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PROROGUE THE OLYMPICS

Women of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre Power of Women Group participate in campaign and press conference.

In anticipation of the upcoming 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the Downtown Eastside Justice for All Network calls on all levels of government, members of our society, and international media to address the persistent issues facing residents of the Downtown Eastside:

1) Increasing homelessness and lack of adequate, safe, and affordable housing.
2) Extreme levels of material poverty.
3) Rapid condominium development and gentrification.
4) Lack of justice for missing and murdered women.
5) Criminalization of poverty through ticketing campaigns and police crackdowns.

The Downtown Eastside Justice For All Network consists of Carnegie Community Action Project, DTES Women Centre Power of Women Group, Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, DTES Elders Council, Streams of Justice, Vancouver Action, Impact on Communities Coalition, PACE, DTES Neighbourhood House, Citywide Housing Coalition.

According to Stella August, member of the DTES Power to Women Group “The police have launched a series of crackdowns against the poor in time for the international media and the tourists. We are angered at the hypocrisy of a government that closes down emergency shelters and refuses to build proper housing, while allowing police to harass and displace homeless people. People should matter more than corporate profits.”

“We want all the people coming to Canada to know about the unimaginable violence that has taken the lives of so many women in the DTES,” says Beatrice Starr of the DTES Power to Women Group. “Every year the list of murdered and missing women continues to grow, but our society just sees them as another stereotype or another statistic. It is shameful that there is the political will to host the Olympic Games, but little support for our call for justice for our sisters and daughters and friends.”

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women writes: “Hundreds of cases involving aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention.”