PHOTOGRAPHY about PovertyHousingDirect Actionposted on July 15, 2010 by stimulator
Housing activists occupy apartment in Athlete's Village
VANCOUVER - Four local housing activists inside a suite today at the infamous Olympic Village complex in False Creek. The four peacefully "took possession" at around 5pm. They plan to occupy the $2.1 million apartment for one minute for every social housing unit the government lied about - more than 11 hours in total.
The activists issued the following Press Release:
ACTION RECLAIMS SUITE AT ATHLETE’S VILLAGE
The suite will be held for eleven hours and twelve minutes, representing one minute for every affordable unit the city has redesignated as unaffordable at Millenium Water.
Vancouver, BC – As of 5:15pm on Thursday July 15, 2010, residents of the least affordable city in the world have reclaimed a home in the Athlete’s Village on South East False Creek.
The home is one of 800 housing units the City of Vancouver promised as affordable and social housing, 674 of which are now being sold on the most unaffordable market in the world.
The suite will be held for eleven hours and twelve minutes, representing one minute for each of the 674 affordable units the city has redesignated as unaffordable.
This action will highlight the sheer magnitude of the broken promises at the Athlete’s Village, beginning a series of actions and initiatives in the coming weeks and months to win our demand for an immediate moratorium on the sale of empty units at Millenium Water.
The site for the Vancouver local of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated.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
awesome. housing for
awesome.
housing for all!
justice for all!
Putting the protest aside for a moment...
How does republishing a media release qualify as "independent news"? If, as your About page notes, you aspire to be "a space for critical, high-quality, democratic media in Vancouver", then how does this article meet those standards?
I applaud and encourage all kinds of journalistic endeavours, but I'd urge you to either lower your aim (there's no shame in being a site that republishes press releases), or to produce an original, fair and democratic article.
thanks for your comment Darren
Unfortunately we don't have the resources to have folks cover every event in the city, but this piece was posted as a "photo" and it was a VMC exclusive pic. In this case, the press release is clearly labeled as such, and I'll note it was posted as soon as the activists announced the action. You may have noted that this is a practice MSM uses frequently, often without disclosing its a press release.
I expect we'll be posting a video report about this action sometime in the coming week.
Thanks for checking the site,
dawn
Thanks for your reply.
Thanks for your reply. Obviously this looked to me more like 'an article illustrated by a photo' than 'a photo with a long caption'. Given that it's the latter, I think the caption before the release is totally sufficient, and I'd remove the press release entirely.
I agree that the mainstream media print lightly rewritten media releases all the time. Instead of copying them, why not just write the short caption and link to the release in its original context?
The only problem with that is
The only problem with that is that as far as I know, the press release was not posted anywhere else at the time when this update was published. In an ideal world the organizers could have uploaded a press release to our site under the "press release" catagory, and we could have linked to that... But alas, nothing's perfect, and especially not when folks are trying to crank something out as quick as they can. Thanks for your feedback & hope you keep checking back.
I'd say the ideal
I'd say the ideal circumstance would be that the organizers send you a link to their own site, so you can link to it there. And also link to the developer's response, if they publish one.