On July 31st 2009 Vancouver will be hosting the World Police and Fire Games. The games is an international sporting event where police officers, firefighters, customs and correction officers compete against each other in over 65 sporting events. More than 12,000 police officers, corrections officers and firefighters will be in Vancouver for the 10 day event.

The Anti-Poverty Committee is calling for a mobilization against police brutality both locally and internationally, and the violence that the state perpetrates around the world everyday through police and ‘correctional’ facilities. The APC calls on all those individuals and groups who are against police brutality and the everyday terror and violence caused by the various police forces to participate in actions and events during the police and fire games.

The APC will stand to honor those in our community who have been killed, brutalized, and daily harrased by the police and to condemn not only the individual police forces, but the structure that allows them to get away with oppression, intimidation and violence everyday in our communities.

We believe that the police cannot be made accountable, and they will never truly protect those that they purport to, and that police will never make our communities safer, as they continue to harass, target and brutalize poor people, indigenous people, youth, sex trade workers and many others.

The APC is calling for a demonstration during the opening ceremonies of the games on July 31st at 7pm (location TBA). To get involved in the organizing of the demonstration please contact APC (apc@resist.ca). If your organization would like to endorse the event please email the APC. We also encourage other groups to organize around these events and denounce the police and fire games.

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!

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

download poster (in PDF) –>

At 5:00pm the Vancouver Police Department sent 40 officers in full riot gear, equipped with tear gas canisters and rubber-bullet guns, into the Women’s City Hall Housing Takeover at 2530 Cambie Street.

Barricaded into the second floor of the building, the eight remaining protesters sat together repeating, ‘there are eight of us here, we are not resisting arrest’ as the cops struggled to get into the room. All eight were removed from the building – only one was arrested.

To date there have been four arrests during the City Hall Women’s Housing Takeover. Three supporters were arrested earlier today and one of the occupiers was arrested coming out. All four are still in police custody and legal support is in place, working to get them all released.

There will be a meeting of the Anti-Poverty Committee tomorrow, Thursday November 2nd at 6pm at 327 Carrall Street.

Thank you to everyone who came and supported our sisters and brothers inside the building and out.

For more information on how to get involved in this escalating campaign, please e-mail us at apc@resist.ca or call 604-682-3276.

At 2pm, a third supporter was arrested as he attempted to send a sleeping bag to the people inside. People inside the building and out shouted their anger as police arrested and removed another supporter.

A press conference and rally are being held at the building today at 5pm to show community support for the people inside and condemn the actions of the police as well as the inaction of the City.

For more information about how to help, call 604-728-9550 to speak with an organizer.

This morning, Kim Kerr and Thomas Malenfant were arrested and charged with obstruction while attempting to get essential supplies inside the occupied building. Since the building was surrounded by police yesterday afternoon, they have not allowed anything or anyone to enter the building. This includes water, blankets and food. Police also spent the night harassing supporters who were staying outside the building.

The APC is demanding the immediate release of Kim and Thomas without any charges. Until this happens, we are not entering into any kind of negotiations with police about exiting the building.

Please come down and join supporters as soon as you can. We are especially asking that people come out for a support rally at 5pm this evening.

Two anti-poverty activists have been arrested by Vancouver police for taking blankets and water into a city-owned building being occupied by squatters, just down the street from city hall.

Kim Kerr of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association and a second person were arrested late Wednesday morning at the building at the corner of Cambie Street and West Broadway.

Kim Kerr, one of the leaders of the occupation, was one of two people arrested on Wednesday.Kim Kerr, one of the leaders of the occupation, was one of two people arrested on Wednesday.

Police said the pair could be charged with obstruction.

About 20 people took over the abandoned building on Tuesday, in an effort to draw attention to the city’s homeless situation.

Kerr, one of the leaders of the latest squat, also helped organize the recent occupation of Gastown’s North Star Hotel, which ended with arrests of six protesters.

Police had been posted at the new squat site to prevent any supplies from being taken into the protesters.

When asked about that strategy on Wednesday, Mayor Sam Sullivan said he will not tolerate the illegal occupation of someone else’s property.

A group of advocates for the homeless has taken over another abandoned building in Vancouver, this time just a block from city hall.

About 20 protesters occupied the boarded-up, two-storey building at Cambie Street and West Broadway on Tuesday afternoon and say they plan to stay.

The Anti-Poverty Committee had planned to occupy the council chambers at Vancouver City Hall.

A group of about 100 gathered on the north lawn at city hall early Tuesday afternoon, saying they were set to march in on a city council meeting to voice their displeasure with the current homeless situation.

Instead, they marched in the opposite direction, down the hill away from city hall to the building at 2530 Cambie St., which is a high-profile location at a very busy intersection.

The publicly owned property, and the building next to it, are slated to become the site of the Broadway station for the Canada Line rapid transit service between downtown Vancouver and the airport.

Trying to make a point

Spokesman Tim Kerr of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association said the new squat site will be reserved for aboriginal women, as the group is trying to draw attention to the plight of people who need housing help most.

Kerr, who helped organize last week’s occupation of the derelict North Star Hotel in Gastown, said he’s trying to make the point that the city has numerous vacant buildings and 1,300 people homeless on the streets with winter approaching.

Police ended last week’s squat at the request of the owner of the North Star, arresting six protesters.

Mayor Sam Sullivan has responded to the latest squat by issuing a news release saying he will hold a news conference on Wednesday morning to deal with the homeless crisis.

The mayor says he will outline a five-point motion that will be presented to council later this week that will provide immediate action. It will include a call for emergency funding to keep some of the city’s single-room-occupancy hotels open over the winter.

Yesterday just after 1pm, while over a 150 people rallied outside the police entered the North Star Squat and removed the half a dozen squatters inside. The Anti-Poverty Committee had demanded that Sam Sullivan, the mayor and leader of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), meet with the squatters by 1pm Tuesday afternoon to talk about the NPA’s promise to buy one hotel a year and convert it to social housing. Sam Sullivan, the mayor of a city well-known for the large number of people forced to sleep on the street every night and the huge lack of affordable housing, cowardly refused to speak with the squatters.

About 30 police officers marched down the street and entered the hotel to remove the squatters while the crowd outside screamed “Homeless people under attack, what do we do: Stand Up, Fight Back.” The crowd then followed the police wagon up Hastings to the police station while drumming and singing a warrior song. The squatters were released from police custody around 5pm.

This is only the beginning of an escalating campaign for social housing. Next Tuesday we take the fight to City Hall…