COPE school board member Jane Bouey sat quietly in the audience at a recent panel on civil liberties and the Olympics, as participants called for all-out resistance to the Games.
"Let's go get 'em. Let's take 'em down," declared David Dennis of the United Native Nations.
Said social activist Harsha Walia: "We need to do our best to disrupt [the Olympics]as much as we can, so other cities won't tolerate this kind of circus."
Echoed writer Matt Hern: "Resist the Olympics for all they're worth. Mess the circus up the best way we can… Let's get 'em right now, and let's get 'em later, too."
When Ms. Bouey addressed the audience during a question-and-answer session, however, she did not ask whether these calls for disruptive action were appropriate at events that may have many school-age children in attendance.
Instead, she was concerned about the minds of these young kids and how the Olympics are "infiltrating the schools and bringing their propaganda into the schools."
Now, we have the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers Association promoting a teach-in organized by the Olympic Resistance Network, the folks planning most of the protests at the Games.
First item on the ORN website: protest the Oct. 30 start of the torch relay. "Join us in the spirit of creative resistance to ongoing colonization."
Critical perspective, of course, is good. But do teachers really expect to get a balanced view of the Games from the Olympic Resistance Network? No workshops on stolen Indian land, say I.
Seized 'luxury vehicles' hardly the stuff of posh
One wonders if Solicitor-General Kash Heed gets out much, or maybe he suffers from auto envy, driving around in a battered old Vauxhall or something.
How else to explain his breathless description of four sets of wheels recently seized by police because of their use in criminal activity as "luxury vehicles?"
The 2003 Mercedes Benz qualifies, and just about everyone but me will agree that the 2005 Hummer does too, although, despite its "chromed tubular tail-lamp protection set," I still think it's more for the brain-dead than the lover of luxury.
But a six-year-old Acura RSX? Good in its day, perhaps, but somehow I can't see BMW owners out there clamouring for an even-up swap.
Most hilarious is the inclusion of a 1995 Toyota 4Runner on the list of luxury vehicles. As a friend of mine, who once owned such a beast, observed: "I didn't realize I was driving a pimpmobile."
Its only luxury, she recalled, was power windows (they go up and down!). Admittedly, there was room for a big dog or a couple of mountain bikes in the back, to say nothing of a spacious glove compartment for stashes of cocaine. But hardly the stuff of posh.
Estimated total value of the four "luxury vehicles" on the Heed hit list: $65,000, or the price of just one hot new Mercedes-Benz, and less than a $68,000 package you can buy for yourself and eight guests to eat, drink and be merry at Molson Canadian Hockey House during the Olympics. (Hey, Stan Smyl might go by.) Meanwhile, non-criminals who happen to drive similar models, take note. Mr. Heed doesn't think much of your car of choice. He derided the apprehended vehicles as nothing more than "high-end toys."
As for my friend's Toyota 4Runner, it was not stolen by a criminal wannabe. Her family eventually began to make its way in the world and opted for a step up in luxury. They traded in their Toyota for the vehicle coveted by drug dealers everywhere. Yes, a minivan.
Of misguided youth and dastardly deeds
Apologies to the Lower Mainland's vigilant, armed transit police. I've been remiss not publicizing their exasperated plea for help last month in solving the case of the dastardly "seemingly adult male" who spray-painted the words "SURGEN : HAT" on a bike locker at a commuter rail stop.
This warranted a full press release, under the startling headline: "Transit Police Seek Identity of Graffiti Vandals." Imagine that.
Harrumphed the transit cops, no doubt regular attendees of the Vancouver Art Gallery: "The vandals call it art … [but it's]costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars per year."
Police Chief Ward Clapham weighed in with his own printed analysis: "Graffiti attacks have become a form of miss-guided [just one 's,' sir]political rebellion. These people sneak around at night believing they are justified in some way to spread their so-called art over buildings and other property."
I know how the chief feels. A bunch of similarly misguided young people once spray-painted an anarchist symbol on my front walk. Bakunin would have been appalled, as I was.
As for the perpetrator of "SURGEN : HAT," sounds like Thomas Pynchon to me. If only we knew what he looked like…