Attendees - Jacek, Roland, Lu, James, DJ, Kelvin, Joe L, Herb
Agenda
Illicit Drinkers in Pigeon Park
Copwatch and Street Market
P.O. Box
Pantages
DJ does the opening
James - lot more people at pigeon park now, and they really resent the
street market on Sunday
Roland - that woman needed to have the cops called on her
Jacek - they were way more aggressive than in previous months. It could be
because 1U closed, and they are pushed out of the bus stop
Jacek - how about if we talk to them
Roland - VCH has told VANDU that if they had a partner, they have money for an
alcohol lounge. 1U pulled out of the project, they just need a partner
James - PHS has been doing one where they do a beer every hour or whatever. The
problem was that they were still going outside and driking listerine. So they
could not control it.
Jacek - I was at pigeon park, there were only three or four in the morning
James - they left on their own when we started the market, but now they have
no place to go. The only place they can go now is oppenheimer.
DJ - like that one girl, she was really belligerent. Near the washroom they get
bad too. I see women drinking rubbing alcohol in front of their kids. I'm an
alcoholic, but this gets really bad with some of them.
Jacek - do they have meetings?
Roland - Monday is their meeting at VANDU
Jacek - lets go there and talk to them and find out what is going on
DJ - what really screwed it up the most is that the church closes from
9am till 5pm.
Roland - they kick them out like a standard shelter now
DJ - yup, now they have to go drink in the park because of the way
they are treating
people at the shelter now.
James - I remember that a lot of the drunks would just crash there,
now they can't.
there are only a few that really go hard care and start fights. I know
a bunch of them.
James - a lot of it is how you handle it, you need the right person
doing security
Kelvin - we could bring it to VANDU, but we could also bring it to the
authorities
Jacek - we should only call cops if we really have to
Jacek - could we hire on of them as a liason?
DJ - it is too hard to be aggressive with them, because they are
already ready to fight
Roland - Rob facilitates the VANDU group, but that doesn't mean that
the pigeon park
group will listen to him
James - they do have some kind of togetherness, if you talk to them
the right way, we
might be able to get through. Now that they have no place to go, they
are digging in their
heels there. They used to leave.
Jacek - I bribed a couple of them by smokes, but we can't do much more
James - it is always the same people who start the fights if you
watch, so we can just
keep an eye on them
Copwatch/Market
------------------
Jacek - there was a problem with copwatch last sunday. At the end,
when we were trying
to clean up, two members of copwatch came in and were interfering with
the police. They
were claiming that the police were harassing, and they were not. I
tried to get terry
to stop from filming, but she would not. I always stop everyone from
filming at the park.
Terry was filming the cops helping a guy that had a seizure, and the
cops were going just
what they should, and copwatch was just interfering with them trying
to help the guy.
James - The cops were actually being helpful in getting people to
clean up, and copwatch
was interfering. At the time, you could not ask for two nicer cops.
Jacek - I went down there last sunday, and actually the park was clean
this time for
the first time in a long time, and it was due to the help from the cops.
James - ?
Jacek - next day I got a call from Jen - and she promised not to go to
the street market
again. I told her that she was welcome as long as she did not
interfere. She also wanted
copwatch to come to the volunteers meeting and I said no, that we did
not want this. We
had enough to do without asking more for the volunteers to do
copwatching as well. I will
make sure I bring it up at the Saturday meeting, in case the
volunteers want this.
James - we need to ask Ann to help with the copwatch issue. Jen
listens to Ann. I tried to
get Jen to calm down several times when she deals with the cops, but
she doesn't want to
listen.
Lu - she can go back home to the West end, and leave the problems behind
Joe - she does spend a lot of time at the women's centre
Lu - I agree with her principles, but her methods are wrong, she is too angry
DJ - I've seen it a bunch of times, she gets in the face of the cops
Lu - she interferes with the arrests, and twists the story her way
DJ - she ends up twisting the story and getting the details wrong, she
does not live
down here, she doesn't see what happens 24/7
Jacek - about 2 weeks ago we find out that not much was happening
against the vending
tickets
Roland - there was really no campaign. Susie Q came into VANDU, and
Louis had a court
date, VANDU went to PIVOT and we now have a strategy to reach out and
gather more
people into the constitutional challenge - Vivienne is going to help
doing outreach
DJ - also another thing at Lifeskills for vending tickets
Joe - it is quite busy on main and hastings
Jacek - I count the people often, the highest count I got was 40
vendors on the two blocks
James - on rock row, around the empress, they are starting to give out
tickets again
and trying to chase them off. When Jen and I did copwatch we used to
go up there, but now
they are bugging the ovaltine, and ovaltine can't pay rent because of
the people out there
Jacek - where are they going
James - yup they just push them east, farther east. Dave Hamm sets up
near BC housing.
Vendors are more save up there.
Roland - bumped into some kids in strathcona that were complaining
about the street vending.
It was sad to hear that they did not have any sympathy for other low
income people so close
to them
Joe - I love the DTES. Its got more heart than a whole city.
James - If I see some stuff and don't know if its stolen, why not...
if it will go bad, why
not buy it
Jacek - more important if you live on 610, how can you survive without
cheap stuff, you can't.
Herb - even without addiction the money doesn't last more then a few days.
Joe - its $25 for drum and papers, I can't even afford this once a
month. I'm back to butts.
There are 400 million people is India that no one knows about. There
are probably all moving
here.
Pantages
-----------------
Herb - have not looked inside once they built the fence
James - it is perfect now for a tent city, the trouble is no one would
see it with the fence
Herb - we just need to get pry bars and someone that wants to jump on
the grenade
DJ - I'll do it
Herb - what is going on with the mortgage?
Lu - the lean is due to the workers that were hired to pick up the bricks
James - a building's gonna go there
Roland - yes, but what building?
Lu - what is happening with the old drake lot?
Herb - it all depends on when the permit app went in. If it went in
before march, then
they can do anything they want.
Lu - is there any proof that it will be for low income housing?
James - there was supposed to be 5 or 6 properties down east by the
drake that were
supposed to be for low income
Herb - we still haven't been able to define what low income is, so the
city can basically
just tell us anything. This is something that we still haven't gotten
from the LAPP
Lu - where is the push for normal low income housing? Everything is
for supportive housing
to take away people's rights
Herb - exactly, if it is not covered by the RTA, they can just take
your stuff and you
can't do anything about it
Lu - I used to be a staff for raincity, and I was told to look the
other way if staff was
harassing tenants
Herb - I can speak about the LAPP more...
We had an Ab Sub comm meeting, and a few ad hoc meetings. What I've
hearing is that
we are getting a pile of information. They are gathering from BIAs as
well. It will
really water down the low income point of view. There will be so much
info, and it
will end up just helping developers. It is so stupid that at the end
of the day, we
are just going to end up choosing what color our roofs are, or what
kind of trees
we want to plant. It is so hard to keep up with all the crap.
James - it is always this way, the city is too powerful
Herb - they always throw up legality, and it is all bullcrap.
Vancouver isn't legal.
Anything after March or May new developments must have 30% welfare
rates, but we still
don't even know what was submitted before that date
Roland - really? Still?
Herb - yes, they throw information at us and we still don't have a
clear answer of
what came through the process
Another thing that is happening is...they've gotten us to pull out a
map and name
places that are important to us. My worry is that they've got us doing this crap
and they are going to use this as an excuse to push people out of the
good areas.
We are still just advisors and in the end, they can do anything they want
We are negotiating with a gun to our head. We are trying for nickles
and dimes, and
even these are getting taken away.
Kelvin - one of the things when the LAPP started was that it was supposed to be
open to the public, I don't know how the idea of the closed meeting started. We
need to try and get people out to the meetings in order to show force.
Roland - that is a good idea, we could show force at the meetings and
use this as
a bargaining tool
Kelvin - this way, the city can't say that it is just this sex worker,
or drug addict,
etc... but that it is the whole neighbourhood that will be watching
when they try
something. We need to try and get all the agencies to come out when
people are back
from vacations and get people out. We have lost so many homes to
development in the
last 10-15 years, where are we going to go? We as the LAPP committee
have come together
now we need to go back to our various agencies and bring them out.
Jacek - I've been telling everybody that market is perfect for telling
people about
stuff like this. We need to do outreach at the market. I bet if you
want an action,
people there will come if they know what is going on.
Herb - I can't do sunday, but we need people to come out.
Lu - basically nobody knows what the LAPP is doing
Jacek - even the paper. the information is very abstract, people don't
know what to
make of it.
James - too many people think that there is nothing they can do,
nothing is going
to change, and it is hard to convince people that they can change anything.
P.O. Box
------------------------
Roland - mail now goes to Tami's apt and CCAP office. I've had to wait
almost a month
for a lot of bank statements from CCAP, I also waited more than a
month to find out
that we had received the grant check from SFPIRG. We should have an
official mailing
address that can not be used by people for passive aggressive games.
James - doesn't the carnegie on the third floor receive mail for people?
Herb - why not just get it sent to the third floor
DJ - like 1U, people can get mail there
Kelvin - maybe take a look at Carnegie, and get back to us. Don't let
the matter drop.
General Meeting
------------------------------
Herb - next week we need to talk about the Sep meeting. I say have it on the
second saturday because of labor day weekend, and welfare and everything.
General agreement.
Kelvin - We are having a day of reaching out to residential school
survivors on Sept. 5th.
No comments:
Post a Comment