The free press

“Reality is no obstacle now as the impossible looms before us on the horizon like the purple aura that circles the moon in a subversive halo of Mad Love. We dance all night in sweaty abandon on the beach, swim naked in the coolness of the moonlight, then fall asleep in each other’s arms dreaming of anarchy and surrealism—the impossible compass points of a world turned upside down.” So reads the announcement for the Anarchist Surrealist Jamboree, March 3-5 at the Carnegie Centre, Main and Hastings, as printed in the eye-popping February 15 issue of the Carnegie Newsletter, edited by Paul Taylor. See also the impassioned plea by Taylor to the international media now showing up in the world-famous Downtown Eastside as the Picton serial murder trial gets under way: “It is now that reporters and essayists and researchers will be in the neighbourhood for some time to come, asking many people about the herstory and realities of the missing and murdered women. Now is the time to get this stuff straightened out, to insist that the pejorative labelling and demeaning aspects of the ‘grab the headline’ kind of reporting come to an end.”
 
 
 
Migrant Mexican farmworkers at Purewal Blueberry farm in Pitt Meadows staged a one-day strike last September to protest appalling work and living conditions—an event reported, to our knowledge, only in Latin American Connexions (Volume 6, issue 4, out now). Prospective employees were shown videos in Mexico promising great conditions in our agricultural sector, but after signing up to the Mexican-Canadian government-organized Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, they found no overtime pay, no benefits, over-crowded living conditions, and no rights to become citizens, even among those here for over 25 years.
 
 
 
The Office Journal gives the impression that Vancouver and BC fail in the entrepreneurial department, and that it’s only a matter of thinking uplifting thoughts that can turn everything around. From the editor’s essay on down through nearly all the contributors in the February-March issue, we’re told we have the wrong attitudes toward the risk of failure, that we aren’t creative enough in seeking out sources of funding, or that we ought to meditate more. This isn’t the only business publication that too easily morphs into ubiquitous self-help literature. The Vancouver Sun business pages are no different.