Promoting justice and community in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

During my time at Regent College in July, I was able to see many of the sites around Vancouver. This included spending a little time in the eastside of the city. Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood is known across Canada for its extreme poverty, homelessness and an open drug culture.

On a Sunday a friend invited me to join her at her a church on the eastside, just outside of the downtown, Grandview Calvary Baptist Church. I planned to meet her there, taking a bus from the west end of downtown through the Downtown Eastside. In a matter of just two blocks, the view outside the bus window changed dramatically. From idyllic buildings and streets with souvenir shops of Gastown, the scene changed to old, broken down buildings, boarded up windows and dozens of people lining up at soup kitchen and emergency shelter facilities.

It was definitely an eye opening experience, and a stark contrast to the rest of the downtown. It didn’t even feel like the same city. Where two blocks ago tourists were taking in the scenes of one of Vancouver’s oldest and nicest neighbourhoods, the prevalence of high levels poverty within the Downtown Eastside was undeniable.

Passing through the downtown, the bus arrived at the church a few minutes later. The sense of community at Grandview Calvary Baptist was evident right away, emphasizing the need to build community within the congregation and in the surrounding neighbourhood.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see an advertisement in the bulletin for Streams of Justice meetings at the church. Streams of Justice was started by Dave Diewert and serves as an advocacy, policy and care organization for the residents of the eastside. A former full-time professor at Regent College, Diewert, who was so moved by the level of poverty and disparity within the Downtown Eastside, greatly reduced his hours at Regent in order to work in this part of Vancouver. I had heard about this movement, but didn’t realize that this was the church where they met!

When not on the Regent campus, Diewert and the Streams of Justice team spend their time campaigning for justice on the eastside, and developing relationships and community on this end of the city. But even Diewert’s work at Regent involves the Downtown Eastside. This summer Diewert was teaching a class that was held in different parts of the Downtown Eastside. The class, Solidarity, Resistance, Liberation: The Way of God in the World, was designed to expose students to the issues in this neighbourhood and re-enforce God’s call to promote justice in our communities and care for the oppressed and struggling. After the service at Grandview I met several students from Diewert’s class, many deciding to move to the east end of the city to be closer to the work in the downtown core.

My brief encounter with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside illustrated more clearly the urgent need for action to fight poverty and care for people in need. The work of Diewert and others in this neighbourhood is encouraging, and illustrates the call of God to love and support the downtrodden.