{ texts for nothing }

News from the Tyee:

Vancouver’s two major newspapers are sponsoring a government-run centre that will tell international media covering the 2010 Winter Olympics about how the province is dealing with homelessness issues in the city’s troubled Downtown Eastside. [...]

News that BC Housing and the City of Vancouver wanted to establish a centre to “showcase the range of programs and services that have been undertaken to address the issues of homelessness” was first reported by Public Eye in November. ”We think there’s a good story to tell about what we’ve done in B.C. for homelessness, mental health, drug addiction,” Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman later explained in an interview with The Globe and Mail’s Frances Bula.

Now it comes to light that six private sector interests — including The Vancouver Sun and The Province — are sponsoring that centre, which is being set up in the Woodwards building and will also target the city’s international visitors.

(Hat tip: Sean Orr at Beyond Robson.)

BC Liberal MLA Harry Bloy thinks anti-Olympic protesters are terrorists:

For this group to take away so much from the Games, to have an opinion not shared by many where they have to gather from across Canada to try and disrupt these Games, to stop a young child or young adult with disabilities from carrying the flame—something he had been looking at doing for months since he was chosen, and he couldn’t carry it in his hometown—I think is disgusting and shameful.

They do not understand, these terrorists, the potential goodwill and economic benefits that come from these Games, because they have a limited intellect and do not understand how the world truly operates.

So if the protesters manage to successfully disrupt the Games, does that mean the terrorists win?

Evidently some poor kid’s desire to be exploited by the Olympic machine is more important to Harry Bloy than police harassment of our most vulnerable neighbors; the failure of politicians to live up to their promises to address Vancouver’s housing and homelessness crisis; flagrant violations of fundamental rights; the creation of a $900 million security apparatus that seems to spend most of its time intimidating critics of the Games and their friends; the prospect of massive public debt and the diversion of desperately needed funding from other areas to cover the $6 billion cost of the Olympics; the horrendous effects the Games have had on other host cities; and all the other issues that are motivating anti-Olympic activism in BC. Indeed, according to Harry Bloy, only someone with a “limited intellect” would be more concerned about these issues than about an absurd and pointless spectacle dedicated to elite athletics, nationalism, and corporate sponsorship. Personally, I think the protesters “understand how the world truly operates” far better than Harry Bloy.

It’s not that I expect anything better from politicians, least of all a BC Liberal. I just don’t like it when my friends are insulted by idiots.

The BC Civil Liberties Association is helping two anti-Olympic activists to sue the City of Vancouver over a bylaw that would restrict free speech during the 2010 Games.

“The bylaw is an affront to free speech.  Its purpose and effect is to limit citizens’ rights to express dissenting views and to hear dissenting views on public property,” says David Eby, Executive Director of the BCCLA. Eby cited concerns about the bylaw restricting signs that aren’t “celebratory” and listing public facilities and even a city park as places where free expression is limited as particularly offensive. [...]

“Vancouver’s Olympic bylaw is an infringement on my Charter rights and those of all people who wish to express themselves and to listen,” said Dr. Shaw [Chris Shaw, one of the activists who filed the lawsuit]. “If the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to be a guarantee of anything, if it is to be more than words on paper, this bylaw cannot be allowed to stand.”

This makes me happy.

Back in July, the City of Vancouver passed a bunch of bylaws to suppress free speech before, during, and after the Olympic games. Last week, we learned how the people in charge will be enforcing those bylaws:

Organizers of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics will send roving teams of observers with the power to confiscate material that infringes on the Olympic brand outside the venues, CBC News has learned….

The Vancouver Organizing Committee’s 20 observer teams are intended to enforce its agreement with the International Olympic Committee that the local organizers must ensure the venues are “clean” of commercial, political or religious publicity.

That’s right: political speech has been deemed to “infringe on the Olympic brand” and is therefore forbidden.* Never mind that this policy directly violates your rights as expressed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Larry Campbell took away those rights back in 2005 when he signed Vancouver’s agreement with the International Olympic Committee, which actually requires host cities to suppress their citizens’ civil liberties in this manner for the duration of the Games. (Campbell was Mayor of Vancouver then; now he’s a Senator, proving once again that it pays to watch out for elite interests.)

Of course, if you plan to ignore Vancouver’s illegal bylaws and exercise your rights of free speech and free assembly during the Olympics, VANOC’s Special Higher Police roving teams of observers are among the least of your concerns. The cops have been busy these past few months harrassing anyone who voices opposition to the Olympics — not just activists, who have been subjected to surveillance, interrogation of themselves and their friends and neighbors, and intimidation by the cops, but ordinary people like the 73-year-old man who wrote a letter to VANOC and got a visit from the authorities by way of response. There is also some legitimate concern that the cops are planning to infiltrate protest groups and use agents provocateurs to discredit anti-Olympic activists, just like they tried to do in Montebello in 2007. And then there are the “free speech zones” designed to keep protesters out of sight during the Olympics — in the proud tradition of such bastions of liberty as the People’s Republic of China, which set up its own protest cages during the Beijing Games in 2008.

In response to all this nonsense, the folks at the BC Civil Liberties Association and Pivot Legal Society are training volunteers to act as legal observers during the Olympics:

Like many of you, Pivot and the BCCLA are concerned that when the more than 7,000 police officers, 5,000 private security guards and 4,500 members of the Canadian armed forces arrive in Vancouver this February, their presence may get in the way of citizens’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Bylaws recently passed by the City of Vancouver suggest that we have good reason to be worried.

We plan to be ready, with dozens of people prepared to act as eyes and ears on the streets. Legal observers will be trained to watch for violations and to document and report them.

The first BCCLA/Pivot training session was this past Sunday. More sessions will be offered once a month for the next three months. If you’re concerned about your rights being violated, I’d recommend checking them out.

Or you could, you know, hook up with the anti-Olympic movement, since crackdowns on civil liberties are one of the reasons they’re opposed to the Olympics in the first place.