By Mike Archer. The City of Abbotsford has expressed, through two senior bureaucrats, support for the Drug War Survivors’s proposal for sustainable housing on municipal land. The wood, being used to shelter the protesters who moved out of Jubilee park has been donated, not just to protect them from the wind while they wait for the City’s answer, it is for the housing they hope to build for themselves at their new home.
What possible purpose is being served by moving in with billy clubs and demolishing the wooden structures as the City plans to do Friday?
What is the purpose of using force against the defenceless citizens who are simply trying to stay alive while the City dithers over their proposal? What are we trying to accomplish?
Thanks to a mindless, and stupendously incompetent police force and civil service in Abbotsford, there is no longer any middle ground on the issue of homelessness.
The police have told the citizens huddled against the cold they are coming back tomorrow. The City intends to get the emergency stay of their eviction notice, which was negotiated at the last minute Thursday by DJ Larkin of the Pivot Legal Society, removed so they can move in Friday evening.
If that happens they will demolish and confiscate the wooden structures which were delivered in order to protect the men and women from the cold while they wait for the City’s decision.
We can no longer be said to be trying to help them see the error of their ways; trying to get them to wean themselves of their dependence on drugs or alcohol or attempting to show them a better way.
Our intent seems simply to teach them a lesson.
There is a peculiar brand of Christianity in this community which denies assistance, medical care, funding or the basic necessities of life to people whose behaviours and illnesses are considered unacceptable. The minority belief holds inordinate sway among the politicians and bureaucrats who run the City and its police force.
As a result, we are wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars, year after year, paying middle class wages to cops in order to chase defenceless men and women from ditch to ditch throughout the community with no apparent end in sight and offering no chance of ever getting out of the hell in which they live.
Several of the residents of the village in the park have reduced their drug use and dependence since living, unmolested and free from the harassment of police or chicken feces over the last two months. If the City and its cops have their way, the Abbotsford Shuffle will begin all over again Friday but this time their hopes of building a new home will be destroyed and demolished along with their lumber and belongings.
There has to be an end to this. It has to be now. And it has to be bloodless. Someone has to tell these people to stop. If you claim to be doing this in my name … stop doing it.
If the City of Character intends to send in its thugs armed with billy clubs to teach the poor souls at Jubilee Park a lesson Friday night then we must stand between them and the police and say, once and for all, leave these people alone.
Unless we do … we are complicit in whatever happens.