Occupy Vancouver the safest place for abandoned people

By Gail Davidson; November 7, 2011 - rabble.ca
http://rabble.ca/news/2011/11/occupy-vancouver-safest-place-...

[Note: For background information from the mainstream media, see Occupy Vancouver, Victoria campers ordered out.]

On Saturday a woman died in her tent at Occupy Vancouver and Vancouver's mayor has responded, not by questioning how the city is failing people in need of essential services such as food, housing, mental and physical health-care, but by threatening legal action to end the encampment. Down the street, witnesses at the Missing Women Inquiry are recalling the deadly failure that resulted from the city using the courts to move other vulnerable group -- sex workers -- out of sight: a move now seen as escalating harm and contributing to deaths.

Can Mayor Robertson invoke safety and security to move the vulnerable residents of Occupy Vancouver to out-of-sight locations where they will again be denied the services they are receiving at Occupy Vancouver?

In Vancouver and in cities around the world, people have gathered collectively to protest conditions that threaten democracy, deny equality and impair survival: the growing gap between the fabulously wealthy and the profoundly poor, the hijacking of government by unaccountable corporate interests and the usurpation of basic rights to life, housing, food, a living wage, equality and non-discrimination, by an ever smaller group of elite profiteers. Protests here and elsewhere are being made by gathering collectively and "taking back" public space. Public spaces are where such political expression takes place. As observed by Justice Huddart in the [BC Civil Liberties Association] Falun Gong decision, "...public streets are, as they have been historically, spaces in which political expression takes place."

In Canada, everyone has the right to engage in peaceful public protest of government action or inaction on issues of public concern. In instances -- such as the present one -- where impugned government actions are causing severe damage, the right to protest arguably becomes a duty.

The use of public space for political expression and protest can only be legitimately limited in order to prevent harm to others -- not a factor evidenced or reasonably predicted here. Occupy Vancouver didn't cause or create the harm that led to the death of the woman or the overdose. Rather they are protesting harmful and inequitable conditions that make death and injury to the most vulnerable inevitable. At Occupy Vancouver volunteers provide essential services not provided by the city: meals available 17 hours per day; medical services around the clock; toilet facilities on site, and perhaps most importantly, a community that values the participation of marginalized people. Undoubtedly, particularly as the temperature drops, vulnerable street youth and homeless people are safer at the Vancouver Art Gallery than elsewhere.

Removal of the tents from the public square on the north side of VAG would deny the Occupy Vancouver people their Charter-protected right to publicly protest and to engage in public education and debate on the quickening erosion of the most basic freedoms. It would also expose the vulnerable residents of Occupy Vancouver to greater harm. The mayor and city council ought to be providing solutions, not seeking to use the law to impose greater harm on the most helpless members of our community.

Gail Davidson is a Vancouver-based lawyer with Lawyers Against the War.

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Ashlie Gough, Occupy Vancouver and the mayor

By Michael Stewart; November 7, 2011 - rabble.ca
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-stewart/2011/11/ashl...

Ashlie Gough is dead. We don't know why this young woman from Victoria came to Occupy Vancouver, but her death has already sent reverberations across the Vancouver electoral landscape and the global occupation movement. In an astonishing show of non-partisanship, political rivals Suzanne Anton and Gregor Robertson have united to demand the end of the occupation in the interests of safety, security and the public good.

The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the organization which published the 2011 Lancet article corroborating the success of InSite, found that 62 people died of drug-related overdoses in Vancouver in 2009, and that women are twice as vulnerable to overdose as men. The medic who treated the near-overdose on Thursday evening stated that there were 125 drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside which resulted in deaths last year, a statistic that has been widely reported in the wake of Ashlie's death. While the medic's statement is unsubstantiated, clearly far too many people are dying preventable deaths in Vancouver. Yet how many of these deaths resulted in the kind of decisive action Mayor Gregor Robertson showed when he declared that Occupy Vancouver must vacate the art gallery lawn? Precisely zero.

Two months ago, a woman was thrown out of the sixth-floor window at the Regent Hotel on Hastings street by a drug dealer -- the second such death in a year. Did Mayor Robertson step in and demand that the owners of the Regent provide security and shelter for its residents or face fines and imprisonment? Incredibly, no. Even before Ashlie's death, the mayor and the Vancouver Police Department were showing a staggering amount of concern for the Occupiers' compliance of city by-laws, while the slumlords who profit from the legislated poverty of DTES residents flout these restrictions daily.

The occupation offers warm, convivial shelter based on solidarity and caring. A volunteer kitchen has been distributing food since the occupation began. Furthermore, as a babbler recently pointed out, the homeless and the addicted have as much right to demonstrate as anyone else. While Occupy Vancouver demands a democracy that is accountable, transparent and just, the two opposing mayoral candidates for Vancouver's upcoming municipal election have come out in lockstep, both demanding the end of the occupation. And yet they wonder why millions of Canadians have given up on our cynical electoral system which offers us only distinction without difference, choice without option.

Not only are Mayor Robertson's public hand-wringing and Suzanne Anton's calls for tough action deeply disingenuous, they are also remarkably short-sighted. From New York to Oakland, repressive and undemocratic attempts to bring the global occupy movement to a premature end has without exception resulted in reinvigorated public sympathy and increased numbers. Anyone who has witnessed the belief, the conviction present in the occupation, resonating in any number of cities across this continent, immediately recognize two things: people are powerful, and they cannot be stopped.

Make no mistake: Ashlie Gough's death is tragic, and the whole city should mourn that such a young life was lost, more so that it was preventable. The occupation only asks that every such injustice summons the same outcry, the same demand for change from our public figures, and the same appeals to social welfare, the commonwealth and the promise of democracy.

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I Support Occupy Vancouver
http://signon.org/sign/i-support-occupy-vancouver-1?source=s...

By Sarah Beuhler (Contact)

To be delivered to: City of Vancouver

The supporters of Occupy Vancouver need to make their voices known. The City is preparing an injunction on the grounds of health and safety. We all know this is a political issue. We're calling on the city to support democracy in action.

Occupy Vancouver is part of a growing worldwide movement to bring governments back to the people. We oppose systemic inequality, militarization, environmental destruction, and the erosion of civil liberties and human rights. We seek economic security, genuine equality, and the protection of the environment for all. We can not be at the Vancouver Art Gallery but we believe in this movement. We are also voters. We call on the city to:

1. Stop bowing to political pressure to remove the camp and acknowledge that a political protest is protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

2. Acknowledge that the City is playing politics with health and safety and the [Vancouver Fire Department] is being used to pursue the political goal of removing the camp before the election.

3. Recognize that encampments are integral to Occupy Vancouver and the movement as a whole. Talk of splitting the two is a disingenuous way to split the issue. The protest is the encampment is the movement.

4. Acknowledge that Vancouver, like many other cities, has numerous citizens who are disenfranchised and addicted to drugs.

5. Acknowledge that people overdose and die on the streets of Vancouver every day.

6. Follow the lead of Irvine, California and Los Angeles, California and endorse the occupation.

Occupy Vancouver is doing meaningful work for democracy and needs to be supported. Many people can't make it down there but need somewhere to express their support.

[To sign this petition, click here.]

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