Homeless Blogger Gets Elected

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William “Bill” Simpson, a homeless man in Vancouver who was barred
from the Carnegie Learning Centre for allegedly blogging, won a seat on
the Board of Directors at Carnegie Centre last Thursday evening.

Carnegie is a community Centre operated by City of Vancouver
management staff with input from a Board of Directors elected from the
membership of the Centre. Carnegie doubles as a left wing organizing
base in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood. It publishes the left wing
Carnegie Newsletter, in which editor Paul Taylor has admitted in
writing that he censors submissions not ideologically compatible with
his views. When a blog, The Downtown Eastside Enquirer, deviated from
the party line, it drew fire from Carnegie staff, Board members, and
the Newsletter.

Simpson opened his candidate’s speech at the June 7th Annual General Meeting with, “I am not the blogger.” The crowd laughed.

But laughs don’t get you elected. Votes do. So Simpson brought a
contingent of Carnegie members with him to the meeting. In the days
before the election, Simpson, a tall, blue-eyed man in his mid fifties
with wavy, light brown graying hair which he wears in a short ponytail,
says, “I talked to people and asked them if they’d be willing to come
to the AGM and support me.”

Simpson says he actually does not blog on the Downtown Eastside
Enquirer, but adds, “If I did, I would be proud of it.” These are words
Simpson first spoke late last year to Bob Sarti, a Board member who
waved his finger at Simpson in the corridor outside the Learning Centre
and yelled, “Tattle tale Queen of the Carnegie! Tattle tale Queen of
the Carnegie!” The stress of publishing power in the hands of the
masses appeared to be taking its toll on Sarti, a retired Vancouver Sun
reporter who was organizing the Anarchist Surrealist Jamboree which
took over the Carnegie Centre in Janaury 2007. After decades of left
wing activism, Sarti and fellow Carnegie Board member Margaret “Muggs”
Siguirgson retired to Hornby Island, famous for Dr. Hornby marijuana
plant fertilizer.

But Sarti got in a parting shot at alleged blogger Simpson before
departing at the end of January 2007. He voted along with other Board
members to bar Simpson. In January, Simpson was met at the door of the
Carnegie Learning Centre by teacher Lucy Alderson and escorted to the
office of “Skip”, the Head of Security for Carnegie. There Simpson was
informed that he was barred from the Carnegie Learning Centre for
blogging on the DTES Enquirer blog. In the previous Dec. 15, 2006
edition of the Carnegie Newsletter — a newsletter subsidized by the
City of Vancouver which provides free office space, etc. — Sarti had
been credited with being the “unsung hero” who outed the “blog bozo.”

The Downtown Eastside Enquirer gives a voice to political dissidents
inside Carnegie and on the Downtown Eastside, people who deviate from
the party line of the left wing establishment in the neighbourhood.
Alderson, along with Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, Education and Arts
Co-ordinator Rika Uto, and others had been given low marks on the blog
for too frequently locking students out of the Learning Centre or
evacuating students in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday —
always with the excuse that a volunteer (usually somebody with a known
drinking problem) hadn’t shown up.

For a short time, the blog tracked closures of the Learning Centre
and Computer Room on the 3rd floor of the Carnegie Centre, facilities
which would close despite up to $500,000 worth of management, supervisory, and other staff having offices just meters
away on the same floor. On the coldest
night of the year when Vancouver’s underclass flocked to Carnegie to
keep warm by passing the time watching television or using the
internet, Whitty allowed them to be locked out of the Computer Room
near her office. She took off out the front door of the Centre.

This new accountability-by-blogger has met a hostile reception at
Carnegie which has never dissipated. Just a couple of weeks ago, long term Board member Jeff
Sommers accused Simpson of writing for “that stalker rag” and refused
to talk to him. Sommers was re-elected to the Board along with Simpson
on Thursday evening.

Although Simpson has become a symbol of blogger repression at the
Carnegie Centre, he has not been the only one targeted. Simpson was
barred during what has been termed a ‘witch hunt’ for bloggers in
2006-07.

To read the rest of this original story and to see full election results, go to Downtown Eastside Enquirer.