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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.)

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.

It’s been an interesting month for Vancouver’s version of Critical Mass, the leaderless bike ride that takes place on the last Friday of every month in cities around the world. Vancouver’s July 31 ride became the focus of media hysteria when Mayor Gregor Robertson let it be known that he was “pissed off” about the lack of a predetermined route. Robertson and police chief Jim Chu went so far as to call for a meeting with the “organizers” of Critical Mass. Which is kind of ridiculous, since Critical Mass doesn’t have organizers — and Gregor, who has participated in the ride in the past, ought to know that.

Anyway, the ride went ahead as scheduled, and with a minimum of fuss. (I participated, mainly because I was annoyed by the negative media attention.) But the powers that be haven’t given up trying to assert control over future rides. Now city councillor Andrea Reimer is complaining that the ride “hasn’t been well marshaled, it has been loose. As a result it has made it less easier to cycle and less clear why we are doing it…. It was good to see more marshals out [at the July ride] and for them to be very clear about why they are riding, right?”

Well, no.

Look, I know this is hard for politicians to understand, but Critical Mass doesn’t have leaders. There are no organizers for the mayor and the police chief to talk to. There are no marshals responsible for maintaining order on the ride. And there is no single goal or agenda or point that Critical Mass is trying to make (beyond a very broad “Bikes are awesome!”). Some people participate because they hate cars, others participate to draw attention to how unfriendly Vancouver is towards cyclists, and still others participate simply because it’s fun. To talk about “being very clear about why they are riding” is to completely misunderstand Critical Mass. Even calling it a “protest” is a bit of a stretch. Critical Mass is literally just a bunch of people meeting up at the same time and place every month and going for a bike ride together. There is no basis of unity beyond that — and it’s definitely not something you need to have leaders to do, any more than my friends and I need a leader when we ride our bikes to a party (or whatever).

When Andrea Reimer refers to “marshals,” she is probably referring to the self-appointed leaders at the July ride — the ones who brought their own PA system to address the crowd before the ride began, and then tried to cooperate with the cops to divert the ride according to their own pre-determined plan, without the consent of the other 3,000 participants on the ride. Well, I’m sorry, Andrea, but those people have no more authority than anyone else. In fact, to the extent that people ignored the self-appointed leaders and did what they collectively wanted to do, I’d say the ride was a success.

And that’s as it should be. Critical Mass shouldn’t have leaders or organizers — that just creates a target for cops to harass and for politicians to co-opt. Vancouver has been fairly lucky that the authorities are so tolerant of the ride. There are many stories of rides in other cities where the cops cracked down and arrested participants (last year in New York, for example, a cop was caught on video assaulting a cyclist during Critical Mass). The recent hysteria may be a sign that the local tolerance is waning. Under the circumstances, it would be a big mistake to give the authorities a target to crack down on. A crowd of 3,000 cyclists is pretty much unstoppable short of overt use of force by the cops; a small group of leaders, self-appointed or otherwise, would be much easier to manipulate.

But why is Vancouver’s tolerance only waning now, years after the rides began in Vancouver? I think Mike Cantelon has a point when he connects the current controversy to the Olympics. After all, the February 2010 ride will be happening right in the middle of the 2010 Winter Games. Mike puts it best in a comment on another story:

They’ll only be okay with Critical Mass during the Olympics if they can control it. To move towards this, local politicians want to to see Critical Mass become hierarchal, with leaders they can influence so they have control over the route. They want this ASAP so they can test this control over the half year leading up to the Olympics.

I don’t think the Olympics are the whole story here, but the powers that be are obviously keen to “maintain order” during the Games (hence the $900 million security budget, the crackdown on civil liberties, etc.). There’s no question that they would love it if Critical Mass had a hierarchy to exert pressure on, so as to avoid any unpleasantness on February 26, 2010 and every ride thereafter. What worries me is those self-appointed leaders. It’s not too hard to imagine people like that setting themselves up as Critical Mass “representatives” (with the best of intentions, of course) and, ultimately, collaborating with the powers that be. It’s a classic problem: some event or movement challenges the status quo, the keepers of the status quo push back against it, someone eventually emerges as the voice of compromise — and sure enough, that event or movement becomes compromised, softening and undermining the “challenge” that it poses until it no longer challenges anything at all. Critical Mass is hardly a social movement, but it definitely constitutes a challenge to the status quo, and it does so in a beautifully empowering and non-hierarchical way. It would be a shame to see that radical edge sanded away, yet again, in the name of accommodation.

This Sunday is the International Day Against Police Brutality. In the spirit of the day, the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre is organizing a black market in the DTES to protest against police harassment of neighborhood residents:

Significant street sweeps have been occurring in the DTES from increased and aggressive ticketing for things like jaywalking to “illegal” vending. As verified by the VPD itself, a year-end performance report shows that officers issued 467 tickets for violations of the Safe Streets Act in 2008, compared to 202 tickets in 2007. Police officers also handed out 133 tickets for violations of the Trespass Act, up from 95 in 2007. Tickets for city-bylaw infractions, including tickets for vending, panhandling, and loitering, shot up to 439 tickets in 2008 compared to 247 tickets in 2007.

Leading up to the 2010 Olympics, such measures are meant to ‘cleanse’ the neighbourhood and to intimidate DTES residents through the use of no-go orders for “chronic offenders” (i.e vendors/binners) and street checks by VPD Beat Enforcement Team officers.

In response to this, the Power to Women group is organizing an afternoon of “illegal vending” in front of the Vancouver Police Station on Sunday March 15th, International Day Against Police Brutality. We strongly encourage supporters and allies of the group and of DTES residents who are facing this increased onslaught to please come out and make your presence visible. We are standing together and we ask you to come out and support the Power to Women “black market” which will also help fund the groups ongoing activities! If you have any items (clothing, appliances, books, art, crafts etc) to donate to our “illegal vending” efforts, please bring them with you on Sunday!