well today, oct 30, DERA helped re-establish a tent site for a few homeless on Glen, in Vancouver’s East Side on an empty city lot from which they had been kicked earlier this week. The city has not responded to the requests to find housing for these people, and despite threats tonight they are staying on that city lot until they recieve word on where they are to be housed.
During a court ruling earlier this month, testimony was given as to the dangers of sleeping on the street, such as hypothermia, and trench foot. These people are: in an act of desperation, attempting to keep what little shelter over their heads as is possible without housing; in order to protect themselves from the elements until that housing is provided.
As you can see from this 1886 archival picture, Vancouver City hall has even found itself run by homeless immigrants who lived in a tent city.!
Police planners for the 2010 Winter Games are asking permission to ignore requests for information made under the federal Access to Information Act until at least 2012, saying such requests could pose a threat to security.
In the recommendations section, Graham suggested “special (access to information) exemption should be sought to defer requests to at least two years after the 2010 Games. The temporary exemption would help to ensure that the integrity of Games security was maintained.”
Information commissioner Robert Marleau said this week he doesn’t believe the RCMP needs any special exemption since the Access to Information Act already allows for sensitive information to be redacted for national security purposes.
Agencies like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Department of National Defence have equally sensitive issues, but comply with the act.
“If CSIS can live with this, and national defence can live with this and we are in a campaign in Afghanistan … why should there be a special exemption for the Olympics?” he asked.
Final plans for the potential W2 media lab at the old Woodwards site seem to be caught in a bureaucratic nightmare. Due to open in September 2009, it needs to raise $2.6 million to become a reality, but W2 can’t move forward without City approval.
Jacquie Gijssen, senior cultural planner with the city, said to the Straight she can’t predict when the W2 proposal will go to council but she hopes it will happen before the new year. “We are obviously trying to complete our review and assessment as soon as possible,” she said. “Then we have to make a staff recommendation, and then it has to go to a steering committee, and then it has to go to council.…All of those steps take a bit of time.”
Plans for the three-storey space include a café, gallery space, digital-equipment co-op, youth media lab, performance space, and disability arts studio , in over 14,000 square feet. After all the struggle at the Woodsquat there had better be a community driven project from the DTES that gets in there.
The developers had no problem selling out $200 million in future condos.
Sure they put in a couple token units of social housing and promised to work with the community, but really they aren’t giving up much. Other plans for a community house and a woodworking studio in the new space have already sunk due to the process.
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I also thought it was funny there was a TV show being filmed in 2000 at the empty Woodwards during all of the protests called Freedom.
the plotline?: After a plane is flown into the White House killing the president of the United States, the US is taken over by United States military forces. Four soldiers who do not go along with the takeover work with a wider resistance movement against the military government, in order to restore the Constitution and freedom to the people.
12 episodes were shot, only 7 aired in 2000. Woodwards was the resistance movements headquarters.
mondo mondo 