COALITION GATHERS TO FIGHT OWEN'S DRUG POLICY

Roughly 700 people showed up Thursday night at the largest and most
significant political gathering in Vancouver since the Non-Partisan
Association's convention before the last civic election.

The $35-a-plate dinner was a fund raiser for the new Community
Alliance -- a coalition of Downtown Eastside business owners and
primarily middle-class inner-city residents.

Held at the Floata Seafood Restaurant, it was an enormous success for
the group, which is dismissed by some as a small gang of right-wing
zealots.

The crowd belied that knock -- around the room was a who's who of the
Chinatown, Victory Square, Gastown and Strathcona neighbourhoods.

I think the impressively large turnout will give Mayor Philip Owen
pause about his much publicized drug policy, A Framework for Action.

These were his constituents, many in the room were senior NPA
organizers and fund raisers, and they are mighty angry at what Owen's
been up to.

The dinner raised serious doubts in my mind about Owen's ability to
find solutions for the blighted Downtown Eastside.

And I figure it heralds a heightened political war over how to
renovate the area.

The Alliance is mounting vehement and vocal opposition to the mayor's
so-called Four Pillar proposals and instead demanding tougher policing
and a zero-tolerance approach to drugs.

Gail Sparrow, the Liberal hoping to oust cabinet minister Jenny Kwan
in the looming provincial election, attended, although her opponent
was nowhere to be seen. "The status quo has to go," said Sparrow of
living conditions in the riding of Vancouver Mount Pleasant, which
encompasses the Downtown Eastside.

Saying one of her own friends is currently missing in the Downtown
Eastside, Sparrow said the policies of the provincial NDP and the
civic government have failed.

"Things have gotten worse and worse and worse," said Sparrow, a former
chief of the local Musqueam Indian band.

"Governments have thrown money at the problem and it hasn't helped.
It's become an industry down there and there needs to be
accountability. There's a wake-up call here and if they don't listen
there's going to be a bigger problem down there. When the people lead,
the leaders should follow."

Fred Bass, one of two left-wing coalition city councillors, also
attended and left mulling over the show of force and heart-felt
feelings expressed.

Bass, an addiction specialist and member of the B.C. Medical
Association's addiction committee, said the city must find a way to
bridge the chasm between the Alliance and some low-income and
drug-dependent residents who are demanding safe-injection sites, more
services and that police turn a blind eye to illegal drug activity.

"I think it's very important to address the concern of everyone in
that room that there isn't equal security across Vancouver," Bass told
me Friday. "I'm going to make some inquiries about that. I'm going to
be talking to the mayor and the chief of police about that."

But unlike Sparrow, Bass doesn't agree with the Alliance's
politics.

He disagreed with most of the evening's speakers, who recited a litany
of horror stories about trying to live and work in the decrepit area.

"I've been around the planet long enough to know that when you put a
lot of energy into blaming, it tends to keep solutions from being
reached," Bass said.

But for Bass, the humanist message delivered earlier in the week by
Australian activist Tony Trimingham was more appropriate.

Four years ago, Trimingham devoted his life to lobbying for a repeal
of drug laws and more compassionate drug policies after his
23-year-old son Damien died of a drug overdose. At lunch Wednesday,
nearly 100 people crammed into the Carnegie Centre theatre to listen
as he explained how he opened an illegal safe-injection site in 1999.
It was the catalyst, he said, in forcing the state government to
change its policies. Within two weeks, a legal safe-fixing site is
scheduled to open in Sydney.

"If the public doesn't stop seeing drug addicts as a separate society
deserving no sympathy or help, then their children or friends will be
the next victims," Trimingham said.

It was a poignant presentation, but those Thursday night had a
realpolitik reply:

If taxpayers get no sympathy or help from the police and government
while they, their children and their friends are victimized, they will
organize and oust the politicians.