natalieparkes's blog

You know I was so excited to see on the news this moring that Vancouver has a police dog who was ranked number one in the whole country. And then I thought how sad is that.... Our police force in Vancouver is shockingly corrupt and legendary for abuse of power and brutality. And a dog won the award. What lessons can we learn from this? What can our human members of the VPD learn from this canine?

Unfortunatley I found out that 2 people I was close to on the street have died recently. It's the third death in a short time and I'm so sad it's hard to keep the tears back long enough to focus on studying-the reason I'm studying is to try and change all this, to make some sort of a difference. I feel helpless to stop the deaths right now. Funding for homelessness seems to be slowing evaporating and since the olympics bid all sense of humanity in this city is gone. Condos are being built all around us, people are obsessed with making money, and setting this city up for the olympics.

There have been more than 50, 000 children that have been abducted into the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. These children have been turned into child soldiers as young as 5 years old. They are tortured, forced to watch other children being murdered in front of them and are forced to kill others themselves. The LRA looks for children from ages 5-13 because they are the easiest to indoctrinate with their cause.

This city has so much space that could be utilized , and yet all we seem to be worried about is how many condos can we build and how quickly. There is a space around the corner from the Gathering Place that used to be the old SYS. This space has been empty for almost two years and nothing has been done with it. For so many years that space was a place where homeless youth could go to get support, food, and get off the street for a while. There were people who genuinely cared and wanted to help regardless of how old the kids were or what they had done. We need another place like that.

Lately Translink has been putting up signs everywhere stating that it is ILLEGAL to sell or give away your transfers. I am a little confused with this as the term 'transfer' means "to pass from one person to another" Please tell me if I'm wrong, but how in the world can it be illegal when we in fact do that?

Hey everybody! Just so you all know I'll be working with Janelle and Homeless Nation every wednesday from 3-6pm at the Learning Centre in Gathering Place. Feel free to stop by and say hi or eat free pizza. Hope everyone's doing great and I'm happy to be back!!!
Nat