Poverty Olympics Game: Stretch the Truth

Participants in the Poverty Olympics on Sunday in Vancouver, marched up Hastings St. to Carnegie Center on the Downtown Eastside carrying placards and even an Olympics torch. Inside the Carnegie Center theatre, a packed audience watched an alternative Olympic games. Medals were awarded for such games as: Welfare Hurdles, Bed Bug Broadjump, Buy-athon, and Poverty Line High Jump.

But another game was clearly being played here: Stretch the Truth.

Jean Swanson, representing Raise the Rates and the Carnegie Action Project, told the crowd that one reason the Poverty Olympics had been organized was to draw the world's attention to the fact that: "People in Canada, like people in poorer countries, have to search through garbage for food and things to sell.In Canada. So they can survive."


Swanson deserved a medal, at least a silver. She must have spent years in training to stretch the truth that far.


Nobody in Vancouver needs to go through garbage as a means of survival. Bill Simpson, a homeless man on the Downtown Eastside, says he doesn't get welfare, has no source of income, yet never goes through the garbage. . . .
 
To read the rest of this original article or to see a photo of Swanson speaking at the Poverty Olympics, go to Downtown Eastside Enquirer.