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 [...]

South Africa’s Poor Targeted by Evictions, Attacks in Advance of 2010 World Cup

Thousands of South Africans are being displaced in preparation for the 2010 World Cup. While Durban completes the finishing touches on its new stadium, thousands of the city’s poor who live in sprawling informal settlements are threatened with eviction. On Saturday, an armed gang of some forty men attacked an informal settlement on Durban’s Kennedy [...]

Victoria protesters plan anti-Olympic rally at start of 2010 torch relay

em>(this is a corrected version of an article published yesterday on the TC website, which claimed that No2010 ‘vows to disrupt’ events. Zoe called and had them correct it.)
By Staff Reporter, The Province
A group of social-welfare advocates in Victoria plan a mass rally to coincide with the kickoff to the Olympic torch relay in the [...]

Surrey won’t force homeless into shelters

-from Surrey Leader
A provincial initiative that would force homeless people into shelters during extreme weather conditions – whether they wanted help or not – is receiving cool reviews in this city.
Victoria is drafting legislation that would give authorities the power to compel the homeless to go to shelters if it’s determined they would be harming [...]

Bury my heart at Main and Hastings

by Zoe Blunt
Olympic Games and Murdered Women
The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver – Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood – hosts the world at the Olympic Games in February. The people in this old Skid Row don’t have much in terms of material things, but they have more than their share of murder and mayhem. As many as [...]

Homeless may be forced off street

Proposed law denounced as a bid to conceal problem during Games
By Rob Shaw, Times Colonist
Police officers will have the power to forcibly transport homeless people to shelters during harsh weather, but not confine them there, under new legislation to be introduced by the B.C. government this fall.
The proposed Assisting to Shelters bill could be [...]

Halloween anti-Olympic protests will test police vows

By Rod Mickleburgh, The Globe and Mail
The first big test of vows by police and security that protests and civil rights will be respected during the Olympics is headed for normally sedate Victoria.
Under the organizing banner “NOlympic Torch Relay Halloween Convergence,” opponents of the 2010 Winter Games have been meeting and planning for months [...]

Victoria protest group vows to disrupt start of 2010 Olympic torch relay

(the following article was re-edited before going to print with the new headline “Victoria protesters plan anti-Olympic rally at start of 2010 torch relay”, but not before Zoe saw it on their website and called them to make sure they’d read the press release she’d sent. I assume they also might have gotten a chance [...]

BC government to jail the homeless

By Harsha Walia
“The officer takes a person to a shelter. If the person is not accommodated at the shelter, alternative accommodation may be found. As a last resort, and in order for the police to discharge their legal responsibility, the individual maybe taken to police cells…”
Internal documents obtained and released by the BC Civil Liberties [...]

B.C. may force homeless indoors in cold snaps

-cnc.ca
Internal government documents show the B.C. government is drafting legislation to force homeless people into emergency shelters during extreme winter weather, according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
But legislation would will not likely stand up to a Charter of Rights challenge according to BCCLA executive director David Eby, who obtained the government documents and released [...]