Lately we've seen Women's rights being pimped out for political purposes. Reflecting on the extremes, I'm forced to ask about Women's rights in the DTES. Several years ago I made a post stating that East Van doesn't look after it's own. I was addressing the misconception that the homeless are safe in East Vancouver because everyone claims East Van takes care of their own.
Times have changed. East Vancouver is the epicentre of exploitation. Harm reduction without the other three pillars (Enforcement, Treatment & Prevention) has simply poured gasoline on the forest file of violence. The elderly and weak are regularly robbed and assaulted in the DTES. East Van doesn't take care of it's own, they eat their own. The spike in predatory violence is fueled by the drug trade we are enabling and promoting with tax dollars.
Sadly, it's not just the elderly that are being targeted. The number of sexual assaults against women in the DTES has skyrocketed. At least we gave them a clean needle and a clean crack pipe before the sexually assaulted a woman in the DTES. Can we not see the irony and the criminal culpability of our socially irresponsible conduct?
Last year I made post about Women suffering in the DTES. It was a result of my observations helping a group of volunteers hand out clothes at Pigeon corner in the DTES. Last year we had a few female leaders with us. They were told by other women living in the DTES that they were not comfortable on Pigeon corner because they get sexually assaulted there by other addicts.
Last Saturday we were there again and heard more horror stories of women being raped and exploited in the DTES. The first thought that came to mind was the hypocrisy of the woman's marches that are motivated by political purposes when we see complete exploitation of women in the DTES and no one is saying a word about it because the perpetrators of the violence are the ones we are enabling in the drug trade.
What we are doing in the DTES is wrong. History has recorded that.
The violence against women in the DTES became completely out of control when Mayor Gregor Robertson closed the police station in the DTES to public access. Years ago I spoke with a woman who lived in the DTES who spoke about how she constantly had to deal with aggressive male stalkers chasing her and harassing her. She told me she would run in front of the police station where they had a camera for safety. The creeps would leave her alone because they didn't want to be recorded on camera. Now that they closed the police station there to public access they have no place to hide. The DTES is not safe for women.
Overall, Canada is pretty good with regards to women's rights. Most places of employment have pay equity. A women and a man earn the same wage in the same job. Most places of employment, other than the RCMP, realize that sexual harassment in the workplace is illegal. But how about a woman's right to be safe? That is where we are failing. As a result, Gregor Robertson has proven to be an enemy of women's rights in the real world.
as far as society has come in some areas of our lives, we haven't come that far at all. The glass ceiling still exists, however getting into medical or law schools for women is considerably easier. However, it is at the opposite ends of society that things have not changed much.
ReplyDeletePeople in government and social services have not made the leap. That includes women working in these areas. Once the DTES was male dominated. It still is, but there are more and more women winding up there. What government and social services have not done is provide female only services, i.e. safe places, health care, treatment centres, housing, etc. whether this is being done out of ignorance, neglect, or a desire to save money who knows, but it is agreed things need to change.
of course Christy Clark and her b.c. lieberals have a 2 billion dollar surplus. Now we know how she got it. on the backs and lives of those at the bottom of the economic scale. Christy is spending millions on ads regarding jobs and some of them are featuring women in historically non traditional jobs. If Christy and her b.c. lieberals had taken that money to provide services to the women of the DTES we'd all be much further ahead.
Its much more fun and easier to organize a march for a thousand than to provide assistance and support for 10 women on the DTES. One gets you a lot of publicity, the other a lot of hard work.
Is it just me or does somehow that fence in front of the DTES station just seem like them barricading themselves into their own building? It has the sense of them ceding the streets outside to the goblins. If you don't have a desk sergeant out front, it's not a "Real Police" station, it's just an office building. And if people can't walk through the front door and be helped if they need it, what good are you?
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