Briarpatch Magazine » development http://briarpatchmagazine.com Fiercely independent (and often irreverent) news & views. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:36:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Olympic Profits: The 2010 Games versus Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/07/21/olympic-profits/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/07/21/olympic-profits/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:00:46 +0000 dave http://briarpatchmagazine.com/?p=676 By Christopher A. Shaw Briarpatch Magazine August 2008

"I'm watching things speed up in my own city, Vancouver, as legislators tighten the noose around society's most defenceless members. In the lead-up to 2010's Olympic orgasm for developers, the city council has passed laws to keep street people from sitting on park benches or reclining in parks. Behind this crazy-making effort to create a ‘civil city' is a conception of humans as rubbish."

Geoff Olson, "The Future Isn't What It Used To Be," Common Ground, July 2007

"The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges."

Anatole France

Home to legions of homeless people, drug dealers and users, sex trade workers and the working poor, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside suffers levels of disease that are comparable to the worst found in the Third World and crime rates on persons and property that exceed all of the rest of Vancouver combined. A sense of defeat hovers over much of Hastings Street like a fog. But in defiance to circumstance, there is pride here, too, and community. It's more than possible to imagine that the Downtown Eastside with its vibrant history would blossom in thousands of ways if only the various levels of government cared enough to help. That government doesn't care speaks volumes to social priorities in Vancouver's headlong rush to be a "world-class" city, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the handling of the Downtown Eastside and its inhabitants in the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics. ]]> http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/07/21/olympic-profits/feed/