Homeless activists tour BC!
Donation protected
In November, Alliance Against Displacement is organizing a tent city tour, bringing leaders in homeless struggles from Maple Ridge, Coquitlam, Surrey, Vancouver, and Nanaimo to meet with communities in the Okanagan and Kootenays.
To build homeless power beyond bare survival, we need to organize. Donate to support a BC-wide poor people’s movement!
In June 2019, Alliance Against Displacement held a gathering of homeless leaders from eight different communities with experience establishing and defending tent cities as sites of collective survival, resistance, and power. At the gathering we reflected on the past four years of the tent city movement in southwest BC and charted a path forward – from local homeless survival struggles towards a much broader and more ambitious poor people’s movement.
When homeless people organize, they help each other survive and become a thorn in the government's side, forcing the state to release resources. In the last two years in Nanaimo and Maple Ridge, Discontent City and Anita Place Tent City have won nearly 300 units of modular housing that otherwise never would have been built in these cities. These wins are partial, but are still a sign of homeless people’s power. Modular housing is mostly repurposed mining camp trailers – it is tiny, unsafe, unhealthy, and operated through the institutional model of "supportive housing" that pathologizes and criminalizes poor people. But without homeless activists efforts, people in these communities would have even less than they do today. And without continuing the fight for dignified social housing, poor people across BC will be left to languish on the streets and in the bush, in shelters, and in temporary modular units that are already falling apart.
In November, we are organizing two 5-day tours, first to the Okanagan to visit low-income communities in Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, and Penticton, and then to the Kootenays, including Grand Forks, Trail, Castlegar, and Nelson.
We are fundraising to bring ten homeless leaders and four members of Alliance Against Displacement on tour. Leaders from poor peoples’ struggles in Metro Vancouver will bring solidarity, gather knowledge about homelessness and anti-homeless hate across the province, and invite people in the Okanagan and the Kootenays to work together and launch BC-wide campaigns to abolish supportive housing and against the war on the poor.
As a thank you, the following materials will be available upon request to anyone who donates: a booklet about the tent city gathering held in June, “To Build a Poor People’s Movement”; the leaflets we are bringing on tour, “Abolish Supportive Housing” and “Stop the War on the Poor”; and the report on the tent city tour, which will include the results of community action research about the conditions faced by low-income people in the Okanagan and Kootenays.
Expenses:
Printing: $1000
Gas to the Okanagan (1000km x $0.58 per km x 2 vans) and the Kootenays (1360km x $0.58 per km x 2 vans): $2737
Snow tires for 2 vans: $1600
Food: $2000
Stipends ($20 per day / 10 people / 10 days =): $2000
Extra camping gear: $500
Total: $9837
We have already raised some funds for this project, but to make both 5-day tours possible, we need your help! We hope to crowdfund a total of $6000 by November 8th. Please donate if you can, and share with your networks.
We are also collecting winter supplies to bring to homeless communities: tarps, blankets, socks, scarves, hats, and gloves. If you can provide an in-kind donation, that would be wonderful – you can email us at [email redacted].
Thank you for your support!
To build homeless power beyond bare survival, we need to organize. Donate to support a BC-wide poor people’s movement!
In June 2019, Alliance Against Displacement held a gathering of homeless leaders from eight different communities with experience establishing and defending tent cities as sites of collective survival, resistance, and power. At the gathering we reflected on the past four years of the tent city movement in southwest BC and charted a path forward – from local homeless survival struggles towards a much broader and more ambitious poor people’s movement. When homeless people organize, they help each other survive and become a thorn in the government's side, forcing the state to release resources. In the last two years in Nanaimo and Maple Ridge, Discontent City and Anita Place Tent City have won nearly 300 units of modular housing that otherwise never would have been built in these cities. These wins are partial, but are still a sign of homeless people’s power. Modular housing is mostly repurposed mining camp trailers – it is tiny, unsafe, unhealthy, and operated through the institutional model of "supportive housing" that pathologizes and criminalizes poor people. But without homeless activists efforts, people in these communities would have even less than they do today. And without continuing the fight for dignified social housing, poor people across BC will be left to languish on the streets and in the bush, in shelters, and in temporary modular units that are already falling apart.
In November, we are organizing two 5-day tours, first to the Okanagan to visit low-income communities in Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, and Penticton, and then to the Kootenays, including Grand Forks, Trail, Castlegar, and Nelson.
We are fundraising to bring ten homeless leaders and four members of Alliance Against Displacement on tour. Leaders from poor peoples’ struggles in Metro Vancouver will bring solidarity, gather knowledge about homelessness and anti-homeless hate across the province, and invite people in the Okanagan and the Kootenays to work together and launch BC-wide campaigns to abolish supportive housing and against the war on the poor. As a thank you, the following materials will be available upon request to anyone who donates: a booklet about the tent city gathering held in June, “To Build a Poor People’s Movement”; the leaflets we are bringing on tour, “Abolish Supportive Housing” and “Stop the War on the Poor”; and the report on the tent city tour, which will include the results of community action research about the conditions faced by low-income people in the Okanagan and Kootenays.
Expenses:
Printing: $1000
Gas to the Okanagan (1000km x $0.58 per km x 2 vans) and the Kootenays (1360km x $0.58 per km x 2 vans): $2737
Snow tires for 2 vans: $1600
Food: $2000
Stipends ($20 per day / 10 people / 10 days =): $2000
Extra camping gear: $500
Total: $9837
We have already raised some funds for this project, but to make both 5-day tours possible, we need your help! We hope to crowdfund a total of $6000 by November 8th. Please donate if you can, and share with your networks.
We are also collecting winter supplies to bring to homeless communities: tarps, blankets, socks, scarves, hats, and gloves. If you can provide an in-kind donation, that would be wonderful – you can email us at [email redacted].
Thank you for your support!
Organizer
Duncan Chan
Organizer
Vancouver, BC