Occupy Vancouver Protesters Reunite

Occupy Vancouver protesters met in the city's Downtown Eastside on Saturday to talk about the future of the movement.

The protest camp disbanded last month, five weeks after the movement began, after failing to establish a new encampment following two evictions.

As about 100 demonstrators reunited on Saturday, the discussion included whether they should bring back the encampment.

"I hope to see and take the temperature of the crowd and find out what people are thinking about that," said Hugh Stinson, who has been involved in the Occupy movement since the beginning.

"There are different strains of thought on that. We have had some offers of land, we have had some land that we have just considered taking. There are questions around what is the best strategy? What are the best tactics? Is an encampment necessary?"

Results vary as Occupy protesters react to eviction deadlines

While defiant anarchists in Toronto donned chains to fight off eviction, protesters in Vancouver did something entirely different. Tents came down, only to pop up elsewhere, at a sprawling provincially owned complex that includes B.C. court facilities.

By late Monday afternoon, Occupy Vancouver’s five-week old encampment at the Art Gallery had ended in response to a court injunction to leave by 2 p.m. Monday, and more than a score of tents went up at the new Robson Square location.

The quick movement caught authorities off guard, and police did not interfere with the new encampment, now a possible headache for B.C. Premier Christy Clark. Protesters indicated a determination to stay. “We need to bring more tents, so we can hold this place,” one volunteer said to loud cheers.

The move prompted the B.C. government to announce it will seek an injunction on Tuesday to end the new occupation. Attorney General Shirley Bond wasted little time seeking to remove tents from the court entrance, announcing she will ask for remedy shortly after learning of the new Occupy target.

B.C. Occupy protesters ordered to clear camps

A man was arrested during an Occupy Vancouver march following a B.C. Supreme Court decision to grant an injunction, ordering an end to the five-week protest camp outside the city's art gallery.

A group of protesters marched a few blocks from the encampment to the headquarters of the Non-Partisan Association municipal political organization and began banging on the windows of the office, which was full of campaign workers preparing for Saturday's city election.

It's not known if NPA mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton was in the office at the time.

The man was arrested during the protest and taken into a police van.

Another group of protesters made their way to Vancouver City Hall, where a speaker demanded through a bullhorn that city politicians be more accountable to citizens and less beholden to corporate interests.

"Corporations are buying elections in Vancouver," the speaker said.

Ashlie Gough, Occupy Vancouver and the mayor

Ashlie Gough is dead. We don't know why this young woman from Victoria came to Occupy Vancouver, but her death has already sent reverberations across the Vancouver electoral landscape and the global occupation movement. In an astonishing show of non-partisanship, political rivals Suzanne Anton and Gregor Robertson have united to demand the end of the occupation in the interests of safety, security and the public good.

The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the organization which published the 2011 Lancet article corroborating the success of InSite, found that 62 people died of drug-related overdoses in Vancouver in 2009, and that women are twice as vulnerable to overdose as men. The medic who treated the near-overdose on Thursday evening stated that there were 125 drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside which resulted in deaths last year, a statistic that has been widely reported in the wake of Ashlie's death. While the medic's statement is unsubstantiated, clearly far too many people are dying preventable deaths in Vancouver. Yet how many of these deaths resulted in the kind of decisive action Mayor Gregor Robertson showed when he declared that Occupy Vancouver must vacate the art gallery lawn? Precisely zero.

Two months ago, a woman was thrown out of the sixth-floor window at the Regent Hotel on Hastings street by a drug dealer -- the second such death in a year. Did Mayor Robertson step in and demand that the owners of the Regent provide security and shelter for its residents or face fines and imprisonment? Incredibly, no. Even before Ashlie's death, the mayor and the Vancouver Police Department were showing an staggering amount of concern for the Occupiers' compliance of city by-laws, while the slum lords who profit from the legislated poverty of DTES residents flout these restrictions daily.

Occupy Vancouver the safest place for abandoned people

On Saturday a woman died in her tent at Occupy Vancouver and Vancouver's mayor has responded, not by questioning how the city is failing people in need of essential services such as food, housing, mental and physical healthcare, but by threatening legal action to end the encampment. Down the street, witnesses at the Missing Women Inquiry are recalling the deadly failure that resulted from the city using the courts to move other vulnerable group -- sex workers -- out of sight: a move now seen as escalating harm and contributing to deaths.

Can Mayor Robertson invoke safety and security to move the vulnerable residents of Occupy Vancouver to out-of-sight locations where they will again be denied the services they are receiving at Occupy Vancouver?

In Vancouver and in cities around the world, people have gathered collectively to protest conditions that threaten democracy, deny equality and impair survival: the growing gap between the fabulously wealthy and the profoundly poor, the hijacking of government by unaccountable corporate interests and the usurpation of basic rights to life, housing, food, a living wage, equality and non-discrimination, by a ever smaller group of elite profiteers. Protests here and elsewhere are being made by gathering collectively and "taking back" public space. Public spaces are where such political expression takes place. As observed by Justice Huddart in the BCCA Falun Gong decision, "...public streets are, as they have been historically, spaces in which political expression takes place."

In Canada, everyone has the right to engage in peaceful public protest of government action or inaction on issues of public concern. In instances -- such as the present one -- where impugned government actions are causing severe damage, the right to protest arguably becomes a duty.

The use of public space for political expression and protest can only be legitimately limited in order to prevent harm to others -- not a factor evidenced or reasonably predicted here. Occupy Vancouver didn't cause or create the harm that led to the death of the woman or the overdose. Rather they are protesting harmful and inequitable conditions that make death and injury to the most vulnerable inevitable. At Occupy Vancouver volunteers provide essential services not provided by the city: meals available 17 hours per day; medical services around the clock; toilet facilities on site, and perhaps most importantly, a community that values the participation of marginalized people. Undoubtedly, particularly as the temperature drops, vulnerable street youth and homeless people are safer at the Vancouver Art Gallery than elsewhere.

Removal of the tents from the public square on the north side of VAG would deny the Occupy Vancouver people their Charter-protected right to publicly protest and to engage in public education and debate on the quickening erosion of the most basic freedoms. It would also expose the vulnerable residents of Occupy Vancouver to greater harm. The mayor and city council ought to be providing solutions, not seeking to use the law to impose greater harm on the most helpless members of our community.

Origin
Source: Rabble.ca 

Occupy Vancouver death dooms protest camp

The death of a woman taking part in the Occupy Vancouver protest at the city's art gallery has led the city's mayor to announce the protest movement's tent city will be cleared.

"I have directed the city manager to expedite the appropriate steps to end the encampment as soon as possible with a safe resolution being absolutely critical to that," Mayor Gregor Robertson said Saturday night.

Police said a woman in her 20s was found unresponsive inside a tent at the encampment at about 4:30 p.m. PT Saturday.

"Tragically, she could not be revived," Vancouver police Const. Jana McGuinness told reporters. "She was transported to hospital and pronounced deceased at hospital."

Mayor heckled for more services after Occupy Vancouver death

The death of a woman at the Occupy Vancouver camp means the site has become so unsafe that it must be shut down as soon as possible, says Vancouver's mayor.

Gregor Robertson said Saturday night he's instructed city officials and the chiefs of the fire and police departments to look at how that can be done safely and peacefully.

The 20-year-old woman was found unresponsive in a tent at the site in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Saturday afternoon, two days after a man suffered a non-fatal overdose at the encampment.

“There is a serious problem here and we want to address it urgently,” Mr. Robertson said.

The woman's death is tragic and is also upsetting for him because he has a 20-year-old daughter, he said.

Occupy Vancouver supporters tried to drown him out as he spoke to reporters, with one woman shouting that at least his daughter has a home.

Occupy Vancouver: City Debates Use Of Force To End Protest

VANCOUVER - Vancouver's police chief says he isn't interested in dispersing Occupy Vancouver protesters by force because the tactic simply hasn't worked in U.S. cities.

Chief Jim Chu appeared in front of city council Tuesday and was asked by the mayor his opinion of the city's "wait-and-watch" approach to resolving the demonstration, part of a global movement.

"In other jurisdictions where they tried to end it with police interventions, it hasn't ended it," Chu told the public meeting, as councillors asked questions of senior city staff and mulled over how best to bring about a peaceful resolution.

Chu noted that when officers descended on the demonstration in Oakland, Calif., protesters reconverged in equal numbers. Riot-clad police raided the camp last week and used tear gas to drive out crowds, yet the camp returned the next day.

The city report noted using the hardline police approach has also not worked in Chicago or Melbourne. Mass arrests have been made in Denver, Portland and Perth. Officials in London abandoned attempts at seeking a court injunction.

Occupy Vancouver: City Debates Use Of Force To End Protest

VANCOUVER - Vancouver's police chief says he isn't interested in dispersing Occupy Vancouver protesters by force because the tactic simply hasn't worked in U.S. cities.

Chief Jim Chu appeared in front of city council Tuesday and was asked by the mayor his opinion of the city's "wait-and-watch" approach to resolving the demonstration, part of a global movement.

"In other jurisdictions where they tried to end it with police interventions, it hasn't ended it," Chu told the public meeting, as councillors asked questions of senior city staff and mulled over how best to bring about a peaceful resolution.

Chu noted that when officers descended on the demonstration in Oakland, Calif., protesters reconverged in equal numbers. Riot-clad police raided the camp last week and used tear gas to drive out crowds, yet the camp returned the next day.

Occupy Vancouver Dominates City's Mayoral Race

Vancouver mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton is turning up the pressure on Mayor Gregor Robertson to force an end to the Occupy Vancouver protest on the lawn of the downtown art gallery.

The city councillor says she is introducing a motion to have council give those in the encampment a week to move. She calls the activists and protesters that have set up the elaborate tent city on the site "squatters."

Robertson, who is running for a second term as mayor in the upcoming civic election on Nov. 19, has suggested the city can't do much about the encampment, because the art gallery lawn they are occupying is actually provincial land.