[van-announce] URGENT - Change of Demo Time/Place: Woodward's for the People!

[apc at resist.ca]

Visit apc.resist.ca for more info about this and other upcoming APC actions!

                   APC DECLARES VICTORY OVER STAN HAGEN!

For the second time, the Anti-Poverty Committee have prevented Stan Hagen
from meeting with poverty pimps in the Downtown Eastside!  The first
ousting of the former Minister of Human Resources was so successful that
the mere threat of an APC presence has seen the proposed meeting with
NEVCO on the 28th called off.

APC continues to declare all BC Liberals as red-zoned from the Downtown
Eastside, a neighbourhood whose population has been repeatedly kicked in
the teeth by Liberal policy.  This red-zone includes Susan Brice, the new
Minister of Human Resources.  Brice has a long history as an oppressor of
poor and vulnerable people, including having spent time as a member of the
BC Police Commission.

***CHANGE OF DEMO TIME/PLACE!!!***

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Woodward's for the People!
Tuesday, September 28th - 2:00pm
City Hall front steps (South Side)
12th & Cambie
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This Tuesday, September 28th City staff will make their final presentation
to City Council regarding the development of Woodward’s.  The entire
process - from the sell-out of the squatters to the make-believe
‘community consultations’ - has been a sham.  The City has made no effort
in response to the crisis facing poor people in the Downtown Eastside or
across Vancouver.

In all the bids made by large corporations, the Woodward’s squatters have
been all but abandoned.  The catastrophe of homelessness booms with each
wave of welfare cut-offs.  People forced to live on the street can’t even
lie on the sidewalks or ask for change.  It is in this climate of extreme
poverty and dire need that COPE claims to champion the people by offering
to accept up to 100 units of social housing in a building that could
accommodate far more.

In this city, where 25% of the population qualifies for social housing,
100 units of social housing is not good enough.  Where there are 130 000
people currently at risk of homelessness the three proposals being
entertained are not good enough. Where over a thousand people sleep with
no shelter whatsoever every night, COPE is not good enough!

We demand every unit in the Woodward’s building become social housing!

This is not a new proposal.  The APC has been standing behind the demand
made at the Woodward’s squat 2 years ago.  We demanded that the provincial
Liberals end the moratorium on money invested into housing and develop
Woodward’s as an emergency project to begin alleviating the sufferings of
the DTES immediately!

Having promised Woodward’s to the people on whose backs they were elected,
COPE has now turned it’s back on the interests of the people and is
handing the building over to developers.  Even some of the unions who
supported the squat now endorse a proposal that would see no subsidized
units on the Woodward’s site and that would have the construction done by
welfare recipients forced into workfare.

The Anti-Poverty Committee will be taking a school bus full of former
squatters up to City Hall to demand what is theirs: Woodward’s, all of it,
now!

Please meet us at the front steps (south facing side) of City Hall on
Tuesday September 28th at 2pm sharp.  We will echo the demands of the
squat loud and clear - ‘Woodward’s for the people’!

We will win!