Today, between client visits, I cry and listen to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Helpless. I’ve learned the importance of naming my emotions aloud. Helpless, I sing between small sobs, Helpless. The sweeps force me to take an indirect route to get to my destinations. I repeatedly pass the various barricades, but I do not enter the foray.
My assignment isn’t within the 00 to 200 blocks of Hastings but it could be. In morning huddle our manager is present. I know why she is here, my colleague whispers to me before we begin. Days before, there were leaked documents from the City of “Vancouver” [on unceded traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations] announcing plans for public safety. (what public? safety from what? safety for who?).
In the meeting, we makes plans for our personal safety, as health-care workers who go provide care in people’s homes. Bring your ids with you, our manager cautions us, they will be checking. People live there (you know that right?). I’ve been in nearly every building along that stretch. People live in those tents too.
The forecast anticipates rain for tomorrow.
There are not enough shelter beds.
The last time I went to a shelter, folks were smoking drugs openly in the space.
What are you? a Christian! a client asked me this incredulously after I requested she hold off on smoking her crack until I left her room. I’ll just go to the kitchen, she said, not quite grasping that in her small studio apartment, going to the kitchen wouldn’t prevent me from getting a second-hand high. All the other nurses let me do it. I feel guilty but not enough to stay. Not even a week later I have the experience in the shelter. I stay because it is not my client who is smoking, and this man really needs care or he’ll likely lose his hand. He already lost his housing due to police involvement from a mental health crisis. Discharged from the hospital to the shelter. Helpless. I don’t ask the people smoking to stop because I don’t want a confrontation. I leave unsteady on my feet with dilated pupils.
Today I see multiple older Asian senior widows wearing layers and layers of clothing I peel back to take their blood pressure. In their neatly tided homes, I check that their medications are on track. They are in their 90s and living independently with some supports. They are polite, and offer me snacks. I use a translator on my phone to communicate with them. Sometimes I wonder how strong my Cantonese would be if I started taking lessons when I first started this job in 2016.
Today (like everyday) I wondered why some bodies seemingly hold more value than others.
I asked my colleague how her visits went. It’s like a police stateout there, she attests, as she describes having to wait and then be inspected at the border before she could gain access to go see a client and provide care.
Constables in Vancouver make between 77,983 and 111,709$ as a base salary. There were over 100 officers involved in today’s decampment. The police budget increases continue. The people living in tents are in situations of extreme poverty. There isn’t more addiction or crime… it is just more visible.
Helpless.
This is about how we as a collective chose to treat one another. This about our values and our ethics. This is about how we show up (or don’t) for each other. This is about (in)justice. This is about privilege. This is about violence. This is about capitalism. This is about community.
but mostly
this is about
how sometimes
I don’t think
what I do matters (helpless, fruitless, useless, powerless)
and I still
try
really
really
REALLY
hard
to show up
and stand up
and learn
and fail
and pivot
and try again
and do my work anyways.
Why are you still a nurse? ( a recent question by a new acquaintance, a now-artist reformed nurse). The answer: for the money… but also because I guess I do think this work holds meaning, as a way to express my social justice values.
This work that does not get noticed
or seen
because it is so
so
so
fucking small
yet, here I still am.
(and if you read this, then here you still are…. and thanks…)
I go a matinee performance ofStarwalker, a musical by Corey Payette. Its world premiere, the show was co-produced by Urban Ink, Raven Theatre & The Musical Stage Company. The Cultch’s York theatre is packed; I had decided just a few hours before to attend and I purchase one of the last available seats in the house. As a professional queer, I am excited to witness queer joy on stage.
“Starwalker is a rebellion through an outpouring of joy. It recognizes our shared history, our complex relationships, as we build towards a new future bursting with love.” [Director’s note, Corey Payette]
Starwalker follows a young Two-Spirit person – Star – in a journey of self-discovery, courage, and vulnerability. This growth is nurtured through Star finding romantic love with Levi, and Star’s adoption into the drag house Borealis. When they met, Levi tells Star that Mother will love them due to the synchronicity between names: Star/ Borealis, as both relate to the night sky. Levi then takes Star home to the house to meet the family.
Set in “East Vancouver”, specific neighbourhood undisclosed, we learn that Mother Borealis managed to purchase a house when that was still a realistic achievement (many years ago; hold for laughter). The house is a centre hub of activity with the drag family Borealis living all together. However, not all is well at home. I mean this literally, Mother is sick! She refuses, despite active encouragement, to get assessed by a physician. Mother minimizes the concern for her health and keeps the level of its severity from all but her eldest child. Despite its promise of joy, the theme of medical trauma is central to Starwalker’s dramatic plot.
*spoilers!*
Theatre is all about the suspension of disbelief… but it took every ounce of will power to not stand up on my chair and yell out the referral number for Home Care services (604-263-7377) when all the characters are under the delusion that Mother *has* to go to the hospital to die. Calling this number would have connected the chosen family members of Mother Borealis to a community health nurse.
Community Health Nurses (CHNs) work closely with your family doctor to plan and provide your care. Part of the nurse’s role is to provide information about physical comfort, medications and procedures. The nurses will listen to your concerns and talk about choices to help you and your family make decisions. They assess and discuss with you the type and amount of help you and your family may require and adjust these as your needs change. They can also refer you to other team members as needed. Nurses are available 7 days a week to visit homes based on assessed need. Community health nurses will provide you with the information for contacting evening, weekends, and on-call services.
Not knowing about community health nurses creates a significant conflict. Mother is clearly unwell and in need of medical intervention, but she has also been very clear in her wishes: no hospitals. Sissy respects this despite the great distress it brings, whereas Levi identifies that Mother is no longer in the correct state of mind to make this type of decision. There is concern that Mother is suffering unnecessarily. Not to mention that it is very emotionally upsetting for the rest of the family to see Mother’s decline – feelings of fear, helplessness and uncertainty in the face of severe illness abound. (me: oh no! this seems so hard! I or any of my colleagues, could come by and sort this out!).
Star, who has experienced significant trauma in hospitals relating to their upbringing, is avidly against Mother going to the hospital… mostly because Star themselves does not want to go to the hospital. In a beautiful scene, with great stage lighting, Mother ends up being taken away by EMS at the end of a righteous drag show held at the House of Borealis. Mother is brought to Saint Paul’s Hospital (meanwhile, my CHN brain is going… what neighbourhood are they in East Van to be brought to SPH and not VGH… are they in *gasp* my catchment!?! When I asked a CHN colleague who had also seen the show, her theory was that it was in the “cool” part of East Van… likely around Commerical Dr. [Robert & Lily Lee] but really, East Van could also represent: Ravensong, Evergreen and South! ).
A map of East Vancouver…it actually looks like my catchment [Pender] is not in East Van!
Mother’s hospitalization triggers the climatic fight between Levi and Star: one begging for the other to show up, be vulnerable, trust, face fears; the other lost still within their past, …yet
(As I kept my little community health nurse butt in my seat and my mouth shut)
Mother could have had a home death! Mother could have been assessed by a community health nurse, who maybe would have called her doctor and got her all comfy and her paperwork sorted! Star could have shown up for Mother and the family while also not been stressed or forced to go the hospital! Mother’s wish to not go to the hospital could have (easily) been respected while simultaneously Levi’s concerns over her need for medical attention could have been met…
I knowwwww, it’s a play and a 5th business nurse character who swoops into the second act doesn’t perhaps hold the same dramatic tension… as Star showing up, performing ceremony and with the family giving Mother “permission” to die. Mother also dies very beautifully, with this super amazing costuming from the hospital bedding into a sparkling flowing gown… but I’ll just say, we can get a hospital bed into your home!
So I must at least pitch a 5th ! As we build towards a new future bursting with love, consider the importance of community health nursing! Consider our luck to live in a place that actively invests in a home dying program… consider that Mother might have also passed away at a hospice (yet another alternative to the hospital). Consider how this theme of medical trauma resonates for folks who watched the show… and how many could have learnt about home death or community-based nursing as viable options within our city! Consider art as propaganda spreading the message that HOME IS BEST!
Alright, I will come down off my soapbox… as I really did enjoy the magic of Starwalker, and I hope to see more works that blend drag into theatre/theatre into drag while being geographically rooted here in the city (on the unceded traditional territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh nations.). I also would really be into a drag family literally owning a housein East Van and regularly performing in said house and attending very regularly– and then if this happens irl, that someone is sick… CALL ME OKAY?
Working as a nurse has given me the (financial) freedom to travel a ton, move spontaneous, take a variety of classes and go to lots of parties. I do not get emotional satisfaction from the work, and I do not get virtue points (but I do notice others endow me with them. I invite you to experiment with this, the next time you talk to a stranger who you won’t meet again, say you are nurse. If you are a nurse, say you are a sex worker. Please report back if the stranger had a different response to you regarding moral assumptions about your character).
It was requested that I explore the trope of the high school mean girl who goes into nursing. I mean, the logic is flawed. I offer the following arguments:
(1) gendered profession, specifically “traditionally” female occupation. Relating to assumptions around female/ femininity & caretaking. — In Canada, about 91% of nurses were female in 2021 (CIHI, 2022). — Historically, the body of the trained “modern” Canadian nurse was a white middle-classed ciswoman (McPherson, 2003). Prior to the era of the “modern’ nurse, much of Canadian health care was provided by nuns or lay women. Thusly, the female high schooler, bully or not, has a higher probability of entering a female profession like nursing.
(2) the ideals of nursing – compassionate and caring – make a strong contrast between the profession’s virtue and the cruelty of adolescent behaviour. –reinforces a binary between “good”/”bad” –accusation of bullying are an ego hit for the profession, resulting in defensiveness + more attention to the trope –more interesting/memorable for the person looking up their bully due to the [moral] expectation that nurses are good/nice/kind/caring/compassionate. The public’s perception of nursing generates expectations for the behaviour and morality of the nurse that may or may not align with their lived experience/ impression of the human being doing the work.
(3) Nursing is a job. People, in all their complexities, do jobs to survive in capitalism.
$$$
In my final year of high school, I made a video yearbook. Most of the footage has me behind the camera – but in this short clip, I am the subject.
Context: We are in chemistry and setting up for an experiment. I recall that in the end, we needed to use another group’s data to complete the lab report. I also know, I tried to get even more safety goggles from surrounding groups, but my other classmates were unwilling to give them to me as they were working. Finally, my intention was purposefully to be funny/silly, and my speech is improvised.
C : Say hi Kyra, the fool
K, in a serious voice: Hi, my name is Jessinta Kyra Philbert [N: and I look like an idiot], and today, I’m looking at children… in chemistry. As you can see, I’m being extra safe by wearing as many safety googles as I could get my hands on.
A: Practicing for journalism school Kyra?
N: Yeah, you sound kinda stupid.
K: N____, A____ secretary.
A: I’m not the secretary! I got turned into secretary ’cause N can’t do his job properly.
N: I told you I wasn’t going to be secretary.
K: This is Kyra Philbert, reporting.
N: Get this on film! [*throws a balled up piece of paper at Kyra’s face*]
K, in regular voice: *laughing* I hate you!
Kyra- the fool.
What strikes me – beyond the casual violence – is that I didn’t go to journalism school. Not even comedy or an arts degree! I went into nursing! A choice that everyone thought was bizarre. A choice I double-downed on, in part, because everyone else thought it was a terrible idea.
I wouldn’t say I was mean in high school but I also wasn’t particularly nice or kind. I was known for being weird, smart, social, funny and emotional. (My whoremoans were next level. I am thankful everyday for wise ageing and less raging).
I went into nursing because I wanted a university degree, able to work immediately after and to be financially independent. I also went into nursing because I did not feel brave enough to be a creator.
I cry at the start of every movie I guess ’cause I wish I was making things too But I’m working for the knife
I used to think I would tell stories But nobody cared for the stories I had
Mitski, “Working for the Knife”
Working as a nurse has given me the (financial) freedom to travel a ton, move spontaneous, take a variety of classes and go to lots of parties. I do not get emotional satisfaction from the work, and I do not get virtue points (but I do notice others endow me with them. I invite you to experiment with this, the next time you talk to a stranger who you won’t meet again, say you are nurse. If you are a nurse, say you are a sex worker. Please report back if the stranger had a different response to you regarding moral assumptions about your character).
Speaking of nursing and morality! I have completed my master’s of science in nursing thesis. It is written in an academic style, but also I think there are some spicy moments (particularly in chapters 4 and 5). If you like my favourite theorist Sara Ahmed, you will appreciate the sweaty, sweaty, stinky conceptual work I’ve done in these 92 pages!
[and full disclosure, I do not feel “proud” beyond intellectually. I feel that I should be proud. What I notice is that I’m fixated on small errors that are now forever viewable; that I got an 90% (A+) but immediately obsessively googled to see what the average thesis grade was at UBC… and then felt relief in my shame when I saw the ‘average’ for the course was 91%– validation that I am not actually good; that I feel bad for feeling bad; that I am not meeting expectations; that I am forever difficult; that I had a series of escalating meltdown writing the acknowledgement/dedication because it brought up a lot of complex feelings for me; that I amplify those complex feelings by denying them; that I amplified them more by shaming them: you are a fool!] So I hold of this suffering, imperfection, and self-criticism in love and kindness while sharing in the spirit of common humanity.
$$$ Finally, I am grateful that I am experimenting in creation more. Two quick things: (1) Thanks to everyone who voted in my last post, please look forward to a podplay experience in Trout Lake, about self-compassion and intertwining! Available on spotify here; or feel free to read about the process (2) Save the date(s) peeps on unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations: I’ll be hosting a weekly event over 5 consecutive Sundays evenings in Mount Pleasant specifically to showcase queer performance art. March 19th to April 16th, 7pm-9.30pm. READ MORE
Well, the results are in! I did not get elected for ‘Vancouver’ City Council during the October 15th, 2022 municipal elections. Unlike most of Vancouver’s Reddit community, I don’t need to imagine getting less votes than Amy “Evil Genius” Fox nor Rollergirl. With a resounding 3 382 votes, I’ve lived it, and I can use my creative thinking for other things. Also, it was super exciting. I absolutely thought I would get 50 votes max. If you voted for me: wow! thank you! endless gratitude for supporting my vision for radical, intersectional, queer, feminist, compassionate healing…Considering that I did no active campaigning, made no promotional materials, talked to no strangers (dangers), put up a few social media videos to my 300 then followers, got zero media coverage and did one debate (thanks Vancouver Public Space Network!)… I feel proud of my first foray into politics!
I’m not even remotely upset about my defeat… I am way too focused on that a ton of people voted to increase the police everywhere: schools, parks, every city block?
Excuse me while I go vomit.
I am in anger and disgust now. Honestly- I spent Saturday night, and nearly all day Sunday and Monday just bawling my eyes out. Sad about our new reality in a police state. Sad about the scary drought/fires/smoke. Sad because I was not expecting this result (naïve much?). Sad that I feel so betrayed by fellow citizens. How dare you! All these folks claim to be concerned about the DTES and helping people… so like my job for the last six years… ? They are concerned about Chinatown and helping the seniors out… so again, my job for the last six years…? They claim they want nurses providing an empathic response… so again, my literal job for the last six years. They claim they want solutions… but what outcome are they looking for?
***
To add insult to injury, the major elect, Ken Sim, and his party are trying to make nurses complicit in their pro-police agenda- particularly mental health nurses. Today, on CBC radio, he stated “to give your listeners a little bit about my background […] my background is in nursing… so we understand the moving parts” [11:03-11:09] – I am not a journalist, but I can tell you, he is not registered with the college. Being an employer of nurses is not the same as having a “background in nursing”. As a self-governed profession, ‘nurse’ is a protected title. He did not say, “I’m a nurse” but he certainly implied he had an expertise in nursing that that he may or may not hold. Nurses are a highly respected and trusted profession in Canada. He is falsely leading the public into a belief that trusted professionals, like nurses, think more police is a good idea. In actuality, many Canadian nurses are calling for the complete abolition of both the police and prison systems.
Screenshot from google re: the rules about calling yourself a nurse in BC
Can an actual journalist investigate Ken Sim’s claim about his ‘background in nursing’ and if it is misleading to people ? Can you also ask the BCCNM if it violates the use of the reserved nursing title?
I mean, maybe I am wrong and Ken Sim does have a real background in nursing. In which case, I want to know: where did Ken Sim get his nursing degree? Who is Ken Sim’s favourite nursing theorist? What is his area of clinical expertise? Where has he practiced?
********* Nursing, like policing, is a problematic institution. It is based in white ideology, it has a history based on anti-Blackness, and that context has had very direct harms for folks of colour. Nursing, like policing, are composed of individuals – some are very lovely people (and some are murderous assholes)! However we work in *systems* and those systems make us do things that are straight up racist like birth alerts! Or arrest people because they peed outside! I am including myself in this.
Here’s a scenario : a young brown person is brought to the emergency room by the police. They are there to have their dog bite wounds treated, sustained during their arrest. Their crime was shoplifting (total amount, under 20$) and then fleeing. The police dog was deployed to apprehend the suspect/victim. The person was bitten on multiple points of their body, notably their head. Police dog should be trained to release their bite on command. The patient was bitten by the dog on their head/face repeatedly. The extent of the damage is deeply disturbing: They will require extensive plastic surgery, their vision will be forever impaired and they will have an obvious lifelong facial disfigurement. Worse, their healing outcomes are poor: the nurse expects that the person will develop infections and require repeated rounds of IV antibiotics due to the nature of the trauma [dog bite], and the conditions of the patient’s lifestyle (poverty, insecure housing, malnutrition). Each probable infection represents the possibility of a preventable death from sepsis. The police are joking in the trauma bay and minimising the harms the patient will now have to live with for their rest of their life. They do not reconsider their actions until the nurse informs them how much money this dog bite will cost our public medical system… their empathy is with the tax payer, not the real human whose life they have forever fucked. The patient is discharged back into police custody. The nurse is very distressed, and wants to take action. They are actively discouraged by hospital leadership from calling in a complaint to the VDP about the behaviour of the police re: excessive force. The nurse is reminded that VPD is a community partner. The nurse does not feel safe nor supported by the larger medical system. The nurse does not feel like they are acting within their own moral framework, nor their professional ethics. Still, the nurse does not report. They go home, cry in the shower and try to scrub off the shame/guilt/disgust.
****
It’s not a personal insult to be critical of the systems we engage with, particularly if they are harming people. I am certain lots of people went into policing because they wanted to make a positive impact in their community! However, structures of power need to be actively unlearned. Nurses have an ethical obligation towards social justice. Nursing is very actively trying to address its racism problem. My own scholarship does this– no one bats an eye when I tell them that nursing is racist… it is a fact! A necessary fact to openly acknowledge to shift the profession towards anti-racism.
Meanwhile, while I was calling the police complaint line during the ‘freedom convoy’ in Vancouver [which happened while our CAPITAL was OCCUPIED! Hello, it was fricking domestic terrorism! just need to go vomit again] – and I stated a fact: the police are a system build on racism. I was told not to be ‘controversial!’.
AHHHHHH
AHHHHHH
AHHHHHH
The complaint officer kept interrupting me, and comparing his experience as a white man going abroad to my own ! He demanded that I listen to him, while he spoke soooooooo slowly about *his* feelings of becoming cognisant of his race for like 2 seconds in a temporary position of his own making as the benevolent Canadian on voluntourism!… he said this to me while I was actively fearful for my safety within my own city [on unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations] .
He said this to me while I was getting ready to march back and forth at Main & Kingsway holding a little dinky sign in an effort to delay traffic slightly.
He said this to me while I spent the day bawling because I was so scared. My co-protesters were trying to be positive, with music and fun outfits. They were trying to cheer me up because I was very miserable and clearly alone… but (a) stranger danger (b) I did not want to have to mask my feelings for the comfort of randos when it was a very scary/upsetting situation, (c) I think crying was an appropriate response to what was going on!
taken from a Vancouver Sun article. Note the wig & fun nurse outfit? I did not look this joyful. PHOTO BY JEFF VINNICK /PNG
He said this to me while his colleagues would yell at me to hurry up. “Ma’am! I’m worried about your safety!”. I would think that I know how to cross a goddamn fucking street! and they don’t care about *my* safety because if they did I would be sipping tea at home, not actively witnessing people honking their cars [and drive in from the burbs while unnecessarily emitting fossil fuels!], trying to block access to the major hospital, yelling transphobic stuff and doing white power gestures.
AHHHHHHHH
Eventually I said to the complaint officer, “I’m pretty sure your job is just to listen to my concern and log it… and I want you to do that now”. Judging from that interaction, it is clear to me that there has been very little critical thinking within the VPD about their social responsibility towards dismantling the systems of inequity. The focus is repeatedly on ‘public safety’– well safety for who? from what?
I am so sad and scared, yet again.
*****
The mayor elect Ken Sim’s rationale for mental health nurses working with the police is there would be a more ’empathic’ response. He claims he wants to be evidence-based. So let’s explore that claim – that nurses working with police generate more empathic responses- with a recently published academic article about mental health, policing and nursing in a British Columbian context. The lead author of the article, Maja Kolar (they/them) is a registered psychiatric nurse, holds a master of science in nursing, and very cool.
Kolar et al. (2022) employed critical discourse analysis to examine the provincial legislation The Metal Health Act (1996) and its interpretive handbook, the Guide to the Mental Health Act (2005). The act directs the involuntary and voluntary psychiatric treatment for folks in British Columbia experiencing mental health issues. Nurses, physicians, and police officers are professionals who regularly enact the act, which gives them authority to intervene on someone experiencing mental health issues. Kolar et al. identified “the need for protection” as a central discourse within these texts. The authors affirm the term protection is never clearly defined within the act but rather broad allowing the safeguard of the enforcers while legitimizing involuntary psychiatric treatment.
The police are given power via Section 28: Police Intervention for public safety to bring someone experiencing mental distress in for a medical examination in a hospital setting. This form of policing is considered an enforcement of protection through containment. Kolar et al. comment that this type of policing reinforces both the criminalization and stigmatization of folks experiencing mental health issues. They also highlight the danger of police intervention which “increases the likelihood of involuntary treatment, as well as detention, incarceration, violence, and in extreme circumstances, death of people experiencing mental health and/or substance use issues”(Boyd and Kerr, 2016; Wilson-Bates, 2008 as cited by Kolar et al., 2022, p. 11). Regarding my own profession, nurses might make clinical assessments on recalling a patient on extended leave based on missed medication or appointments. Together, a nurse and police officer might work together to locate a patient “for apprehension and transport to hospital” (Kolar et al., 2022, p. 11). Kolar et al. are mindful that neither the act nor the guide pays attention to nursing practice. The result is an invisiblization of how nurses might be complicit as agents of enforcement, within these structures of power that actively harm. Not to mention nurses acting in ways that go against our professional ethical obligations and best practice: harm reduction/ trauma informed. My own experience validates this concern.
Ken Sim’s claim that the nurse might provide a more empathic response is not supported by this evidence. The empathic and compassionate response I would want to provide to patients is made impossible by the presence of police. Perhaps he is conflating the presence of the nurse with less lethal outcomes for folks… but that does not mean it is a ‘good’ solution. Kolar et al. actually recommend intervening on social conditions like poverty, racism, unsafe housing, transphobia, and colonialism. What if we actually did stuff to prevent the need for a mental health crisis response in the first place?
I could not find any academic research about Car 87/88. This is the program that Ken Sim wants to expand by hiring all these mental health nurses. However, I can share from my experience working in a major emergency department in Vancouver that Car 87/88 were mostly bringing people in from their extended leaves [recalling]. My interactions with the teams were positive, and I think they do an important service for loved ones wanting to assist someone in crisis and de-escalating that situation.
However, the larger conversation that dominated the election was about ‘public safety’, crime and the DTES. Ken Sim stated in his CBC interview that increasing Car 87/88 alone would not be enough. “We need to go upstream, we need to figure out what the root causes of these challenges are and it could be… mental health, addictions, people experiencing homelessness…” [0803-0813]. Okay, well, that’s easy enough because it’s poverty.
****
For a long time, Vancouver’s DTES has been a containment zone. According to Dana Culhane (2003, p. 594) “Public health and law enforcement authorities, in an effort to respond to these “twin epidemics” [Kyra note: HIV + IV drug use] have treated the Downtown Eastside as a containment zone, rather than as an enforcement zone: few if any arrests are made for simple possession or trafficking of small quantities of illegal drugs, or for soliciting for the purposes of prostitution.” Now in 2022, we have even more epidemics to add: Covid 19, opioid poisoning crisis, missing & murdered women… [which is still happening, vomit, like the circumstances of Chelsea Poorman’s death that the VPD ruled not suspicious].
Screen shot of the DTES from google
Yet where is the DTES? It is obvious to me that this area is a heterotopia. The city has historically used this space to contain all its undesirables. The DTES is simultaneously Chinatown [headtax], Japantown [internment], Hogan’s Alley [destruction for the viaduct] and Strathcona [for ethnic Europeans like Italians, until they got absorbed into white]…
screen shot from the Chinatown Business Association website
The new mayor will have a “satellite city hall in Chinatown”. The Chinatown Business Association is focused on the promotion of Chinatown with their first item being (1) security patrol [aka, protect settler capital] and then (2) cleaning graffiti [aka beautification]. Their website make no mention about the other places/spaces that encompass Chinatown (for example: DTES/Hogan’s Alley). It focuses on tourism, profit, and revitalisation… which means
the undesirables
the trash
[the poverty]
must be contained… elsewhere.
****
The police might be up for the job… but I really hope nurses take a clear stand against this. This work goes against all evidence and our professional values. There is nothing that suggests nurses are ‘more’ empathetic to these situations other than that they get forced into being complicit and maybe make it less likely the police will immediately kill someone. There is no rationale that the police could not get training to be more empathic themselves (and clearly they desperately need it!).
The evidence for the root cause of these problems is overwhelming. The evidence against doubling down on policing is also overwhelming. Yet Ken Sim wants us… so as nurses, we have the power of the powerless here. All nurses can take a radical stand and refuse to do this outrageous work. Instead, that money can be reallocated into actually addressing the social determinants of health with radical interventions of care: finding safe & secure housing for people, feeding people and ending poverty.
I hope that we are supported by our nursing leadership at multiple levels: our major union [BCNU], our professional associations [CNA, NNPBC], our major employers [like the health authorities: VCH, PHSA, Providence], our college [BCCMN] and all our nursing scholars/researchers in the lower mainland. It would be very impactful if all these groups– who have made pretty significant claims of anti-racism and equity– now enacted their politics! Statements/press conferences/ big stink. The use of nurses for pro-police rhetoric must be challenged.
***
There is certainly a way for Chinatown to be fabulous, and everyone to have a cute time… but it’s not achieved through policing! The police only deal with a situation, after it has already happened. We got to invest in prevention and intersectional equity. It’s great that the new mayor has endorsed all the equity policy asks from women transforming cities’ hot pink paper campaign, among them washrooms for all, healing lodge, and alternative non-police models to community safety. These were also election promises, that will make an actual difference. I want to see how Ken Sim follows up on those.
Kyra Philbert 