Vancouver CST

Picket Against Geoff Meggs

6:00pm
- 7:00pm
Monday October 15 2012

We had so much fun connecting with 20 affordable housing activists, public park supporters, environmentalists, defenders of the rule of law, and other great community leaders two weeks ago that WE ARE DOING IT AGAIN.

We will be holding another picket this Monday evening, October 15th, against the corrupt neighbourhood-busting policies and developments ushered in by Vision Vancouver and its housing czar Geoff Meggs.

THIS TIME HE HAS TO SHOW UP!

As you may have read in the Courier, the Media Coop, or on Twitter, Vancouver's neighbourhoods have organized multiple pickets against City Councillor Geoff Meggs.

He now NEEDS OUR VOTE to bail out of the mess he's made of civic politics and bring his neo-liberal, privatization policies to the province as an MLA.

Whether it's public land, public housing, public transit, or even public decency, Meggs has put it all up for sale.

Now he's is running in a tight nomination race against the Executive Director of the Sierra Club to secure the Vancouver Fairview NDP ticket for next spring's election. A final candidates' debate is being held at:

The Holiday Inn on Broadway at Heather Street (2 blocks west of Cambie)
Monday, October 15th
Picket from 6:00 to 7:00 PM
Debate 7:00 to 9:00 PM

Geoff Meggs failed to show up at a pre-arranged community consultation two weeks ago and yet another one last week, but he can't miss this one, and nor can hundreds of NDP riding association voters who've yet to decide for whom to vote.

We can't afford to let this man return to Victoria. The last time he was in the Premier's office as Communications Director, he presided over NDP Premier Glen Clark's ignominious resignation and precipitated a decade of Liberal tyranny.

Since then, Meggs

•  Was at the center of the 2003 schism in Vancouver's progressive politics that left our city in the hands of not one, but two, developer-funded corporatist parties (detect a pattern?),
•  Stick-handled the RAV Line P3 which bankrupted Translink, forcing huge tax and fare increases and deep bus service cuts (all for which he later voted),
•  Has promised to ram through another RAV Line to UBC and ravage and further rezone Mount Pleasant, Fairview, Kitsilano and Point Grey,
•  Turned his back on the people after his election in 2008 by declaring "the election was the consultation" (watch 2 minute YouTube video here),
•  Has championed gentrification throughout Vancouver's once affordable neighbourhoods,
•  Has tossed out decades of careful community-based planning in the City's oldest neighbourhoods,
•  Has supported development-fee-waivered high-rise developments throughout the city while claiming rents of $2-3 per square foot per month are both "affordable" and worthy of public subsidy, and
•  Has done more to spur the demolition of public and affordable housing than any politician in recent memory.

This is Geoff Meggs, and he has to know that the voters of Vancouver will not let him squirm his way out to a higher paying job in Victoria, where he can do even more damage.

October 15 is also the first anniversary of Occupy Vancouver, and the 99 Per-centers will be gathering all day downtown at the Art Gallery. What better way to meld the message of that protest with next spring's provincial election.

We have dozens of signs made already, plus some fat markers and blank canvasses.

Come join us for a half hour or hour, and stay to ask some hard questions at the debate.

Get the word out to your networks, especially from the historic Stands for Housing and the neighbourhood organizations that just saw half the city rezoned for high-density development.

Join us Monday evening to help change our province for the better, and hold our City Council accountable for their actions.

Randy Chatterjee