i'm looking at the backs of a row of black robes. two women lawyers (broadsky & buckley) representing the poverty and human rights centre, a man and a woman lawyer (skollod and jones?) also representing the rights of the homeless (didn't catch where they're from), a man (something elwood) from the pivot legal society. and, of course, cathie boies parker and irene faulkner - the women who have championed this case all these years.
there's a mr. young (not the infamous john young, who i meet later in the hallways of the courthouse where he tells me that his two court wins aren't enough because schools are still charging fees even though it's twice been ruled illegal or unconstitutional, and he's going to the supreme court of canada sometime this summer in an effort to win the right to free education for all across canada, as a good canadian society would provide) representing the bc municipalities. b channel's andrew ainsley, who's sitting beside me, says he's heard the bc municipalities association are the ones paying for all this. they're likely shitting bricks. if this thing ends up in the supreme court of canada, which it very well might, there's no telling the implications for municipalities. they might all be required not only to acknowledge homeless people, but to actually care enough about them to allow them the dignity of self-preservation. there's penner (male) and jackson (female) representing the attorney general and the city's lawyer. o'donnell? something like that.
and then there are the three judges. i have no clue what their names are. two of them are women, and apparently one of those won the scissors/rock/paper toss backstage (steve filipovic, who could've been mayor, suggested maybe that's how they decide) and is sitting in the middle chair.
there are a number of witnesses. david johnston is sitting a row in front of me. his hair and beard are growing in grey after he shaved it all off a couple months ago. i think about how many years we've all been determinedly working, each in our own ways, to secure the rights of canadian homeless people to protect themselves from the winter elements. and more than that - the right to build one's own housing in the face of a global economic crisis, the right to gather in communities of our own choosing, the right to self-determination on these stolen lands.
i think about how i could leave this wood panelled room, with its padded churchlike benches, its large wooden desks and tables, its coat of arms .... i could walk outside and along any nearby street and find people who, for as many reasons as there are they, find themselves homeless.
one of the judges has interrupted the city lawyer's diatribe, which i've only been half hearing as i write this, to ask for clarification. the city lawyer lost me after his first sentence:
"there are no constitutional rights for the homeless ...." he finished this sentence with "... to erect tents inside city parks" but i know, we all know, if they had their way there's be no rights for any of us unless we fall in step with the status quo - a mortgage, a picket fence, and suv in the driveway, or nothing. never mind those who just flatly reject that trap, even if we try, and fail, and go bankrupt or get laid off, and can't find affordable rental housing, and end up on the streets. it's just too bad. tough luck. it's not the city's problem.
the city's lawyer is nattering on about cridge park (the tent city encampment created after david johnston was tortured with sleep deprivation and imprisoned several times because he insisted he have the right to sleep on provincial lands) which they ignored at the time, allowing it to become whatever it became (which was certainly not as smelly and bedraggled as they would have us believe) without offering one iota of assistance in the form of recycling bins or porta potties. the consensus among many of us is that the city intentionally let, maybe even infiltrated, cridge park so that they could hold it up in court all these years later as an example of how very f'ing difficult it is for regular, rational, kind, caring homeless people to try and construct something livable when there are drug dealers and men who like to have sex with children ready to move alongside any encampment they can find. simon will tell me, later, outside as we're gathered on the lawns of the courthouse until we get kicked out, that the city and authorities' cry, during cridge park, was "you'll have to take that into a courthouse, there's nothing we can do about it here." so here we are, all these years later, inside the courthouse, listening to a hired hand tell tall tales about cridge park and how any opportunity for any homeless person to erect a tent anywhere will naturally result in a cridge park type situation and this is not the place to discuss that.
the three judges asked for clarification several times during the city lawyer's rant. essentially, it came down to this -
city lawyer: it's just not fair (insert mental image of angry inner child stomping and yelling). the court has over-stepped their boundaries. madam ross' decision imposed an obligation on city council to implement a 'regulatory regime' that would require resource allocation.
the centre woman judge's response: that's what this is about. if the court finds something to be unconstitutional, it means that some change in behaviour must occur. judge carol ross found a city bylaw to be unconstitutional, now it's "over to you" to figure out how you're going to change and reconstruct and reassign. "you make the policy decisions," we decide whether they're in keeping with canada's charter of rights and freedoms or not.
much more rambling about pre-emptive camping, the slippery slope, it starts with one tent and next thing you know they're planting potatoes in beacon hill park. a difficult to connect reference to henry morgantaler and pregnant women. an insistence that this is a political issue dealing with the allocation of resources and "it is being dealt with." much exaggerated celebration of the compartatively tiny amount of housing that the high salaried committee to end homelessness (not to be confused with the originally named and very different grass roots coalition to end homelessness) has secured, along with their intention to move 1500 people off the streets by 2018. no mention that at least another 1500 will have died by then if we continue this destructive course of neo-fascism. a lot of discussion about the city's emergency response thing that happens in the winter, where they put mats on floors (including donated yoga mats, i've recently learned, and call them beds) and fill rooms to capacity (one can only imagine the over-crowding, not to mention the air borne tuberculosis - how do they define 'capacity') and then say about people whose only crime is that they're homeless and prefer to sleep outside - "they could have gone to a shelter space and they chose not to."
fifty years ago they would have said "they could have gone to a concentration camp, and they chose not to." we do have the right not to be institutionalized, don't we?
just a reminder - we live on stolen land. the founders of this city planted gardens wherever they wanted. during the gold rush, the entire place was full of tents. ironically, the original pre-contact natives probably felt much the way today's privileged elite feel now: you invite one or two of them to pitch a tent, and next thing you know there's a whole community of them setting up camp.
i think about a story i heard yesterday, from a native acquaintance, about his sister. they were having a party. someone called the cops. her friends left. five male police officers insisted she leave the apartment. she refused, knowing they'd charge her with being drunk in public (as they had done with her friend). the police entered the apartment and broke her arm in their attempts to remove her. apparently she has a facebook page about it and is hoping to press charges. trouble is, there were no witnesses. serving and protecting.
back in today's courtroom the city's lawyer informed us that, on page 1360 of volume 7 (of whatever forest of trees were harvested for that), it's reported that 1.3 million tax dollars are spent every year for police to respond to beach fires, and "cleaning up" (aka harassing homeless people and stealing their stuff in) the parks. oh, and the city and province want $260,000 for costs incurred during the original trial, which ended last year with madam justice carol ross' decision that a city bylaw which prevented homeless people from putting up a tarp or tent to protect themselves was unconstitutional. one can only guess what this big ticket black robe affair will cost.
i couldn't stomach any more, and decided to hang out on the lawn with the real people.
tomorrow the three judges will hear from the 7 (if i counted correctly) black robed lawyers defending the rights of the homeless.
