CITYWIDE HOUSING COALITION
Immediate Release
11 May 2008
Vancouver, BC CANADA
STREET-CORNER "STANDS" FOR HOUSING
Continue this Saturday and ....
Neighbourhood housing activists will again stand on Vancouver street corners, Saturday April11 for one hour, 1-2pm, with banners and wearing vivid blue scarves. They'll be calling attention to federal and provincial failures to build permanent social housing, and the City of Vancouver's proposed abandonment of deals with Concord Pacific for affordable housing in downtown condo towers.
STANDers will also be paying respects to the hundreds of dead and dying homeless men, women, and children- victims of legislated poverty and government neglect in BC and Canada. In Vancouver they populate our streets and lanes, huddle in parks and encampments, burn to death in doorways, are crushed in back alley garbage bins.
Vancouver Stands for Housing April 12, 2008
1. Georgia & Burrard Christ Church Cathedral Social Justice Com
2. Burrard & West 4 th Ave Make Poverty History APRIL 12
3. King Edward & Main CALM EVERY WEEK
4. Main St. & 33 rd Avenue CALM EVERY WEEK
5. Broadway & Commercial Streams of Justice APRIL 12
6. Commercial & 1 st Avenue RAOK, CCAP, HOMELESS NATION APRIL 12TH
7. Heather & 6 th Ave Citywide Housing Coalition and False Creek neighbors ONGOING
8. Cordova & Gore St James Anglican. Social Gospel Coordinating Group ONGOING
9. Sasamat & West 10 th Ave Deegy Dallong and neighbours APRIL 12
10. Burrard & Nelson St Andrew's-Wesley Homelessness & Mental APRIL 12 Health Action Group
11. Hastings & Nanaimo Linda Shuto, colleagues and neighbours EVERY WEEK
STANDs are calling for substantial funding to be dedicated by federal, provincial, and municipal politicians to building new, permanent, low- and welfare-rate housing. Using the surplus billions in the prosperous economies of Canada and BC to build the full spectrum of housing for all citizens is the primary mechanism by which homelessness must be defeated.
The public and media are invited to join us at any of the above locations. The idea of the STAND is based on the moving example of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose children were "disappeared" by the military, 1976 to 1983. They stood every week in a city square wearing white scarves until the generals capitulated. The scarves became an international "brand" for protests against unjust and inhumane governments.
Contact: Rider Cooey 604.872-1382
False Creek Organizer
Citywide Housing Coalition