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We Are All Persons and We Belong! Homes for All! Decolonization Not Criminalization!

volc8no October 28, 2016     DTES organizations, Gentrification & displacement, Histories & stories, Housing crisis & struggles, Social Movement strategies

2016_fall_volcano_insert_final_page_1This supplement to the Fall 2016 Volcano newspaper collects discussions and lessons from the “Together

Against Displacement and Dispossession” summit held by the Alliance Against Displacement on June 11-12, 2016. Attendees included people from Victoria’s Super InTent City, Maple Ridge’s Cliff Avenue Tent City, Abbotsford’s Dignity Village, Surrey’s 135A Strip, Burnaby’s Stop Demovictions Campaign, The Volcano newspaper, and Downtown Eastside groups, including Our Homes Can’t Wait, DTES Power of Women group, Chinatown Action Group, and VANDU.

This supplement collects these discussions and lessons in one place where they can be further discussed, critiqued, and developed. We think these articles help clarify the meanings of our discussions, and express the potential for the poor, Indigenous people, and the working class to come together in a broad movement of the displaced.

Table of Contents

2-3  | Portraits of Regions in Struggle

4      | Common Language, Common Struggle – Defining the Terms of our Times: By Ivan Drury

5      | We Are All Persons and We Belong: By Dave Diewert

6      | Homes for All – Our Homes Can’t Wait (OHCW) Campaign Works for DTES Housing: By Jean Swanson

7      | Liberation & Decolonization – Discussion groups change our hearts and minds: By Natalie Knight

8     | Three Pledges of Struggle: By Together Against Displacement & Dispossession Summit

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Portraits of Regions in Struggle

― October 28, 2016

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Nowhere to go – City of Vancouver files for an injunction to displace remaining 58 W Hastings Tent City residents: By Maria Wallstam

― November 2, 2016

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1
Sad Siren Song: By Tracey Morrison

― February 12, 2017

Community Spotlight: Jean Swanson

For our issue on the BC Liberal legacy, Volcano editors turned to our Community Spotlight on a legacy of our own to highlight her over 40 years of anti-poverty work. Jean Swanson is an editor with The Volcano alongside her work with the Carnegie Community Action Project. She previously worked with the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA) and is the author of a book titled Poorbashing: The Politics of Exclusion.

You’ve been active in anti-poverty work for a long time. What has been the biggest realization that you have had with regards to poverty in this province? Has your understanding or approach to government changed over time and through experience?

My approach to government has definitely changed. Back in 1979, I actually ran as an NDP MLA candidate because I thought being involved in electoral politics was a way of implementing the things you’ve been fighting for in the community. I ran with COPE for city council too, along with my co-workers Bruce Eriksen and Libby Davies, who were elected. In those days it seemed possible to get city council to do some good things for the Downtown Eastside if we worked hard at it: fund the Carnegie Centre, pass a Standards of Maintenance bylaw, put sprinklers in the hotels.

In the early 90s, after the NDP cut welfare and brought in a whole poorbashing framework to justify it, I couldn’t bring myself to vote at all, let alone run for office.

Read more about Jean Swanson's commitment to anti-poverty organizing here.

The Volcano is published on traditional, ancestral, and unceded Coast Salish Territories.

Alliance Against Displacement: The Volcano is affiliated with the Alliance Against Displacement, a pan-regional anti-displacement network of local communities, organizations, and activists fighting displacement on the ground.

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