[Wamvan] Fwd: ongoing battle in mainstream media

[Tami Starlight]

Ongoing battle with the warped Vancouver Courier, the DNC, VANDU & DTES Not
For Developers.

Also adding another story from the mainlander regarding the fight against
gentrification and the systems like shitty hall that support this gauntlet
of oppression.

Tami
VANDU serves impoverished population****

Vancouver Courier
Wed May 16 2012
Page: 9
Section: Letters
Byline: Dave Diewert
Source: Vancouver Courier ****

 ****

To the editor: ****

 ****

Re: " Vancouver city hall coddles, protects poisonous pro-dope lobby," May
9. ****

 ****

Mark Hasiuk's last column was a toxic, hateful piece of journalism. Under
the civil and legal argument that the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users
is not playing by the rules (apparently it operates without a permit), he
feels completely justified to demonize and vilify the people and work of
VANDU. ****

 ****

Maybe Mr. Hasiuk is perturbed to see active drug users care for one another
by creating a welcoming space for education, support and political
organizing in the midst of tremendous public hostility. ****

 ****

Or perhaps he is troubled to see drug users, whom he and others clearly
hold in utter contempt, take action against the structures of oppression
and death inscribed in the legal policies and social consciousness of the
status quo. ****

 ****

VANDU is a powerful social justice movement among the most despised and
impoverished population of our city, and despite Mr. Hasiuk's efforts, it
is not disappearing any time soon. ****

 ****

Dave Diewert, Vancouver ****

 ****

 -------------------------


http://themainlander.com/2012/05/12/counterpoint-allen-garr-attacks-the-poor-loses-all-credibility/


Two weeks in a row, Allen Garr has written articles attacking Downtown
Eastside community members who oppose the Pantages condo project slated for
their neighbourhood. Harold Lavender, a board member of the Downtown
Eastside Neighbourhood Council (DNC), has called Garr’s recent writings
“libelous and horrible articles” filled with “scurrilous attacks.” One
would imagine that before publishing something so inflammatory, the veteran
columnist would make sure he was on solid ground. Let us examine whether
Garr did any investigating, or whether his words are indeed “scurrilous.”

Garr’s article opens with thunder: “By all accounts, it looked like a riot.
There was pushing and shoving, cops and security guards trying to control
the crowd and death threats being uttered: ‘There will be blood in the
streets.’” Is that an accurate representation of what happened? I was there
and wrote an article<http://themainlander.com/2012/04/27/city-council-uses-questionable-methods-to-fast-track-sequel-138-gentrification-project/>about
the same meeting. How could two accounts of the same event be so
different?

First, of course, Garr wasn’t there. What I learned, by speaking to staff
of city hall and City Manager Penny Ballem, was that the Mayor’s Office
determined beforehand to block DTES residents from the public hearing. When
residents demanded to be allowed to enter the hearing — which is why they
sent a delegation all the way to city hall! — security, police and city
managers responded completely out of proportion to anything reasonable. In
front of everyone’s eyes the police physically assaulted three members of
the public, all who simply stated verbally that the meeting should be
publicly open. It is impossible to imagine what would happen if City Hall
treated a delegation from Shaughnessy in the same way.

But Allen Garr tells a very different story. The fact that he wasn’t there
does not immediately disqualify him from writing about the hearing. Surely
Garr, being a respectable journalist, will have done rigorous research
before painting 50 concerned delegates with a broad stroke. Indeed, Garr
begins his article by suggesting that he consulted widely with all those
present. “By all accounts,” the article begins.

But then only a few sentences later, Garr concedes that, after all, he did
not speak to everyone in attendance. “I have this report from some of the
participants,” he says. As we read further we soon find out that there is a
world contained in this “some.” Garr’s article quotes Michael Clague and
Wendy Pederson, co-chairs of the city’s DTES Local Area Planning (LAP)
Committee, but their comments are inconsistent with Garr’s opinion, so he
dismisses them.”By all accounts” quickly morphs into “by some accounts.”

In a similar vein, award winning anti-poverty activist and writer Jean
Swanson wrote the *Courier* to counter one of Garr’s attack articles: “I
didn’t hear anyone threatening anyone when I was there. Not once,” said
Swanson. In response, Garr not only dismisses Swanson, but down-right
attacks her credibility: “One can only conclude she was conveniently deaf.”
Pretty bold conclusions for Garr, especially since he was not even there.
One can only conclude that Garr hasn’t read Swanson’s classic
book<http://www.amazon.ca/Poor-Bashing-Politics-Exclusion-Jean-Swanson/dp/189635744X>,
*Poor-Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion. *

To quote just a few sentences from Swanson’s book: “Poor-bashing means
having your reality and your perceptions denied by people with more money
than you have,” and, “Poor-bashing means ignoring people who are poor when
they propose what they need,” and, “Poor-bashing means leaving poor people
out of discussions on issues that are crucial to their livelihood,” and,
finally, “Poor-bashing means ignoring facts and repeating stereotypes about
people who are poor.”

If Garr did not ground his version of events in the testimony of Clague,
Pederson, or Swanson, then who was his source? Garr tells us: “I wasn’t
there, but aside from Rafii and Jeffries, of those willing to speak up,
there is…city manager Ballem.” So, Garr’s account is based on the testimony
of three people: architect/developer Foad Rafii, City Manager Penny Ballem,
and False Creek resident Fern Jeffries. It serves to examine these three
people more carefully, and to find out in particular what immediate
interests they have in demonizing DTES residents.

First, Garr’s account relies heavily on Foad Rafii, a member of the
Development Permit Board. Rafii is an architect who is currently personally
designing a large condo project in the DTES. In fact, at this week’s
Development Permit Board meeting (May 7th), Rafii acted as the spokesperson
for the applicant of a 10 storey condo tower at Main and Keefer, an
aggressive gentrification project with zero affordable or social housing.
At this latter meeting, Rafii blurred his roles as both Board member and
applicant’s representative. He did not publicly disclose this conflict of
interest. Part way through Rafii’s speech on behalf of the applicant, a
member of the public recognized him as a Board member and announced it to
the room. Rafii still did not clarify which hat he was wearing, nor did the
Board Chair intervene to address the
conflict-of-interest<http://themainlander.com/2012/05/07/conflict-of-interest-in-city-hall-condo-tower-approved-in-chinatown/>.
Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, the Development Permit Board,
stacked with Vision-appointed developers, barely blushed and then ploughed
ahead with approval.

Rafii’s conflict-of-interest regarding the Main and Keefer condo project
provides the context for explaining his recent attempts to spread
misinformation about the Pantages hearing. The Pantages condo project is
only two blocks away from Rafii’s project at Main and Keefer, so the
arguments against both projects are identical: both are gentrification
projects that will inflate surrounding property values and push out rare
low-income housing, stores, and community spaces. Rafii’s development is a
particularly uncompromising embodiment of greed and carelessness,
containing no affordable housing whatsoever. Rafii clearly identified more
strongly with the developer of the Pantages condo project than with
residents. Realizing that many of those who spoke out against the Pantages
condos would also speak out against his own condo project, Rafii made an
effort to delegitimize them by spreading massive misinformation.

With this knowledge, we are better situated to unpack this quote from Allen
Garr about the Pantages hearings: “According to Foad Rafii who sits on the
board’s advisory panel, folks were being shouted down by Drury and his crew
even before they could speak. Then there was the threat Rafii heard that
there ‘would be blood in the streets.’”

What is incredible is Rafii’s effort to distract from the actual cause of
the disturbance. City Hall decided to block DTES residents from being able
to get into the hearing. The meeting was moved to a last-minute private
location with over 20 police officers blocking the door. The only
“shouting” that occurred was people asking that the hearing be open to the
public at the start of the meeting. The developer and his friends were
allowed to sit in the hearing room, while DTES residents had to sit outside
in a different room, and poor people on the speaker’s list were escorted in
by police, one at a time, only when it was their turn to speak, and then
escorted out immediately after. This was clearly identified by the public
as an outrageous and humiliating manifestation of poor-bashing. Imagine if
such a double-standard were applied along lines of race (which in effect it
was *de facto* if not *de jure*).

Even worse, when those who were blocked from attending began chanting “move
it [the meeting] upstairs,” the police needlessly assaulted at least three
people. The ironic thing is that there is no way for Rafii to have seen any
of this. While DTES residents were barred entry to the hearing itself, all
these events occurred outside in a separate room reserved for DTES
residents, while Rafii and his developer friends hid inside the hearing
room proper. So much for Garr’s major source, Foad Rafii.

Garr’s second key source is city manager Penny Ballem. Garr quotes Ballem
as saying:

“‘I was there. My staff was threatened. I was threatened. I was called all
sorts of things.’ For the people in that room ‘it was very scary.’”

In point of fact, Ballem was not there during the events in question, when
over 20 police blocked DTES residents from entering the hearing room and
then assaulted at least three people for no reason other than that they
demanded for the meeting be moved upstairs to the vacant council chambers.
Ballem showed up *after* the police misconduct, only to ignore testimony
that people had been needlessly assaulted by security. She inflexibly
asserted that she would not change her plan of blocking DTES residents from
the meeting, then left again.

What was Ballem’s interest in giving Garr these misleading quotes? Ballem’s
comments must be interpreted within the broader context of property
politics in the inner city. Ballem is currently working with the DTES Local
Area Planning Process (LAPP) Committee to develop a framework for a
comprehensive neighbourhood plan. But new condo developments like the
Pantages project will reshape the neighbourhood before the plan is
complete, thereby undermining the process. The LAPP Committee therefore
voted overwhelmingly to ask the city to halt the Pantages condo project
until the local area plan is in place. But Ballem has been directed by
Vision Vancouver to ram the project through regardless of the LAPP.
Importantly, her efforts are hampered in part by community organizer Ivan
Drury.

Drury is a member of the LAPP Committee, and has helped give the committee
the courage to stand up for its mandate of creating a grass-roots vision
for the neighbourhood. His no-nonsense, well-researched, tell-it-like-it-is
approach gives other poor people on the committee confidence to speak their
truths as well. Ballem, on the other hand, has made every effort to water
down the committee’s influence, autonomy, and grass-roots participation. It
is for this reason that Ballem is attempting to scapegoat Drury.

So when Garr writes the offensive sentence, “the decision to neuter Drury
should be applauded,” he really means, “the decision to neuter the DTES
Local Area Planning committee should be applauded, because I want my
friends to reap the profit of unfettered speculation and condo development
in the DTES.”

Ballem’s comments go even further — and here she makes a big strategic
error. Ballem, likely in coordination with Vision’s communications team,
decided to use Garr’s last article to publicly slander Drury and threaten
the LAPP Committee. Instead of formally approaching the committee about her
preferences (for example, proposing to muzzle anyone who is an effective
organizer, or who speaks out about the Pantages project), Ballem chose to
negotiate in public, giving Garr this unprofessional quote: “He [Drury]
cannot be part of the committee. We will not give him the legitimacy of
being part of a formal city process. I just said, ‘Out.’”

This led Garr to state: “The decision to neuter Drury should be applauded.
Now let’s see if it works.” Well, it worked to undermine Ballem’s
credibility and trustworthiness. The day after publication of Garr’s last
article, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council held its monthly
meeting, with over a hundred in attendance. The bulk of the meeting focused
on drafting a Bill of Rights for shelter residents. When it came time for a
report-back about the progress of the LAPP Committee, sections of Garr’s
article, including Ballem’s, quotes were read out loud. The entire DNC
membership was outraged and emboldened.

One Downtown Eastside resident, who volunteers on the LAPP Committee, stood
up and said: “if the City is allowed to do this [kick Drury off the
committee] because Ivan’s a strong person and he speaks for other people,
what’s going to stop them from kicking off us other poor people next?”
Kelvin Bee of the Aboriginal Front Door (AFD) made a statement, saying:
“The AFD will not stand beside and watch this happen. If he [Drury] is
forced out by the City, the AFD will pack its bags and leave with him.”

The DNC board has written a letter to Ballem, asking her to explain her
comments and behavior in writing.

*Scapegoating leaders of poor people’s movements*

Garr and Ballem’s strategy is to single-out and scapegoat one community
leader, in this case Ivan Drury. The purpose of singling him out is that
Drury is an effective leader, something that Garr admits: “smart,
charismatic.” When trying to defeat a social movement, it is common for
corporate public relations people to attempt to single-out effective
community leaders and demonize them through slander and lies (which we
might here dub “Garr-bage”).

Garr has now written three articles personally attacking Ivan Drury, with
each successive article being more desperate than the last. Garr’s general
method is to take second-hand accounts of statements made by other people
completely out of context, and then blame Drury.

For example, Garr says “folks were being shouted down by Drury and his crew
even before they could speak.” But no organizer, Drury or otherwise,
shouted anyone down. As mentioned, the dozens excluded from the meeting
took up the chant “move it upstairs,” not to shut down the meeting, but to
ensure it was accessible to everyone!

To take another example, Garr writes: “If this was approved, one man in the
crowd screamed, ‘People would die.’” In fact I do recall a resident (not
Drury) talking about how gentrification causes homelessness, and that
homelessness causes people to die on the streets. Somehow from this
statement, Garr concludes that death threats were made.

Garr also claims that “the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council (DNC)
chaired by Drury launched an attack on Mayor Gregor Robertson and Jang.”
Taken in context, Garr’s claim is absurd. Two years ago, there was a
grassroots campaign to build social housing above the new Strathcona
library, but Vision Vancouver insisted on pushing ahead with the plans
minus the social housing. Volunteers from the DTES gathered thousands of
petitions, sent dozens of delegations to city hall, and organized a
phone-in campaign to ask Jang and Robertson to build the social housing
above the library (using their phone numbers as posted on the City’s
website and www.karyjang.ca). Because of this campaign, Vision was
eventually pressured to slow down until funding was secured for the
housing. The campaign was successful, and now there will be precious
women’s housing on the site. At the time Jang considered it an “attack” for
citizens to call him, their elected representative, to ask for women’s
housing for those in need. This was a clear sign that Jang was
out-of-touch, if not anti-democratic. Furthermore, Ivan Drury never
personally attacked Robertson or Jang. Jang just didn’t “like it” when
citizens called his publicly available phone number, and made a personal
decision to blame Drury. As a fact-check side-note, Drury has never been
the DNC chair (DNC doesn’t have a chair) nor has he been president (the DNC
does have co-presidents).

As a corollary to singling-out Drury, Garr belittles everyone else, as if
they mindlessly follow the singled-out leader. Thus Garr refers to “Drury
and his pals” and “Drury and his crew” and “Drury and a crowd he was
leading” and, my favorite, “Drury et al.” This is exactly the same language
that NPA candidate Michael Geller commonly employs to demonize Wendy
Pederson, another extremely intelligent and effective leader of poor
people’s movements in Vancouver. Framing a group of poor people who make
the trek to city hall to defend their neighbourhood as a “crowd” or “gang”
or “mob” is a form of poor-bashing. It is also intended to reinforce the
ideology of the 1% that poor people are naturally mindless supporters of
the system that oppresses them, and that they stand up for their rights
only when manipulated by “populist” leaders who “whip them up.” That’s how
to interpret Garr’s sentence, “a bully whipped up the crowd, egging them on
to greater heights of excess.” This way of thinking leads Garr to hope that
if only Drury could be removed from the situation (Garr uses the phrases
“clip his wings” and even “neuter Drury”), all opposition to gentrification
and displacement would evaporate.

Garr’s third and final source is Fern Jeffries. Jeffries is not nearly as
influential as Rafii or Ballem. But she is important to Garr’s story,
because he attempts to present her as a “little old lady” — the victim in
his narrative.

Garr writes: “As a bully whipped up the crowd, egging them on to greater
heights of excess, little old ladies feared for their safety.” The “little
old lady” here is Jeffries.

Here Garr’s sensationalist account is thoroughly misleading. In fact,
Jeffries has long been vocal about her dislike of organizations led by
low-income DTES residents. It was no surprise to many that she was one of
only a handful of delegates speaking in favour of the Sequel 138
gentrification project. At the DPB hearing she claimed to speak on behalf
of a different neighbourhood (False Creek Residents Association). It is
strange, to put it lightly, for an organization from a different
neighbourhood to belittle concerns of the community directly affected.

In an open letter
<http://dnchome.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/mayanswering/>to the DPB on
behalf of the False Creek Residents Association, she
demonized low-income people and promoted contempt towards First Nations
residents, especially if they are facing addictions and poverty-related
issues. She asserted that these residents do not have a right to live in
the Downtown Eastside, even if it is their home. DTES residents were called
“ex-cons” who should be displaced because they do not exhibit the
“standards and behaviour of typical Canadians.” In essence, Jeffries
asserted that what matters is ability to pay: the poor are out of luck
because the rich have equal right to their homes. This made me think of
another antidote from Swanson’s book: “Poor-bashing means assuming that the
rich are entitled while the poor must do without.”

Garr claims that Jeffries was scared at the meeting, but really she was
bold and hateful, while DTES delegates (the vast majority of whom were
forced to sit in a different room!) sat uncomfortably through her comments.
Garr makes Jeffries into a victim because someone called her “racist,” but
Garr (who has recently written articles about anti-Asian racism) should
know that racism is the problem, not naming racism. On the contrary, the
only way to deal with racism is to name it when it happens. It takes
courage to name racism in our society, and those who do so should be
applauded.

*Conclusion*

To summarize, Allen Garr has penned three scurrilous articles against poor
people’s movements in the DTES. His interest has been, unfortunately for a
professional journalist, to bolster Vision Vancouver and its corporate
developer backers. Garr created a counter-factual narrative around the
Development Permit Board hearing for the Pantages condo project, despite
not being present at the hearing. Garr did not mention that DTES residents
were barred entry and discriminated against. Garr claimed falsely that
there was a riot  when there was only the needless assault by police of
three people who demanded that the meeting be moved upstairs. Garr’s
evidence regarding this episode relied heavily on second-hand accounts by
the development community and Foad Rafii in specific, who was not in the
room where this “riot” occurred. It is also important to note that Rafii is
in a serious conflict-of-interest, personally representing condo
developments in the DTES. Garr also claimed that DTES delegates “shouted
down” other delegates, but that is also false. His source for this claim
was a woman who repeatedly made uncomfortably racist and classist comments,
and got defensive when someone commented (accurately) that her comments
were indeed racist and classist. Finally, Garr used comments by Rafii and
Ballem to scapegoat Ivan Drury, because Drury is an effective community
organizer who empowers poor people. Garr even let Ballem and Vision
negotiate in public through his column. Ultimately, this only eroded Garr’s
and Ballem’s credibility and trustworthiness. Both have backed themselves
into a corner, with no facts on their side, such that they can only rely on
greed, power-plays, and slander. In the last analysis, Garr’s articles and
conclusions are poor because they are based on poor-bashing and
misinformation: Garr-bage in, Garr-bage out!
A more accurate account of the meeting itself would mention simply that
poor people were barred entry; then, escorted in and out of the room
one-by-one, made about 50 beautiful and inspiring speeches, knowing full
well that the dice were loaded against them by the corrupt Vision-appointed
Development Permit Board. As Garr says, “approval was inevitable. The
Development Permit board simply applies policy that council has passed.
After seven hours, that is what happened.” Garr of course forgets to
mention that almost no members of the Board have any familiarity with the
relevant city policy. Approval was inevitable simply because the Mayor’s
Office ordered that existing DTES housing policies be ignored and set aside.
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