ACTION - March 8 Stands

CITYWIDE HOUSING COALITION

Immediate Release
Contact: Rider Cooey 604.872-1382
6 March 2008
Vancouver, BC CANADA

Street-corner “STANDS” for Housing Continue this Saturday and next

Neighbourhood housing activists will again stand on Vancouver streetcorners, Saturday March 8 for one hour, 1-2pm, with banners and wearing vivid blue scarves. They’ll be calling attention to federal and provincial failures to build permanent low-income housing, and the City of Vancouver’s proposed abandonment of deals with Concord Pacific for affordable housing in downtown condo towers.

STANDers will also be paying respects to the hundreds of dead and dying homeless men, women, and children— victims of legislated poverty and government neglect in BC and Canada. In Vancouver they populate our streets and lanes, huddle in parks and encampments, burn to death in doorways, are crushed in back alley garbage bins.

Ten “STAND for Housing—Homes for All!” sites have been confirmed for this, the third of four weekly Stands:

1. Main St. & 33rd Avenue (Kia Salomons and Community Advocates for Little Mtn)
2. Main St & King Edward (Ned Jacobs, Mary Ann Code, and CALM)
3. Arbutus & King Edward (Homeless Nation and Random Acts Of Kindness (RAOK)
4. Broadway & McDonald (Candace Simmonds and Kitsilano CHC)
5. Heather & 6th Ave (Rider Cooey and False Creek neighbours)
6. Commercial & 1st Avenue (Anna Truong, Calvin Baird & Streams of Justice)
7. Cordova & Gore (Anne Kennedy and St James Social Gospel Coordinating Group)
8. Oak & W 49th Ave (Leslie Kemp and Unitarian Church Social Justice Cttee)
9. Commercial & Broadway (Lauren Gill, Homeless Nation and RAOK)
10. Burrard & Nelson (Bobbie Phillips and the St Andrew’s-Wesley (Homelessness & Mental Health Action Group)
    

[Christ Church Cathedral, Georgia & Burrard, will resume next week.]

Some STANDs for Housing will pause over the Easter Break, Friday to Monday March 21-24, then continue, calling for substantial funding to be dedicated by federal, provincial, and municipal politicians to building new, permanent, low- and welfare-income housing. Using the
surplus billions in the prosperous economies of Canada and BC to build the full spectrum of housing for all citizens is the primary mechanism by which homelessness must be defeated.
The public and media are invited to join us at any of the above locations. The idea of the STAND is based on the moving example of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose children were "disappeared" by the military, 1976 to 1983. They stood every week in a city square wearing white scarves until the generals capitulated. The scarves became an international “brand” for protests against unjust and inhumane governments.