[Smashpatriarchy] Fwd: [risingtide.cst.announce] TOMORROW: Join Rising Tide at the Pidgen Picket

[Peter Gill]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rising Tide-Vancouver Coast Salish Territories <
risingtide604 at riseup.net>
Date: Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Subject: [risingtide.cst.announce] TOMORROW: Join Rising Tide at the Pidgen
Picket
To: risingtide.cst.announce at lists.riseup.net


Rising Tide Coast: Salish Territorries stands in solidarity with Homeless
Dave and the residents of the DTES as they resist gentrification. We will
be picketing outside the newly opened Pidgin Restaurant this Saturday and
we invite you to join us.

Where: Pidgen Restaurant, 350 Carrall Street (between Cordova and Hastings)
When: Saturday, April 6th at 6-8PM

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/124391561086825/

Rising Tide - Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories - Statement of Solidarity

The lines are drawn - Stop market gentrification of the DTES!

With the Downtown Eastside gentrification project once again we see profit
being placed before people, we see conspicuous consumption portrayed as
the ultimate source of happiness, and we see disregard for, and
displacement of, those most screwed over by the system and most in need of
society’s support. ‘The high-end developers, who control municipal
politics with their massive election donations, are developing high-end
stores, restaurants and condo developments from Carrall St to Clark Drive.
Last year, the DTES saw only 24 new social housing units open up, while
there were 170 condos built and over 400 low-income housing units lost to
rent increases.

Enough is Enough

In recent years, there have been numerous attempts by local DTES residents
and allies to bring attention to the displacement of DTES residents.
Residents have presented their concerns at city council meetings and have
been continually shut out. They have participated in the Local Area
Planning process which turned out to be yet another betrayal of the people
most impacted by the changes occurring in their neighbourhood. They have
picketed construction sites and occupied condo developments. None of these
strategies have yet resulted insubstancial change. The gentrification and
displacement continues.

Finally, on March 22nd 2013 a former Vancouver homeless DTES resident,
Homeless Dave, started a hunger strike. In his words, “Gentrification is
intensifying; the housing crisis is deepening, and the health of the
people and the land are under serious threat. Desperate times call for
desperate measures.” His demands are clear, reasonable and obtainable:

1) 100% community-directed social housing at the Sequel 138 condo site
with a healing and wellness centre;

2) 100% social housing at the former police station on Main with a
community-directed space focused on women and aboriginal people in
recognition of the horrific damage done over the years by the Vancouver
Police;

3) The City declares the Downtown Eastside a “Social Justice Zone” along
with the policies to make it happen.


Rising Tide Coast: Salish Territorries stands in solidarity with Homeless
Dave and the residents of the DTES as they resist gentrification. We will
be picketing outside the newly opened Pidgin Restaurant on Saturday 6th
April at 6PM and we invite you to join us.

Land Grab

The Pidgin Restaurant (as in ‘pidgin English’ – a means of communication
for trading purposes under British imperialism) is located across from
Pigeon Park, historically a gathering location for low income residents
including many indigenous people who live in the surrounding SR0 hotels.

With the increasing gentrification of the area, Pigeon Park is being
systematically emptied of low income folks due to increased police
harassment, the creation of yet another new condo development, and now,
the opening of two brand restaurants which cater to amuch wealthier crowd.
Instead of a home for the community the block is in danger of being
transformed into a new zone of exclusion.

We are witnessing a modern day land grab, not unlike the historic process
of colonization in which land was seized from Indigenous peoples. Those
with the money and power to buy elections, backed by Vision Vancouver and
city council, are buying up land to create ‘trendy’ and expensive
restaurants and fancy boutiques, while low income residents have no say in
this rapid transformation.

DTES residents are in danger of being involuntarily displaced from the
community they call home by soaring property values, rents far beyond what
people on welfare and pensions can afford, renovictions, and a dramatic
drop in the availability of low income housing stock. Many are at severe
risk of homelessness or are being forced to move out of the city of
Vancouver to places where there are few services available for the much
more widely dispersed pockets of low income people.

The Pidgin Restaurant has become the symbolic heart of the fight to
preserve the street and retail spaces that serve the low income community
and its needs, not those of the wealthy who aspire to control the
neighbourhood.

Connecting the Dots…

It is the same oppressive dysfunctional capitalist system that is pushing
low income residents out of the DTES that is trampling indigenous rights
in the Alberta tar sands and the proposed BC carbon corridor, displacing
hundreds of thousands around the world through fossil fuel extraction and
processing and ultimately threatening life on earth itself through
catastrophic climate change. Rising Tide feel that it is vitally important
that we connect the dots between these struggles for these battles cannot
be won in isolation.

For us the DTES is one of our front line communities, a community being
stripped of its most fundamental of resources, its land. We resist the
onslaught of capitalism and colonialism from restaurants in Pigeon Park to
proposed oil and gas pipelines in the interior of BC, from the oil fields
of Iraq and the Niger Delta to the low lying island nations set to
disappear into the rising seas.

We fight for social and climate justice locally and globally.

Join us outside the Pidgin Restaurant on Saturday 6th April at 6PM.


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www.risingtide604.ca
@risingtide604
wwww.facebook.com/risingtide604
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