More about the Charter Challenge

Here's a longer excerpt from the two hour meeting last night, about the recent court decision that finds it's a violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to punish people for sleeping in a tent or under a tarp when no other option is available to them. As far as I know, the current Mayor and Council (with one exception) are proceeding with their appeal of this decision. Be sure and vote on November 15th!

Making History in Victoria BC

History is being made in Victoria BC. Two lawyers (Cathie Boies Parker and Irene Faulkner) have challenged a city bylaw that made it illegal to sleep outside in public places. They took the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada, and they won. Madam Justice Ross ruled, in October 2008, that it's a violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to prevent people from erecting a shelter to protect themselves from the elements when no other options are available to them. This is a tiny segment from a 2 hour discussion with the lawyers today.

None of the major media were present at this event. Only one elected city representative, Sonya Chandler, was there. Mayoral candidates Steve Filipovic and Kirsten Woodruff were in attendance, also some candidates for council including Tavis Dodds (the guy who asks the question), John Turner, John Luton, David Shebib, and Rose Henry.

Seattle's Tent City - 'Nickelsville'

Seattle's 'Real Change' founder Tim Harris responds to Mayor Nickels' claim that the inhabitants of Seattle's tent city, 'Nickelsville', aren't really homeless.

i love my dentist

i love my dentist. really. you don't hear those words often, eh?!

after too many hours in too many dentist's chairs, big mens' hands pouring deadly mercury into my fragile mouth, i found deanna the dentist. over the years she's re-created the naturally beautiful and straight teeth i was blessed with naturally.

it's not that i hate all men, or anything like that .... it's about the whole health care for profit system, the tradition of men being the breadwinners and the pressure that ensues, the questions i have about those years when the company i worked for offered a dental plan and my mouth was transformed into a metalic mess. was it really necessary to pull all those wisdom teeth? i live with a lot of unanswered questions, and i'm trying to forgive myself for surrendering so easily to the decisions i naively made.

at least i still have all my teeth. poor people often have no choice but to release theirs. my dentist believes in saving teeth, she does everything she can rather than pulling them, but dental care isn't part of the canadian health package and it's not cheap. there's nothing quite like dental pain - isn't it a form of torture to deny people proper dental care? but, that's what capitalism does. if you don't got the money, you don't got the care. thanks to my mom and dads, i have choices.

deanna has a meditation room where people can relax themselves prior to treatment. once in the chair she sprays lavender and chats while preparing for the treatment. to deanna i'm so much more than a set of teeth - i'm a real living person, doing work she respects. deanna's originally from argentina and has told me stories about tens of thousands of people in argentinian streets, in solidarity with their chilean neighbours mourning the cia inspired murder of salvadore allende on september 11th 1973, or banging pots and pans outside the banks when corporate thieves stole all the money and left the country. deanna supports the mothers of the revolution, (Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo), a group of Argentine mothers whose children "disappeared" during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. deanna's very cool and i trust her.

she asks if i'd like music or silence, and then sings gentle spanish songs through the drilling, about 15 minutes worth. part way through i jingle the rattle she's given me, indicating sensitivity, and we decide to freeze the area. when she was finished drilling she provided a hand held mirror and i peered into my mouth to see my two back teeth drilled down to about half. deanna explained she's done her best to salvage the healthy part of the teeth. the black bit in the middle, she explains, is discolouration from the metal that previously inhabited the space. the metal was removed in 2003 and whatever it was that deanna put there afterwards, i think it was porcelain cavity filler, had cracked and needed a more permanent replacement. i remember her telling me this would be necessary sometime down the road.

the area was cleaned and dried and a series of gooey stuff in plastic tooth-shaped containers put into place. models, these, for the porcelain on-lay that will eventually cap those teeth and serve me, hopefully, to the end of my days. i'm now with a temporary on-lay while deanna's comrade at the lab in vancouver (someone, she assures me, she's met and trusts) prepares my permanent replacement.

i've been a bit concerned about losing that back tooth, it's caused some intermittent pain these past few years, but yesterday's x-ray shows the abscess is almost disappeared and the roots are healthy. when it pains me i treat it with clove oil and up my dosage of mercury and wait for the pain to subside, usually a day later, then i go visit james the wonder herbalist. deanna and i have known about this below the surface abscess for a few years now. deanna's done her best to encourage me to a root canal, and i went so far as to make an appointment but on the day that was scheduled the dentist wasn't there. deanna doesn't do root canals, she had referred me to a different dentist. i don't remember why the dentist didn't show that day but i took it as an omen and began to think -- deanna doesn't put metal into people's mouth, and neither does she perform root canals. could there be a connection?

after talking to many people, including alternative healers, i found dr. juan rohan who's touted as a local expert on mercury poisoning. for a year i've been following the vitamin regiment he suggested (a b complex, selenium, zinc, msm, chlorella, vitamin c, consumption of cabbage family vegetables including broccoli and cauliflower), plus homeopathic mercury and lead. then there's the yoga, acupuncture, massage therapy - all help with detox - plus the pre-packaged liver cleanse and heavy metal detox i found at the vitamin shop, and of course james the herbalist who custom builds natural mixes to help facilitate the cleansing. because of some or all of this, who knows which specifically, a surface abscess has disappeared - it's gone from a hard lump to a tiny little pimple that continues to recede - and yesterday's x-rays show that the root abscess is also nearly non-existent. that's two root canals no longer necessary and i expect that, by healing my mouth, i've also removed mercury and lead and the other heavy metals (that showed up on dr. juan's test - arsenic, cadmium, etc) from my liver and kidney and other organs.

in case it's not clear, here's the point -- i really believe that the abscesses in my mouth were connected to the mercury that was dumped into my teeth. it's interesting that the only place it's legal to dump mercury is into peoples' mouths. deanna the dentist has a special license with the city stating that the mercury she removes from peoples' mouths will be properly disposed.

in conclusion, to the dentist who told me, in my adolescence, that my very strong tongue will be useful to me someday, i say ..... is this what you meant? that i'm to tell my story? that i'm to use all the power of the alternative media to tell the stories of the millions of people who live on the streets without any access to dental care, without the ability to consult alternative healers, whose only recourse is to have their teeth pulled from their mouths and die of starvation? to laugh in disbelief at sarah palin's greed motivated idea of socialism that involves taking things from people rather than providing them?

i really am glad to be canadian, despite our collective flaws. this is the country deanna the dentist felt she could safely inhabit. i hope there are other dentists out there like her.

massive october rally to demand protection for ancient forests

visit the wilderness committee for more information.

wilderness rally october 25th victoria bc

Time for a change at Victoria's City Hall

Remember FolkFest?

For many years, Victorians enjoyed a mid-summer festival celebrating the diversity of culture. In its early days, a small stage enabled local ethic groups to show off their talents, there was a fabulous food area where local cooks shared their cultural cuisine and, as the festival grew in popularity and size, increasing numbers of local vendors flogging their wares - artistic, musical, practical.

One summer, shortly after I'd graduated from UVic, and right livelihood* employment seemed increasingly unlikely, I invested a chunk of change in a hammock made on one of the gulf islands. A young wilderness-loving sales guy assured me that this was the way to go, and told me stories of hanging from the canopies of ancient forests in his hennessey hammock. The hammock cost me $150 hard earned dollars. It's light, compact, and fairly rainproof. I bought it with wilderness camping in mind, and I've slept in it there, but mostly I bought it as security measure. The day may arrive, I thought, when I can no longer suffer the slings and arrows of this outrageous society, when I give up trying to fit myself into a world that values commodities and material wealth above all else, when I am unable to pay the unfair increases in rent. On that day, I thought, I'll take my hammock and I'll somehow survive.

I've got an emergency backpack ready to go. Don't you? Anything could happen - a fire in the night, the earth might throw up one of those storms of devastation, or the economic system that depends on greed and self-interest might collapse ..... oh wait, that's already happening. We've seen how emergency services rescue the wealthy first when an entire city's wiped out. I've got a backpack with a change of clothes, some dried food (that reminds me, it's about time to rotate that into consumption and replace it), a spare toothbrush, a small wad of cash, and my trusty hammock attached. I'm ready to go in an instant.

Thanks to a recent supreme court ruling, I can take that backpack and survive. Maybe not for long (we do live on an island, and anything could happen), but maybe for long enough until the storm passes. Thanks to a bunch of homeless people who insist that we all ought not be punished for our attempts to secure our own right to life, liberty, and security of person, as Canada's charter of rights and freedoms acknowledges, the police can't rightfully arrest me if I need to sleep outside for a while.

Victoria's current Mayor and Council don't think that's fair. After years of waiting, upon hearing Madam Justice Carol Ross's decision, Victoria Mayor and Council immediately held a vote to appeal. They were so determined to overturn that judge's decision that they made absolutely no plans to acknowledge it if it wasn't in their favour. They did everything they could to keep the case out of the courts and then, with a supreme court decision that upholds our right to protect ourselves, they voted unanimously to appeal the verdict.

And now it's job review time. Why should we re-hire any of them?

Last night the grassroots Committee to End All Homelessness and the Together Against Poverty Society hosted an all-candidates discussion and offered first dibs at the microphones to the street community so we could ask them pointedly. And ask them we did ....

Dean Fortin and Geoff Young claim there's no money to manage a tent city like Portland's Dignity Village. They say it'd cost $800,000 to a million a year. One wonders how much they've already invested in trying to stop justice ..... how much they're willing to spend on the appeal.

They were asked how much will be spent on Ellice Park's new proposed shelter space, and they pretended not to know. Dean deferred the question to Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe, saying it's not about knowing the answer so much as it is about asking the right person. That's true, except when you already know the answer. I was told it was made public how much is going into Ellice Park, but not because of City Council. At the meeting when they held the final vote, Rob Fleming (formerly City Councillor, now MLA), told the audience there's something they need to know about Ellice Park. Apparently the provincial authorities offered up an enormous amount of money (the details escape me, check back later) on the stipulation that the City build specifically a shelter (not subsidized or low income housing, not a tent city) and that they build it on city property. The City, rather than making this information public and suggesting we all lobby the provincial goverment for something more reasonable, accepted this offer and then took a piece of designated park land out of park status .... and now they're pretending not to know how much money's being invested in it.

Maybe that's why Charlayne Thornton-Joe eventually left the meeting in tears .... maybe she finally realized she can't pull the wool over our eyes anymore. Her little introductory speech about how education is the number one ingredient to combatting poverty might have worked the first time she was elected, she might even have impressed people with it the second time around, but the third time?

The current mayor and council have done a lot of talk, research, and studies. They created a Committee to end Homelessness and hired a bunch of rather highly paid bureaucrats to do more talk, research, and studies. And, according to one audience member last night (the room was packed full), they spen about 60% of their meeting time on rezoning issues. The current mayor's an architect -- is it any wonder we've got lots more new buildings for the wealthy, and absolutely nothing for the poor?

Their arguments against a tent city, one that is established in cooperation with municipal authorities (like Portland's Dignity Village), are full of misinformation. Dean Fortin says tent cities always increase the amount of drugs and prostitution. He pointed out that Cridge Park (the former site of Tent City) was fraught with drug dealers and underage sex. Yes, it was. And the homeless people I know were also frustrated with that. A few good people set up residence and next thing you know the riff raff's moving in next door. Was it the campers' responsibility to make citizen's arrests on their unwanted neighbours? Can't Victoria Police visit such gatherings and sort the wheat from the chaff? That they neglected to do so, that they chose instead to shut down the entire affair and condemn all the campers to the same fate, and now years later that city officials choose only to focus on that unwanted element suggests they got exactly what they wanted. They wanted tent city to fail so that they can stand in their self important way and claim 'ALL TENT CITIES ATTRACT DRUG DEALERS.'

Last night Rose Henry (candidate for Council) told me that four more homeless people died this past week. Mayor and Council's final solution. Do absolutely nothing and hope they'll go away. And they will, they'll die, we'll all die, but every day a failed economic system creates more. It's time for some real action.

Mayoral candidate Rob Reid seems to be re-thinking his former position adamently opposed to tent cities. Kristen Woodruff, Saul Anderson, and Georgia Jones are all in favour of a tent city. But it was Steve Filipovic, who I've known as a Green activist for many years going back to the G8 summit in Calgary, who spoke most eloquently about it. Steve wants to empower the street community rather than provide for them in a patronizing, paternalistic manner. Steve seems to understand that homeless people are each individuals. Why not allow them to gather in small communities, Steve suggested? The City can assist by offering up small parcels of land and providing necessary services like porta potties and recycling/garbage collection, but ultimately people gotta find their own friends and build their own communities and make their own rules and live their own lives and look after each other.

Portland's Dignity village is a wonderful example of what can happen when political will combines with creative solutions. Dignity Village has no drugs no violence rules. I've heard that if you're kicked out, the amount of time you stay away depends on how you left. All residents of Dignity Village must contribute a certain amount of time to the collective upkeep of the place. They've established themselves as a charity so they can write grants and fundraise and contribute to their own existence. They're a shining example of what is possible.

We might wish we could ignore the increasing numbers of homeless, we would rather not see shanty towns, but the reality is the economic system is collapsing. Hopefully something better will grow from the ashes, something humane and compassionate, but in the meantime we have to look after each other. It's the Canadian way. Personally, I'd rather live in a shanty town than a doorway. We need to swallow our pride, accept the reality of the crisis, and consider viable and humane options. Let's not be fake Americans, or real Americans, insisting on the rugged individualism of misinterpreted Darwinism .... let's be real Canadians and say the world socialism out loud and be proud of it.

Through Charlayne's tears (and I've seen those tears before), during some tough questioning, she invited us to go see her research on Dignity Village, to look at the websites she's visited connecting her to tent cities all over the world. But she, and all the other Councillors, and the Mayor, did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING beyond research to prepare for Madam Justice Carol Ross' ruling. It'd be so easy to give up a small parcel of land for a tent city, the precedent's already been set, but we just haven't seen the political will. And we heard that again and again from street community representative after street community representative. Mayor and Council can talk 'till they're blue in the face about what they want to do for the homeless, what they've researched and studied, but last night a room full of street representatives told us all about what they've actually done.

To her credit, Councillor Sonya Chandler has put forward a motion that City Council will be reviewing this morning --- it's about re-thinking their decision to appeal the judge's ruling that says it's not illegal to sleep outside. But it leaves one wondering whether Sonya would have regretted her initial response if her job review hadn't been pending.

I publish the Victoria Street Newz, and I have done for four and a half years. I've invited councillors to write a column, or ask someone to write a column, keeping us posted on their activities. To date I haven't had a single submission. I guess they're at least smart enough to realize we're not all that interested in re-zoning.

It's job review time for our local elected officials. Victoria is missing its annual Folk Festival, and it doesn't yet have designated space for a tent or dignity village.

Don't miss the next Mayoral Candidates' Meeting on Homelessness, Youth, and Justice - a cast of colourful characters have put their names forward and if the next meeting is anything like last night's, it's definitely more entertaining than television!:

November 3, 2008, 7:00 PM @ JAMES BAY NEW HORIZONS, 234 MENZIES ST.

* Right-livelihood is defined in Buddhist texts. The Wikipedia interpretation suggests we "ought not engage in trades or occupations which, either directly or indirectly, result in harm for other living beings."