Jamie Lee Hamilton just made a super-interesting posting on her Facebook page. What she says not only exposes some pretty dirty information on what’s been happening at the City of Vancouver funded W2 Media Centre, but also some insights to the Robert Pickton serial killer inquiry. It seems that there’s a lot more to the story here, and what’s happened at the W2 is more than a just a case of poor judgement.
I’ll write more as I dig deeper into the situation. All I know now is that the city MUST have a full inquiry…
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This is a deplorable use of subsidized space in Vancouver—especially because bondage play is such a consumerist occupation, so it’s obvious these parties aren’t for DTES residents, except perhaps the new kids moving in.
And I maintain that the sex angle is important—it’s not a side issue, it is -the- issue. It shows how brazenly the ‘activist’ community has destroyed public norms in a very short period of time, all the while instituting their own totalitarian norms designed mostly to exempt their deplorable conduct from critique, typically by trotting out a five-dollar word ending in “ist” or “ic.” However one comes down on the issue of the post-60s sex culture, the real issue is how it has been foisted on the general public through “activism.” If this is the end-result of the sex-activism of the 60s, publicly subsidized bondage parties taking advantage of vulnerable populations, we all need to take a step back and radically re-evaluate “activism” and what it is. Maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere…and it seems that if you give an inch, they take a country mile.
Native women being exploited???? Will Tony Hall and Joshua Blackney be coming out to defend them. Do a report on Irania State government TV about this? Or do they only report on natives when it advances their agenda?
Author
Did you see that Blakeney got ridiculed by the National Post yesterday? It seems that the world is onto his BS…
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/11/iranian-media-report-claims-alberta-police-abduct-traffic-aboriginal-children-for-profit/
Both JLH and GenuineWitty’s comments are the most false and libelous i have read for some time.
W2 gets some ink in the newspaper this past week because the City is trying to evict W2 for refusing to pay the Woodward’s project’s $84,000/year amenity fee. Now these allegations which are 100% false – from two people who have publicly stated they don’t like me or the W2 community – spring up. Wow! shaking my head.
W2 paid wages to our cafe staff ($10-13/hour) who were predominantly Eastside Indigenous women because we believe in redress and community economic development. The cafe has recently closed because W2 had no subsidy for our work and couldn’t go deeper in debt to keep our crew employed in a highly competitive restaurant market.
There were two sex-positive RENTAL events at W2 before (out of the 300+ events at W2) NEITHER were produced by W2. One was a gay men’s dance party (which involves dancing) at W2 Woodwards and one was at W2 Storyeum 2 years ago for lesbians and transgendered people. These comments by JLH and GenuineWitty are out and out lies and outrageous attempts to further smear our work. They pretend to know what we do with their wild imagination and hatred of us and create these smarmy allegations. I know JLH’s motivation is to take down people who believe in prohibition of prostitution (like myself) because we are political opponents, and i assume GenuineWitty’s interests are for the sheer egotistic attention as he attacks progressives people in this city. He’s done it before, he’ll do it again apparently. I’ll keep walking forward – in a neighbourhood where politics is a blood sport.
But this lateral community violence reaches new lows when throwing around names like Pickton and W2 in the same sentence. W2 staff and crew work to advance the interests of innercity Indigenous women. We work to stop male violence against women. These Facebook and blog posts are lies and untruths by publicity-hungry parasites. We will not engage further in this attempt to drag us down to shameful untruths at the heart of our community’s trauma. Sensationalism indeed has no lows.
I invite anyone to contact W2 should they have questions about our work.
Irwin Oostindie
W2/
604-689-9896
Author
Hi Irwin,
Well, at least you didn’t accuse me of being mentally ill or homophobic this time! lol
It’s interesting to hear your take on the amenity fee. I learned about it from Marsha Lederman’s article in the Globe and Mail. Are you going to accuse her of also having a host of reasons for wanting to take you down? Perhaps she doesn’t like Dutch people? Maybe you should call her a racist? lol
If there are other things I’ve written that you think are wrong, please let me know. I honestly want to make corrections if I have. Believe me, it’s a lot more effective than throwing a temper tantrum. Have you ever considered that it’s tantrums like this that bring you so much attention?
So far, I’ve identified three ‘sex positive’ events at the W2- not two. One of them seemed rather innocent- but, I have confirmed that there were sexual and sadomasochistic acts at the other two. Just have a look at the ads for them- there’s no denying it. There’s also the fact that W2 advertised in Xtra! as a venue for BDSM events.
I have a couple of questions for you:
1. Were all of the people working at W2 getting paid wages- or, were there volunteers also? What was the ratio?
2. How much money did W2 give to political parties- I’m assuming you aren’t denying giving money to Vision Vancouver?
W2 was a city subsidized space, located in a neighbourhood that’s still healing from the wounds of one of the world’s most horrendous cases of sexual violence and murder. It doesn’t matter if it was ‘two’ ‘three’ or ‘thirty’ events you had- it matters that you held them in this space. Anyone who was horrified by the Jim Brown case should be equally as horrified at the fact W2 held sexual sadomasochist parties.
You cant get out of this one by screaming insults and accusations Irwin. What happened, happened- it’s undeniable….
The author is so sad. I pity him. People take drugs in parks should we prohibit them? People even take drugs in schools in BC. Hey maybe we should prohibit those. The author unfortunately fails to see the importance that w2 has on the community. I think he may be too busy eating at Joeys and Cactus Club because without those few spaces left in Vancouver that do have integrity our city is going to become even more of a hollow disney land.
Author
First of all, I don’t know what Joey’s is, and I have only once eaten at the Cactus Club (I was forced to). I take great offence to that sort of accusation- you can call me sad, but don’t accuse me of eating at chain restaurants!
Of course people take drugs- and, obviously we can’t shut down everywhere people take them. You need to re-read what I’ve been saying. The problem is that this is a city-funded organization that has used public resources to host sadomasochist parties in a neighbourhood that’s been plagued by sexual violence. Doing so, and promoting the space that way, was both incredibly stupid, and incredibly insensitive.
The people who made the decision to operate this way are obviously not equipped to run a publicly owned space…
“believe in prohibition of prostitution ”
Seriously? And you think you’re a progressive? Yet another “knows what’s best” nanny-state totalitarian.
It is about time. So good of the main stream media to take a bit of time reporting on a pet monkey and notice this guy right under their nose. You would think it would be time for an investigative report.
This report hits a new low for Joshua Blakeney. Just when I thought his reports could not get much worse. Even Professor Don Cherry did not appear in this report.
Milton Friedman once said: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
From the Globe Article it appears those with W2 are trying to judge W2 success by the intent rather than the results.
Irwin you sound like a dirty filthy perv like something out of Red Riding trilogy and all on the public dime .Women have been abused and they need good places and your dump aint it .People are waking up to the creeps around them and whether it has a celebrity cover or an arts one its still abuse and crap and should not be funded