DNC Board Meeting Minutes - June 21, 2012

DNC board meeting

June 21, 2012

Present: Roland, Jenn, Harold, Ann, Wendy, Ivan, Dave H

Guests: Jacek, Dave D

Agenda

-      Street market discussion

-      1-way committee reports

-      DTES Not for Developers

-      Taskforce

-      Tenant organizing

-      Police and copwatch

-      LAPP

-      Committee discussions

-      Board business

-      Treasurer

-      General meeting

-      New business

-      Closing

STREET MARKET

Roland

-      Had a meeting with the city and it appears that they don't want to give us a special events permit anymore

Ann

-      We had a good-cop bad-cop thing with the city. The police said that there are well-known dealers there, I argued with them. Roland played reasonable guy.

-      If the city wants to give us 62 W Hastings then we could take it and use it as our space.

Wendy

-      If we bring up that we could move to 62 W Hastings then that's all the city is going to push us to

Jenn

-      I heard that the church on the park has been complaining about our market more. That they are threatening us.

Roland

-      We offered that church more space around their door and they said that's okay

Dave

-      Today Ivan and I were at a meeting with the city over the LAPP about communication. Maybe we could use the LAPP to support the Street Market.

Ivan

-      We need to separate out the details from the general principles and problems of the market.

-      Can the committee send the board reports on the meetings with the city that are objective and not about opinion? Then others can contribute to the struggle.

Dave

-      My papers got stolen last weekend and I lost a lot of documents, including sign-up sheets.

-      I'll white out one that was used to make a blank one.

Roland

-      Could the LAPP take a position in support of the market?

Wendy

-      Only if it's really important. It might be opening a can of worms because other peoples non-LAPP projects will get pushed too.

DTES NOT FOR DEVELOPERS

Ivan

-      Actions we have decided on: Rubble action Tuesday, meeting Carnegie 12:30pm; Ongoing civil disobedience discussions with member groups; Preparing for Sequel presentation centre action.

-      Need to talk about the specific dynamics of what demands and what to do about our “Boycott Gentrification”. I think we should do some meetings on what to do about restaurants etc.

-      We decided to change the structure of the coalition to once-a-month coalition members meeting to set general direction

Harold

-      We also decided to organize a townhall on the anti-gentrification fight in San Francisco, sometime in July

Wendy

-      Can we add to the rubble action for the city to buy the site?

-      And maybe there's only energy for the coalition when there's actions to be done.

Harold

-      It's true that there's less energy when there's not a crisis but if we don't have discussions at lower points then we won't be prepared when things do happen.

Richard

-      Where would we put the energy from the coalition? We could put it into a raise the rates campaign

Dave

-      All the preparation work we're doing, civil disobedience, discussions, etc, is important to sustain and maintain. We don't want to just move from crisis to crisis.

-      This is basically an anti-gentrification campaign

Ivan

-      I think we're starting to form a general anti-gentrification campaign, after just working on Pantages for the last year.

-      Next steps are to carefully define our arguments and demands about gentrification by working with the community

Wendy

-      Sounds good. Keep the energy of the community in mind when planning actions; if there's big monthly actions that demand a lot of participation then it might be draining.

TASKFORCES

Ivan

-      The SRO taskforce is finally going. The first meeting will be Friday, 2pm at the Wonder Rooms. The focus of the three meetings for each of the six buildings are Standards of Maintenance; Safety; and Rights.

TENANT ORGANIZING

Ivan

-      Balmoral lunch this Sunday, 12noon at Balmoral bar. Focus will be on conditions and rights in the Balmoral and Regent. Who wants to come? (Dave D)

POLICING AND COPWATCH

Ann

-      Jenn went on CKNW and it was very good

Jenn

-      We're getting targeted by someone named Greg Renouf who has a history of targeting prominent women of colour especially. He is writing articles attacking us. I called him and asked him to lay off and maybe he'll listen.

-      Ruth Meta also wrote a letter to the city critical of us.

Ivan

-      Should we tell Ruth Meta that she's not welcome to work with us? She wrote a letter to the city attacking me and Wendy and DNC.

Ann

-      She's mentally ill and will go after us harder if we criticize her or block her.

Wendy

-      Maybe it's better, tactically, to ignore her and let her go away. (AGREED)

LAPP

Wendy

-      All kinds of planning going on for the LAPP. Some of it we're involved in and some of it we're not. We might be losing control over some of the dynamics here.

-      We have to remember that we're looking at March 2013 as the time that the LAPP is going to council. We should be preparing for that meeting as a target. We need to prepare outside of the LAPP too.

-      We have been saying that we want 100% social housing for singles on welfare, but maybe we should all go walk by the 58 W Hastings spot and look at the mix they have in the PHS proposal on that site.

Dave H

-      At the communications meeting today Tom was going red in the face with anger because he thought he was getting criticized about us being excluded from the planning of meetings.

Ivan

-      The city is running ahead of us and doing planning without our involvement. We only get to have a say when we discover what we're doing. We're going to have to fight them for a say all the time.

GENERAL MEETING

THEME: Non-violent civil disobedience

Harold

-      The things we talked about are “Why civil disobedience,” as well as rights, legalities, and some exercises.

Ivan

-      The coalition was thinking about doing discussions on why we could do this now, the dynamics of what we're up against and fighting for. Also to do some exercises and scenarios.

Wendy

-      I really like the songs that VANDU is singing and I think we should import them into DNC.

LOCATION: Dodson (if we can get it for free)

NEW BUSINESS

BOARD MEMBERS

Wendy

-      We need to talk about dwindling board members.

Ivan

-      We said we need to contact the people who have not been coming and get their intentions. We still need to do that.

END DRUG PROHIBITION

Dave D

-      About 14 years ago there was a four-day conference in Oppenheimer under tents and people came from all over the world.

-      We're moving towards doing another event like that at Oppenheimer again in on September 22^nd. Aiyanas is looking into getting Deborah Peterson Small, a good speaker from the states, to come for the event. We want to organize breakout groups and themes to take on.

-      We are asking CCAP to do it, but if that doesn't work then maybe we'll ask DNC. You get a discount rate to book a park if you are a non-profit.

Richard

-      It's good timing. We're getting hurt down here. I know Sarah Blythe from the Parksboard and should be able to get the park.

Harold

-      DNC should take this on in whatever way we can. We should get regular reports from the Drug Prohibition coalition and stay on top of the issue.

FUNDRAISING

Roland

-      There is a woman named Naomi Bartz who has offered to do some fundraising for us.

Ivan

-      We have met her, she seems decent. She is from Chicago but seems to be on our side.

CLOSING

-      Dedicated to Rodney Schek

DNC Board Meeting Minutes - June 14, 2012

DNC Board meeting

June 14 2012

NEXT STEPS:

• PALACE & WONDER
• Push the city to collect the fines Wolsey (and other slumlords) owes them
• Write simple demands to stop real estate speculation and organize actions, maybe at 925 W Georgia.
• Organize more actions targeting BC Housing to put social housing on the table

• STREET MARKET
• Support vendors to make decisions about the governance of the market, including who can vend and with what conditions.
• Politicize the market more with banners, calls to action, stop ticketing.

• PEDESTRIAN SAFETY
• Dave H will liaise with the VANDU board on whether we can take joint action to get police to enforce the 30/kph speed limits on Hastings.

• POW WOW SUNDAY
• Wendy will contact the organizers of the Pow Wow (meeting at Pigeon Park at noon Sunday and marching to Oppenheimer) to find out what they need from us to start at the street market.

• SHELTERS
• Roland will work with Robert H to issue a complaint to the Yukon over Robert's eviction

• DRUG PROHIBITION
• Ivan to liaise with VANDU, the End Drug Prohibition coalition and others to organize a joint event and news conference in response to the recent overdose (and other) deaths in the neighbourhood. To call for an end to the drug war; violence from the police, between users, overdoses, and lack of access to detox and treatment as systems that kill oppressed people.

Present: Tami, Kelvin, Roland,

Guests: Greg (ally), Richard (West Hotel), Ben (Asia Hotel), Bill and Maxine (Regent Hotel)

Agenda

• Anti-Lippification fight
• Committee reports
• Committee discussions
• New business

ANTI-LIPPIFICATION FIGHT

Ivan

• What happened and why we acted

Harold

• We had a successful picket line in front of Lippman's house. It was a spirited action, kids involved. Good media coverage.

Greg

• We were able to set up a camp site right under the police's nose because they don't know how to handle protesters.
• I was woken up by someone yelling through a megaphone, “Go home freak, go home freak! West Vancouver doesn't want you!”
• There were some professionals and rich people who were semi-friendly, but awkward
• The most friendly people were the servants, and a postie who wanted to know who the slumlord was. It was good to talk with those people.
• Some people also came by who did not live in the area but who saw it on the news and wanted to know what it's about
• I did a lot of media interviews too. It was pretty successful

Dave H

• On Tuesday we had a demonstration in front of BC Housing
• It was not huge but the spirit was really high, really unified and strong.
• Richard C sang a song from the VANDU choir and it brought people together
• We also carried banners and signs and communicated well with the people in cars.

Harold

• It was a good action. The message was really strong and consistent.
• We were able to get a meeting with BC Housing, they were under pressure.
• We should continue to target BC Housing.

Wendy

• When we target private developers we also put pressure on the government, so we don't always have to target just BC Housing
• Also, two people from the community told me that they were happy that we were doing what we were doing.

Ivan

• Four residents from the buildings came along with us for the march and got in for the meeting with the BC Housing executive. It was good.
• Through our actions we put these buildings on the map for the city and the province. They both sent lawyers to the court case.

Roland

• I want to bring up again that if BC Housing capped shelter spending at $50/per bed they would save $15M a year.

Wendy

• Better to not target low-income peoples' services

Ivan

• What happened at court: Wolsey got his buildings back through finding another bank to finance him.

Robert

• Can we do something to stop him?

Dave

• He owes the city so much money for fines, we could try to get them to go after him for the fines he owes them.

NEXT STEPS:

• Push the city to collect the fines Wolsey (and other slumlords) owes them
• Write simple demands to stop real estate speculation and organize actions, maybe at 925 W Georgia.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

LAPP

Wendy

• We have the LAPP because the city feels bad for wiping out our neighbourhood.
• We have twin timelines happening:
• LAPP planning schedule, including our outreach and discussions work
• And at the same time there are, outside the committee, many terrible things happening that are hurting the community.

• The bad things are the Wonder and Palace threatened with gentrification; the Argle upscaling; the Asia facing renovation; the Pantages development driving up the investment value of the community; 767 new condo units planned or proposed; the viaduct happening outside of our purview; city interfering with the dynamics in the LAPP committee.
• Michael C and I met with the city manager and asked her to help with these problems.
• She agreed that if the committee agrees then Ivan could stay on the committee.
• She also said that she would put together a housing action group outside of the LAPP
• She did call Shane Ramsay about BC Housing buying the Pantages

STREET MARKET COMMITTEE

Dave

• The street market volunteer meeting will now be 9am Saturday mornings at Jacob's Well
• We had a good meeting at the Dodson, more than 30 people attended.
• We'll make sure we have DNC memberships here for the vendors meeting
• The vendors decided that they want any one who wants to vend at the market to be a member of the DNC. That way they can be sure that anyone who vends there is part of the community. They are feeling pressured from some others from outside the community who are buying things in bulk and undercutting our community vendors.
• The market is becoming stronger as vendors are taking more control over its operations.
• If anyone wants to volunteer for the street market you have to come to the meeting

Wendy

• We are also trying to get $10,000 from the city to keep the market going

Jean

• Please pass it on to vendors that there is a welfare earnings exemption coming; $200 for regular welfare and $800 for disability.

Dave

• Some vendors are saying maybe to charge a fee to people from out of the neighbourhood
• There is a class thing happening at the street market. The binners and people with used goods are feeling like they are in a different camp, lower status than people with new goods.
• We said that we want to give them ownership on it and make decisions. We have to support them for that.

Ivan

• One thing we could do to take control over the market is to politicize it. We could put up banners and distribute information.

Dave

• Could invite people to join my constitutional challenge in August

Jim

• When I was a bike courier the cops would give me tons of tickets and I would appeal everything. They finally gave up ticketing us because we fought everything.

Robert

• I go every Saturday to the North Shore and grab donated stuff from the Salvation Army. They let me back on the seabus because they don't want me on the North Shore. I stay up all night guarding my stuff. I do that every week.

Dave

• You have a right to make a living, and we don't have yards or garages so we need the street.

Jim

• The street is our backyard.

Sparrow

• You'll never get a general bylaw lifted because then they'll have vending in Yaletown and Granville and they'll never stand for that. They don't let you panhandle in other areas.

TASKFORCES

Ivan

• The next meeting of the SRO taskforce will be this Monday the 18th. We'll go and try to organize four dinner-meetings in four hotels to work on conditions and housing security.
• Our group with seats on the taskforce includes Herb, Roland, DJ, Ivan.

DTES NOT FOR DEVELOPERS

Ivan

• Still doing the Pantages pledge
• Planning a rubble action at the next council meeting

SHELTERS

Robert

• I got thrown out of the Yukon shelter today. They said I hadn't shown up for four days, which wasn't true.

Roland had said that he will work on sending a statement about this.

NEW BUSINESS

TRAFFIC ON HASTINGS

Ben

• I almost got hit by a bus crossing Hastings last week. I looked in each direction because I was wearing headphones but this bus snuck up on me and blew its horn at the last minute
• I wonder if there's anything we can do
• The buses that come in from the suburbs are the worst.

Dave

• VANDU did a pedestrian safety project that the city claimed to be so proud of but they're not enforcing it.
• There must be some way to enforce it.
• VANDU has been meaning to monitor the speeds but we've been busy with other things.

Sparrow

• My friend was killed at Hastings and Jackson by a speeding driver
• Maybe we could get a speed gun from the city to help measure the speeds people are actually going

Dave

• That's what we did with the Pedestrian Safety Project. We had speed guns for that and made our report based on our findings.

NEXT STEPS:

• Liaise with VANDU on Pedestrian Safety next steps

POW WOW THIS WEEKEND

Kelvin

• There will be treatment referral this Sunday at the Pow Wow at Oppenheimer. If you go to the Pow Wow and want to enter treatment you can go straight from the Pow Wow, by bus.
• AFD is supporting this event
• Starts at noon at Pigeon Park and marches on to Oppenheimer.
• The treatment centres will have tables at the event.

NEXT STEPS: Wendy will contact the organizers of the Pow Wow to find out what they need from us to start at the street market.

END THE WAR ON DRUGS

Ivan

• There have been a lot of deaths by overdose.
• I think we should organize a discussion and news conference event to call for an end to the drug war; violence from the police, between users, and overdoses as systems that kill oppressed people.
• That we should organize with other groups like VANDU and the end drug prohibition coalition

Harold

• Make sure we work with others on this

Wendy

• Make sure 'treatment' is part of the discussion too.

(AGREED)

Closing; Kelvin.