Hordes of people are in attendance at Victoria's Courthouse June 16th. A contingent of young dancers perform an interpretive piece fully capturing the horrors of shattered paradise. The mood of the trial is more like a family reunion, it having been two and a half years of delays on the part of the Crown and more like six years since a lot of these people have been fighting to be heard.

Victoria Food Not Bombs and the Food Security Initiative is there with vegan soup and dumpster-dived produce under a tree in the park behind the courthouse. There is community at this hearing. Going from a defensive role to an offensive role is a dramatic shift for these people on the defensive their whole lives.

This time, however, it is the poor, the unorthodox, and the non-conformists that are defending the Rule of Law, fighting for order and justice, while the police and the Crown are the anarchists, the nihilists, the criminals endangering our social fabric and threatening the values we all hold dear.

It is a beautiful thing to see: the disenfranchised suddenly finding themselves constitutionalists. Both children and elders are in attendance, and all have been quiet and respectful. There was one guy that didn't want to stand for the judge and was threatened with being banned from the court by a bailiff. One high point was when Karma's 14 month old boy's Bob the Builder doll said "Can we build it? Yes, we can."

The media was not there in numbers. A-Channel filmed the dancers but, as is often the case with them, they didn't broadcast it. Andrew MacLowd, the Tyee's legislative Correspondent, was there. Monday Magazine and Focus magazine also have people there. The Toronto Star broke the story on June 17th in a paper that isn’t available in Victoria except on Saturday. The Star quotes Mayor Lowe as saying that this hearing could impact the whole nation.

Despite the findings of the mayor’s own task force that counted 1,500 homeless, Lowe told the Star that the real number is closer to 300. The correspondent from the University of Victoria student paper The Martlett was in attendance the whole week and was sitting in the space reserved for media by the end of the hearing.

The mainstream media blacked this story out, focusing instead on something about a foot, but it's really no surprise. The trial and the social movement behind it point to some of the most heinous corruption in high levels of business, government, and the media.

Two interesting points did make it into the Times Colonist, although they were distorted. The Walk For Justice of aboriginal elder women marching to Ottawa was reported to have been stopped by police on Blanchard. What they didn’t tell us was that the march was just coming up over the hill towards the court house when the police intercepted them. We could hear the singing and the drums. One lady was assaulted by officers.

Another interesting point that made it into the Times Colonist was that police were using a helicopter that night to search for campers in wooded areas. The Crown wants to show that they have always allowed people to sleep outside, that is only the erecting of shelters that is illegal. Many people have contrary experiences with the police and By-law guys.

The Crown is claiming that natural fauna and bird populations are damaged by the homeless. They claim that there will by more needles and health hazards if the homeless are allowed to shelter themselves. They claim that the court has no business telling the City that it has to adhere to the charter. They claim liberties for the poor will lead to prostitute tents.

The case of the crown, says Charter Challenge Champion Catherine Boise-Parker, hangs by a thread, a string that distinguishes whether a tarp is hung up or not. At the last moment the BC Civil Liberties Association was asked to intervene and evened out the numbers of lawyers on either side, making in their opening statement a point about the hypocrisy of Canada signing UN Human Rights declarations while violating domestic human rights.

One of the stalling points that has made it take so long to get this far has been from a desire to wait for The City Of Victoria Mayor's Task Force on Breaking the Cycle of Mental Illness, Addictions, and Homelessness to make a report. They did make the report and many thousands of dollars and volunteer hours later, the task force found that homeless need homes. 1,500 homeless people were counted in Victoria in 2007, and there are 326 mats or shelter beds available during extreme weather protocol. That number came mostly from the night of January 15th, and everyone admits that much of the homeless refuse to be counted and are impossible to count, some research suggesting as much as 80% of homeless aren't counted.

Boise-Parker, however, argues that not all these underestimations are accidents. Strangely, two related trials have also recently wrapped up. David Arthur Johnston, who is named as an applicant in the Charter Challenge, was recently found guilty in a protest against dozens of signs in the library courtyard forbidding loitering and chattel.

During this trial film-maker Andrew Ainsley allegedly smiled the wrong way at a bailiff who wrestled him to the ground, threw him out, arrested him, and then released him in his underwear. Andrew Ainsley also saw a case dating back two-and-a-half years ago finally finished. Andrew was accused of recklessly endangering police officers when he set up a video camera to film officers assaulting some youths taking food out of a dumpster.

Ainsley has finally completed his feature length film "Love and Fearlessness" concerning the events leading up to this June's Charter Challenge. It is a powerful film in the tradition of "Five Ring Circus" or "Citizen Sam." Everything seemed worth it at one point Thursday when Boise Parker argued that the way things are now is as though we refuse to recognize that the homeless exist, and we tell them that trying to shelter themselves is wrong and that they have to scramble, to hide themselves in the bushes like criminals or animals, rather than quietly and with dignity take care of their own needs. We are putting these people in a position where they must beg or break the law and risk arrest. We feel bad when we see homeless people partly because we wish it wasn’t happening, but maybe we shouldn’t be allowed not to see them.

As the trial wrapped up the mood outside the court house was escalating into ridiculous amounts of signage and people. Billy Bob, Heidi, and Chase all slept in the park outside the court house for the duration of the trial, despite the sprinklers and constant rude awakenings by police.

Billy Bob is named as an applicant in this case from Cridge Park and was instrumental in the whole fight. He also tells of having been severely beaten by police. On the other hand, he says he overdosed on some bad stuff the other week and was told his heart stopped seven times while substance abusers performed CPR and ran for an ambulance. A police officer finally arrived and Billy Bob recalls waking up in the arms of the officer who was rubbing his back and weeping. The ambulance arrived 25 minutes after the officer.

On Saturday June 21st, a number of those that had rallied at the court gathered and marched on the Legislature armed with signs and bags of flower petals. The dancers danced. Police followed us the whole way and finally left at the behest of the Comissionaires.

After the occupation of the Legislature we went for a victory picnic at St Anns Academy where six police showed up and took David Johnston into custody. Seargeant Lahrs claimed that Johnston was in contravention of some kind of court order. This time supporters really rallied. There were more signs than ever, all over the sidewalk. By Monday morning many thousands of people had been informed of David fasting in prison.

His last sentence was seven months so many of us thought that this time the court might really kill him like they killed Harriet Nahanee, but it turned out that there had never been any undertaking anyway and that Lahrs had totally abused his powers to perform an illegal arrest.

When David Johnston was released at 3pm, after 43 hours on top of the 200 days he fasted in custody for this cause, the activists were jubilant. There was a feeling that, with a few more battles like this one, we can turn the tide of this war for the dignity of all humanity.

The street community of Victoria is always changing. Thousands upon thousands of people have taken stands to get us this far. There is a feeling of celebration, but just beneath the jubilation everybody knows that even after Judge Ross of Vancouver gives her ruling, as long as six to eight months from now, the poor will still have less legal rights than the rich.

The racism, the slavery, the inequality will still be there, whether it be against the rights of the poor or the rights of youth, or even the rights of animals, forests, and the Earth itself. Nobody really expects to take down our tyrannical totalitarian system at this hearing, but everyone's hoping with confidence for a piece of truth, for a revelation, for a ray of light.

In Toronto on Saturday June 23rd, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and other activists captured and held a park. Several people were arrested and charged. Police destroyed a tarp in pouring rain while people were sheltering under it. The police then tore up the tarp to the point where it couldn’t be used. At the point at which I’m writing this, the evening of Monday the 25th, the Toronto tent city is still holding on. Camp Canada!