The Volcano

Kristina won her fight against her eviction, but says, "It doesn’t feel like much of a win when my friends are still sleeping outside." She's calling for Lookout Housing & Health Society to rehouse everyone they evicted during the pandemic. She is also requesting donations of tents and sleeping bags, which her former neighbours need to survive outdoors. Please DM us to arrange donations. Please contact Red Braid Alliance for Decolonial Socialism to arrange donations.

I’m currently barricaded in my room hoping for a miracle, says Kristina Freberg. She’s afraid that if she leaves her room, her landlord, Lookout Housing & Health Society, will board it up and she will be out on the streets. The real agenda of the non-profit housing provider, says Kristina, is to clear out her building before September, so that a developer can reclaim the property. Without enough new housing to move tenants into, Lookout is searching for reasons to evict residents to the streets.

Tana Copperthwaite problematizes BC's $300 dollar COVID-19 welfare bonus, arguing that the government is dehumanizing the poor by giving people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic twice as much relief as people who were already struggling to live off welfare. http://thevolcano.org/2020/05/08/covid19-welfare-bonus/

In "I believe in the future," long-time DTES activist Karen Juanita Lane shares her thoughts on homelessness, women's safety, COVID-19, and why she helped start the Stewart Squat. http://thevolcano.org/2020/05/08/interview-karen/

Last month, Trudeau announced a #COVID19 aid package for homeless people and women fleeing violence. Homeless communities are set to receive $160 million. $40 million is going to violence against women shelters and sexual assault centers. And only $10 million is going to emergency shelters on Indigenous reserves. In addition to representing incredibly small sums of money, compared to the billion dollar bailouts going to banks and bosses, Laura Rose argues that the aid packa...ge overlooks two realities: homeless women face gendered violence and women’s shelters are not safe from COVID-19. http://thevolcano.org/2020/05/07/dtes-womens-shelters/

Read "Inside the Hothouse Squat" by Tana Copperthwaite at http://thevolcano.org/2020/04/04/inside-the-hothouse-squat/ !

In February, Kyaw Din's family delivered a petition calling for #JusticeforKyaw to BC's police watchdog. Kyaw was murdered by Ridge Meadows RCMP in August 2019, after his family called 911 to bring him to the hospital. The Dins know Kyaw's murder was structural. His sister Hla Myaing said Kyaw was killed "because we are immigrants. Because we are poor. If my brother was white and rich he would still be alive. His brother Thant said in Canada, mentally ill people are "slaugh...tered" by cops. The Dins demand that the IIO recommend to the Crown that murder charges be laid against the officers responsible for Kyaw’s death, and release the names of the killer cops. 8 months into their investigation, the IIO still can't say which of the two cops present shot Kyaw. But we do know that the cops are back to work, getting paid to get away with murder. Yin Yin pointed out that "if it was a police officer who was killed, the killer’s name would be released right away, not covered up and kept secret. But because the IIO only investigates individual cases, it is unable to confront the systemic roots of police murders. Unfortunately for the RCMP, the Dins are in this fight for the long run, and will not rest until we win #JusticeforKyaw! http://thevolcano.org/2020/04/07/kyaw-din-petition/

Tana Copperthwaite, who was a leader of Anita Place tent city before the camp was displaced, describes her experience in the Hothouse Squat and explains why she and others are taking over vacant buildings to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the emerging #Squat2Survive movement. "We were partaking in civil disobedience, some of us for the first time in the name of a true cause... We made it happen, because it needed to happen to save lives. This was no joke to any of us," writes Tana Copperthwaite.

Gentrification and its twin, the criminalization of poverty, interact with #COVID19 to ensure that the same communities that are harassed, displaced, and jailed also face the greatest risk of contracting and succumbing to the deadly virus. Even before the pandemic broke out, the aggressive gentrification scheme known as the "City Centre Plan" was fast-tracking poor and homeless residents of North Surrey toward invisibility and death. To survive COVID-19, low-income communiti...es must fight back and stop the City of Surrey from sacrificing their homes to profit-hungry developers. On April 1, homeless leaders occupied the North Surrey Rec Centre, establishing shelter from the harms of homelessness, including COVID-19, and demanding the building be converted into 100% social housing a visionary demand that could serve as a bulwark against gentrification. #Squat2Survive

The RCMP evicted Surrey's Hothouse Squat, but they cannot stop the #Squat2Survive #COVID19 movement! Listen Chen analyzes the strategy, tactics, and lessons of the Hothouse Squat. The Hothouse Squat made a political and legal claim: that warehousing poor people in #COVID19 "hothouses" like shelters and modular housing is a death sentence, and they have a right to take over vacant buildings to stay safe from the deadly pandemic. The legal basis of this argument is Section 7 o...f the Charter of Rights, which is Canada's highest law. Lesson 1: The RCMP's immediate eviction of the squat shows that the #Squat2Survive movement cannot rely solely on a legal claim to defend its squats. In the future, we need to pick buildings that we can physically defend, because if the police make their way inside, they will rob us of our day in court. Lesson 2: To unite and fight COVID-19, the #Squat2Survive movement has to assert its power as made up of mixed communities of Indigenous and working class people of different genders and races, with different relationships to the nation of Canada. Why? Because Canada is not just bailing out capitalists and landlords, it also relies on an exclusionary definition of the "public" as only those people who are white, cis, settler, home-owning, straight men. To unite and fight COVID-19, the #Squat2Survive movement has to assert its power as made up of mixed communities of Indigenous and working class people of different genders and races, with different relationships to the nation of Canada. http://thevolcano.org/2020/04/03/hothouse-squat/

Where is the federal government's $107 billion dollar aid package actually going to? Tyler Gaudet shows that though poor people are being hit the hardest by the economic fallout of #COVID19, relief is overwhelmingly flowing into the pockets of banks and corporations. A typical week sees 45,000 workers apply for EI. Because of COVID-19, a single week saw 900,000 applicants. Sectors like hospitality and tourism have laid off scores of workers. The Trudeau Liberals are giving b...illions of dollars to business, while those most vulnerable to COVID-19 are getting, altogether, less than a quarter of that. Homeless communities (or more accurately, agencies that dole out services to homeless people) are receiving $200 million, and Indigenous communities are only promised $300 million. In moments of political and economic crisis, the colonial and capitalist contradictions of Canada become much clearer. Propping up banks and bosses on the backs of Indigenous people and the working class is not just a slap in the face, but a deathblow. It's time to organize our communities to fight back! http://thevolcano.org/2020/03/28/canada-covid-19-aid/

Where is the federal government's $107 billion dollar aid package actually going to? Tyler Gaudet shows that though poor people are being hit the hardest by the economic fallout of #COVID19, relief is overwhelmingly flowing into the pockets of banks and corporations. A typical week sees 45,000 workers apply for EI. Because of COVID-19, a single week saw 900,000 applicants. Sectors like hospitality and tourism have laid off scores of workers. The Trudeau Liberals are giving b...illions of dollars to business, while those most vulnerable to COVID-19 are getting, altogether, less than a quarter of that. Homeless communities (or more accurately, agencies that dole out services to homeless people) are receiving $200 million, and Indigenous communities are only promised $300 million. In moments of political and economic crisis, the colonial and capitalist contradictions of Canada become much clearer. Propping up banks and bosses on the backs of Indigenous people and the working class is not just a slap in the face, but a deathblow. It's time to organize our communities to fight back! http://thevolcano.org/2020/03/28/canada-covid-19-aid/

#Squat2Survive COVID-19! The single greatest preventative measure against COVID-19 is adequate housing: housing where we have enough space to keep our distance from others, where we have access to our own kitchens and bathrooms, and where we have autonomy over our lives. For poor and homeless communities, protecting ourselves from the pandemic means coming together to seize the resources we need, while pushing the government to do more for the poor. We know from experience t...hat the many crises of poverty, like homelessness, the opioid crisis, and gendered violence, mean nothing to the state and the people who represent it. COVID-19 is no different: it's one more crisis on top of a mountain of crises that Indigenous and poor working class communities confront every day. That's why we're calling for poor communities to squat vacant buildings. The street, shelters, SROs, and modular housing are warehouses, not homes, and they will become hothouses for COVID-19. Squatting fills an immediate need by getting us indoors with the space we need to take care of ourselves. But it also has an important political message, that we need to drive home now more than ever: that human life is worth more than private property. The government won't save us, but our collective activity will! http://thevolcano.org/2020/03/28/covid19-squat-and-survive/

#Squat2Survive COVID-19! The single greatest preventative measure against COVID-19 is adequate housing: housing where we have enough space to keep our distance from others, where we have access to our own kitchens and bathrooms, and where we have autonomy over our lives. For poor and homeless communities, protecting ourselves from the pandemic means coming together to seize the resources we need, while pushing the government to do more for the poor. We know from experience t...hat the many crises of poverty, like homelessness, the opioid crisis, and gendered violence, mean nothing to the state and the people who represent it. COVID-19 is no different: it's one more crisis on top of a mountain of crises that Indigenous and poor working class communities confront every day. That's why we're calling for poor communities to squat vacant buildings. The street, shelters, SROs, and modular housing are warehouses, not homes, and they will become hothouses for COVID-19. Squatting fills an immediate need by getting us indoors with the space we need to take care of ourselves. But it also has an important political message, that we need to drive home now more than ever: that human life is worth more than private property. The government won't save us, but our collective activity will! http://thevolcano.org/2020/03/28/covid19-squat-and-survive/

We just sent the book "A Separate Star: Our politics and strategy for anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist struggle" to the printer. Get your copy for $10-20 at the Red Braid Alliance for Decolonial Socialism Launch Party this Saturday!