In this month’s edition of “From the Archives,” we’re taking a look at Issue 3.13 (Winter 2011): Manifestos Now! Edited by Brian Ganter and Jenny Penberthy, the issue includes prose, poetry, and art that, as Ganter writes in his preface, “fruitfully explore[s] and expose[s] the promises and limitations, the continuing risks, and possible futures of the manifesto.” Nikki Reimer‘s “manifest/later” is a defiant yet grounded critique of the excesses and inequalities of the twenty-first century, her words backgrounded by bleached-out photographs of shipping containers and high-rise apartment buildings. Next, participants in the Humanities 101 Writing Course run by Margot Leigh Butler and offered by the University of British Columbia to residents of the Downtown Eastside/South ask, “What Do Downtown Eastsiders Want?” in their repudiation of gentrification and forced displacement. Finally, artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Webber, whose work “Super Students #1” graces the cover of the issue, bring to life a series of student protests through drawing, photography, and collage. Check out all three works below.

Some Keywords of DTES Displacement & Gentrification, compiled by the Hum Study Group

... City Planning, class, class war, collective action, colonization, Community Benefits Agreements, Community Engagement Mandate, community vision, condo tsunami, conversation or anti-conversion bylaws, criminalization of poverty., crumbs, culture, decision-making process, deliberate neglect of buildings, densification, development permits ,development, direct action, displacement, displacement of sex workers to more dangerous areas, diversity (meaning ‘class’), “Do the poor have a right to live in expensive areas?”, donations to the Mayor...

Our 50th Anniversary “From the Archives” series is headed by Associate Editor Jastej Luddu and supported by a BC Arts Council Early Career Development Grant.