October 17, 2008
by Janine Bandcroft
This afternoon local officials selected carefully from among the tent city's prettiest colours and shapes, collecting camping gear for their next year's family outings at the last remaining BC wilderness in the pay-as-you-go provincial rip off campsites. Because law enforcers are themselves above the law, they call this 'confiscation,' but to everyone else it's known as 'theft.' Local law enforcers justify their theft of camping gear as the only possible way to eradicate the societal demise known as 'tent city' which city officials will now reluctantly 'allow' ...... but only through the night.
You see, a couple hundred years ago their white, invasive ancestors (perhaps even the very same souls, cloaked in the disguise of another lifetime), destroyed the homes of other people attempting to live with a gentle footprint upon this land. Those were known as 'Indians,' 'Savages,' and the above-the-law enforcement officers of their day engaged a sense of entitlement and superiority that justified an unprecedented theft of land, destruction of property, and deathly disease.
Thanks to the inconvenience of modern media, we can watch that theft and destruction all over again .... and celebrate because homeless people are now 'allowed' to sleep in tents at night. They can sleep, but they can't have a home. There will be no municipal support for alternative lifestyles. As winter approaches, the homeless will have to settle for extra 'shelter beds,' (in reality, foam mats on a floor in a potentially TB clouded church basement somewhere).
Tonight's corporate media tugged at the green heart strings of those watching from the comfort of their bear mountain condos. Camping, it seems, is indescribably damaging to the local habitat. I could almost hear Len Barrie's tsk tsk from his Alan Lowe designed monster home, on top of his world, carried across the miles on the winds that blow with a forcefulness never known before an entire mountainside was clearcut and destroyed.
The corporate media was also careful to connect drug use (which, apparently, has never ever occurred previously in Beacon Hill Park) with the tent city dwellers. How dare those homeless criminals attempt to construct homes on the sacred grasses of Beacon Hill Park, the ultra-wealthy coke sniffing martini drinking SUV driving 65,000 square foot oil heated home dwelling citizens exclaimed !?!!! How dare they.
WE MUST ALL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES OF DEBT they screamed, across their Jordan River 'development' plans which make Bear Mountain look like a lego-project at miniature world. WE MUST ALL OWN MORTGAGES, GIVE OUR LIVES OVER TO THE BANKING SYSTEM (let us pray), LIVE IN BOXES, PRETEND THIS LIFESTYLE, THESE BANKING DECISIONS, HAVE NO IMPACT WHATSOEVER ON THE NATURAL WORLD, AND FOR GODSAKE BE HAPPY ABOUT THE CHOICES WE'VE MADE. After all, everyone knows it's CAMPING that's the crime, CAMPING that's the most environmentally damaging lifestyle, CAMPING that leads to drug use, prostitution, and the ultimate demise of all that is sacred and holy.
In addition to convincing us all that the tent city campers deserved everything they got (theft of property, rough-housing, ticketing, arrest ....) tonight's media also ran a story informing us of the filth and uncleanliness associated with riding the buses. Whereas bus riders touch chairs and railings that other people have also touched, thereby picking up untold amounts of bacteria and other disagreeable cootie-type micro-objects, SUV drivers never ever touch doorknobs or elevator rails, they never try on shoes that dirty lower income feet might have touched. In comparison to those grubby bus riders, car drivers are sparkly clean. According to the corporate media, homeless people attempting to create a gentle life for themselves are the blight upon the earth, they're the cause of global warming and species extinction, with those who choose public transit very nearly as despicable.
It's reasurring to know that, with the capitalist economic system collapsing all around us, creating homelessness and poverty faster than Rob Reid can run into the Mayor's chair, the corporate structures of the 200 year old industrial revolution will cling sooooo valiantly to their dying system of unethics. You gotta admire their determinism .... er, determination.
7:00 pm update: Chris Johnson reports - "tent city update: The five people arrested earlier today have been released from jail. I've no word yet if they are facing charges..."
