This picket has been an unqualified success.

By ignoring heroin dealers, and going after pickle dealers, the picketeers have converted the entire city to their cause.

Every day, more and more people flock to the line. Last night, more than nine people showed up to denounce the menu. 17,000 people live in the DTES. Nine picketers out of 17,000 residents is an overwhelming proof of support in the DTES.

The fact that the leadership of the picket doesn't even live in the DTES is beside the point. Although Homeless Dave isn't actually homeless, the fact that he lives in North Van is immaterial. Joseph Jones lives in Norquay, a subject of no relevance either.

The fact that a restaurant must be held responsible for providing public housing cannot be overlooked. Pidgin should have been required to build 47 units of public housing before being allowed to open its doors. Everyone agrees.

Night after night, the residents of Pigeon Park come over and stand on the line in support... Oh. Wait. They don't. Sorry.

The restaurant hasn't drawn a customer in over two months, and all of this free publicity hasn't helped them at all.

Everything considered, the Pidgin Picket has been a triumph. They have drawn a line in the quicksand, and the entire DTES has rushed to their side. Nine out of 17,000 ain't bad.

Hey Zig:  you ask where the DTES cops live. Probably in North Van, like Not-Homeless Dave. Or out in Norquay, like Joseph Jones. Or over in West Van, where Nick Ellan comes from. Or in a luxury highrise condo in Burnaby, where Harsha Walia lives.

But the cops and business people don't pretend to represent the people of the DTES. You do.

There are 17,000 people living in the DTES. You have nine people walking a line and you pretend you "represent" the other 16,991 of them.

And get this. The people who actually live in Pigeon Park ignore you. They could walk 12 feet to join your picket, but they can't be bothered. Tells you something.

Your picket would have a lot more credibility if you went after the real source of suffering -- drug dealers and pimps.

Your picket would have a lot more relevance if you went after the real center of power -- City Hall, or Victoria, or Ottawa, or even BC Housing.

But instead a small and wornout band stands around complaining about a menu, and wonders why you have no public support at all.

Nine people out of 17,000 is not the popular uprising you may have intended.

Masks are not for "managing risk". They are for avoiding responsibility, and escaping consequences.

The thugs who mask up and break windows, overturn garbage cans, and steal sandwich signs are not revolutionaries. They are vandals with a Grade 8 education.

Mandela didn't need a mask. He had courage. So too Malcolm, and Martin, and Emma, and Louis Riel. The maskers of the DTES have zero courage, and much fear.

"Managing risk"? They're just hiding from cops, like a child not wanting to get caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

The people who live all day in Pigeon Park have totally ignored your demo. It is meaningless to them for reasons you cannot bear to acknowledge. Of course it is "complicated to talk about", because a thoughtful analysis would reveal that the Pidginites don't represent the actual folks who live in the park, or in the DTES.

Those folks couldn't care less about your efforts.

But that's OK. You couldn't care less about theirs. You are mutually exclusive groups, working on mutually exclusive agendas. Yours is ideology. Theirs is survival. Yours is trivial. Theirs is existential.

If it were otherwise, they would be marching with all nine of you. If it were otherwise, they would have organized the picket line themselves.

But they are not, and did not, and you continue to parade in failed isolation... and just across the street, the people you claim to protect simply ignore you, night after night.

You might as well get used to it.

When Gandhi and his colleagues organized the legendary Salt March in 1930, it was a direct and non-violent attack upon the salt monopoly of the British. It challenged economic forces essential to the Raj, and was essential to achieving Indian independence 20 years later.

None of those great Indian revolutionaries wore masks.

When King and his allies organized a decade-long cycle of marches and pickets across the South, and later in the North, they were challenging a Jim Crow system whose legitimacy they did not concede. For Rev King, the only masks he saw were worn by the cowards of the KKK.

When Louis Riel, a militant who did not recognize the "legitimacy of the canadian state", was betrayed, he organized the Mètis Rebellions of 1869 and 1885 -- and never wore a mask either.   

In these cases, we saw true militants defy all the forces of government. You may have noticed, Sid, that Riel and Gandhi and King and Malcolm and Emma and Nelson never wore masks. They never talked about "risk management". They talked about principle.

In Vancouver, the masked cowards of the Black Bloc attack sandwich signs, pizza restaurants, store windows, trash cans, and march around with sticks on fire. 

When Dr King and Gandhi and Malcolm led forces of REAL rebellion against the state, they proudly submitted to arrest. And they changed the world.

When the people you defend mask up, they do so out of cowardice. They are not proud of what they do. They are children, afraid of consequence and getting caught.

Their political cowardice is enough to give raccoons a bad name. 

Sid, you defend the childish actions of masked bullies and cowards.

Gandhi was a non-violent militant who brought down the British Raj, and in twenty years created an independent India. He never needed a mask. He paid for such militancy with his life.

King was a non-violent militant who brought down a system of Jim Crow and segregation, achieved voting rights for his people, and empowered millions. He never needed a mask, and paid for such militancy with his life.

The children you defend raccoon-up, smash windows, overturn garbage cans, and march with the torches of the Klan.

They achieve nothing, and their 'militancy' is an excuse to -- like raccoons as well -- leave piles of trash in their wake.

These are "revolutionaries"?? What a joke. They are entirely inter-changeable with the Stanley Cup rioters and -- very likely -- were part of that circus of drunken idiots as well.

No one who speaks truth to power ever needs a mask for a megaphone.

You defend cowards. I'm glad you are not one of them.

Hey Sid:

You wrote, absurdly, "there's obviously no such thing as a "non-violent militant"."

"Obviously"? Don't be ridiculous, and don't be so obtuse in reading history. You may oppose non-violent resistance, I suppose, but you must try harder to comprehend it.

Both Gandhi and King were powerful militants, leading non-violent protest against the power and instruments of the state.

You seem unaware of what actually happened during the Salt Marches. They were a direct -- and entirely militant -- assault on the economic hegemony of the Raj, and its salt monopoly. There was a great deal of violence, and all of it led by the British. You just don't know what you are talking about.

So too are you unaware of the history of Dr King and the non-violent militancy he raised against the entrenched white power structures of the Old South and, eventually, of the North. The night Dr King was assassinated, he had been leading a strike in favour of the sanitation workers in Memphis. Perhaps no one told you this.

I gather that wearing masks, and being called on the political cowardice it represents, is a sensitive subject for you. It takes zero valor to throw a rock through a window, and hide behind a mask while doing it. And it takes zero brains to march using torches redolent of the Klan and the SS.

But courage trumps cowardice, and proud determination trumps masked trembling, every time.

One day you'll find this out, and soon. I hope. Good luck!

You have become an apostle of the obvious, Sid.

You quoted, "Combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause: "militant Islamic fundamentalists"." Very good. Now you're on to something. That is precisely what Gandhi and King did, and did with extraordinary success. And no masks.

But you knew that all along.

I presume you have friends in the Raccoon Brigades. Fair enough. Everyone needs a role model, and I gather they are yours.

The fact remains inarguable:  if they had courage, they would not need masks.

Rather, they throw rocks from behind masks -- and then run away as fast as they can.

The notion of openly confronting the power structure, of (as Alinsky taught) making that structure play by its own rules, and doing all of it with pride and distinction:  this is foreign to the midnight maskers.

They are cowards who would rather steal sandwich boards, and break pizza windows. Whoo hoo! Now THAT will smash capitalism.

Why do some crooks wear masks? To avoid getting caught.

Why do some demonstrators wear masks? 

You already know the answer.

The DENC, together with the Carnegie people, has been the engine of this pointless demonstration.

Led by Ivan Drury, Wendy Pederson, and Jean Swanson, these are the "forces" that have tried to keep it going.

Tonight, they admitted failure. Tonight, on the DNC website, they published the following: "

DNC statement on the Pidgin ProtestThe DNC shares many of the goals of the anti-gentrification protesters, but feels that the specific actions in front of 350 Carrall St. have served their purpose. The DNC therefor disagrees with the continuation of this action, and calls on the protesters to move on. "