DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE MERCHANTS, RESIDENTS CONFRONTED ON MARCH

At least 12 people were arrested when another group confronted those
protesting new services for drug users

Evidence of the growing chasm between Downtown Eastside residents and
merchants fed-up with drug-fuelled mayhem and the area's drug users and
their allies came face to face in the street for the first time Saturday.

Police arrested at least 12 people when 40-demonstrators confronted a
protest march organized by the Community Alliance, a larger citizens' group
that opposes the concentration of services for drug users in the neighbourhood.

Hundreds of Alliance supporters, who were escorted by at least eight
private security guards Saturday, were protesting the new services planned
for drug addicts in the Eastside that they say will bring more addicts to
the area.

The Alliance claims to represent 90 per cent of the 35,000 residents in
Strathcona, Chinatown, Gastown and the Victory Square area.

"We're not against any specific program or facility or anything," explained
Alliance spokesman Bryce Rositch in an inteview, Sunday.

"What we're saying is that there's been so much here now, it truly is
saturated and no more. That's what we're saying, 'no more in our
neighbourhoods.'"

Meanwhile, the protesters who crashed the Alliance's party were criticizing
the police Sunday for the arrests, saying they had no right to arrest them
for what was a peaceful demonstration against the Alliance.

The 40 protesters represent various Eastside support groups, said Tom
Laviolette, a spokesman for the group and coordinator of the Community
Action Project, based at the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings.

"I think we got the message out that there is opposition to this Alliance
strategy, that there is not unanimity on this issue," Laviolette said.

Eastside resident John Cheetham said he was arrested Saturday morning after
he and others dressed in black-and-white tuxedos, with their faces painted
white, joined the front of the march while carrying a coffin to symbolize
the drug deaths in the downtown neighbourhood. Cheetham said he spent more
than three hours in jail for allegedly breaching the peace.

"We were, in fact, leading the parade along. We were in front of it," he
explained Sunday, adding that neither he nor the others arrested were charged.

"Then the police just kind of swarmed in with no warning and I had this
huge policeman grab me, twist my arm behind my back and he just marched me
into the paddy wagon."

The march occurred the day after a coalition of politicians announced a
$14-million plan to close Vancouver's open drug market and set up a
comprehensive health-care system in the Eastside.

Rositch said he believes the announcement - which he broke down as 20 per
cent good news, 80 per cent of the same - was purposely made Friday to take
the steam out of the march.

"You still have four neighbourhoods that are still very angry and very
frustrated and that will continue to do all they can within the legal means
to make a change down here and be heard," said Rositch, an architect who
lives and works in the Eastside.

He claimed the protesters were not area residents or business people,
adding that it was a shame the media would focus on what he claimed were
"professional actors."

Cheetham, who also works in the area as an accountant, emphasized that he
and the other protesters are not in favour of drug use, but don't believe
the continuous arrests of addicts is the solution. But more drug support
resources and safe drug injection sites are, he said.

Cheetham was arrested shortly after hundreds of Alliance supporters left
Strathcona elementary school on East Pender, the march's starting point. It
ended at Canada Place, where the Alliance presented government
representatives with a 37,000-name petition opposing government support for
programs that "assist , facilitate, or maintain the dealing and use of
illegal drugs."

The governments' plan announced Friday calls for a new "health contact
centre", a mini-emergency room, and expanded detox and sobering services
for the area, along with the already-planned drug users resource centre. It
won't, however, include safe-injection sites until other cities are willing
to put them in, Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen said.