[Vanact.internal] Help with Food to support Power of Women Action

[Cassie Sutherland]

Hello Everyone,

Just an informal message, requesting some support for the action listed
below.

A few of us, tied to Food not Bombs, are providing food for approximately 50
people. If you are available to help prep food (Monday 2:00), cook food
(Tuesday 11:00-4:30), or transport, serve, and clean up (4:30 onwards)
please call Cassie at 604-709-0138 for more information.

All help is appreciated!

In solidarity,

Cassie

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No More Stolen Sisters:
Safe Shelters, Safe Housing, Safe Services!

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Tuesday March 22 at 1:30 pm (ongoing - join when you can!)
Gather at Main and Hastings in the DTES
for March AND Women's Action
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"Come on, shit happens, look at Rwanda, look at Libya" - Margaret McNeil,**
BC Housing when asked about BC Housing's role to ensure women's safety in
their shelters after numerous reports of sexual assaults at the First
United Church were made public.


For decades women have gone missing and been murdered from the Downtown**
Eastside. Recently, it has come to light that women are being sexually
assaulted in shelters in the neighbourhood, but the response from service
providers and BC Housing has largely been muted. The silence and
normalization of violence and sexual assault against women in this
community is unacceptable. Women should be free from racialized, gendered,
colonial violence. As condos overrun this neighbourhood, women should not
have to "choose" between the indignity of homelessness and being
warehoused in shelters, and the high-risk of assault associated with both.
Women have a right to physical, mental, emotional, spiritual safety – this
includes more beds for women in shelters, a 24-hours women’s drop-in, and
housing for all women and children. BC Housing must act immediately.

Beatrice Starr, an Indigenous woman who stayed at the First United Church**
Shelter for over 8 months says “All of us are someone’s mother or
someone’s daughter and deserve to be treated with respect. Warehousing
hundreds of people in a shelter is unacceptable; it is like residential
schools. Also, increasing police presence in the shelters only makes the
problem worse because mistrust of the police runs deep. Instead, all
Downtown Eastside residents should have adequate housing and access to
safe services.”

“BC Housing and the City of Vancouver are responsible to ensure that safe**
services are equally available to women in this community. Women should
not have to choose between the indignity of homelessness and violence
within publicly funded institutions” states Alice Kendall, Coordinator of
the
Downtown Eastside Womens' Centre.

Background info: **http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/6390 and
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/6496

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