Missing and Murdered Women: Libby Davies

Showing posts with label Libby Davies. Show all posts

Friday, March 5

$10 million ‘a start’ to investigate women’s deaths, disappearances

By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun

March 4, 2010

There was cautious optimism Thursday in response to the federal government’s promise of $10 million over two years to address the issue of hundreds of missing and murdered native women in Canada.

“It’s a start, because five and 10 years ago, the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada never passed the lips of a single cabinet minister, that I’m aware of, over all those years,” said Ernie Crey, whose sister Dawn disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2000.

Thanks to the efforts of a group of vocal native women, many of them based in B.C., this issue has finally been pushed onto the public agenda, he said.

“But $10 million doesn’t strike me as a large amount of money given the magnitude of this issue,” said Crey, whose sister’s DNA was found on the Port Coquitlam farm of convicted serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton.

There were few specifics in the budget speech about how the money would be spent, noting only that it could involve law enforcement and the justice system.

Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies, whose riding includes the Downtown Eastside where 64 women disappeared from 1978 to 2001, said the solution to this epidemic cannot come solely through “a criminal justice lens.”

It requires much more money being invested in the systemic issues that made many of the victims vulnerable in the first place: poverty, violence and homelessness, she said.

“It really concerns me about whether they are going to do anything substantive.”

Davies has long called for a public inquiry into Vancouver’s missing women, but she said that alone would likely consume the $10 million.

There have been 520 native women reported missing or murdered in Canada over the last four decades, according to the federally funded Sisters in Spirit report. B.C. is home to a disproportionately large number of those cases.

There have been at least 18 cases of missing or murdered women and girls over the last four decades along highways in northern B.C., collectively dubbed the Highway of Tears.

Highway of Tears coordinator Mavis Erickson also dismissed the $10 million as a small amount of money, but said she hoped it would be spent on a commission of inquiry into unsolved cases of missing and murdered B.C. women, so lessons can be learned and changes can be made to keep women safe.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women criticized Canadian governments and police for not doing enough to prevent or investigate violence against aboriginal women and girls.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, said the government had been slow to respond to the UN’s damning report, but was “elated” Thursday to finally see recognition of this issue from Ottawa.

Phillip said the $10 million should go to organizations that have fought to raise awareness about unsolved cases of missing and murdered women, such as Walk4Justice, the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, and Sisters in Spirit.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

Tributes flow to 'mayor' of Downtown Eastside

Mike Howell

Vancouver Courier

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The Downtown Eastside has lost one of its most popular residents. Referred to by many as "the mayor of the Downtown Eastside," Margaret Prevost died of a heart attack Feb. 6. She was 53.

A memorial for Prevost was scheduled yesterday (March 4) in the theatre at the Carnegie Community Centre at Main and Hastings. The location is fitting considering Prevost's longtime service on the Carnegie board, including terms as vice-president and president.

This week's edition of the Carnegie newsletter paid special tribute to Prevost, who spent most of her life in a wheelchair after being injured in a serious car accident when she was 18. Some of the tributes in the newsletter came from politicians.

"Margaret and her life make me believe that there is justice, there is hope and there is goodwill in our world," wrote NDP Vancouver-East MP Libby Davies. "She embodied the best of everything and her compassion, strength and determination are things we all strive for."

Former mayor Philip Owen, whom Prevost once told to pay her a dollar every time he said "um" while talking, recalled her devotion to the Carnegie and residents. "Margaret Prevost was a very effective force in the Downtown Eastside for many years in focusing on and bringing forward to the media and politicians the needs of the community," Owen wrote.

Former mayor Larry Campbell, who is now a Liberal senator, described her as an "amazing person."
By all accounts, one of Prevost's proudest accomplishments was getting police action on the illegal sales of rice wine in some of the stores in the Downtown Eastside. She also lobbied to get curb ramps on sidewalks to make life easier for people in wheelchairs.

She was agile enough in her wheelchair that she became a member of Canada's national wheelchair basketball team. In 1992, she and the team won gold at the ParaPan American Games in Spain. She was born in the Nimpkish First Nation community of Alert Bay, where she was a member of a large extended family. She was proud of her heritage and served on the board of the Vancouver Native Health Society.

A recipient of the Queen's Jubilee medal for community service, she also volunteered for a community policing centre and was a mainstay of the Out-To-Lunch Bunch of Alcoholics Anonymous. Friend Lisa David added: "Like many people in our community, Margaret struggled with some serious challenges in her private life. I admire how she maintained her grace throughout those challenges. Thank you Margaret for everything that you have done for us. The Downtown Eastside is lucky to have had you."
Prevost's memorial fell on what would have been her 54th birthday.

mhowell@vancourier.com

Thursday, September 24

Bright Lights: Katrin Pacey

Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society

When was the last time you met a member of the legal profession who claimed to be an activist first and a lawyer second? If that sounds a bit odd, it’s because you’ve never met Katrina Pacey.

Pacey, 35, is a staff member with the Pivot Legal Society, a nonprofit legal-advocacy organization that tackles social-justice issues plaguing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It’s not a glamorous gig, but it’s rewarding for her. In some ways, she’s a walking contradiction. Pacey is a self-described feminist who fights for sex workers’ rights. She said she comes from a privileged background, yet she spends her working days dealing with some of the most vulnerable women in the city.

She said she was intrigued when Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies brought a motion forward in Parliament in 2002 to review prostitution laws after so many women went missing from the Downtown Eastside. Pacey said the sex-trade workers were saying: “We need something different; we need to have safety in our lives.”

“I thought, ‘How do I get these women’s voices and stories to Parliament?’ ” she recalled.

As a student, Pacey knew that the corporate environment of law school would challenge her ideals as a human-rights activist, but she said she wanted to gain the tools and knowledge to use the legal system to advance the interests of marginalized people. After receiving her undergrad degree in political science and earning a master’s degree in women’s studies from UBC, she attended law school and began working with Pivot in her first term.

“I feel like it [Pivot] was a huge part of my education and kept me from deviating from being focused on human-rights issues,” she said, sitting in a modest boardroom at Pivot’s office on East Hastings Street. “I feel like it kept me grounded and real.”

Pacey’s work involves advocating for changes to Canada’s prostitution laws, but she admits that she didn’t always have such conviction about the subject. She had seen how it had divided the feminist community. “I really didn’t want to go there by any personal inclination,” she said, “but when I realized that’s what the demand was—and that it was the most pressing issue for them [women of the DTES]—I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”

When she became involved with sex workers’ rights, she expected a backlash from the feminist legal community. Ultimately, she hopes that her objective will become clear to even her fiercest critics. “What I’m really about is creating a safe and dignified working condition for people involved in sex work, and honouring those people who say this is their choice,” she said emphatically.

Despite some people’s objection to Pacey’s endeavours, her contribution to the field and, specifically, her work with sex workers is undeniable. In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Pacey’s long-time coworker and Pivot Legal Society executive director, John Richardson, sang her praises: “She’s definitely someone you want fighting in your corner.”

It’s hard to believe that Pacey graduated from law school only five years ago. Already she has been awarded the YWCA Women of Distinction Award; she routinely speaks about human-rights issues at universities and local colleges; and she is one of the partners at Pivot’s most recent venture as a law firm—Pivot Legal Society LLP.

The firm, an idea developed by Pacey and Richardson, came to fruition in 2006 and has been growing ever since. “I’m really passionate about this because it can help strengthen Pivot as a nonprofit while giving access to affordable legal services to those people who need it most,” she said.

Not surprisingly, even her venture in creating a business model for Pivot leads her down a people-before-profit path. It’s an often thankless cause she has taken upon herself, but it’s never been about her.