Eats Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories
ROAMING STREET PARTY!
Beat the Heat!! Reclaim the Streets!!!
7:00pm
Saturday September 4 2010
Music, DJs, Dancing!
Commercial Drive is a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. At Charles and Commercial lies Grandview Park. Over the last few years, there has been a controversial plan to redevelop the park which was initiated by “The Friends of Grandview”. The “friends” of Grandview are a group of property owners living near the park who would like to live in a different neighborhood but refuse to move away. The plan is to stran...gle the life from Grandview park by eliminating loitering in the park, and the use of the park by “non-families”. The new plan includes the removal of bushes and trees to discourage homeless people and youth from using the park as the trees and bushes provide shelter from various predators such as police and security.
Grandview Park has been fenced off, and torn apart. Defending Grandview is no longer an option, but we can still defend our community!
Community Control of our Communities! No to Displacement and Gentrification!
check out defendgrandview.wordpress.com
The site for the Vancouver local of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated. Please visit the main Media Co-op website to learn more about the organization.
Comments
Controversial? Hardly.
This redesign plan is hardly controversial. What you have is a large group of people who support the updating of facilities to accommodate all users of the park (more grass, bike polo court, updated playground), and a small group of dissenters who just want to scream and yell and party instead of going to the info sessions and speaking their mind beforehand.
The main issue that the so-called 'movement' to defend Grandview is 'fighting' to support is that homeless people and street kids need the existing bushes to hide from the police in. This isn't Chechnya, Vancouver has more green space for covert sleeping than the majority of other cities of the same population, and the police and government are not out hunting stoner youth.
Community control of your community means being responsible and showing up to vote or speak your mind on the future of your park on the dates that were set out beforehand. Where were any of you on June 3rd, 2009 when there was an Open House? Where were you on the October '09 Open House held in the park? Where were you on January 19th when the concepts were displayed?
If you don't want to be responsible for taking action until after the decisions have been made, you forfeit your right to complain after the fact.
What a lame party.
Fuck I just wanted to party. Apparently (I did not find the "street party" so I cannot say for sure) there was only about 30 people in the protest. I found it rather funny. People like myself just kinda said fuck it when we found out it was a protest. I'm all for them getting the homeless people out of where I live. I don't like the way they are dealt with but I don't want them always on my corners begging for everything I have.
But Werner I agree with most of what you said, except for suggesting to go to a fucking meeting. Are you stupid. Do you know how Canada works? You think homeless people and teenagers are going to win over the tax payers and contributing society members? If there is one thing I have learned about shit like this, it is that mother fuckers in power positions do as they please and meeting are just a notification that shits gonna happen. I think if they wanna protest let'em protest. BUT FUCK YOU WHOEVER MADE THE POSTERS BECAUSE YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE!! That is all.