Live from Gospel Mission

As we mentioned in the previous posting (see previous posting), the TV is now installed in The Lord's Rain and we're ready to start our live closed-circuit feeds so that people with disabilities can take part in our services.

Now ... how to get the word out. It's to be a "soft launch", as we PR types call it. My friends, Viv Garcia and Brad Jacobsen with the BC Paraplegic Association have agreed to help publicize it within the disability community and thus inform those on the Downtown East Side that this is available.

Viv, in fact, is linking this from the BCPA Facebook page, so here are the basic details:

Services at Gospel Mission -- 331 Carrall Street -- are now available to persons with disabilities via closed-circuit TV to The Lord's Rain -- Gospel Mission's showers program at 327 Carrall Street (the ground-floor space below the Mission).

Services are at the following times:
SUNDAY 12:30pm
MONDAY, TUESDAY, FRIDAY & SATURDAY 6:30pm
(meals served after each service)

WEDNESDAY Bible study 6:30pm (no meal, but snack afterwards)
THURSDAY Movie night 6:30pm (no meal, but coffee & popcorn)

As of right now, the plan is to cut off entry at 7pm, so's not to disturb the service, but we'll review that as needed.

=====
Bravo to Daphne Bramham in The Vancouver Sun, for her column on the recent Ontario court ruling effectively legalizing prostitution. She dismisses the blather about rights and individual choice far more effectively than I could, but I look at the once-beautiful women on the DTES, whose bodies have been ravaged by drugs and who continue to sell their bodies to get more money to buy more drugs, and I wonder why anyone would want to make it easier for that to happen.

Daphne also points out that the ruling sends a message to boys and men that it's OK to buy sex. Speaking on my own account, how would they really learn about love and fidelity and the special relationship between a man and a woman if that message is coming loud and clear from legal circles?

=====
Yet another drug bust, headlined in the media with the dollar-value of the amount seized. As I ranted in another post, the media have a nasty habit of glamorizing the drug trade at the same time that they profess shock and outrage. They talk about the value of the drugs and discuss with lascivious glee the lifestyles lived by dealers and "drug lords". Let's get real: no matter how the media try to push the "crime does not pay" message, there are always going to be people reading, watching and listening, who will add "for them", and determine that, for that kind of money, they could do it better and not get caught.

Instead of publicizing the value of the drugs, why not give an estimate of the number of people whose lives were not destroyed because those drugs won't make it to market? How about an estimate of the health care costs that won't be flushed down the toilet in treating the manifold effects of drug abuse, or of the police, ambulance and firefighting costs that will be saved by not having to deal with that many more cases among the street people that the seized drugs would have created?

Perhaps that would make a good little J-school assignment.

What's a headline worth?

The media in Vancouver are all over the story of the seizure of opium buds at Vancouver International Airport. Prominent among the details is the estimated dollar-value of the drugs on the street.

Why must the media report that? (I'll get to the standard, defensive answer that you get from a newsroom shortly.) All that does is let people know that it's possible to make that amount of money dealing drugs, and increase the desirability of that occupation. "Hmm ..." one could say, "if I needed to make a quick twenty grand, that's the way to do it." The fact that the stuff was seized -- i.e. that police at least intercepted the cargo -- only increases the challenge to "do it right next time".

Newsrooms will defend their action by saying that "that's what the police told us in their news release", but does no one in the newsroom run the information that goes out through the "public interest" filter?

I remember, when I was starting out in broadcast journalism, the local RCMP seized a stash of marijuana. Big deal in 1981, but doesn't even merit a second glance on the cops' charge sheet now. Wanting to be cool and get an angle I thought would interest people, I asked what the street value was. "Oh, we don't give that information out," the police officer said. I asked my boss if I should call a friend of mine who was involved with drugs. He said -- to my surprise -- "you don't want to promote that -- it might give someone else the idea."

It made sense.

Now, we fast-forward almost 30 years to see the police giving out the dollar figure (maybe they get a charge out of telling the public how much "business" they've been able to shut down) and the media dutifully parrotting it. (And I know the media can be selective, as I've found in my own dealings with them as a public information officer, with the number of times certain extenuating details are ignored -- and others are misreported.)

Worse, just over a year ago, there was a high-profile trial of a drug gang member, and the daily fishwraps showed a front-page photo of the accused's brother -- not exactly an angel, in his own right -- arriving in court, looking like something off the cover of GQ. A stunning (unidentified) young woman was at his side.

And it's clear, watching from Gospel Mission, which is right in the teeth of the worst alley in Vancouver, that a lot of young men are buying into that image. Good-looking, clean-cut young men, wearing hoodies, talking on cell phones and not really doing much -- although they do tend to vanish just ahead of the police, rather like salmon when an orca comes through.

Aren't we supposed to be discouraging young people from going into lives of crime -- in particular, dealing drugs and muscling into gangs? Don't we shake our heads in disbelief and disgust at the scene on the Downtown East Side, which is the fruit of that labour? Why, then, do the media insist on glamorizing the industry by reporting on "value" of a seizure and material wealth acquired by dealers.

Don't reporters understand the impact? It may be a grabbing headline one day: but it could lead someone to a life-changing -- and life-destroying decision.