he said the legislation would “help to prevent tragedies such as the one that occurred last winter when a woman died trying to keep warm in a makeshift shelter.”

But a coroner’s report into the death of Dawn Bergman, who died early in the morning on Dec. 19, 2008, says Ms. Bergman turned down police offers of help because she was reluctant to risk losing the cart that carried her belongings.

Tent city in Puyallup idea dies in council

by MELISSA SANTOS; The News Tribune

Puyallup won’t host a tent city for homeless individuals in the immediate future, city officials have decided.

After a lengthy public hearing on the proposal Tuesday night, the City Council held off on approving an ordinance that would have allowed a 40-person encampment somewhere in the city.

Media Analysis of Homeless Encampment “Sweeps”

(The following is a short excerpt from an excellent report that just came my way.
Check it out at http://faculty.washington.edu/stygall/homelessmediacoveragegroup

Seeing the Homeless
by George Dillion, English Professor, University of Washington

If an individual or organization decides to portray homelessness as urban blight and contagion—as the dump come to your door—a common tactic is to shoot garbage-scapes with a few closer shots of excrement and syringes, possibly (if you’re lucky) with a sanitation worker in a haz-mat suit standing next to a pile. We have seen examples in previous pages. Sometimes the mayor’s office invites “friendly” news teams to help produce and disseminate City Hall’s view.

Several arrested as police clear out Nickelsville

By Lindsay Cohen & KOMO Staff

SEATTLE — About a dozen people were arrested Wednesday afternoon for refusing to leave the Nickelsville homeless encampment at a park in West Seattle.

The homeless residents set up camp at Terminal 107 Park on West Marginal Way in July, despite warnings that they would not be allowed to stay.

Officials issued a 1 p.m. deadline for the campers to get out. After a brief last-ditch negotiation with port officials, Nickelsville residents were ordered out by police officers.