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Dozens of protesters from the Downtown Eastside braved snow and wind Sunday to send a message to Vancouver police.
“Stop the war on the poor,” they chanted in front of the police station on Main Street during the latest protest aimed at condemning the city’s ticketing campaign – or crackdown, depending on who you ask – in the DTES.
“It’s about being treated like a human, with respect,” said Joan Morelli, one of the protesters with the DTES Women Centre’s Power to Women group. “I’m not saying people should jaywalk or do illegal vending – because often they’re selling items stolen from me – but the way people are being treated is distasteful.”
Groups like Power to Women, Carnegie Community Action Project and Pivot Legal Society have been holding regular protest actions since seeing a 50 per cent spike in tickets police have been issuing in the DTES last year.
They claim the increased enforcement of minor bylaws – and the crackdown in street-level vending – is criminalizing poverty and helping the city aggressively clean-up the impoverished neighbourhood for the Olympics.
“You don’t see this kind of enforcement in Kitsilano or other parts of the city,” said an organizer known as Chili Bean. “There is an enormous police presence because of the Olympics, but we still live here. This is our neighbourhood.”