Shortly before Mayor Robertson spoke 5 APC members casually sauntered past security into the meeting with a message for Mayor Robertson, Concord Pacific and the Board of Trade. APC has been working on a campaign against ticketing, and the civil city initiative for the past 8 months. Demanding that the City and the VPD stop their discriminate ticketing and street sweeps of the residents of the DTES. Today, this message was brought to the tables, of the cities business leaders.

Despite the growing security apparatus as the city gets closer to the 2010 olympics, the members entered the ballroom and disrupted their event unfettered.
For 10 minutes the APC distributed leaflets on top of the $85/plate lunches and successfully crashed their party with a message to stop the targeting of poor people, stop the ticketing and the street sweeps.

After realizing their security had been breached the APC members were forcefully escorted out of the luncheon.

APC will continue its fight against any form of the civil city initiative, the rampant ticketing and the blatant attack on poor people.
For more info check out apcvancouver.org

Today, the Anti Poverty Committee dropped a banner off the Cambie Street Bridge stating: CIVIL CITY IS A HATE CRIME. Simultaneously members attended the monthly police board meeting to address the ongoing repression of poor people in the downtown eastside through mass ticketing, street sweeps and a project of criminalization.

APC drops banner, visible from the nearby police station, off Cambie bridge to protest police and civic oppression of homeless.

“In his campaigning mayor Robertson said, ‘ civil cities are created by strong communities, they cannot be enforced or legislated’ but in today’s police board meeting he seemed to have a different story.” Stated Mitchell Milne “So then why is he supporting the ongoing street sweeps and ticketing of people in the Downtown Eastside (DTES)” said Milne.
In the last four months, there has been an increase in the number of tickets given to people in the DTES for minor bylaw infractions such as, jaywalking, vending without a licence, being in a park after 10pm and riding a bicycle without a helmet.

“Basically, this is a strategic plan to criminalize the daily activities of people living and surviving in the downtown eastside.” stated Anna Hunter, “they repeatedly ticket people and then when they obviously can’t pay the exorbitant fines, there is a warrant for their arrest, and they are locked up.”

Superintendent Warren Lemcke also spoke at the police board meeting, and praised the New York plan, the “Broken Window’s Theory”. Arguing that by targeting people for minor infractions and ‘cleaning up the streets’ of unsightly people, the real problems will be dealt with.

“This project of social cleansing is criminalizing the daily activities of people trying to survive. Trying to hide the image of homelessness will not solve the problem.” stated Anna Hunter during the police board meeting.

“Members of the APC have dropped this banner to let the citizens of Vancouver see what Project Civil City really is – a Hate Crime.” Stated Milne. The APC will continue it’s fight against Project Civil City, alongside of other organizations in the DTES as more and more people are being targeted.

Parks are for people, not PIG$!

In a further escalation of the Olympic gentrification in Vancouver, the Vancouver Police Department have been doing regular and consistent sweeps of the Downtown Eastside, ensuring no one feels safe in their own neighborhood. People scurry away from in front of the Carnegie Center in fear of the police aggression that patrols the neighborhood. The aggression embodied by state security forces to serve their elite masters was well displayed in Pigeon Park by badge #2060, on December the 23rd.

It was two days before Xmas, and the APC was serving hot chocolate between 10:15pm and midnight at Peoples Pigeon Park. We had above our heads a banner reading “PARKS FOR PEOPLE, NOT PIG$!”. We were there to draw attention to the escalating police state, and the Carrall st greenway. We were also there to serve hot chocolate, and to do our best to make Pigeon Park a more comfortable place for people whose mere presence apparently makes them targets for being “drug dealers”. The atmosphere was resoundingly positive and people were happy to know that on this particular night not everyone was abandoning them to the mercy of the historically murderous VPD.

At about 11:10pm, two beat cops showed up and immediately demanded that we pack everything up declaring the park closed. We of course refused pointing out that we were merely serving hot chocolate. One of them(badge #2060) saw past our excuse to the banner above our heads, determining that we were a threat. “Take down the banner” he said, which was followed by a flat out “no!” from our side. In a fit of rage, he threw our shopping cart to the side and ripped down our banner slipping and sliding in the snow. He began to leave taking our banner with him.

Led by the people who had joined us in the park we began to heckle them and also sang “no more Pig$ in our community”. Badge #2060 walked back towards us ripping his gloves off. After some time stalling we were eventually forced to give them our identification, so they could send in a squad car to run our names. After disappointingly finding out that they had no good reason to arrest us, they departed. If Badge #2060 had his way he would have us all down face first in cuffs and hauled off to jail for the remainder of the holidays.

It should be noted that while the VPD attempted to shake us down, people were unafraid to gather in the park and drink hot chocolate on a cold winter night, something that has been made illegal and consistently enforced in the name of social cleansing. This victory will not be the last, seeing as people are unafraid to face the police state and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

The VPD are an overbearing oppressive force in the downtown eastside. The people in the community are considered “the problem” when it comes to gentrification, while social cleansing along with the Olympic Police State are what the ruling elites are hoping will be “the final solution”. For this reason they have earned the title pig$ to describe the police force in their necessary role as the protectors of business interests.

The Class War is the Last War!!!!

Till next time, Pig!!!!!

On Thursday November the 20th during what is known as the Anti-Olympic Days of Action. The Canadian Tourism Commission, Tourism British Columbia, and Tourism Vancouver held an extravagant nighttime reception for the world press who were in town for a tour of the different services and facilities that would greet them when they came to Vancouver in 2010. As they filed off of the tour busses into a giant hall with flashing lights and the fanciest bar anyone has ever laid eyes on they were completely unaware of who else would be receiving a red carpet entrance later on that night…..

VANOC’s 2010 mascot, “Quatchi”, pictured above, was impersonated by members of APC.

Eight APC members pulled into the parking lot where the nighttime reception was to take place, after having tirelessly worked on the identity of their newest member during the week prior. The newest member of the APC is a mascot named Squatchi, who is meant to mimic the official VANOC mascot named “Quatchi” (the sasquatch).

Having barely made it past the first wave of security claiming that Squatchi had been invited, the APC decended upon the decadent gala from which piercing screams of joy could be heard. Leading the pack was of course Squatchi who received a warm greeting at the red carpet. One greeter mistakenly shouted out “watch out for the puddle Quatchi!”. With his out of place looking entourage Squatchi entered the building to roaring applause.

In absolute horror, organizers of the event were directing security to “get them, get them!” With Squachti by the arm, one APC member announced that Squatchi had arrived and had recently been kicked out of his home due to the 2010 Olympics. As boos echoed through the building, and stiffs in tuxedos stood stunned, two security personel grabbed them and started hauling them out of the building. One member yelled “another Olympic eviction everybody!” and another yelled out “fuck the Olympics”. As we passed out anti-olympic leaflets we chanted “homes not games” following the laughing Squatchi to assure that he and his comrade were not harmed.

“Squatchi” gets escorted out by security.

Once outside the building, about thirty feet from the door, we chanted a number of anti-olympic slogans in a brief standoff with security. As the pigs finally pulled up we marched victoriously into the night not quite believing how easy it had been to fool the Olympic security.

Link to video of Squatchi’s ejection (Quicktime .MP4 format)

Our new office is located one block south of the Carnegie center, between the blocks of Pender and Keefer on the East side of Main street (in Chinatown).

Unfortunately, at this time we are not wheelchair accessible (we are working on it!) . However, we are able to hold meetings across the street at the community center in the event that our meeting needs to be made more accessible.

The space is extremely child friendly and as always APC provides childcare upon request.

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

The office, located in a DERA building, has not been used by the APC for more than a year. The police arrived at 11:15pm with a search warrant, and left empty-handed about an hour later.

The APC believes that this search was a political maneuver – an attempt by the Vancouver Police Department to drive a wedge between APC and DERA. This strategy has been used in previous efforts by the VPD and the City to neutralize our support and isolate our organization. DERA has made it clear publicly that they have no intention of falling for the cops’ bluff and selling us out.

Further, we believe that this search was an act of desperation. The police and colonial powers will do everything in their power to render invisible the Native Warrior Society and minimize all forms of indigenous struggle. The fact is that the Native Warrior Society was able to strike a significant blow by stealing the enemy’’s flag. This was not a symbolic gesture but a revolutionary act and one that has got the colonial cops running scared.

We refuse to be intimidated by the cops. We will continue to stand and fight while the cops and the powers they protect scramble like fools. We laugh in their faces and say bring it on! We ally ourselves with the warriors and we say Fuck the Racist Police! Fuck 2010! No Olympics On Stolen Land!

The people have announced that Ken Dobell is the perfect mascot for the 2010 games. He proves that there is no conflict between big business and all levels of Government.

Ken Dobell is, among other things, director of the 2010 Legacies Now Society and the Canadian Council for Public-private partnerships. A member of the board of the 2010 Bid Corporation in its early years, Dobell now serves on VANOC’s Board of Directors, where he chairs its Finance Committee.

When not acting as a symbolic figurehead, Kenny rakes in $250-an hour as ‘special adviser’ to the premier Gordon Campbell. Not so coincidentally his second job is as a lobbyist for the City of Vancouver, which has hired him to influence Campbell on development issues. What this amounts to is pillaging public resources for private profit.

This eviction was carried out in a non-violent manner with respect to the workers inside. This is contrary to the evictions that take place every day in the Downtown Eastside. Often the police serve as the City’s eviction service and assist in the displacement of people from their homes. In cases such as the Marr Hotel and the Burns Block, poor people are evicted from their homes violently. In the case of the Burns Block people who had lived there for 20 years where evicted with less then 30 minutes notice. Their belongings thrown to the curb.

So long as people are being evicted from their homes to make room for the 2010 Olympic games, we will continue targeting VANOC representatives in their offices. It is from these offices that life and death decisions are made.

We plan on escalating our siege and making the profiteering off displacing poor people from their homes and territories too costly to continue. To get involved in this campaign and other organizing efforts of the APC.

NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND! NO 2010!

DEMANDS

1.  IMMEDIATE CANCELLATION OF THE 2010 OLYMPIC GAMES.

2.  DIRECTION OF ALL OLYMPIC FUNDS TO NEW HOUSING AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS.

3.  WITHDRAWAL OF COLONIAL OCCUPIERS FROM ALL UNCEDED INDIGENOUS TERRITORY.

4.  DOLLAR-FOR-DOLLAR REINSTATEMENT OF ALL FUNDING CUT TO SOCIAL PROGRAMS BY THE PROVINCIAL LIBERAL GOVERNMENT.

5.  KEN DOBELL’S IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION FROM AT LEAST TWO OF THREE CONFLICTING POSITIONS.

The APC Womens Committee made the following demands to Carole Taylor and the Liberals:

* Spend the $2 billion surplus on securing safe housing for all women in this province;

* Complete restoration of funding to all social programs cut by the Liberals since 2001.

‘Women are dying everyday on the streets, or facing violence and exploitation within the deplorable housing situation in our city. This surplus money has been made on the backs of poor women in the form of massive cuts to welfare, it has to stop’ said organizer Stephanie Cameron.

Media and supporters were forced to leave the building at the request of the landlord and under threat of arrest by the VPD, but five women had locked down in the office refusing to leave until they had a guarantee from the Finance Minister that the surplus would be spent on housing and services for women and children.

It took the VPD three hours to remove the remaining women from the office and arrest them. All five are being charged with mischief. All five will be released with mischief charges.

‘This surplus was stolen from the poor women and children of this province,’ said organizer Mary Claremount. ‘We were just here today to get it back. This money was stolen through welfare, legal aid and other
social programming cuts. Evictions, homelessness, violence and child apprehension are the only trickle-down poor women of this province have seen so far from this government. This wont be the last time Carole Taylor and the Liberals hear from us.’

NATIVE YOUTH MOVEMENT WARRIOR TARGETED & ARRESTED AT ANTI-OLYMPIC PROTEST IN VANCOUVER, BC, KKKANADA

“THE INDIAN WARS ARE NOT OVER”

(February 13, 2007, unsurrendered Squamish Territory (Vancouver, BC) Three Native Warriors were targeted and arrested yesterday during a protest against the 2010 Winter Olympic Games planned to take place in Vancouver/Whistler, KKKanada. NYM Warrior, Tselletkwe, of the Secwepemc Nation, Gord Hill of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation and Lynn Highway of the Anishnabe Nation and the Indigenous Resistance Organizing Committee (IROC), were hauled away by the Vancouver Police, who are notorious for police terrorism they inflict on Indigenous Peoples.

The Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee and the Vancouver Board of Trade (businessmen) were celebrating the unveiling of a “3 year countdown clock” in the downtown business district in Vancouver, marking exactly 3 years until the Olympic Games invade Indigenous Territories here in Vancouver, BC. Just as their festivities were to begin, one Native Warrior stormed the stage and took over the microphone, yelling, “F*#! the Olympics,” until he was captured by Vancouver police and rushed off stage.

Native People from across BC participated in this rally along with non-natives from the Anti-Poverty Committee, who are protesting the gentrification of their neighborhood and the eviction of hundreds from low-income housing in the downtown eastside. A total of seven protesters were arrested during this Anti-Olympic protest.

NYM Warrior Tselletkwe made a statement upon her release, stating “Our land is not for Sale, we are still at war with KKKanada, we have never surrendered our land. We want the whole World to know not to come to our country and to boycott KKKanada and the 2010 Olympic Games. Tourism is not welcome here.”

This is not the first time Natives have been arrested protesting the 2010 Winter Olympics, Pacheedaht, Nuuchahnulth Elder Harriet Nahanee was arrested and sentenced to 14 days in jail for protesting the expansion and development of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, leading from Vancouver to Whistler, in preparation to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The destruction of Indigenous Territories and Sacred Sites must be stopped.

NYM spokesperson, stated in response to the arrests that, “Human and Indigenous Rights violations here in KKKanada must stop, the governments and corporations continue to drive our People from our homeland and destroy our food and medicine harvesting areas and basic necessities to survive our traditional, ancestral way of life. The Olympics is a global event and it will take the global community to awaken their conscience to boycott this 17-day event.”

For more information or to join the Anti-Olympic Coalition contact:

Native Youth Movement
nymcommunications@hotmail.com
(604)682-3269 ext. 7845 or

Warrior Publications
Warrior-Publications@hotmail.com

NYM Communications
NATIVE YOUTH MOVEMENT
FIGHT FOR LIFE
WARRIORS UNITE FROM ALASKA TO ARGENTINA

There is no such thing as a ‘housing crisis,’ there is only a political crisis. There is more than enough money to provide every poor working and unemployed person and family with decent housing. But while the politicians consider us their surplus, they amass billions of dollars made at the expense of our poverty.

We demand that not one more cent be spent until every person is housed!

Our proposed breakdown of how the Liberals must spend our $2 billion surplus:

SOCIAL HOUSING NOW!

We demand that the BC Liberals immediately begin construction on no less than 2000 units of fully subsidized social housing a year. This will cost $200 million a year and $10 million per year in operating costs.

It’s important not to be fooled by the Liberals claims of building social housing. What they aren’t telling us while we pat them on the back is that the little money they are spending on housing is federal health money. What they want us to believe is social housing is in fact assisted living for the elderly. Gordon Campbell makes is grandstanding on the backs of seniors.

The fact that the government itself admits that providing social housing is less expensive then the consequences of homelessness, and yet refuses to do so speaks to the truth that this government is a brutal one.

If driven by cost efficiency, as the government and tax-fanatics often excuse themselves, we would not be warehousing people in shelters but in decent homes. Under this capitalism our suffering is not an economic fall-out but rather a calculated surplus used to exploit us further by keeping wages and employment down. We say no more!

RENT REPARATIONS

Currently under the Liberals latest housing plan humorlessly titled ‘Housing Matters,’ rent subsidies have been made available to a very few working people. Under this deceitful plan persons or families can only receive supplements if no one in the family is on income assistance and only if every member of the household has ‘full citizenship’. The cut-off for subsides is fixed so that, for example: a single mother with 3 kids can only get a $200 subsidy for an apartment that costs less than $800 a month!

Housing minister Rich Coleman’s former job was working for landlord associations, so with his expertise in slumlording he knows full well how astronomically priced even the worst hovels in this province are.

We demand that rent reparations be paid out to all low-income renters. There are more then 65 000 households in BC paying more then half their income on rent. We have paid too much for too damn long! Bring in a rent freeze and compensate anybody who’s currently being bled dry by paying over a third of their monthly income into shelter. Housing rights are our human rights!

RAISE THE DAMN RATES ALREADY!

Welfare rates must be raised to levels that people can live decent dignified lives. To raise the rates 50% is $500 million. What else can we say about that…!

PAYBACK TIME!

The BC Liberals have successfully disempowered poor people’s ability to fight back by destroying our community services. Almost every string of our social security net has been cut. Our communities have been slashed and burned by funding cuts and altogether closures of the few places we felt safe.

We demand that every service that fell under the Liberal blade be reinserted. That the $200 million stolen from social programs and services since 2001 be paid back with interest!

Stop sending our community to jail or deporting them because there is no more legal aid! Stop the eviction factories from throwing families out into the streets because they can not legally challenge the landlords! Stop abusing us because there is no access to a Human Rights Tribunal! Stop stealing our children because there is no care! Stop kicking us in the teeth when we are down – or we will stop you!

AND SO MUCH MORE…

These simple demands barely cost 2/3 of our surplus. In fact we are fine with not taking this money that has been saved at our expense; we would much rather have the health of our communities restored with the money that is currently being squandered by the police, prisons, corporate subsidies and the damn Olympics.

Our government’s priorities are clear. Profit before people. Based on this calculation they are unfit to govern. Because they will not house people we must do so by whatever means. Our government will not give unless forced. We will only get what we organize to take.