THE KIDNEY HIGHWAY AND US

The Kidney Highway and Us

I read this short story once that curled my toes. It was set in the future where the divide between the rich and the poor had become absolute and a young mother was trying to hide her child from the body parts snatchers. Which in the story was legal. The snatchers had the legal right to take body parts from the poor to sell to the rich. It was like hunting game animals. The story was absurd, but there was an underlying truth that haunted me. Because the rich have been using the bodies of the poor for whatever they needed without pay or adequate pay for eons…for prostitution, slavery, semi-slavery wages, child labour, fodder for the armies of the rich, medical experiments…so how great a stretch is it for rich people to think they have some sort of right to the body parts of the poor when they need them?

I don’t think it’s that big of a stretch. After all, when rich Canadians need nannies they are prone to summon mothers from poor countries whose own children are near starvation. The poverty stricken mothers come to Canada and the US to care for the pampered darlings of the rich while their own children go motherless and uncared for a continent away. This practice is so prevalent that some Pilipino writers are describing the Philippines as a country without mothers. And it’s a practice that will continue as long as poor mothers feel compelled to feed their children even if it means they must leave them. . So if rich people can induce poor mothers to leave their own children in order to send back enough money to feed the kids, why would these rich people have any qualms about buying or effectively stealing kidneys or other body parts from the poor? The fact is, they don’t. That early short story that freaked me has come true. The kidney highway is the very darkest underbelly of corporate capitalism. But I think it also might well contribute to its downfall. Betty Krawczyk

FOR THE LOVE OF THE OLYMPICS?

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF THE OLYMPICS!
Love? Oh, no. It’s actually money. For everybody but us Vancouverites who have to shell out for this huge province wide construction party masquerading as a civic celebration (oh, all right, everybody in the province pays). We’re supposed to do it for love. Do what exactly? Well, let’s just consider the Athlete’s Village.
Okay, so a lot of figures are boring. Even to me. So I’ll keep it simple. There’s a corporation named Millennium Development Corp. They got the nod to build the Athletes’ Village on Southeast False Creek for the Olympics which will include 1100 condos of which 250 will belong to the City after the games. For this privilege Millennium will pay us, the city, 193 million, of which 30 million will be a down payment. These condos are not for the working poor. They will go for between 500,000 and 6 million all of which they plan to pre sell. Millennium will also receive over 82 million for building the units and we will do the site fixing at another 153 million. There are two directors (Shahram and Sharokh Malekyazdi) who hold no board meetings, issue no shares and do not file the required annual financial paper with the provincial Ministry of Finance. They are partnered with Armeco Group of Companies.
Armeco currently has only one director, a lawyer who recently headed the Vancouver NPA party (Paul Barbeau). But where can these corporations, wealthy though they are, get such huge amounts of money? Well, there are two lenders… The Fortress Credit Corporation and guess who?
Well, bust my britches! It’s us! The City of Vancouver! Which means that we, us, yes us, the tax payers of Vancouver will be lending a hunk, or even most (maybe all?) of the start up money to Millennium who is supposed to pay us, for God’s sake. But somehow they have it fixed so that we pay them for borrowing money from us so they can make billions. But if we, Vancouver, have this kind of money to lend out for the already super rich people so they don’t have to use their own money why don’t we do something about the homeless? Or affordable housing? No money for that? Or money in that? Well, back to Millennium and Armeco. These two, along with Gordon Campbell simply take my breath away. Their ability to pull off such a gigantic public robbery in secret takes stealth and cunning the likes of which makes Lord Black look rather amateurish. I think Gordon Campbell, VANOC, Millennium and Fortress along with Paul Barbeau are guilty of conspiracy to defraud the public. I’ll be pouring over my law books. This has got to be against the law. Betty Krawczyk

more on prostitution and 2010

On Jan 29, 2008, at 8:54 PM, BETTY KRAWCZYK wrote:


Dear Esther,
I have heard all of your arguments before. I was a friend of the woman who first started PEERS in Victoria. My daughter also worked with this organization as a researcher, later moving on to work for SAVE THE CHILDREN. Due to her work there she was later commissioned to write a government report on the subject of aboriginal children and youth and the sex trade. I found her report in the Alouette prison library under the title "Sacred Lives" when I was serving time there just recently for blockading at Eagleridge Bluffs. My daughter continues to do research on women in the drug and sex trades and I have a third book coming out soon on this subject myself entitled OPEN LIVING CONFIDENTIAL. I know enough about this subject to impress upon you that I know a con when I am in contact with one, whether in person or through the mail. If I become mayor I promise you this...what you envision as upper scale brothels serviced by beautiful mature women to cater to upper scale men will never happen.
First, because this category is already being filled by call girls. The second category of men with money want very young girls. The younger the better. Well, lower class men do too, but they have a harder time with it. Do you doubt this? Do you really? So children would be drawn into these brothels no matter how much you protest you wouldn't like it. And if you listened to the aboriginal women such as the woman at Aboriginal Women's Action Network you would think twice before you brag that you have the consent of the women on the East Side. They hate you. Well, certainly they oppose your organization veraciously. It might be because your racism surfaces in your casual assumption that you are working for them, too. They know you don't give a tinker's dam about their lives.
And even if you did, it wouldn't matter because your solution is one of managing (to your advantage of course)a pus pocket in society, not to try to eradicate the wound, much as the way Gordon Campbell tries to manage the downtown east side. As mayor I will insist that every child in this city has a decent place to live, decent food, and decent treatment from the adults entrusted to care for them. I will insist that the billions spent on needless waste like the Olympics be spent on affordable housing and educational programs. I will insist that young people work with me to present a challange to all levels of government that university fees be brought down to a reasonable level, and that we all have the physic space to learn about organic gardening, about conserving waste, and considering how to do with less as we reconnect with nature. I will push for the legalization of marijuana which seems to be a rather innocuous herb compared to alcohol as this would curb much of the crime and violence in the city and fund long term drug treatment programs for hard core addicts. I will push for the age of consent to be raised to sixteen at least, and I will work for a society where men and women can come together as equals, not as one in a position of sexual servitude to the other. Yes, there will be much to do as Mayor, much to champion, but consenting to the sexual servitude of children and women will not be one of them. But you say a mayor can't do all of these things I claim? I quote the poet Goethe... "whatever you dream you can do, begin it. Begin it now. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." Betty Krawczyk