[antiwar-van] Naomi Klein joins DTES Residents in DTES not for Developers Campaign

[Harsha W.]

Occupy Condos Campaign Continues in DTES, Naomi Klein Lends Support

Gathering and press conference: Thursday December 1st at 2 pm at Pantages
Site (150 East Hastings)

Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territory –  On Tuesday November 29th at
4pm, twenty four DTES residents and housing activists successfully
occupied the Salient Group’s Paris Annex condo development in the Downtown
Eastside. For over three hours, traffic all along Hastings Street was
blocked as activists raised the issue of gentrification in the
neighbourhood, and supporters managed to halt police attempts to enter the
occupied building by forming a people's blockade around the three
entrances.

The banner flown from the building read “Occupy Condos”, a nod to the
international Occupy movement for economic justice, but the demand – for a
moratorium on all condo development in the DTES until the area’s extreme
housing and homelessness crisis is solved – is distinctly local.

“We told the city that condos are destroying the low-income housing in the
DTES by driving rents up and that they are killing our community with
gentrification,” says Laura Shaver, DTES SRO resident and board member
with VANDU. “But City Hall is not listening. They are still
permitting and giving kickbacks to developers to build condos in the
DTES... and they’re still not building social housing!”

On Thursday December 1st, international best-selling author of No Logo and
Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein will join the DTES Is Not For Developers
campaign in a press conference and gathering at 2 pm in front of the
Pantages site in the Downtown Eastside. Speakers will include
representatives and DTES residents from the Aboriginal Front Door, DTES
Neighbourhood Council, DTES Power of Women Group, and Vancouver Area
Network of Drug Users.

Jen Allan, founder of the survival sex worker support group Jen’s Kitchen
and Downtown Eastside Neighbhourhood Council board member says, “The city
talks about safety for women and for survival sex workers, but safety
means safe and affordable housing for sex workers and their children.
Condos in the DTES will not help survival sex workers, they will hurt
them.”

Beatrice Starr, member of the DTES Women Centre Power of Women Group and
thirty-year resident of the neighbourhood is angry that the City and
developers are complicit in escalating rents and gentrification. “The
priority should be building social housing not condos. Marc Williams,
Robert Fung’s Salient Group and all other gentrifying developers, real
estate speculators, and greedy investors, as well the corporate-controlled
City Council, should know that we will not abandon this fight,” she says.





-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group