[Wamvan] Fwd: [dnc-members] Four September events: Housing march, Pipelines forum, Drug War gathering, LAPP public event

Mon Sep 10 13:53:25 PDT 2012

FYI

tami

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: DTES Neighbourhood Council <dtescouncil at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 4:27 PM
Subject: [dnc-members] Four September events: Housing march, Pipelines
forum, Drug War gathering, LAPP public event
To: DNC Members <dnc-members at povnet.org>, DNC Steering Ctte <
dnc-board at povnet.org>

SEPTEMBER EVENTS SUPPORTED BY DNC

  1. Women's Housing March, Saturday September 15, 1:30pm at Cordova
and Columbia
  2. Women speak out against pipelines, Friday September 21, 7pm at
Aboriginal Friendship Centre
  3. The War Stops Here! Gathering against drug prohibition, Saturday
September 22, 9:30am-6pm at Oppenheimer Park
  4. What we are hearing in the DTES Local Area Planning Process,
Friday September 28 at the Japanese Language Hall, time TBA.

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***************************************
6th ANNUAL WOMEN’S HOUSING MARCH
***************************************

Sat. Sep 15 @ 1:30 pm
Starts at Cordova and Columbia, just west of Main St.
Unceded Coast Salish Territories

* Homes for People, not Profit for Real Estate!
* No Slumlords, No Evictions and No Gentrification!
* Rent Control not Social Control!
* Homes not Jails!
* Homes not Pipelines!
* Housing, Childcare, and Healthcare for All!

FB RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/368896053180255/
Download posters: http://www.dewc.ca
Videos and photos from last year: http://is.gd/DQ5j8h

On Saturday Sep 15 at 1:30 pm, join the Downtown Eastside Women Centre
Power of Women Group in the 6th Annual March for Women’s Housing and
March Against Poverty.

This year we continue to march for housing, childcare, and healthcare
for all low-income residents in the DTES. We want no more evictions,
no more displacement, and no more gentrification in our neighourhood.
We know that the growing number of cops and condos in the DTES is part
of a larger pattern to destroy and privatize neighourboods,
communities, and the land. We want to live free: free from BC Housing
controls, free from violence against women, and free from this system
that is hurting and killing us.

We invite groups to bring their banners and anything else for our
festive march. All genders are welcome and celebrated. Please bring
your drums and regalia. This march is child-friendly and there will be
a rest-vehicle for elders. Spread the word!

Email: project at dewc.ca or Phone: 778 885 0040

The DTES Power of Women Group is a group of women (we are an inclusive
group) from all walks of life who are either on social assistance,
working poor, or homeless; but we are all living in extreme poverty in
and around the DTES. Our aim is to empower ourselves through our
experiences and to raise awareness from our own perspectives about the
social issues affecting the neighbourhood. Many of us are single
mothers or have had our children apprehended due to poverty; most of
us have chronic physical or mental health issues for example HIV and
Hepatitis C; many have drug or alcohol addictions; and a majority have
experienced and survived sexual violence and mental, physical,
spiritual, and emotional abuse. For indigenous women, we are affected
by a legacy of the effects of residential schools and a history of
colonization and racism.

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She Speaks:
Indigenous Women Speak Out Against Tar Sands

When: Friday September 21
Doors at 5:30 pm. Program ends at 8:30 pm

Where: Aboriginal Friendship Center
1607 East Hastings St (corner Commercial)
Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories

Childcare & Feast (sponsored by the International Woman's Climate Caucus).
This is a free event.

* FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/216667078461052/
* Web:
http://www.ienearth.org/blog/2012/08/she-speaks-indigenous-women-speak-out-against-tar-sands/

Indigenous communities are taking the lead to stop the largest
industrial project, the Tar Sands Gigaproject. Northern Alberta is
ground zero with over 20 corporations operating in the tar sands
sacrifice zone, with expanded developments being planned. The cultural
heritage, land, ecosystems and human health of Indigenous communities
including the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First
Nation, Fort McMurray First Nation, Fort McKay Cree Nation, Beaver
Lake Cree First Nation Chipewyan Prairie First Nation, and the Metis,
are being sacrificed for oil money in what has been termed a “slow
industrial genocide”.
Infrastructure projects linked to the tar sands expansion such as the
Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, Kinder Morgan pipeline, Ontario
Line 9 reversal, and the Keystone XL pipeline threaten Indigenous
communities across Turtle Island.

Join us to hear from Indigenous women at the front line of defending
the land and communities from tar sands development and expansion.

* Ta'Kaiya Blaney is a Sliammon Nation youth who made headlines when
she wrote a song to speak up against the Enbridge Northern Gateway
Pipeline. Since then, she has been a strong Indigenous youth voice
locally and internationally advocating to protect the coast and the
land against big oil.

* Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a Dene from the Athbasca Chipewyan First
Nation of Northern Alberta, Canada. She is currently the
Communications Coordinator for Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, who
have recently filed a suit against oil giant Shell Oil Canada for
their open-pit mining projects.

* Suzanne Dhaliwal is the co-founder of the UK Tar Sands Network,
which works in solidarity with the Indigenous Environmental network to
campaign against UK corporations and financial institutions invested
in the Alberta Tar Sands.

* Melina Laboucan-Massimo is Lubicon Cree from Northern Alberta. She
has been working as an advocate for Indigenous rights for the past 10
years. She has worked with organizations like Redwire Native Media
Society and Indigenous Media Arts Society. She has joined Greenpeace
as a tar sands
climate & energy campaigner.

This event is organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network. IEN
is an alliance of grassroots Indigenous Peoples whose mission is to
protect the sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination and
exploitation by strengthening, maintaining, and respecting traditional
teachings and natural laws.

This event is supported by Aboriginal Front Door, Alliance for Peoples
Health, Council of Canadians, Indigenous Action Movement, Mining
Justice Alliance, No One Is Illegal - Vancouver Unceded Coast Salish
Territories, Occupy Vancouver Environmental Justice Working Group,
Pipe Up Network, Purple Thistle Center, Rabble.ca, Streams of Justice,
Tanker Free BC, Western Wilderness Committee and the International
Woman's Climate Caucus.

For more information:
Clayton Thomas Muller: monsterredlight at gmail.com
Sheila Muxlow: sheila.muxlow at gmail.com
Harsha Walia: hwalia8 at gmail.com or 778 885 0040
Maryam Adrangi: madrangi at canadians.org

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THE WAR STOPS HERE!
Ending drug prohibition in the DTES and beyond
- A Community Dialogue -

Saturday, Sept 22, 2012

9:30 am – 6:00 pm
Oppenheimer Park, Downtown Eastside
Vancouver, BC
Unceded Coast Salish Territory

Drug Prohibition uses criminalization as a means to reduce or
eliminate the production, distribution and use of certain substances.
As a social policy, it has been a costly failure. The financial and
material resources necessary to implement it are staggering, and the
various human and social costs to individuals, families and
communities caught in the drug war are devastating. The persistence of
prohibition, despite its obvious futility, indicates that it serves
other purposes or interests. It has long functioned as a tool of race
and class based social control, legitimized the expansion of the
state’s militarized policing powers, and been used to justify and fund
imperialist intervention and proxy wars.

On the local front, the Downtown Eastside has borne the wounds,
fractures, diseases and deaths that prohibition produces, and its
residents carry the alienating stigma that criminalization generates.
Overdose deaths, murdered and missing women, the spread of HIV/AIDS
and Hep C, child apprehensions, needless incarceration, daily police
harassment and intimidation –all flow from living under the regime of
drug prohibition.

It’s time to move beyond prohibition towards a framework that
recognizes the desire for altered states of consciousness as a normal
part of human behaviour, that develops drug policy based on public
health and social justice, and that begins to address the social roots
of addiction. We need to set drug use within the framework of
collective self-determination and social justice not punishment and
exclusion.

The Downtown Eastside has long been ground zero for the war on drugs,
but it is also the site of some of the most powerful and dynamic
challenges to the paradigm of prohibiton. The drug war began here over
a century ago; now it’s time to stop it here.

This community gathering will open up space for popular education and
dialogue around prohibition and build momentum toward strategies for
social change.

 Special guest speaker: Deborah Peterson Small

Deborah Small is Executive Director of Break the Chains, an
organization that seeks to build a national movement within
communities of color against punitive drug policies. Break the Chains’
ultimate goal is to implement progressive drug reform policies that
promote racial justice and human rights. Before assuming her position
at Break the Chains, she was Director of Public Policy for the Drug
Policy Alliance.