P.O.W.E.R. DISPATCH #3
Update on community-based reporting at P.O.W.E.R.
Notes: P.O.W.E.R. intends to release updates on community-based reporting outside of our academic and single topic newsletters when time and resources permit. Previous dispatches can be found here.
Dispatch #3 Themes
Gender-based violence
As women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are confronted with intersecting and seemingly unending crises, an alarming number of gender-specific drop-in and harm reduction sites have suspended services over the last few months, including WISH, Sister Space and others, removing some of the few remaining safe spaces left in the city for women and other gender minorities.
These closures are happening alongside an unrelenting drug toxicity crisis, unaccountable settler-state police power expansion, and inadequate supportive or affordable housing options, which together, creates an climate of an overall lack of safety for and increase in violence against women. The impacts of this are evidenced by the rising incidences of gender-based violence reported among women and gender minorities at P.O.W.E.R.’s drop-in and beyond.
While gender-based violence is not new to the Downtown Eastside, the current realities faced by women means that the acuity and nature of gendered violence is changing in frequency and shape. Through our collective work with P.O.W.E.R., we have witnessed this increase in gender-based violence firsthand. Not only have the majority of formal police-violence-related incidents received by P.O.W.E.R. to-date been reported by women, but P.O.W.E.R. members have repeatedly endured and/or observed considerable increase in all forms of gender-based violence during our weekly community outreach activities.
This shift is symptomatic of both broader social and cultural norms that embed gender subordination as the status quo and has subsequently normalized gender-based violence, as well as economic policies (including exceptionally low social assistance rates) that trap women in poverty, state sanctioned police violence directed particularly towards Indigenous or otherwise racialized women and gender minorities (while the police take the public resources that could otherwise be spent on safety), and austerity measures that eliminate or limit access to community supports.
Chronic underfunding in particular has resulted in the temporary or permanent closures of several of the gender-specific resources as of late – many of which have been operating in the community for decades. In order to improve women’s safety amidst rising gender-based violence and related crises, gender-specific drop-in and harm reduction sites play a critical role. In some cases, these spaces provide women and gender minorities with some of the only reprieve from violence they can access.
On Feb. 24, PACE Society was one of the organizations to announce the temporary closure of its programming, including their daytime drop-in centre at 425 Carrall Street. PACE Society is a sex worker-led organization that provides low barrier harm reduction and other support for sex workers of all genders in the Downtown Eastside. With the temporary closure of WISH and permanent closure of Sister Space, PACE’s announcement comes at a time when women and gender minorities in the Downtown Eastside are already in urgent need of space. PACE’s closure will have inevitable consequences for women in community, contributing to the rise in gender-based violence and paucity of resources currently available to women and other gender minorities.
In order to maintain their programming and re-open their doors, PACE is requesting support from the broader community.
Donations can be made directly to PACE via e-transfer to: info@pace-society.org. A fundraiser is also being planned for PACE at the Birdhouse on May 8, details will be released in the coming weeks.
P.O.W.E.R. is putting together a longer comment specific to gender-based violence. If you are part of an organization that may want to endorse and/or provide feedback on this, email us at power@vandu.org to collaborate.
Decriminalization never happened
As a small part of a series of longer interviews, we asked more than 15 people who use drugs what they thought of BC’s decriminalization model and the changes since implementation – and the majority of answers could be summarized as “what decriminalization?”
Histories of police dogs
When discussing histories of police interactions in the Downtown Eastside, multiple people in the last two months have shared detailed, violent incidents that involved police dogs over the past few years – including sustaining injuries from being attacked by police dogs.
Newsletter highlights
In January, P.O.W.E.R., alongside Stop the Sweeps, released a report on behalf the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users (NANDU) on alarming law enforcement practices in the harbour city. P.O.W.E.R. member Tyson Singh distributed physical copies of the report at a NANDU general meeting.
We later published a letter from a Nanaimo mother concerned for the people living outside in her community.
P.O.W.E.R., along with 13 other community groups around BC, condemned the punitive approach Island Health took with Doctors for Safer Drug Policy co-founder Dr. Jess Wilder.
Community activity
In January, P.O.W.E.R. members Molly, Dave H., Tyson Singh, Dan, Darren and David presented on P.O.W.E.R. to a class at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health.
Pivot Legal also released a video on who and what P.O.W.E.R. is. Watch and share it here!
On March 15, P.O.W.E.R. will be supporting an event led by Justice 4 Jared - launching a fundraiser for a people’s tribunal on police killings of Indigenous Peoples in the absence of any level of government taking leadership against this settler colonial violence. We encourage those who can to attend and help inform what justice can look like in the community’s hands.
P.O.W.E.R. in the news
The Tyee: Vancouver’s Poorest Area Braces for Mayor’s Policing ‘Barrage’
P.O.W.E.R named as a 2025 ‘Breakout’ by Georgia Straight
The Tyee: No Steady ‘Flow’ of Fentanyl into the US
The Mainlander: Care is Not Forced in Prince George
New research with contributions from P.O.W.E.R. members
Discover Public Health: Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on supervised consumption service delivery in Vancouver and Surrey, Canada from the perspective of service providers