Vancity Pushes Propaganda

BLOG POST posted on July 25, 2012 by Joseph Jones

It looks like Vancity Credit Union is choosing to become an in-your-face propaganda pusher for the gentrification of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

This morning at my local Vancity branch in the heart of East Vancouver I encountered plastic laminated copies of this document prominently laid out at each of six teller wickets.

Knowing that all large financial institutions by their nature will be funding and profiting from various contentious situations is bad enough. For the credit union that you yourself use to needlessly trumpet what side it favors in an ongoing struggle is intolerable.

Here is a window into the other side of the story, provided by the web site of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council.

I nicely told the teller that what Vancity was doing with those laminations was highly offensive to many persons in and associated with the Downtown Eastside community, and why. He helpfully provided me a photocopy of the item. As it turned out, I did not need to make a scan for this report, since Vancity also has the item up on the web.

I intend to direct an email to Vancity calling attention to this published report of complaint. At the worst, they could stick to their core business and refuse to serve as a gratuitous advertising agency for that kind of controversial customer. A more interesting and consciousness-raising alternative would be for Vancity similarly to laminate and distribute and display a reply from the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council.

Incidentally, I never "joined" Vancity — it swallowed the small credit union that I started using in 1980.