East Hastings Street in Downtown Vancouver is known as a place where people with substance abuse issues gather and reside. I had sort of joked about seeing the 'down and outs' as society would have them branded. Where energy goes, attention flows, and as if by coincidence, we stumbled onto this street. What I saw totally and utterly blew me away. It was such an eye opener. There was simply massive throngs of "street people" milling about.
On the street there are the addicted, dealers, pimps, the homeless crowds, prostitutes, sidewalk vendors and more. Walking by, people were smoking crack and injecting as out in the open. A complete indifference for the "norms" molded into us by society. Imbibing in the open as one could say. Something you would never imagine seeing just a couple blocks away. Generally there is some sort of stigma or shame associated with drug use that is termed illicit and addiction. Something to be done in the shadows, something to hide away from the prying eyes of the everyday passer folk. The fact that there are prison sentences and other deterrents instituted by the war on drugs would generally cause that type of activity to be done in the relative privacy or secrecy of ones choosing, whatever can be afforded. But on East Hastings street, there is no such need for confidentiality. You just do what you gotta do.
Exchanges of money and products, both legal and illegal happen out in the open. There are vendors selling whatever you can imagine, whether it be a DVD player or what have you. Substance use, smoking, injection happens on the street in the public eyes. What hit me the most was also the incredible numbers of people that were present. The massive crowds of people on East Hastings was incredible. While there was of course a "core" to it, it also went on for a couple kilometers in each direction, gradually thinning out.
It wasn't all bad. Someone close to me asked if they thought that these people knew where they were or were simply in some sort of "la-la land" that they didn't know where they were, what they were doing or what sort of condition they were in. While of course there was a few people unconscious, this is typical of the type of thinking that most society has about 'drugged out' people, that they are so far off that they can't even know what their condition is, or they have no feelings. The typical misunderstanding of "drugs." All while of course, being okay with alcohol, the most harming drugs as a whole out of all drugs. I was surprised just how down to earth a lot of these people were, and goes to show if you treat people with respect, you are bound to be treated the same.
I read a book by Dr. Gabor Mate, who deals with the addicted men and women of Vancouvers Downtown East side. I had read some of their stories, and the difficulty that these people have endured in their lives is beyond the comprehension of your average mind. Looked down upon as 'junkies' and rejects of society, the stigma that is placed on these people helps to create a vicious cycle. Drug use is simply viewed as a 'choice' taken by some people, or a defect of morality. People will not recognize that these people are just trying to cope in a life that chewed them up from the start never gave them a chance, and the drugs offer them an escape from a world that treats them as subhuman, although a temporary escape.
Later we happened again to drive by this area, and I sheepishly pointed my camera out the window. After dishonorably snapping a picture... I heard a person on the street alerting others - "Camera! Camera!" After being dropped off, and walking past a few more people, I heard the same exclamation. "Camera! Camera!" I stopped and turned to these people, I asked what the deal is. While understanding what the issue was dealing with cameras, I wanted to know what exactly the 'protocol' or whatever it was. I was told, "Well, we are junkies..." I agreed the sort of tension around photographic equipment was reasonable, given the activities that happen on that street. However, she mentioned that asking would be okay. I realized that my feeling of incapacity to forthright take photos, taking a picture from a moving vehicle was shifty, it was not the correct approach to take. It was simply better to be upfront and ask. This was confirmed later on, speaking to some other people about the issue.. They said they just wanted to be asked if anything. I was told that people would try and smash my camera if I was taking pictures on the sly or without permission. That they used to have golf balls and slingshots for people sniping pictures from their moving vehicles. However, asking, being upfront made it a different matter. It taught me something I already knew - a good reminder. At the core of it, even though these people were dealing with heavy substance addictions and issues, they are still people that need to be treated with respect. They aren't simply some sort of attractions, some sort of sideshow for the public to come and "ooh and ahh" at. Let alone the condescension they face from the public on a daily basis. I was told that 16 years ago, the cops would "simply kick your teeth in, right there on the street for doing dope." I guess this heavy handed act of vigilante justice by police never really got too far, as now, the numbers of addicted people on the street is still great, if not even greater than before. The war on drugs is simply an abject failure, and as a society we need to move on from the stigma that comes with this thinking, that substance abuse is simply a morality gone astray, or a result of wrong "choices." Some of these people were born into this life by default, as a result of neglect and abuse, a case of normal human development gone astray. A reaction to a reaction, programmed in a way that their parents were programmed, all without a choice in the matter. It's the human condition and we need to learn to break this cycle of reactions and heal the division we have, to help lift each other up. In his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate stated that if we really understood the importance of the formative years, up until a child is about 5 or so, as a society we would simply not tolerate child abuse. And certainly most, if not all of these people had some form of abuse. It's time society reformulated it's failed approach to this issue and moved beyond simply tossing more money into prohibition. The war on drugs creates more problems for these people that it seeks to solve, branding them, stigmatizing them and cutting off the possibility of a return to society. Enabling a vicious cycle of neglect and despair.
I didn't have much time on this street, shortly after I was dropped off my ride pulled up and said we had to go. I was a bit miffed because at first I was told to take my time and had really only started off, I had wanted to spend more time getting to know and document the plight and condition and see that at the core, these are still people, no matter what their problems are.
