Statement of the Victoria Anti-Poverty Coalition--Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade: Preface

On April 25, 2002, The Victoria Anti-Poverty Coalition--Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade, a group of 10 women of varying ages, all living below the poverty line, occupied the office of Victoria MLA, Jeff Bray to protest policy changes by the Government of BC.  A Vancouver Sun Article about the event is available here: Victoria Police Pepper-Spray Crowd.  

The BC Coalition of Women's Centres was asked by APOV to post their Statement to our website (see below).  The Coalition supports non-violent action for social change.  

Comments or questions about the Statement should be directed to:  
APOV
(250) 388-9181
Box 8441
Victoria BC, V8W 3S1
e-mail:  apov@acts.bc.ca

"The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst.  The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.  Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed - not only its symptoms but its basic causes.  This, too, will be a fierce struggle, but we must not be afraid to pursue the remedy no matter how formidable the task."

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964

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Statement of the Victoria Anti-Poverty Coalition--Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade

Occupation Statement
After the Occupation
Why We Did This
The Sadistic Irrationality of "Get a Job."  

Victoria Anti-Poverty Coalition--Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade:  Occupation Statement
April 26, 2002

The Victoria Anti-Poverty Coalition Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade occupied the office of Liberal MLA Jeff Bray in defense of all people whose lives are threatened by the economic violence perpetrated by the government of this province.

People all around the world die daily from poverty which has been created and enforced by neo-Liberal market capitalism.  Now here in BC we have Bills 26 & 27 which will directly lead to the deaths of many people living in poverty.  Cuts to welfare in Ontario led to the death of Kimberly Rogers in August of 2001.  She was sentenced to house arrest during a heatwave for the crime of collecting welfare while she attended university.  She was eight months pregnant at the time of her death.  We here in BC refuse to passively sit by and let the provincial government sadistically cut thousands of people off welfare.

Simultaneously laying off thousands of workers and then forcing the unemployed to look for jobs that do not exist will sentence people to hunger, homelessness and ill health for the crime of not finding a job.  This is irrational, illogical and immoral and is a slow genocide of people living in poverty.

This economic violence will impact on all parts of society. It will destroy communities, families, it will put children's lives at risk, it will force women, men and youth into the sex trade, it will increase violence and suicide. It will also depress all wages in the province as thousands of desperate people underbid each other and workfare workers replace unionized workers.

Both increased mechanization and globalization has lead to the reduction of available jobs. Increasingly, many new jobs are in industries which are harmful to people's health (fast food, cigarettes, alcohol for example) or to the planets health. In order to end all harmful work, or useless 'make work', and also to ensure that all human beings have the access to the things they need to live (clean water, nutritious food, shelter, health and dental care), APOV calls for the immediate emergency
implementation of a Guaranteed Livable Income. Without this we are sentencing people to death for the crime of being unemployed in a system that needs surplus labour in order to function.

APOV calls on all those affected by provincial government cuts to resist them through economic disruption. The ruling elite will not listen to moral arguments as they only understand one thing: their bottom line.  They care more about loss of profit than they do about the loss of people's lives. APOV believes that all people deserve to live a happy life with dignity, and we feel it is all of our duty to ensure that business does not go on as usual while people are being left to die on
the street.

ORGANIZE, FIGHT BACK!



APOV Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade:  After the Occupation

Contrary to police statements, we assaulted no one, hurt no one, harmed no one, damaged no equipment, nor did we "trash" Jeff Bray's office at all. When we walked inside at 1pm to secure the office, we merely emphatically repeated, "This is an occupation, you have 30 seconds to get your belongings and leave."  As this was going on, the secretary, Diane Clement dug her fingernails into the arm of one of our members, which left a bruise. This woman was not the least bit afraid of us, as after she left the office, she actually came back and stood in the doorway. Her first statement after she left was that a "big man" assaulted her.  There were no men inside.  We told her that it was a nice day out and she should go for a walk. Jeff Bray was not in the office but Mike Demers (his lackey) was, and took his sweet time leaving, obviously trying to bide some time for the police to arrive.

You will notice in all TV newscasts they only show the piled up furniture (which we moved but did not damage) and papers all over the hallway (which the police did when they stormed through the back door).  You will notice they do not show Jeff Bray's private office as it was neat as a pin and none of his expensive furniture had the slightest scratch. You will also notice they do not show any damaged equipment as we did no damage to any equipment of any kind. You will also notice there is nothing written on the walls but only on their dry erase board (and that done with wipe-off markers!).

There were 10 womyn in the office and contrary to media statements, only three womyn are under 25.  The rest are older, with the oldest being fifty.  We are mothers, disabled,  unemployed or underpaid, students, and are ALL living below the poverty line.

We brought our own food and did not touch the fridge full of alcohol (!) in Jeff Bray's office kitchen. The police made the mess when they knocked over boxes of recycling that were stacked on furniture that was blocking the back door.  It seemed pretty obvious that afterwards they must've scattered papers on the floor and broken glass in the bathroom as we kept the office fairly neat (Mike's desk was already strewn with papers).

Inside, the police were trying to "negotiate" with us by calling us on our cell phone and saying if we gave our names they would let us walk away unarrested.  But we were in no way going to give in to them and believe their lies, nor did we want to leave. We felt solid inside, especially grateful that so many supporters were on the outside in case any shit went down.  We felt confident in our convictions and felt it
was very timely to be doing an occupation and upping the ante in "BC".

We collectively decided to boycott the corporate radio stations (other than sending them our statement) and would only do interviews with CBC Radio or Indy Media.

Around 1:30pm someone outside of the occupation posted on Victoria Indy Media and we followed up by posting an inside statement.   A few hours later we could not access the Victoria or Vancouver Indy Media sites (surprise, surprise).  From inside we also had fun faxing something to our "so-called" mayor Alan Lowe, and also emailed our  statement to all the MLA's of British Columbia.

When we heard the police working on the back door to take it off (5:30 pm), we went to the front office, and stood in front of the window with the blinds up for everyone outside to witness the riot cops coming in and arresting us.  Our arms were linked as we wanted to leave the office as a group and not allow them to easily take us away one by one. There was about 20-30 people out front to witness what was happening but most of our supporters were in the back at this time where dozens of riot police and police vehicles and were.

The police stormed in to this front office, kicking through the door, yelling and dressed in full riot gear with rubber bullet guns pointed at our faces, shields and gas masks. They would not let us leave the office as a group even though we were yelling "We will leave if we can leave together" and they frantically attacked us pushing, pulling, and grabbing our arms and aggressively pulling our hair to try to get us out one by one.

The two people they grabbed were viciously thrown face down onto the carpet. One of them was old enough to be their mother, has gray hair and has a disability, which we yelled at the police when they dragged her away.  However, that did not stop them from inflicting bruises on her face, arms and hands as she later showed to the media.  The younger woman who was arrested at the same time as this older woman was also thrown on the ground forcefully and put inside a paddy wagon.

After they took these two away, they were acting less like a group of rabid attack dogs. We were defiant in our responses as we yelled at them to realise how insane they were acting. Many of these riot cops seemed to be in training because they were either hesitant or overly-eager at attacking us, were being told step-by-step what to do when we were being arrested, and even one cop moved back and couldn't stop laughing in the corner (perhaps prompted when one of us said in a deep voice, "Luke, I am your father").

One of them took off his mask and we began to tell them how pathetic it was for them to be so armoured-up just to deal with a group of unarmed women. We then negotiated to go out of the room two by two, which we finally did. We then had our wrists bound tightly with plastic straps (some later had big red welts on their wrists) and were taken out the back door to the paddy wagon. There was noisy, spirited crowd of about 100 people (many union members from the Hospital Employees Union and the BCGEU) who were chanting and yelling in solidarity for them to let us go.

Four people (including two young gutsy women from the street community) bravely sat down in front of the paddy wagon to block its exit. They were grabbed and sprayed directly in the face with pepper spray and were arrested as well and placed in the paddy wagons. One of the women with a mohawk was sprayed in her face and on the shaved part of her head. We were also very worried about one member of our group who has asthma, as the pepper spray had wafted into the paddy wagon.

The paddy wagon finally got through the crowd, after many more people were pepper sprayed.  Even the Raging Grannies were shoved by riot police.  From the steamed-up paddy wagon windows we could see others being thrown to the ground and arrested as the paddy wagon drove out. We were then taken to the police station to be processed. We had to sign conditions not to go to any MLA's office or to the grounds of the legislature but we will go to the Victoria court to try to get a judge to change this condition as it is against our constitutional right to demonstrate.

One final note: we were all disgusted with the unnecessary opulence of Jeff Bray's office. There were TVs in both Jeff Bray's and his CA's office. Jeff's office had big upholstered leather chairs and huge mahogany (or some kind of reddish wood) desk and matching wall units.  His office was so tidy one would wonder if he ever did any thing in it!

There was every kind of office gadget including an electric stapler (too much work to use a hand stapler?) and a fancy photocopier/fax machine.  Even all the coffee mugs were trimmed with gold.  There was only one plant in the office. It was in a lovely wrought iron plant holder, dead as a doornail, with its leaves shriveled up, brown and crispy. We thought of it as a symbol of how much the liberals care about living things. These people can't even look after a plant, never mind their constituents.



Why Did We Do This?

We felt we had no choice. People are going to die from Bill 26 and 27 and the cuts to health care. Some families lost up to $300 from their checks, $70 direct cuts to welfare, $100 taken if they were getting child support payments, now they can keep none of it; $200 taken from the earnings exemption, now every penny earned will be deducted dollar for dollar. Mothers were already going without eating for the last week in the month on the previous rates so their kids could eat. These cuts mean children will be going without food for significant periods as well. Kids will also be left alone in unsafe conditions as their mothers will be forced out of the house to scramble to get money to feed them (many will be forced into the sex trade).

People will be cut off FOR LIFE if they ever in the past have been caught for welfare fraud (many people have been forced to sign repayment agreements -- for "fraud"-- under duress as they were threatened with being cut off ). People with disabilities will be "reassessed" and many will be cut off or forced to look for jobs that don't exist. The cuts to health will also cause peoples deaths. Many people will give up and commit suicide.



The Sadistic Irrationality of "Get a Job."

There are 8700 people who are "employable" welfare recipients in Victoria. They will be cut off in two years or sooner if they don't find a job. This is before many of the government lay-offs. This will impact on everyone as thousands of starving desperate people will do desperate things to survive. Count on increased crime, theft, violence. It will drive down all wages as people underbid each other as they get increasingly hungry. This is very good for employers and they know that our economic system cannot work without surplus labour to keep wages low and workers compliant.

All the "get a job" rhetoric is happening at a time when there are constant headlines about thousands of job lay offs. There are job lay offs because there are far more goods and services than there are dollars to buy them. There can't be more jobs without more consumption.  Any consumption beyond the basics of food shelter and medical care is determined by our freedom of choice. If people choose not to smoke cigarettes then large numbers of jobs would be lost in the cigarette industry (even though quitting smoking is exactly what health advocates are telling us to do). Consumption that is good for the economy, is bad for our health and the planet's health.

Arguing for more consumption for more economic growth for more jobs is
totally irrational and defies the physical limits of our planet's natural resources and our bodies physical limit to consume beyond what is healthy.

If the government really wants to prevent property damage and people from being hurt the riot squad would be out every night surrounding bars and night clubs. It is well known that 40% of all traffic accidents are caused by alcohol consumption. Alcohol is also implicated in rapes, crime, domestic violence and assault. Yet having more people drinking is very good for the economy.

It is clear the government has no interest in protecting anybody but the neo-liberal bottom line which is the business communities desperate need for profit above life.

WE URGE EVERYONE TO STAND IN SOLIDARITY, ORGANIZE, AND FIGHT BACKAGAINST THIS ILLEGAL PROVINCE AND THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM!

APOV
(250) 388-9181
Box 8441
Victoria BC, V8W 3S1
e-mail:  apov@acts.bc.ca