Elizabeth James Posts In
Further to this morning's item on the Carnegie Centre, following is Liz James', local activist, email:
24 December 2007
Dear Mr. Ridge:
For both you, your colleague Ms. Forbes-Roberts, and myself, I sincerely regret the need to send this message out on Christmas Eve. However, politics and bureaucracy appear to have little respect for the season - this one or any other.
The Grinch, it seems, has struck at the heart of the Carnegie Centre.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9a0f844c-28d3-4b54-912a-130079fe3f80&k=92106
To be up front - the websites and blogs in question have not been my usual internet stamping ground, but that's beside the point. Christmas Eve, or any other day in this extended "season of goodwill", is not the time to make the City's point. This is especially so in the case of an administration that makes much politically hay out of actually caring about the homeless people on its streets.
So, to any and all Grinches who may have played a part in the decision to bar William Simpson from the Centre, and to prevent him from taking his democratically-elected seat at Board Meetings, merely for having the temerity to disagree with your management style - shame on you.
You have confirmed that the dark side of the world Charles Dickens wrote of so eloquently is alive and thriving on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth James
Box 16090, RPO Lynn Valley,
NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C.
V7J 3S9
Dear Mr. Ridge:
For both you, your colleague Ms. Forbes-Roberts, and myself, I sincerely regret the need to send this message out on Christmas Eve. However, politics and bureaucracy appear to have little respect for the season - this one or any other.
The Grinch, it seems, has struck at the heart of the Carnegie Centre.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9a0f844c-28d3-4b54-912a-130079fe3f80&k=92106
To be up front - the websites and blogs in question have not been my usual internet stamping ground, but that's beside the point. Christmas Eve, or any other day in this extended "season of goodwill", is not the time to make the City's point. This is especially so in the case of an administration that makes much politically hay out of actually caring about the homeless people on its streets.
So, to any and all Grinches who may have played a part in the decision to bar William Simpson from the Centre, and to prevent him from taking his democratically-elected seat at Board Meetings, merely for having the temerity to disagree with your management style - shame on you.
You have confirmed that the dark side of the world Charles Dickens wrote of so eloquently is alive and thriving on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth James
Box 16090, RPO Lynn Valley,
NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C.
V7J 3S9
2 comments:
I loved these quotes in the Van Sun article:
"He [Simpson] believes that the agencies that are in the Downtown Eastside to combat poverty are actually codependent on the poor. "It's their raison d'etre."
"I call them the povertarians," he explains. "And they've created a system in the Downtown Eastside that is going in the wrong direction. It's a hell down here and I got elected to the Carnegie board by the members because I wanted to change the way these people are running things."
William Simpson's story with the Carnegie is, sorry to say, not a rare example, they often bar people without due process of any sort. My favorite example is the head of security says "You're barred" the barred man says "what for?"
Security explains: " Never mind that! Just get out!"
Power corrupts, and absolute power over an abject population tends to corrupt absolutely. When there is no accountability, no way for the common member to resolve his grievance, let alone get the grievance on a staff person's file, things get out of balance.
There is a "Incident Report Book" at Carnegie in which members can be written up by security. This can be done with out a person's knowledge. Incidents in this book will be automatically entered into the computer and will stay there for three years. All without them even knowing about it! How much sense does that make? If you want someone to stop doing something, wouldn't you go ahead and tell them when they've crossed the line? Secret write-ups are so iron curtain, how in the world do they help to resolve anything? They are only good for building a case for a punitive strike.
And then what happens when a member tries to get something on record and resolve a staff person's behavior? There's no way to get it on paper at all, and in fact, complaints could be dismissed out of hand because it turns out you're cpmplaining to the boss about his girlfriend! But how were you to know, unless you've read the DTESenquirer blog? I'd like to see more people from outside the DTES write to Judy Bader, she's the boss of Jaquie Forbes Roberts, the woman from the City of Vancouver who wrote the letter that barred William Simpson. I say from outside because so many inside live in 10x10 rooms without computers, and on the streets and such. The City knows exactly who they are picking on, and they know exactly how little resources they have to protect themselves against egregious abuses of power, like the barring of William Simpson.
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