Housing activists took to the streets again today in downtown Vancouver. Their objective was to surround the LiveCity Downtown Olympic celebration site with a wrap of red banners and to then allow the public to paint their own messages to the Canadian government. According to their Facebook event page they used “142 red tarps and 1700 feet of messaging calling for an end to homelessness in this country”.

Some of the banners were staged as blank canvasses for others to voice their own messages.

Under an agreement with the Vancouver Police, at approximately 3 pm the entrance to LiveCity was peacefully blocked for 60 seconds.

After the unveiling of a 45-foot banner under the Cambie Bridge this morning, a rally was held at noon at Pigeon Park in Vancouver to draw attention to the rampant homelessness of the Downtown Eastside.

A few hundred people marched down Hastings and around the block before taking over an empty lot nearby where they started pitching red tents. The group said they plan to continue putting up red tents on vacant lots downtown to bring as much attention as possible to their cause. Up to 24 people will live in the first tent village around the clock while the 2010 Olympics are in town.

The gathering was peaceful and non-eventful compared to Saturday’s violent Olympic protests on Georgia Street.

The site of the first red tent village, put up by an autonomous Downtown Eastside coalition, is in the shadow of the gentrified and re-opened Woodwards building. The lot, at 58 West Hastings Street, is currently owned by Concord Pacific.

A large banner was unfurled from the Cambie Bridge today in Vancouver demanding “Homes For All”. The sign was put up by the group sponsoring the Olympic Tent Village whose slogan is “No More Empty Talk, No More Empty Lots”. The group is putting on a press conference at noon in Pigeon Park to announce their village of red tents that will be used to draw attention to the plight of the homeless on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The Cambie Bridge and the banner overlook the Athlete’s Village, which will be turned into market-rate condos after the Olympics but is also slated to contain a few hundred subsidized units for lower-income renters.

[UPDATE, 8:50 AM] That was incredibly short-lived. In the time it took for me to upload the photos and make this post (about 30 minutes), the banner and the tents flanking it have been removed.

[UPDATE, 9:50 AM] According to this press release about the banner drop, the RCMP and ISU agreed to allow the banner to hang. Maybe the agreement was that they would allow them to release it but then it would immediately be removed? And here is the main site for the Red Tent Organization.

[UPDATE 10:00 AM] I spoke with Red Tent Media Coordinator, Am Johal, on the phone who confirmed that the banner was allowed to be hung for a pre-arranged period (20 minutes) as a media event to kick-start the Red Tent campaign.

A few of the organizers assisted in the placement from the seawall below.

An anti-Olympics protest called the 2010 Heart Attack turned violent today in Vancouver as black-masked marchers clashed with over 200 police.

The protest started calmly at Terminal Station on Main street. The entire block was surrounded by police on bikes and in cars, both marked and unmarked.

Bike patrols accompanied the protesters down Main street and soon blocked traffic for the march.

The vandalism began with local newspaper boxes and this VANOC-marked vehicle.

The protest headed down Georgia street and left a wake of overturned newspaper boxes and traffic barriers.

A ladder was stolen from London Drugs.

The first windows were broken at the Hudson Bay Company.

The TD Bank on Georgia street was hit.

A VANOC-marked vehicle was told to quickly turn around as the marchers approach. The passenger continued to take photos.

A line of police on bicycles was positioned on Georgia street and Thurlow avenue but quickly fell back to their reinforced stand at Georgia and Denman.

The first clash between protesters and police.

The real violence erupted at the police stand on Denman.

Some sources say over a dozen arrests were made. The march regrouped briefly on Robson street but the violent aspect had either been quelled or removed from the scene.

The Poverty Olympics torch, made from a toilet plunger and plastic bag.

The same group responsible for this morning’s torch relay disruption in Vancouver staged their first major protest of the 2010 Olympic Games this afternoon downtown. Starting in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the crowd of one to two-thousand people marched slowly to B.C. Place before facing a tense stand-off with police that lasted over an hour.

The protesters and the police were at an impasse as the rest of the Olympics crowd filed into B.C. Place for the Opening Ceremonies behind them. There were a few brief skirmishes and push-backs between the two groups but no major violence erupted and the protest groups dispersed willingly around 7:15 pm. Vancouver Police said two officers were injured with flying objects and one was sent to hospital with a shoulder injury. One protestor was taken into custody, facing a charge of assault.

One to two-thousand protesters gathered downtown at the Vancouver Art Gallery to stage the largest yet of the Vancouver 2010 Anti-Olympic protests.

Vancouver Police watch as the protest moves slowly down Georgia street.

Lines of police in front of B.C. Place and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games Opening Ceremonies are flanked by a row of mounted police on horseback.

The protesters face off with police in a stand-off that eventually ended with the crowd dispersing.

Pro-Olympics supporters wave Canadian flags in front of the torch processional being stopped on Hastings street by anti-Olympics protesters.

The 2010 Welcoming Committee‘s protest and disruption of the Olympic Torch Relay in Vancouver stopped the torch in its tracks for over 10 minutes this morning at 9:20 am at Hastings Street and Cambie. The protest seemed to encompass a wide range of anti- slogans including anti-racism, anti-tar-fields, and of course, anti-Olympics. A few also came out that were pro-Marc-Emery and openly demonstrated their particular form activism in front of the Vancouver Police.

After 10 to 15 minutes of tense stoppage and a close range face-off between protesters and police, someone made a decision to re-route the torch relay back on to Pender street and then back to its planned route. The Olympic torch runner has probably never run so quick as they did rounding the corner to get off of Hastings. Police then moved in on horseback to disperse the crowd.

Protesters gather at Hastings and Cambie a few minutes before the torch arrives.

2010 Welcoming Committee organizer, Lauren Gill.

Protesters start to blockade Hastings street.

The Mounted Police force moves in for crowd dispersal as the Coca-Cola torch trucks wait behind.

The torch is diverted from its planned route back on to Pender street.

The Poverty Olympics Torch Relay culminated today in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Torchbearers Lucie and Richard completed the final leg of the The Poverty Olympics Torch Relay.

From the Poverty Olympics website:

Glen spends most of his days moving through the city and its trash.

He isn’t homeless but he spends most of his day binning — searching the city’s garbage cans, trash bins, and recycling receptacles for items he can turn in for a few nickels each. We laughed for a few minutes about the spectacle of what is happening around us downtown. He didn’t have many complaints other than the added distance he has to travel to get to his normal route. Today, he said, was a bonanza day for recycling. He said he was watched quite a bit by the (now much larger) police force but most of those giving him a second look weren’t the local cops but part of the additional units brought in from out-of-town.

With the bill for the Olympics rising to over $6 billion, many are questioning the debt's long term effects.

And this is “No on 2010“. An impromptu press conference was held today by Chris Shaw and other organizers of the No on 2010 movement. They met with media to discuss the upcoming plans for protests around the city and to present a few of the Downtown Eastside’s residents’ stories of how additional police oppression has been the norm since the 2010 Olympics celebrations began.

Chris Shaw speaks to reporters about the plans for upcoming protests.

The No on 2010 rally in Pigeon Park, Vancouver.