UN agency invites Pivot lawyer to Geneva
David Eby to present on homelessness and Olympics
May 31, 2007
Vancouver – A United Nations-funded housing rights agency has invited Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby to Geneva to make a presentation on the impacts of the 2010 Olympic Games on Vancouver’s most marginalized residents.
Eby’s presentation to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) in mid June will be part of a larger workshop presenting final results from COHRE’s two-year study of the housing rights impact of international events, with a specific focus on the Olympic Games.
“I am honoured that this internationally recognized research agency has chosen Pivot to present on homelessness and the Games,” said Eby. “I will do my best to provide this international audience with a comprehensive report on Vancouver’s progress, or lack of progress on these issues.”
Eby has spent the last two years with Pivot studying the state of low-income housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood. In 2006, he was co-lead author of Cracks in the Foundation, Pivot’s comprehensive study of housing issues facing low-income residents in Vancouver. In 2007, he was an editor of the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition’s Interim Report Card and is a member of the Board of that organization. Experts from the UN High Commission on Human Rights and UN-HABITAT are also scheduled to present.
“Given Vancouver’s experience with Expo ’86, I would have thought our governments would be more concerned,” said Eby, “but with just over two and a half years to go before the games, the affordable housing legacy promised in the bid process has yet to appear and through Civil City our city council is poised to harass and displace Vancouver’s most vulnerable citizens.”
Stops at the World Health Organization, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS are on Eby’s itinerary.
—–
The results of the COHRE study are announced June 14 and Mr. Eby is speaking on June 14 and 15.
For more information contact:
David Eby – Pivot Legal Society – (778) 865-7997
———————-
About Pivot Legal Society
Pivot’s mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins. We believe that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such opportunity, respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law.
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
raincoaster 
Until our Federal Government and the banking sector "just say no" to laundering profits from the sale of illegal drugs, the root cause of poverty, homelessness, addiction and the needless death resulting from them will remain unaddressed.
Our major banks have been issued fines in the millions of dollars – what I like to call the judiciary’s cut – but they are paid out as a small cost of doing business. A $2.5m fine is nothing compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars that prop up our mutual funds. Society is the addict, and the drug is money.
Earlier this month, our Prime Minister announced $63b in funding for its so called War on Drugs. It sounds good, help for addicts and stiffer penalties for traffickers, but no new funding for Canada’s ports, the major points of entry for heroin and cocaine. Current staffing levels and equipment allow for inspection of only a small percentage of containers.
Prime Minister Harper, bring our troops home from Afghanistan where they are guarding poppy fields and put them to work inspecting containers on the ports. Our economy will suffer in the short term. We will go through withdrawal. And then we will heal. But first, we must stop the injections of laundered profits from the sale of illegal narcotics into bank and government coffers.
Did you know that every third dollar that is laundered runs through either Montreal or Vancouver? Thanks to our laxer reporting laws a lot of money that used to be run through New York is now moved North.
Yes, I’d heard something to that effect. I watched a DVD called “Cocaine Cowboys” a few weeks ago. It was about the transformation of Miami from quiet, retirement getaway to gleaming, urban supercity as cocaine profits flooded the banks in the late 70s/early 80s. The same thing has been happening in Vancouver over the past 15 years. At certain points during the documentary, the similarity was uncanny.
Did you hear about this past weekend’s gangland assassination of a leading Asian drug kingpin in the Shaughnessy neighbourhood (the most expensive, old money homes in the city)? The deceased’s 10 year old daughter called 911 to tell the police her father had been shot. The violence is creeping into elite turf now. It’s too bad our economy is so hooked on the illegal proceeds of narcotics trafficking. The residents won’t change their political views, though. Not even when their own start getting caught in the crossfire.
Yes, NOW the cops will do something about it. They already knew who he was and how he made his money. I’d like to see the papers publish the name of the realtor who sold him the place; that would be the end of THAT career.
Also: ladies and gentlemen, please do not delude yourself into thinking that pot is a wholesome, Ma and Pa Hippie trade. It’s owned by organized crime, and people get killed for it. I knew a woman whose son was a pot mule, and they killed him and dumped the body in Victory Square.
Dear David Eby,
I was pleasantly surprised to see you riding your bicycle and dropping off your laundry at Shirtland Drycleaning Store.
I live right across the street in the Windchimes apts. #502.
Every morning I check the two free washing machines in Windchimes to make sure they are clean and to empty out the lint filters of the dryers. Everone else seems to forget this simple task. I fix the machines!
What happened in Geneva? This is a great honour to be invited!
I have a job interview coming up in April to be a volunteer
at Pivot Legal Agency.
You are welcome to visit me at home for coffee/tea.
Sincerely,
Wendy A.S. Mayer
Wendy, instead of stalking Dave’s washing machines and trying to psychically communicate with him through my blog, you might want to leave a comment on HIS blog.