A New World Odour

The Olympics brings a war on the poor, underway already

by Chris Walter

Where’s that smell coming from? Why, it’s coming from City Hall, and it’s getting stronger all the time. You see, back in the last civic election, I voted for Larry Campbell because he promised to use a four-pillar approach to deal with the problems of the Downtown Eastside. In all fairness, he did manage to open North America’s first safe injection site.

But the problems started soon after when he also brought dozens of extra police officers to the Downtown Eastside. Granted, enforcement is one of the four pillars, but when you bring in that many cops, Four Pillars quickly becomes “Three Toothpicks and a Billy Club.” Naturally, the only lasting result of that experiment was to chase drug dealers to the West End and to the city center, where many of them still operate to this day. I was surprised that Larry would do such a thing, because he, of all people, knows that such tactics never work.

This brings us to my next beef. At the beginning of his term, Mr Campbell said he was against the Olympics, but he soon changed his mind and jumped into bed with the “Yes” team. During all this, the other Mr Campbell, Gordon, that is, was busy doubling homelessness by making it almost impossible for those in need to collect welfare. Everywhere you looked, there was someone new sleeping in a park or on the sidewalk, and spots that provided an overhang to stay out of the rain were in particularly high demand.

Last summer, the city installed heavy steel fences to keep people from sleeping under a bridge across from my apartment in the Grandview Cut. I felt that was quite mean-spirited, seeing as how welfare was now so hard to collect. The provincial government made people homeless, and now the City is eliminating places for them to sleep.

Since then, the War on the Poor has escalated steeply. Now the City has put large boulders under the overhang on the Georgia Viaduct so the homeless cannot sleep under it, and they have chopped down all the trees along the trail in Grandview Cut because homeless people had built shelters there.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t recall anything in Larry Campbell’s campaign about this despicable war on the poor, and I am very bitter that the city is treating its residents this way just so visitors to the 2010 Olympics won’t have to see the results of Gordon Campbell’s heartless fiscal decisions.

In fact, and effective immediately, I resign from this society. From now on, I will not labour under the illusion that this government or this city gives a toss about me, or anyone else that makes less than 100 grand a year. Funny, in that last election, I don’t remember voting for a war on the poor. Colour me disgruntled.

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