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By Zoom!, on April 25, 2013, at 7:08 am
Visiting the Downtown Eastside (DTES) has churned up some contradictions for me, and resolving those contradictions requires re-thinking some questions I thought I already knew the answers to:
1) To what extent do people choose to live in the DTES, and to what extent are they stuck there?
2) Does the DTES community strengthen its residents or weaken them? Does it help mitigate the impact of addiction and poverty, or does it help perpetuate addiction and poverty?
I don’t know. Maybe they choose it and are stuck there. Maybe they are both strengthened and weakened by it. Maybe it mitigates (Read more…)
By Zoom!, on April 15, 2013, at 7:14 am
At the harbour, outside my hotel
So…I went to Vancouver for a whirlwind business trip. I arrived Wednesday afternoon and left Friday morning. I was working most of the time, but I did have two more-or-less free evenings, so I did what I could to cram Vancouver in.
I hadn’t been there in 30-odd years, and Vancouver and I have both changed a lot. Back then, I used to hitchhike and my idea of luxury was to check into a youth hostel for the night. This time I was on a business trip, staying in a fancy-pants hotel and experiencing
. . . → Read More: knitnut.net: My visit to the seamy underbelly
By Joseph Uranowski, on January 3, 2013, at 9:14 pm Context: I don’t like to think of this blog as existing in a vacuum. You may not be aware of it but I am also an avid user of the twitter and the facebook (my twitter feed is there on the right side of my blog btw.) On twitter (you can follow me at @Uranowski) whenever I notice someone being awesome I like to give them a “You go girl!” It is a friendly, 1990sesque way to acknowledge a job well done. Anyone, man, woman, child, or particularly heroic animal, can receive one. However, last year, I (Read more…)
By David J. Climenhaga, on May 2, 2012, at 2:35 am Contemplating the thought of three more years of Stephen Harper. Below: Mr. Harper himself.
Tory times, as the old saying goes, are terrible times. So it should surprise no one that as we mark the first anniversary of Stephen Harper’s majority victory today, the country is increasingly polarized, students are in the streets of Quebec where separatism is again rearing its head, and mean-spirited pink slips are being handed out right and left to public employees accompanied by the pitiless rah-rahs of the Online Tory Rage Machine, parts of which apparently operate out of the United States.Here in Edmonton
. . . → Read More: David Climenhaga’s Alberta Diary: Today’s anniversary of a year of Tory rule in Ottawa: it just doesn’t get any better than this!
By Zoom!, on April 15, 2012, at 11:59 am
Last October, the Supreme Court ruled that Insite, Vancouver’s safe injection site, could stay open despite the Harper Government’s objections. The arguments hinged on whether addiction was primarily a health issue or a crime issue. If it were a health matter it would fall under provincial jurisdiction; if it were a criminal code issue, it would fall under federal jurisdiction.
When the Supreme Court ruled (unanimously) that Insite could remain open because of the rights of addicts to accessible health care, it opened the door to the possibility of safe injection sites opening in other Canadian cities.
For those of
. . . → Read More: knitnut.net: Safe injection sites: Treating people with addictions like they matter
By Greg Fingas, on April 13, 2012, at 2:01 pm Assorted content to end your week.
- Murtaza Hussain nicely sums up why we should be pushing for businesses and wealthy individuals to contribute their fair share through a progressive tax system rather than through self-aggrandizing charity: The private social safety net, provided by corporate donors as compensation for the public one which their tax avoidance helps shred, is a poor substitute for democratically accountable public spending. Besides being poorer, free of public oversight, and geared primarily towards public relations efforts, the private safety net is a rug that can and will be pulled out from under its beneficiaries at
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 4, 2012, at 11:29 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- The Star makes the case for Canada’s wealthiest citizens to pay their fair share: Apart from their hefty pay packets, the top-earning CEOs are sitting on $2 billion in stock options that are treated as dividend income, and taxed at half the value. That’s a tax break worth $475 million, the centre calculates. Arguably, for those who need it least.
These numbers aren’t just about whipping up raw envy. They reflect public policy choices at a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is looking to chop federal spending to erase Ottawa’s $31-billion
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Michael Lithgow, on October 15, 2011, at 3:02 am There’s only a little to say about this – Michel Foucault was born October 15, 1926, and by weird coincidence, Friedrich Nietzsche was born on the same day 82 years earlier- October 15, 1844. Big thinkers in the canon of Dead White Men. So what, you might be asking — and what does that have [...] . . . → Read More: Art Threat: Happy Birthday Nietzche & Foucault!
By bigcitylib, on October 6, 2011, at 6:42 am Mama Kay cites a study sponsored by …the Drug Prevention Network of Canada and Real Women of Canada……to challenge research in The Lancet which purported to demonstrate that the Insite Clinic in Vancouver saves lives. Th… . . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Lets just Call Bullshit Now, Shall We?
By ck, on October 5, 2011, at 9:10 am It would be about time and why shouldn’t we? We are, after all, a province of progress or supposed to be. After all, we opened the first Compassion club, a place, highly supervised, where sick people with the prescription from a medical professional can obtain medicinal marijuana, albeit, on the fringes of the . . . → Read More: Quebec May Open Safe Injection Sites A L’Insite And Compassion Club . . . → Read More: Quebec May Open Safe Injection Sites A L’Insite And Compassion Club
By Pulat Yunusov, on October 3, 2011, at 11:10 am I often talk to friends or strangers about law. I remember a debate I had with someone once about the government. Can it make arbitrary decisions? I said yes, and he said, rather indignantly, no. His logic was that arbitrary means capricious with a tinge of tyranny. Doesn’t our democratic government respect the rule of [...]&srcId=http://lawiscool.com/2011/10/03/safe-injection-facilities-and-arbitrary-government-decisions&crtId=148&dt=1317659918) . . . → Read More: Law is Cool: Safe injection facilities and arbitrary government decisions
By Simon, on September 30, 2011, at 11:38 pm I’ve written about Kevin before. The young heroin addict I found shooting up on the door step of the Yale Town apartment I was renting, while taking a summer course in Vancouver.How I felt like I was looking at somebody dying before my eyes. How h… . . . → Read More: Montreal Simon: The Insite Victory and Kevin’s Story
By Jymn, on September 30, 2011, at 8:42 pm
One of the few benefits of not having any political power is that you get to sit back and watch the majority power fall all over its own ideology and arrogance.
Less than 40% of Canada voted for these guys. That’s not a mandate for anything other than doing . . . → Read More: Outasite! Supreme Court bludgeons Con ideology with reality. . . . → Read More: Outasite! Supreme Court bludgeons Con ideology with reality.
By Jymn, on September 30, 2011, at 5:39 pm One of the few benefits of not having any political power is that you get to sit back and watch the majority power fall all over its own ideology and arrogance.Less than 40% of Canada voted for these guys. That’s not a mandate for anything other t… . . . → Read More: Outasite! Supreme Court bludgeons Con ideology with reality.
By Scott Tribe, on September 30, 2011, at 1:11 pm Not only am I pleased with the Insite rulling, I’m pleased it’s unanimous, in a strong rebuke to the Conservative government, who’s been trying to close this since 2008:
A supervised needle injection site for heroin addicts in Vancouver has gotten a constitutional reprieve following a landmark ruling Friday by the country’s top court. In a decision that sharply pits the court’s view of a coherent drug strategy against the Conservative government’s, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that the federal government cannot refuse to extend a legal protection to addicts and clinical health workers at the InSite clinic in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside who would otherwise [...] . . . → Read More: Scott’s DiaTribes: The Canadian Supreme Court rejects Conservative ideology for facts.
By Adam, on September 30, 2011, at 11:59 am Insite is a safe injection site for drug users which has had proven health benefits for individuals and the community. Through their work Insite has been able to help many addicts stay safe and secure while consuming drugs, this is in stark contrast to doing drugs on the streets which is way more dangerous. In [...] . . . → Read More: Things Are Good: Insite Can Continue to Operate: Supreme Court
By The Mound of Sound, on September 30, 2011, at 11:44 am Vancouver’s safe injection site has been saved from Harper’s attempts to shut it down. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that not allowing the clinic to operate would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.The Court stopped short of … . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Supreme Court of Canada Backs Insite
By Greg, on September 30, 2011, at 11:34 am The Supreme Court has actually told the Conservatives to take a hike. They have saved Insite and as a result, the lives of countless drug addicts. Hooray for the triumph of reason over ideology. It is unfortunate that it is such a rare occurrence. I e… . . . → Read More: They Call Me “Mr. Sinister”: Well, What Do You Know
By Greg Fingas, on July 10, 2011, at 11:53 am Assorted material for your weekend reading.- He’s a bit too shy in pointing out exactly how thoroughly the Cons’ position on the Canadian Wheat Board has been rebuked in CWB elections for ages. But Bruce Johnstone nicely describes the PR blitz designed… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By torontoemerg, on May 19, 2011, at 4:42 pm I realized after I wrote yesterday about Meera Bai and her work at Insite, the Vancouver safe drug injection site, that she has both a blog called Strong Hands and a Twitter feed — @senoritabai. When I spoke to her on Twitter last night, she pointed me to an article she wrote describing her experiences [...] . . . → Read More: Those Emergency Blues: More on Meera Bai, Faith and Nursing
By Greg, on May 18, 2011, at 8:07 am I am against Insite and will pretend drug treatment is a mutually exclusive alternative. Btw., don’t ask me to fund drug treatment either, or locate a facility anywhere near my house. . . . → Read More: They Call Me “Mr. Sinister”: Shorter Barbara Kay
By Zoom!, on May 13, 2011, at 2:51 pm The Harper Government TM is still attempting to shut down Insite, Canada’s only supervised injection site. The case is now before the Supreme Court of Canada, which is where I spent yesterday morning.
I had to line up to go through a scanner, and empty my pockets and put metal things in a bin and so [...] . . . → Read More: knitnut.net: Insite comes to Ottawa
By uranowski, on May 9, 2011, at 11:35 pm What is Insite? Opened in 2003. Operates in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Addicts can inject illicit drugs (such as heroin) in a safe environment. This is part of a holistic harm-reduction strategy that, rightfully, treats drug addiction as a health issue. … Continue reading → . . . → Read More: The Equivocator: Insite Goes To The Supreme Court
By Junkie_Monkey, on September 27, 2010, at 11:47 pm What with all the hoo-ha over the gun registry recently, I wanted to put my two cents in. I got in a Facebook argument with someone I don’t even know, and I was a little nervous that I might be wrong. I mean, I’m not used to being wrong — I’m pre… . . . → Read More: Ottawa From the Down Side Up: Gun safety and registry!
By Junkie_Monkey, on February 24, 2010, at 5:30 pm So I just found out that a good friend of mine died of an overdose while I was in jail last week. It came as quite a surprise to her family because she appeared to be a young urban professional with a bright future, and nobody knew that she was secretl… . . . → Read More: Ottawa From the Down Side Up: Naloxone programs
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