#StopTheSweeps Rally Marches on Victoria City Hall

About 100 supporters of Victoria’s unhoused community rallied at Pandora Green and marched all the way to City Hall, denouncing bylaw sweeps which displace the most vulnerable people in town and impound their meagre belongings, while shouting calls to defund the police.

The event was the result of a community effort by initiatives such as Neighbourhood Solidarity with Unhoused Neighbours (NSUN), the Peer2Peer Indigenous Society, and the Backpack Project, and was made possible with the help of several volunteers.

Tent were erected hours prior to the event proper, to allow people who had experienced homelessness to complete a survey run by the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate. Volunteers also offered free food and distributed donations.

The organisers emphasised not only the outright predation by the city, which had been the object of a recent Backpack Project press conference, but the colonial mindset which fuels it. The crowd empathically rallied behind the stance that community initiatives should take over law and bylaw enforcement in keeping the peace and helping people in need, and demanded actual solutions to the housing crisis instead of criminalising the poor.

The rally organisers meant the event to be more than a mere protest, also calling upon participants to get involved in existing community efforts, or set up their own initiatives, may these pertain to advocacy, supplies, or legal observation. I can attest that there can never be too many benevolent people standing beside those with their backs against the proverbial wall, or between them and bylaw officers, and that the worst of the abuse occurs in the absence of witnesses.

The debate on the role of law enforcement in addressing the crisis has fostered intense division across the city as of late. Just last week, a significant bylaw raid on Princess Avenue was covered by no less than three media outlets and generated considerable outrage; also observe that this implies the existence of an informant at City Hall. Word on the streets and online is that advocacy and activism groups have been particularly active at raid target sites lately, thus exacerbating tensions with city workers and neighbours. In contrast, communities such as Save Stadacona Park and Enough is Enough! have been vocal proponents of bylaw raids and even called for sheltering prohibition to be ratcheted up. And not everyone who showed up at today’s rally was a supporter; if nothing else, participants were dissuaded from engaging with the police and leave the interaction to a designated liaison officer, and also to ignore a notorious troll trying to intimidate the crowd.

If our government fails (or rather declines) to address the housing crisis, protests on both sides of the aisle shall multiply, along with police presence, threatening widespread escalation, may it occur at rallies, on the streets or at parks, or even at City Hall and the Legislature. Our elected officials would do well to address widespread inequality before mobs on both sides decide to take matters in their own hands, because nobody wins when competing neighbourhood watches clash.