Vines Art Festival calls for the removal of fencing in CRAB, Oppenheimer, and Strathcona parks
An open letter to the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Park Board asks for public spaces that foster healing, culture, and community
CRAB Park. Photo by Hailey Heartless
AS VINES ART Festival gets ready to launch its seventh annual event, running August 9 to 19, organizers have released an open letter to the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Parks Board demanding the immediate removal of fencing in three public spaces: CRAB Park, Oppenheimer Park, and Strathcona Park on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
The letter also asks that the self-governance of the Indigenous DTES community be respected.
“We did this because the right to housing is a human right and a necessity, as well as the simple fact that we do not want our presence to be art-washing,” Vines Art Festival communications director jaye simpson tells Stir. “We want to be in solidarity, and that means doing hard work and being in a relationship with our neighbours.”
In May 2020, Vines held a community dialogue called Displacement in Public Green Space, which concluded that the approach to public space needs a radical transformation. The forum found that rather than focus on “colonial leisure activities, gentrification and ongoing acts of genocide”, what’s urgently needed are public spaces that care for the community and provide services, healing options, creative offerings, and cultural exchange.
The letter, which was posted on Vines Art Festival’s Facebook page on August 4, is reprinted in full below:
“To the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Parks Board,
We at Vines Art Festival are deeply disturbed and alarmed at the continued maltreatment of our houseless kin, neighbours and community members experience at your hands. The installation of the blue fencing restricting access to the public space at CRAB Park is a deplorable act that harms so many and only maintains the colonial status quo and only furthers the gentrification of the Downtown Eastside.
Vines works closely with both COV and Parks Board to bring art and culture to public parks. We are calling on our independent relationship with you to immediately remove the fencing in CRAB Park alongside Oppenheimer and Strathcona and respect the self governance that so many folks participate in the communities they create. The City of Vancouver’s housing crisis has created a hostile environment that restricts community, comfort and accessibility while also furthering the opioid epidemic with backwards rules.
We ask you to take into consideration the name of CRAB Park, Create a Real Accessible Beach and the commitments of a longhouse and a public space to exist and live. We ask you to honour the commitment to create a healing longhouse and to prioritize the Urban Indigenous population that resides in the DTES.
In solidarity and relationship with the community our immediate calls for CRAB Park are:
Take down blue fence around south east corner of the park
Renovate fieldhouse, washrooms and showers in consultation with, and hiring local community members
Open the gate for community resource access, provide running water, water fountain and electrical access
No enforcement by Park Rangers or VPD as part of daily displacement under Park Control Bylaw
Change the Park Control Bylaw section 11 on Temporary Sheltering in Parks to end daily displacement and allow for daytime sheltering in place
Housing for all - real, permanent rights-based housing not temporary housing, shelters, “programs or hotels [or “supportive housing” without funding for supports and stop disproportionate investment in shelters, “shelter pods” and navigation centres]
Immediately house the “Strathcona 25” – former Strathcona Park residents that didn’t get housing
Meeting with Vancouver Park Board General Manager Donnie Rosa
Fiona and Josh - barring lifted and allowed back in
No unnecessary “wellness checks” conducted by Park Rangers [when peers or volunteers are present] including no unzipping or shaking of tents
Respect that a tent is a home and occupants do not consent to have their tent opened, entered or looked into without written permission
Treat those living in the park as equals in society and entitlement.
As this isn’t an isolated event and continues to be a pattern of colonial abuse, our calls for the wider community are as follows:
Return the land to the host nations, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Swx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.Immediately remove the containers and tankers in Lot 5
Expand the Freshwater Bird Marsh
Lot 5 becomes entirely public green space
Build an Indigenous Longhouse
No TMX (Trans Mountain Pipeline) oil barge tankers in Burrard Inlet
Both Berths in front of CRAB Park must only be used for clean, environmentally friendly shore power. No dirty freighters in front of C.R.A.B Park!
We at Vines Art Festival are deeply disturbed and alarmed at the continued maltreatment of our houseless kin, neighbours and community members experience at your hands. The installation of the blue fencing restricting access to the public space at CRAB Park is a deplorable act that harms so many and only maintains the colonial status quo and only furthers the gentrification of the Downtown Eastside.
Vines works closely with both COV and Parks Board to bring art and culture to public parks. We are calling on our independent relationship with you to immediately remove the fencing in CRAB Park alongside Oppenheimer and Strathcona and respect the self governance that so many folks participate in the communities they create. The City of Vancouver’s housing crisis has created a hostile environment that restricts community, comfort and accessibility while also furthering the opioid epidemic with backwards rules.”
For more information, see Vines Art Festival1.
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