A prayer for the Mayor

Dear God, please let Sam Sullivan walk again so we can all feel less guilty when someone eventually beats the sh*t out of him. Vancouver gets hit by a winter storm which is most acutely felt by the city's homeless population. A few hundred extra beds may be available, but Vancouver's homeless number in the thousands. What's the response from Mayor Sullivan and his NPA henchmen? Increase the number of emergency shelters? Appeal to Victoria or Ottawa for assistance? No, declare war on the homeless.

How sick is 'Project Civil City'? Sullivan wants Federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day on the "Civil City Leadership Council". For those of you scoring at home, that's the same Stockwell Day who as an Alberta Cabinet Minister, thought that "honourable" prisoners should go ahead and "take care" of sex offenders among Alberta's prison population. By this reasoning, City Hall could rake in oodles of revenue from selling Bumfights videos as the "good" homeless lay the smackdown on the "bad" homeless.

'Project Civil City' is nothing more than a shameless rewarming of Lorne Mayencourt's Safe Streets Act, right down to the definition of 'aggressive' panhandling to try and avoid The Charter of Rights and Supreme Court of Canada rulings which legalized panhandling. All of the fascist intimidation and police crackdown tactics prescribed by Sullivan are intended to 'clean up the streets' before the 2010 Olympics. It's funny, but Jim Green also had a plan to clean up the streets too, but it involved harm reduction for addicts and social housing, not a blitzkreig of the Downtown Eastside. Green leveraged his support of the Olympics to get something for the people most in need, but Sullivan, the NPA, and their good friend JAMES Green stole the 2005 election to ensure that City Hall wouldn't have to deliver.

Until an affordable home is a right that the state can and will deliver, the state has no right to attack those who can't afford a home.