Update on DERA, Street Market etc

Hi DTES residents and natural community members,

This Saturday at 2 pm in the Carnegie Theatre, the Neighbourhood Council (DNC) is having a General Meeting. Everyone is welcome.

This month’s meeting will feature a special guest speaker from DERA to answer your questions.

Help decide the future of the street market which the DNC operates every Sunday at Pigeon Park.

Doors open for registration at 1:30.

In November we’re having our first AGM and will elect our first board of directors. We’ll send out information about that soon so residents can prepare. The board will be made up of 5 residents from social housing, 5 in hotels, 3 renters or owners of market housing and 1 homeless seat (shared by 3 members) – all of this based on the actual population breakdown of the DTES. There will be 5 at large members elected afterwards to make up for gaps in the representation of the board based on gender, race, sexual identity etc. You could run for this board! I’ve really, really enjoyed working with the elected interim steering committee and the street market committee – getting to know and making things happen with neighbours who I would never have met if it weren’t for the DNC. Hope you can come out and support this Saturday.

Wendy

Interim Steering Committee Member

Resident Four Sisters Co-op

The DNC is a representative group of Downtown Eastside residents who advocate for the needs, interests and aspirations of our neighbourhood.

1. The purposes of the society are:

a. To seek to act in honour of the Coast Salish Nation whose unceded lands the Downtown Eastside occupies. We stand for the national, territorial, and cultural rights of Indigenous peoples.

b. To ensure community control over neighbourhood planning, policy, land use, and community development.

c. To develop community directed accessible education and recreation programs.

d. To put a stop to the involuntary displacement of Downtown Eastside residents ensuring that current residents can choose to stay in place.

e. To ensure the development of dignified, low-income affordable housing and to ensure livable incomes.

f. To advocate for self-determined, community controlled and accessible public health care and harm reduction.

g. To support the development of a legal drug market based on health and human rights principles.

h. To stand against the stigmas, discriminations, and violence that silence and marginalize Downtown Eastside residents.

i. To advocate for the right of sex trade workers to safety and dignity.

j. To ensure accountable, appropriate, community-positive and community controlled policing.

k. To honour, respect and celebrate the members of our community and our community’s history of working for social and economic justice by continuing this work.