New Media

Vancouver’s downtown eastside is better known for being the poorest urban area code in Canada. Whenever I visit the neighborhood, I’m astonished at the stark transition from the hip, gentrifying Gastown neighborhood that seemed until recent years to be an extension of the worst parts of the ghetto, and the worst intersections where drug dealers and sex trade workers are reflected by pawn shop storefronts and in the dusty window panes of businesses that long ago closed their doors.

But there is an interesting experiment going on in the downtown eastside, Fearless City, bringing new technology and media tools to energize the neighborhood’s artists and other residents. Empowered with donated camera cell phones, other mobile devices, and peer training, the people of the downtown eastside get to tell their own stories and have a greater voice in our fast-changing city. With a camera phoneThe Vancouver blog Raincoaster provides some details on phase 2 of Phones for Fearless.

Excellent overview of what Fearless City is all about on Global TV. If you want to donate a cell phone or get involved, here’s how to contact them.

There’s tough times all over and in Vancouver, the poor and marginalized are suffering even worse than usual under an Arctic freeze-up. Kudos to Vancouver’s bloggers, twitterers and other geeks for stepping in to save the day.

Gillian Shaw reports today on a Twitter flash mob assembling in the downtown eastside to distribute warm clothing (Vancouver Sun). An excerpt:

“Here’s a coat,” said Steve Jagger, a Vancouver tech entrepreneur on Twitter as @sjagger, rooting around in the bottom of a bag to come up with something for a homeless man looking to warm up. “No, take this one instead, it’s a better fit and it’s cool.”

Kudos also to John Chow, who has raised over $12,000 for the Union Gospel Mission at a time when Vancouver’s hungry and homeless appear to need our help the most. John is better known for being better known – with 44,203 registered subscribers, his “Make Money Online“-themed site probably beats the readership of most Canadian print publications. Way to give back.

Miss604‘s Best of 604 Awards raised $1,800 for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society (which included my donation as well).

Meanwhile, Beautynight stuffed 500 Christmas stockings for their clients hoping to make positive lifestyle changes.

I often blather on about social media and Web 2.0 stuff, so for all you out there who were wondering about whether Twitter and social media really matter, here are some great examples of instant successes that have brought about positive change in the community. It actually works. If anyone else has come upon other examples of this kind of social-media making a difference locally in the last while, go ahead and leave a comment with the details.

Raven and Jason is a Globe and Mail documentary about a couple living under horrific conditions in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Thanks to Beyond Robson for the link).

The documentary shows their lives intimately, including scenes of them shooting up drugs. The exercise clearly gives them little pleasure, other than deadening their senses to their plight.

The documentary brought to mind a recent Economist article highlighting some experimental research that poked a big hole in the longstanding theory of drug addiction. The research implied environment had far more to do with addiction than the drug itself.

Oft-quoted studies on individual rats in little empty cages showed that when given a choice between cocaine-laced water and regular water, the rats invariably chose the toxic water.

But in the study highlighted in the Economist, rats living amongst their kin in spacious and stimulating environments (essentially Vancouver’s West End for rats) almost always rejected the drugged water.

Even a group of rats fed drugs to create dependency rejected the poison when later given the opportunity, despite the discomfort of withdrawal.

Given the despair of the Downtown Eastside, it’s certainly easy to see how the Economist study would apply.

Vancouver is tied with Calgary as the most polite major city in Canada (Moncton actually finished first of any municipality in the survey, so small-town values still count for something). Evidently, the pollsters were never in touch with any member of Vancouver’s Anti-Poverty Committee.

Here is a group which has abandoned any effort to protest its legitimate concerns over housing the homeless in favor of shock tactics and thuggery.

The Hell on Earth that is Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has many causes, among them a decision long ago to release all mentally ill Canadians from asylums on to the streets, a thriving drug trade (the bane of any city with a half-decent port) and an extreme climate that makes most other Canadian cities uninhabitable six months out of the year for those without shelter.

But breaking into buildings for illegal squats that will inevitably get broken up by police is becoming a very tired tactic for getting attention, and a useless one in terms of actually getting homeless people indoors. So long as homeless people are represented by such dorks, they are badly served.

By the way, kudos to the Campbell government for providing $41 million in new funding for homeless shelters.

Surprise, surprise those who assumed a law-and-order Conservative-led government would force Vancouver’s (and North America’s) first legal drug injection site to close at its first opportunity. Personally, I figured it was a 50-50 shot.

There are those who say that closing the facility would have amounted to mass murder, given the number of fatal drug overdoses prevented by having Insite around. It’s an odd argument, akin to saying that the elected representatives of virtually every city, regional and national government on Earth outside of Europe ought to be charged for negligent homicide.

It sort of throws out the whole idea of personal responsibility and societal norms.

Ah, well. In this case, the Conservatives have erred on the side of pragmatism, given that the experiment so far is hinting at some concrete benefits, like 800 of the 7,200 people there actually heading into rehab. Fewer people are injecting heroin right on the sidewalk (which shouldn’t be an issue in a Canadian city to begin with, but it seems like progress).

Besides, we don’t seem to have any other options on the table these days. Civil City, anyone?