Richard was a member of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) “from the start” as he always said. He was an activist and leader in the community and a member of the VANDU’s Board of Directors for the past several years. I want to honour Richard by remembering some of his work for social justice over the last decade.
At the rally for the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the tent city on Maple Ridge’s Cliff Avenue, Tracy was upset because fewer former residents of the tent city had turned up than she had hoped. For an outsider it was obvious why. The rally was beset from the beginning by anti-homeless bigots that Tracy calls Ridgeilantes, a shorthand for Maple-Ridge-vigilantes. They were mostly angry White men who dressed like bikers and raged about their “taxpayer rights.”
