The very same grassroots community of women who have been advocating for a public inquiry into the deaths and disappearances of women in the Downtown Eastside for over two decades are now denouncing the B.C. Missing Women's Commission of Inquiry as an insult to the women of this Vancouver community.
The verdict is in: Insite saves lives. A study by UBC scientists at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS adds to the collection of data already showing that North America's first medically supervised safer injection facility saves lives and money.
The study, published last month in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, concludes that the opening of Insite in 2003 was associated with a 35 per cent reduction in overdose deaths in the neighbourhood surrounding the facility. This reduction translates into real lives saved at no expense whatsoever to the federal government.
When it comes to considering the missing and murder women from the Downtown Eastside, these are the concerns:
• Why did so many things go wrong?
• A lack of trust for police still keeps women from reporting violence.
• What can we learn about solicitation laws and why they don't work?
• Jurisdictional issues need to be addressed.
• A necessary evaluation of any public program is needed.
• What can we learn about marginalized women and men?
• What do policymakers need to understand and learn?
• It's not about pointing fingers.
• Why are sex workers treated differently under the law and their safety not taken seriously?
At the very top of the spiral marble staircase in the Carnegie Centre, past the century-old stained glass windows depicting Milton, Shakespeare, Spencer, Burns, Scott and Moore, there's a small, light-filled classroom. Inside, 10 people sit around a table holding pens, scraps of paper in front of them. This is the Thursdays Writing Collective, a weekly workshop run by SFU Writer's Studio alumnus Elee Kraljii Gardiner. But this isn't your typical week at Thursdays, because today Kraljii Gardiner's handing out contributor copies of V6A.
In the poorest urban neighbourhood in Canada, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), gentrification has been on the move for decades. Plotting these new developments on a map of the DTES and walking along the now unfamiliar streets reveals gentrification for what it is: a form of structural violence.
Support rabble | Advertise with us | Contact our staff | About rabble | Log-in or Register for a new account | Corrections | Privacy policy | Newsfeeds | Mailing lists
rabble: Features | Columnists | In Cahoots | Blogs | Books | Photos | What's Up | Polls
babble: Forum Topics | Active Topics
The rpn: Become a Podcaster | Find a Show
rabbleTV: Program Guide | Features | Indie Inside | Best of the net
Copyright © 2001-2012 the authors
