The respectful tourist ori tour. Notes from the Junkie library. benzo-diazepines and anti-depressants to keep you in your home. No one who didn't grow up on the reserve goes out of their way to see a reserve. Main and Hastings is a reserve stretching white space over red land. A reserve isn't about Throw a stone soaked in bleach at Main and addiction. It's about stolen land. A reserve is Hastings. You'll hit a cop or a service provider or about containing what we don't want to see. one of those missionary kids. Fascinated with the authentic junkie. Fascinated with the lengths of crack tubing and a flood of clean needles, sterile water in nicely stacked plastic, alcohol swabs. Star junkies come from white, middle class families. Fallen angels. Model minority addicts Hastings reserve is one of many stops you can make across the country. Drugs are equal opportunity whether you are in Seaton House, stepped over on the way to the Calgary stampede, passed out in Kenora. make movies about using, write poetry, speak The city zoned addicts into this part of town. discursively, pass Humanities 101. You can do crack from Cambie to Clark, keep it Fascinated. to the industrial districts or we'll have to involve meetings with community policing centres and You are an informed bystander. You read the the health unit. newspaper editorials. You understand the discourse. "Four Pillars." "Harm reduction/' Someone came to talk about addiction in your c class. You wrote a paper. You are an activist. You go to meetings. You actively attempt to recruit authentic voices to • a your meetings. You write articles. You plan protests. You go to protests. Containment. It's all about containment. Some academic said we have a drug problem because we are a port town. Really, Vancouver is a frontier town. Cowboys and cowboys and cowboys and sheriffs and missionaries and "Indians" and everyone else. That's right, Shanghai noon. That one time Jackie Chan made a Western. if You are an artist. You do art that relates to social issues. You teach about social issues. You draw pictures of the oppressed and place them in public spaces. You talk about your oppression. You talk about someone else's oppression. Out West, we forget. We stole the land. We hired "indentured servants", politely, yellow slaves who built the railroad. We made internment camps. And we still hire indenturedly. Because when it's not black and sometimes red, it's hard to think that those other colours are problems for You are a service provider. You counsel Europeans too. We prefer to think of our addicts. You give out food and needles. problems as resources and cheap open markets. IYou are in government. You were elected. You Yes, junkies have a colour, and a gender, and a ere hired. You are paid to go to meetings, religion. And some of us on this tour don't want bu write policy. You fund things for addicts. to talk about colour and stolen land. All services You were an addict. You are an addict. Your father, mother and sister are addicts. are not equally distributed to all people. Look, whites have problems. Whites left Europe too. The English oppress the French, you know, the irishdoukabourukraniancatholicfrenchquestion. I don't care if you're ten kinds of We all come to Main and Hastings reserve just to see what dying's really like. white or purple or green. Can we just get back to the main issue, class. Class war. Drugs. Cops. The literature at hand. 77775 tour begins at the junkie library. This land stretches white space over red land. Europeans stole land and created reserves where Hell's Angels run coke, steal girls, and the government sells liquor and dispenses Junkie literature. Junkie Library. The library was made by authentic junkies, who may have deliberately wanted to choose books for a Library. Or someone needing a bus ticket to sell, or someone who If we can prove that addicts are educable, then we prove addicts was bored while they were waiting to do free laundry. The faces are citizens. If we prove that an addicts' library gives addicts a who chose these books may also have been Native, African, Latin moral life, then we can take the credit for saving addicts. Is the American. But no one really suspects the Chinese, Vietnamese, artist leading the addict out of the cave of false consciousness? Cambodian, Korean, Arab, Indian from India. Yes, we're here too. Will an addicts' library be the first world democratic jesus we've This library was brought to you by the authentic junkie. The books always wanted. Does an addicts' library save society. If we can of choice of addicts. Junkie literature. The first junkie literature be so humble as to accept being saved by addicts, will addicts that comes to mind are beat poets. Think of how many of the save society? great Western writers of the world were addicted. But addicts didn't author this conception. A clever artist conceived Gees, that's a long list of men. Gees, that's a long list of white men. Do junkies only read only white men too? Do only white junkies write? on a three hour tour that addicts read, addicts think, addicts muse, addicts create. Plato, shine a light this way. A reserve is not a cave. A reserve is a physical manifestation of Platonic superiority. Education will get you off the reserve. Education will take you out of the cave. Sugar That's why we call it a Nova Library. Like William S. Burroughs' daddy's gonna give you something if you just stay where you are. Nova Express. You know aliens are taking over our language. We made you. We'll break you. Now, we're talking about green racism. Green racism, folks. Consciousness is a cave and inclusion is a house of multiple Some artists were addicted and wrote bad, I mean beat poetry. coloured cannons. Another cannon for your house, Master. It's obvious. An addict's cannon. Like a black cannon. A red cannon. A yellow cannon. A Neil Bissoondath canon. The Canadian conflation crisis. But I'll make a proper sociological case for the junkie canon. The Hastings Reserve junkie canon: witch hunts A whimpering canon for the white man's junkie. Is a junkie library a privileged fat man through the eye of the needle? industrialization colonization It's all caves and houses here, folks. Buying now earns huge reward genocide points in heaven. Act now. Redeem your points now. Redeem. opium wars drug wars global expropriation $50,000 for the master's tools, $500,000 for the master's house. This is an unauthorized sale. Master's listening, now, better look sharp. slavery Men raping children. Race. Money's coming faster now. Race. Men beating on women. Grants are being given now. Men raping women. Women beating on children. It's thousands and thousands of years of oppression. Burroughs is a thousand miles from that Native guy doing the residential school lam. Privileged people, know what you've done. Check your ego, Burroughs. All of us on tour have something to answer for. Wipe that garbage off your hands. Safe library. Safe space. Safe injection site. Is a public library not enough because addicts can't go there? Because books walk. Because the books in a regular library represent regular people. Because addicts speak only in the language of addicts. The Nova Library is funded through the Vancouver Foundation. Boom. Not with a bang.