Activists celebrate 'Poverty Olympics' to draw attention to homelessness

VANCOUVER — Participants in the so-called 2010 Poverty Olympics torch relay will visit Vancouver’s drug-plagued Downtown Eastside on Sunday morning.

Highlights of the one-day event include a celebration with "cockroach cake" and meeting poverty mascots Itchy the Bedbug, Creepy the Cockroach, and Chewy the Rat. It also includes events such as housing hurdles, hockey with the Vancouver Olympic Committee Predators, and the broken promise slalom.

While the mascots and games are tongue and cheek, organizers said the message they are conveying is serious.

"This is our opportunity to get the message out to the world that our government could end poverty and homelessness. It’s about housing supply, low incomes and low wages. There is no excuse for it and we hope the visitors to Vancouver will be appalled by Canada’s record on poverty," said event organizer Wendy Pederson of the Raise the Rates Coalition, a coalition of community groups and organizations concerned with poverty and homelessness in B.C.

Organizers have taken the faux-flame torch on a provincewide tour in conjunction with educational seminars on poverty in B.C that point out the province has the highest child poverty rate in Canada, the lowest minimum wage, below average welfare rates, and "skyrocketing" rents.

Pederson said the Poverty Olympics are an important countermeasure to the provincial government’s information booth on the community called the Downtown Eastside Connect, which opened Feb. 1. Its intention, according to the government, is to give foreign media covering the Olympics fact sheets and story ideas about the impoverished area.

"Our government is spinning poverty and homelessness as an addiction and mental-health issue. Poverty is caused by poor housing supply and lack of support. Governments won’t admit that," she said.

Vancouver Sun

CNS 2/07/10 0:17:19