[IPSM] Protesters target VANOC board members

[Nora Butler Burke]

Protesters target VANOC board members
ARMINA LIGAYA
Globe and Mail Update
May 16, 2007 at 2:21 PM EDT

VANCOUVER — Protesters who are threatening to storm their way into a
meeting of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee today say they will
start “evicting” individual board members at their workplaces to get their
message across – including tossing their belongings into the street.

The Anti-Poverty Committee — a local activist group that wants to cancel
the games and direct Olympic funding towards social housing — plans to
target VANOC board members at their workplaces.

Committee organizer David Cunningham said protesters intend to
“symbolically evict” the VANOC board members in the same manner people
have been displaced from the downtown lower east side.

“It would be just going in with a very confrontational attitude, much like
the police go in to people's hotels,” said Mr. Cunningham. “When those
places are evicted, people's belongings are just literally thrown into the
streets. We'd be looking at doing about the same thing.”

In recent months there have been a series of protests surrounding the
Olympic games preparations, including a February clash where activists
stormed the stage of a VANOC ceremony, vandalism of the Olympic clock and
today's planned protest.

The APC will go to board members' offices if protesters aren't able to
force their way into VANOC's board of directors meeting. These regular
meetings are traditionally closed to the public, but greater transparency
and accountability is on the meeting agenda, said VANOC vice-president of
communications, Renee Smith-Valade.

The APC is scheduled to meet at Pigeon Park at 1 p.m. PDT, before taking a
bus which can seat 62 to VANOC's Graveley Street headquarters.

“Hopefully, they'll let us into the meeting today and we won't need to do
this,” Mr. Cunningham said. “Otherwise, we'll start immediately... it will
be a campaign of escalating office invasions.”

Constable Tim Fanning of Vancouver police said it's too early to
speculate, but if the APC commits a crime, they will be dealt with.

“It's a no brainer... they're talking about a criminal offence, whether be
it mischief or disturbance,” he said. “We won't know until we get there,
or if it happens.”