THE SHRINKING DOLLAR DERA—serving people By ALD. HARRY RANKIN There is one organization that is not very dear to the hearts of the TEAM-NPA majority on City Council, but it is dear to the hearts of its members. The organization is DERA, the Downtown Eastside- Residents Association. The territory in which DERA operates stretches along the waterfront from Clarke Drive through to Gastown. It includes “Skid Road’? with its derelicts, alcoholics and drug addicts. Muggingsinthe area are common and murders not unknown. People being burned to death in firetrap hotels is not unusual. DERA, now over 800 strong, serves the poor people of this area. Most of them are unemployed, retired or elderly people and live in residential ‘‘hotels’’ rooming houses in the area. They include many of Chinese and Japanese origin. : The problems that these people face are many. Probably the greatest is that of housing. With the commercial re- development of parts of the downtown eastside, housing oc- cupied by these people has been torn down and not replaced. It is estimated that the building of the new courthouse on Main alone displaced 1,000 people. Many of the rooming houses and _ residential hotels are filthy firetraps, a danger to the tenants and a disgrace to the city, to any civilized community for that matter. The battle waged by DERA to clean up Skid Road and make a liveable region out of this whole area has been an uphill fight — against slum landlords, against unscrupulous merchants and beer- parlor owners, and against a City Council that won’t enforce its own health and fire bylaws in the area. But, nevertheless, DERA uunder the leadership of Bruce Eriksen, its able and tireless president, although less than two years old has chalked’ up some significant victories. It has compelled City Council to begin enforcing some of its health and fire bylaws in this slum area including the installation of sprinkler systems to guard against death by fires. What to do about those slum-landlords who refuse to obey this city order is now before council, in the form of a minimum standards bylaw demanded by DERA. MAJOR PRECEDENT SET Port Moody tenants association from both management and government. British Columbia Tenants Organization president Bruce Yorke termed the development ‘“‘a major precedent in landlord and . tenant relations in B.C.” Addressing a meeting of about 35 tenants at Westhill last week, Yorke said, ‘‘What has happened here is important not only for yourselves but for all tenants in _ B.C. The principle of the right of tenants to speak with management as an association has been won.” Westhill is owned by Metropolitan Properties Ltd. but operated under regulations of the Central Housing and Mortgage Corporation. Partially financed by CHMC, tenancy is based on income with a ceiling of $11,500 per year. Most families in the 150-suite complex have children. The tenants began to organize in January following an eviction notice to a single parent, Mrs. Marylin Seaman, for alleged “problem children.’’ She contacted the BCTO and with the aid of Yorke, organized an_ initial meeting of about 35 tenants which elected a committee to protest the eviction. Management offered to with- draw the eviction if Mrs. Seaman would provide ‘‘letters of references’’ for her children — still in their pre-teens — from social workers, the school principal and from other tenants. Outraged at the insult, the tenant committee, with Yorke as their spokesman. of downtown eastside DERA under Bruce Eriksen’s leadership has helped to clean up some of the beer parlors where poor people are mistreated and victimized. It cost him a, few broken ribs when he came up against bouncers ordered by the owners to eject him and rough him up. Tenants are going to, and are receiving help from DERA against illegal rent increases and evic- tions. “Not long ago the Cobalt Hotel issued rent increase notes which we considered illegal,’’ said president Bruce Eriksen. ‘We brought all the tenants to the Rentalsman’s office and filed them. We’re now waiting for him to take some action.” The many services provided by DERA include a day-care centre, interpreters for Japanese and Chinese residents. But its main accomplishment has been involving people in ac-: tivity and giving them courage and hope. “Our people used to get shoved arounda lot,” said Bruce Eriksen. “We organized them, got them involved and raised hell with city council, We’ve won a few battles. Our people now know they can do something about improving the conditions under which they live.” DERA’s reputation, in fact, has spread across the country. A rep- resentative from Toronto is currently organizing a _ national conference to be held in Vancouver on the subject of how to clean up Skid Roads. Vancouver which has the biggest has also achieved the greatest success. Other people in Canada facing similar situations want to know how it was done here. DERA is doing a good job and deserves the full support of all citizens who believe that even the- poor people of the downtown eastside have the right to live in security and dignity. “\. ONTARIO LABOR RALLY MAY 21 TORONTO — The Ontario Federation of Labor has called for amass demonstration at Queen’s Park by affiliated unions on May 21 to coincide with presentation of the annual Ontario Federation of Labor brief. % a ; win fight for recognition For the first time in B.C., tenants at Westhill Apartments in Port Moody won recognition for a tenant had the Rentalsman quash te eviction. cae Management, unperturbed Py the Rentalsman’s order, proceé q to issue four new eviction notices: to Mrs. Seaman and three others: Three of the four were si mothers with children. Letters s&” to management by the tenall committee asking for a meeting discuss the evictions, as well management’s ‘‘poor attitude toward children’? and needee | recreational facilities weM | unanswered. : A second meeting drew 80 residents. At that meeting, als? attended by Yorke, BCT0 secretary Margaret DeWees and Vancouver alderman Harty Rankin, a new and more repr& | sentative committee was electe® | They agreed to ask the Re® talsman to intervene and to call @ meeting of all parties. The Rentalsman’s office agreed to step in but rather than calling @ meeting of all parties chose inste@ to co-sponsor a tenants’ meetiné with management — bypassing the elected committee. In spite ° protests from the tenant com mittee the meeting went ahead 0? February 20. The tenant com mittee called on the residents boycott the meeting. Only 13 at tended. The evictions remained to be dealt with and early in March, formal hearings were held in the Rentalsman’s office. When it became clear that no evidence existed to justify the evictions, management agreed to withdraW them. Of particular importance in the hearing was the agreement that management would issue notices to a meeting to be held under the auspices of the Rentalsman 1! which a vote of confidence in the executive of the tenant association would be taken by secret ballot. About 50 tenants subsequently attended the meeting and voted 34 to 12 in favor of the elected com mittee. In effect, formal recognition had been won from both management and the Rentalsman. Last week’s meeting extended recognition of the association to thé See TENANTS, pg. 10 TOM | McEWEN ay Day, 1975 —a long and hard haul from the first great May Day of 1886, in which a combination of reactionary government and police provocateurs conspired to murder the Haymarket martyrs in the hope that labor would be cowed for decades to come. 2 Yet from the high scaffold a voice from the Haymarket martyrs comes to the ears of labor, clear, resonant and strong: ‘‘The voices you still today will rise to haunt you a millionfold in the years to come.”’ A prophecy from which a great institution of world labor has evolved — the fight for the eight-hour day, the right to strike and picket and protest injustices, to reject all forms of compulsion that would restore the ‘master and slave’ relationship between the bosses and the bossed. A prophecy which heralded the creation of May Day itself. For our own country, rarely in the annals of Canadian labor has such a massive strike wave surged up against the robberies of monopoly capital, against exorbitant living costs, the built-in wage cutter. The message of the Haymarket martyrs delivered from the scaffold of 1886 is being fulfilled — and a Liberal Establishment demon- strates its panic by introducing hurried-up compulsory arbitration against the longshoremen and moving with its PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1975—Page 2 punitive arm of the courts against postal workers. And when this great strike wave matches its economic power with an equal political consciousness, the many voices of May Day willreach the Trudeaus and their ilk, as clear as that of the martyrs of 1886. Back at the turn of the century, labor got the Lemieux Act which did nothing at the time about anti-union bosses with their blacklists, discrimination and boss-controlled hiring halls but merely ‘‘recognized”’ that labor existed and, as such, should get fair treatment. But, like other such pieces of legislation introduced since, the Act failed to spell out what was fair and the bosses continued to give it their own interpretation. A couple of decades later, when MacKenzie King had completed his studies at the Rockefeller Institute on strikebreaking, scab herding and similar pursuits — and before he took up with spooks as to how to run the country — he wrote a book entitled Industry and Humanity. To save our readers the trying chore of going through this. tiring epistle, let us just say the King was highly Rockefellerized on industry and barren on humanity. But like his Lemieux forerunner, he did ‘“‘recognize” that labor existed. To this end, MacKenzie King “gave” Canadian labor a Labor Day, the first Monday in September, to offset May Day and the still-clear voices of the Haymarket martyrs. Then his illustrious successor, Louis St. Laurent supplied Canada’s monopoly shipowners with cordons of RCMP to help smash a Canadian union — all in the best tradition of aiding and abetting monopoly exploitation. From its very beginning, King’s “‘gift” of a statutory Labor Day was a signal that nothing had changed, that labor was still to be smashed if it raised its voice too loud: But Labor Day, though hailed by the right wing labo! bureaucrats and the gangsters that stalked the ships onc® manned by the Canadian Seamen’s Union, has neve! dimmed the inspiration and ideals of the historic May Day and the message of the Haymarket martyrs. : This May Day, as in all the years of its past struggles: will review the pressing issues of the changing times, prepare itself for greater struggles ahead, assess its many victories and defeats and resolve as never before t0 win an ever-greater share of the vast wealth that it alon® | produces, and ultimately to end monopoly exploitation. T° make doubly sure that the prophecy made ‘from thé Chicago gallows will increase by many millions in the. May Days to come. Long live May Day, the day of the working class in its march to progress, peace and socialism! RiBUNeE Editor — MAURICE RUSH Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-8108 Business and Circulation Manager, FRED WILSON , Subscription Rate: Canada, $6.00 one year; $3.50 for six months; North and South America and Commonwealth countries, $7.00 All other countries, $8.00 one year ’ Second class mail registration number 1560 .