The Dominion - Isaac Oommen

Food Sovereignty on the Menu at Traditional Foods Conference

Sandra — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:41:13 +0000

TSESHAHT FIRST NATION—Traditional diet, harvesting rights, seafood contaminants and community health were all on the menu at the 5th Annual Traditional Foods Conference on Vancouver Island. Jointly hosted in Port Alberni on September 28 and 29 by the Tseshaht First Nation and the Nuu chah nulth Tribal Council, the free conference was themed "Feeding Our Future Generations." A space to promote and encourage traditional foods and food practices, the annual event has always focused on four pillars: nutrition, healing, safety and community. This year, sustainability was added as a fifth pillar.

This video was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op. Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and academic researcher based in the Unceded Coast Salish Territories.

The Cornerstone of Gentrification in the Downtown East Side

taramichelle — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:00:12 +0000

From the Woodward squat ten years ago, to a displaced neighbourhood

VANCOUVER—Towering 43 storeys at the corner of Abbott and Hastings Streets, in the poorest neighbourhood in Vancouver—the Downtown East Side (DTES)—sits the new Woodwards.

The $400 million project, launched by the City of Vancouver, is a mixture of market and social housing, commercial stores, offices, a public atrium, part of Simon Fraser University's (SFU) downtown campus and a community space. It takes up three quarters of the block, or 1,222,230 square feet.

The block looked very different on September 14, 2002, when a number of people from the DTES and their allies occupied the then-abandoned Woodwards department store in a bid to have the site made into social housing.

“There was gentrification happening all around the world and we saw it coming,” said Shawn Millar, who broke into the Woodwards building with around 60 other people to begin the occupation. “The saying was, 'As Woodwards goes, so goes the neighbourhood.'”

On September 21, police arrested 54 squatters and sealed the building, only to see them return the next day and set up a tent city on the sidewalk. Their numbers swelled to 150 as homeless people and their allies set up camp.

Police later arrested tenters and City workers disposed of their belongings in garbage trucks. The City promised temporary housing for squatters, as well as room in the future Woodwards social housing project.

According to Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP, an organization that advocates on DTES housing, income and land issues), co-ordinator Jean Swanson, there was no mention at that time of having condominiums at the site.

"At the last minute developers put in two condo towers,” said Swanson. “They said the rich needed to be there in order to make the project pay. Instead the area around Woodwards became a zone of exclusion.”

“Thirty per cent of the Woodwards is social housing, but only 15 per cent is actual welfare-rate social housing that were part of the original demands,” said Ivan Drury, a researcher for CCAP. “A good part of the project is supportive social housing, which is not in accordance with the Residential Tenancy Act and so can be run with immunity.”

Commercial space in Woodwards was offered a ten-year tax break as an encouragement to set up in the neighbourhood, which was deemed to be a high-crime area. Shops such as Nester's Market and London Drugs changed the space by policing it with private security.

“[When you go in there] you're treated like a thief,” said Millar. “They have a sign: 'Where The Community Shops.' It's not where the community shops. The community is not welcome there.”

The September 15 sixth annual Women's Housing March, organized by the DTES-based Power of Women group, called out many high-end cafes and other shops that are now taking over the DTES for making the neighbourhood unwelcome to low-income people. This pattern of gentrification began with the stores situated in Woodwards.

In September 2010, SFU moved its School for Contemporary Arts from its Burnaby campus to Woodwards, into what became the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts.

“We were concerned about the naming of the building because it's alleged that Goldcorp mining in Latin America is pursuing an environmentally and socially destructive policy,” said Dr. Ian Angus, a Professor of Humanities at SFU who was part of a faculty group that took these concerns to the university president. “Naming the school this way connects SFU to corporate practices that have come under widespread criticism.”

Despite student protests that called for an end to the association between SFU and the mining company, SFU has yet to address concerns about Goldcorp's $10 million donation to the university.

After the City of Vancouver paid $50 million of the $70 million price tag on the Centre for the Arts, SFU was left to raise the rest through private donations. Half of Goldcorp's donation went towards paying for the construction of the Centre, while the rest was earmarked for cultural programs. SFU Woodwards hosts events and talks as part of its community mandate.

“It's disgusting because Goldcorp has demonstrated itself to be abusive,” said Christopher Pavsek, Assistant Professor of Film with the School for Contemporary Arts. “It puts to lie anything SFU has said about caring about human rights.”

Woodwards developers' major concession with regard to the DTES neighbourhood, other than fractional social housing, was a community space. A call was put to community groups to to create this space. Of four main groups that attended these consultations, three pulled out and left just one to take the space. The group, known at the time as Creative Technology, became W2 Community Media Arts.

“The place was designed to fool,” said Jim Carrico, who represented one of the many smaller organizations making up the community groups involved with the consultations. “The whole building was designed to not have real mixing. It was built into the architecture. For us, the main floor was off-limits. We were given a smaller space. It was not about helping the groups involved. [The groups] had to come up with the money to finish the space.”

As a result of this perceived exclusion, Carrico left the consultations.

W2 has burgeoned into a number of projects including a cafe, meeting space, arts society and radio show on Co-op Radio. It has also become a controversial space because of its existence in the DTES.

“We had fundraising events to keep W2 running,” said Donna Chen, the organization's former Volunteer Co-ordinator. “We had majority middle-class white males partying in the DTES. How much is this befitting of W2's mission and mandate?”

Strategies like this have had repercussions from the DTES community.

“I don't trust [W2's] motives,” said Lyn Highway, who has worked with a number of social services organizations in the DTES. “I still to this day boycott them. They're in the cornerstone of gentrification in the DTES...They're so eager and willing to participate in that and be at the forefront of its community acceptance.”

Ten years after the squat, the Woodwards building has lived up to its promise of mixing in a different way. It combines housing, commercial space and education, under the guise of community benefit via social housing and a media space.

“What we really need is for the social housing programs to be restored,” said Swanson. “We need self-contained housing with enough space to think that is resident-controlled. The City needs to slow down gentrification and stop pushing low-income people out of the DTES.”

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and academic researcher based in the Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Murray Bush is a Vancouver-based photographer and regular contributor to the Vancouver Media Co-op.

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Tamils Welcomed in Vancouver

dawn — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:24:54 +0000

Hundreds support Tamil refugees on the MV Sun Sea

VANCOUVER—Two hundred people assembled at the Vancouver Art Gallery on the afternoon of August 22 to show solidarity with the 492 Tamil refugees detained and being processed by Canada Immigration. The refugees arrived together on the MV Sun Sea, a ship which docked near Esquimalt, BC.

"People all across the country are saying that we're with the refugees; let the boat stay," said Harsha Walia, an organizer with No One Is Illegal. "[To] every single person who says the boat should go back: we will overcome your dehumanization."

Text by Isaac Oommen; photos by Murray Bush. This photo essay was previously published in two parts by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

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Recovering from the Heart Attack

Moira Peters — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:31:10 +0000

Arrestees fighting off Olympic side-effects in court

VANCOUVER—Although the Olympics' closing ceremonies were three months ago, for those who opposed the two-week spectacle, the Vancouver 2010 Games have not yet left town.

Guillaume Pascal was arrested and accused of involvement in the February 13 Heart Attack Demonstration. "Two cops say that I instructed people to smash the windows of the RBC [Royal Bank of Canada]," he said. "VPD [Vancouver Police Department] said that they caught the ringleader of the action when they arrested me."

The Heart Attack was a demonstration meant to clog the roads leading through Vancouver to Whistler where many of the sports events were taking place. 300 masked people walked through downtown Vancouver, vandalizing symbols of the Olympics and capitalism. Olympic sponsors' advertisements on city buses were spray-painted; newspaper boxes of the Province and Canwest newspapers were overturned and the windows of the Hudson's Bay Company were smashed. The group was dispersed finally by riot police in the West End.

Pascal was arrested two days after the Heart Attack demonstration, after his residence and vehicle were constantly monitored by the police.

"VISU [Vancouver Integrated Security Unit] really dropped the ball on keeping the peace," said Pascal, who believes he was arrested because security agencies needed to save face after property was damaged during the Heart Attack. "They spent eight times the amount [on security] as the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, and needed a scapegoat for their incompetence in letting the Heart Attack take place."

"The Heart Attack ended the violent protests, and that had a lot to do with the response of the police," said Deputy Chief Constable Steve Sweeney at a March 17 Olympic security debriefing. "The public came over to our favour," he said about support for police conduct during the Heart Attack.

But few saw footage of police conduct during the February 13 demo. Police were brutal in arresting protesters, and even detained people peacefully walking to a prison vigil later that day.

"There were no charges made against me," said Sozan Savehilaghi, who marched with a pink-wigged, coverall-wearing group calling itself the Olympic Cleanup Crew. She was detained for video-taping arrests during the Heart Attack. "I was never read my rights or told why I was being detained. There were just lots of empty threats."

Savehilaghi was one of 27 protesters arrested during the Olympics, according to Solidarity with Anti-Olympic Convergence Arrestees (SACA)—a group formed to bring together arrestees and supporters to raise funds for the formers' defence. Ten of the arrestees were charged, of whom two are still fighting charges in court.

SACA member Ed Durgan was arrested February 13 near Pigeon Park, fifteen blocks away from where the Heart Attack demo ended. He was arrested for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk after questioning a group of police, whom he believed were harassing someone sleeping on a bench near the park.

"I was nearly deported. We had to fight for me to stay since they were going to revoke my student visa," said Durgan. "They put effort into intimidating me because I was a high-profile activist. But [the detainees] realized we'd all been arrested for political purposes, and wanted to stick together and fight these charges." Durgan said SACA goes beyond fundraising, and is considering legal action against the police for harassment.

Fundraising for SACA is tricky in Vancouver, where recently a benefit rock gig at the Pitt Pub at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was cancelled by the Alma Mater Society (AMS).

"AMS is claiming that the policy is that only student groups can book events on-campus," said SACA organizer Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, "which makes no sense because off-campus groups"—such as the Red Cross and Vancouver General Hospital—"work with student groups to book space at UBC all the time."

Despite UBC AMS' actions, there is support for SACA. The launch of the Dominion's G20 special issue on May 14 at the Vancouver Media Co-op included a solidarity statement with SACA. A dance party at the Secret Location on the same night included a silent auction for SACA.

Pascal's case is still going through court. "And there are other things like finding a job, that is hard after this," he said. "Marginalizing someone into being a 'terrorist' stops him from ever being able to live normally."

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and communications graduate student researching media representation of marginalized people. He is a collective member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

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Main & Hastings Cop Shop

War in Yemen Means Business

dawn — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:14:59 +0000

While 30,000 IDPs remain inaccessible to relief, US Powered scores nuclear reactor

VANCOUVER—Yemen has been rocked by a series of violent clashes between government and rebel forces from the northern tribes since August, and plans to build a new nuclear reactor has sparked fears of increased tensions.

When the internal conflict in Yemen intensified in August from periodic clashes to full-scale military engagement, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was adamant that his forces would crush the rebel tribes.

"We are determined to destroy this sedition," he said in an address to military school graduates. "We will nip this cancer wherever it exists, in [the province of] Sa'ada or elsewhere."

The northern al-Houthi rebels immediately accused the armed forces of using weapons supplied by the US. A series of videos released by the Houthis displayed weapons they had confiscated from the army during skirmishes over the last year.

Yemen's government has since denounced the northern rebels for wanting to set up an independent Shia state in the country that mimics the pre-1962 theocracy.

In press releases, the government has also accused Iran of backing the Houthis with weapons and training.

On his website, the rebels' leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has denied both accusations. He countered that his people have been fighting for their rights against a government that has become too cozy with Saudi Arabia, whose fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunni rulers see the 10 million Zaydi Yemeni Shi'ites as heretics. He also stressed the difference between Zaydi and Iranian Shi'ism.

Saudi Arabia has a noted interest in the conflict, and has been accused by Houthis of disallowing internally displaced people (IDPs) from entering its borders. Saudi interests in Yemen are like those of the US—primarily related to the threat of terrorism.

US and Pakistani officials are looking at the Arabian peninsula as the new breeding ground for terrorist activities, alleging a movement out of Afghanistan towards countries such as Somalia and Yemen.

Early in the year, deputy chief of Al Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri merged the Saudi Arabian and Yemeni wings of the group. This made enough waves for US President Barack Obama to send Yemen's President a letter in September asking for more cooperation in fighting Al Qaeda in the region.

During US Senator John McCain's August visit to Yemen, he mentioned that the US wholly supports efforts to enhance Yemen's security.

Yemen also gained attention in Canada as an alleged training ground for Canadian Islamic extremists.

"There's a great, and I think growing, fear among policy makers in Washington, in London, in Canada and in Europe about what instability in Yemen will mean for the future of a group like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," Canadian Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan told the National Post on September 4.

Canadian firms were among those meeting with the Yemeni government in September over talks to build a nuclear reactor there. The deal eventually went to US-based Powered Corporation. Greenpeace was one of the first groups to note that the plant would likely increase instability in Middle East.

Energy shortfalls in Yemen are becoming worse, with rolling blackouts and water shortages affecting multiple provinces, particularly in the south of the country. Protests in that area are becoming increasingly violent, as more people become angry about marginalization by the federal government.

Reports regarding the war in the north are few and sporadic. By the end of September the Yemeni government was alleging that Operation Scorched Earth had killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and pushed the remainder out of their stronghold in Sa'ada.

In an October 14 address commemorating the Yemeni uprising against the British in 1963, President Saleh said that he expected to completely crush the rebels over the next few days.

The rebels have been reporting the opposite, claiming to have captured further cities and killed several government troops in Sa'ada province in September. Houthi sources said the rebels had even seized an army camp in early October.

Facts are hard to obtain since the Yemeni government has shut out news agencies from the area, forcing the latter to rely on government and rebel press releases. Both parties' claims have largely been unsubstantiated.

President Saleh mentioned in an Eid ul-Fitr address that Houthi rebels were using human shields and killing civilians. Resistance fighters countered that the army closed down a hospital because of its alleged links to Iran, and attacked a refugee camp.

Any potential for talks have been rebuffed by the government; further, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi stated on September 15 that Yemen would reject all offers of external mediation.

One fact that has not been diluted is the humanitarian impact of the fighting. A combination of aerial bombardment by the government and head-to-head fighting have forced thousands to flee their homes.

Since August, 50,000 people have been uprooted to refugee camps or are stranded in the fighting, according to the Economist. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees notes that around 30,000 of these IDPs are inaccessible to relief workers. A total of about 150,000 people have been displaced since the first round of fighting between the government and rebels in 2004.

Coupled with the unrest in the south, the war in the north is quickly earning Yemen its spot as possibly the most increasingly troubled and poorest region in the Middle East.

Isaac K Oommen is a freelance journalist and commmunications coordinator from Dubai, now residing in Vancouver. Born a nomad, Isaac traveled extensively through the Middle East, south-east Asia and Pacific Asia before settling in Vancouver.

Yemen Business

The South Roars in Yemen

dawn — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:19:05 +0000

Calgary's Nexen among targets of domestic attacks

VANCOUVER—What started off as the annual tremors of remembrance over the bloody 1994 Yemeni civil war have this time had far-reaching consequences.

Clashes in southern Yemen between protesters and police are common in the summer months that commemorate the 1994 civil war, which lasted from May to July of that year. The main grievance of protesting southern Yemenis is the north's control of quickly-depleting oil reserves in the south.

After three protesters and a policeman were wounded during an anti-government rally in early July, the government deemed all protests illegal. Many southerners have not obeyed the edict, believing the central government in Sana'a to be prejudiced against them.

Recent fighting has displaced as many as 3,500 people, bringing the total since 2004 to around 100,000, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Brian Whitaker, an editor with Britain's The Guardian newspaper, notes in his book The Birth of Modern Yemen the dichotomy between tribal pro-US North Yemen and detribalized pro-Soviet South Yemen. This division, according to Whitaker, was bound to lead to the civil war in 1994, where the south sent rockets up to Sana'a in response to the bombing of the southern town of Aden by the north.

The country has remained unsteadily unified since the north emerged victorious in July of that year, with many of the southern Shi'ite and Yemen Socialist Party leaders going into exile.

In July, Yemen's deputy interior minister praised the country's new program seeking to seize all unregistered weapons—a tactic that is being seen by tribes as one set up to forcibly disarm them. Simultaneously, Yemen's courts decided to throw one journalist in prison and order another to stop writing because of their supposedly separatist slants.

"The sentence constitutes another violation of free expression by Yemen," Reporters Without Borders told the Yemen Times.

In addition to controlling firearms and the press, the government sent its forces into southern territories in the name of national security and anti-terrorism: the military is currently surrounding the Wa'ela tribe, accused of holding the six surviving missionaries of nine who were taken hostage on July 12, 2009, in a suburb of Sa'ada.

Sheikh Saleh Habra, spokesperson for the tribe, told the Yemen Times rescuing the hostages is not on the government's agenda so much as a plan "to impose a complete siege on our supporters and expand their military sites."

Such measures from the government have not in any way curbed the violence between the Sunni north and Shi'ite south. Clashes between Houthis and Sunni militants over a northern mosque led to the death of ten people in July.

The Yemeni Defense Ministry newswire is additionally accusing separatists of killing three and wounding another in the Lahaj region of the south.

The violence has not gone unnoticed in the international community, particularly after an American intelligence official warned of possible attacks against the US embassy in Sana'a. Members of Salafia Jihadia, a group linked to Al Qaeda, are being accused of plotting the supposed operation.

To show the world Yemen is serious about fighting terrorism, courts in that country sentenced six accused Al Qaeda operatives to death in July for plotting against foreign and governmental targets.

These actions may be too little too late since western governments have already warned their citizens not to travel to Yemen.

On August 21, 2009, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs issued a travel report citing the presence of terrorism, tribal violence and government-secessionist fighting to warn Canadians against all travel to the region. The Canadian government lists one of the Yemeni rebel entities, the anti-government pro-theocracy Islamic Army of Aden, as a terrorist organization.

Canada has been particularly wary of Yemen ever since a small bomb exploded near the Yemeni offices of Canadian oil company Nexen on April 10, 2008.

According to Canada's report on bilateral relations with Yemen, the Canadian International Development Agency has spent $450,000 in Yemen to help remove landmines. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs is tied to Yemen via its Global Peace and Security Fund and Counter-Terrorism Capacity Building assistance.

Indirectly, Canada has also worked through the United Nations Development Program to help set up the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights.

Despite both domestic and international efforts, attacks within the country are multiplying.

At the beginning of July an unknown group exploded an oil pipeline controlled by a South Korean company in southeastern Yemen. Commercial attacks such as this are a bigger worry for the government than protests since the country is bleeding billions of dollars due to the world financial crunch, whether or not it refuses to admit it.

The Yemeni government's response to the crisis, which stems largely from an economy 90 per cent dependent on dwindling oil reserves, was to further poke at the south: it unveiled plans in July via the Yemen News Agency to open a new refinery in the southern city of Aden.

Southerners are not pleased.

Isaac Oommen is a writer, originally from Dubai and now residing in Vancouver. He traveled extensively through the Middle East and south-central Asia before settling in Vancouver to write.

Independence for South Yemen (Stamp)