Carnegie Newsletter Funding Crisis

Yesterday I learned that the newsletter has lost its funding. The newsletter is a vital communication device for residents of the Downtown Eastside. Aside from its role as a message board for info about health and safety services the newsletter also functions as a town square for a population that does not have the same access to telephones, computers or postal addresses other communities do.

For years the newsletter has published opinion pieces and creative writing by some of the city’s finest writers and activists and earned a reputation as an archive of DTES history. Right now the newsletter has enough funding to publish two more issues.

Below is a notice written by Paul Taylor, who publishes the Carnegie Newsletter. I’m hoping that you may be able to help either by raising the call, raising funds or in some other way.

Please feel free to contact Paul. Here is his piece:

The Carnegie Newsletter, a vital communication device for the Downtown Eastside, has lost funding and will publish only two more partial-length newsletters. The newsletter has been published twice a month (with rare exceptions), 23 times a year since August 15, 1986. It started with 12 pages in 60 copies, the first issue being run off on an old photocopier at Carnegie Community Centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It had been typed up and laid out in a basement storage room, converted to an “office.”

The years between then and now have seen the Carnegie Newsletter grow to 1200 copies per issue, and into a 16-28 page forum for our voices on matters of poverty, housing & homelessness, violence against women, the drug trade, sex trade, “free” trade, gentrification and more.

Everything except the actual printing – writing articles, poetry, locally created graphic art, input, editing, layout, collation/stapling/folding and distribution is and has always been done by people volunteering. The money to pay for printing the Newsletter has come, mostly at first then completely for the last several years, from funds raised through gaming – specifically the license the Carnegie Community Centre Association (CCCA) has to benefit from Bingo revenues and, over the last decade or so, casino revenues for charities.

For over two decades the Carnegie Newsletter has ‘qualified’ for gaming funds. It’s still remote and dark as to why but someone or something somewhere in the bowels of the Gaming Commission caused the CCCA’s application for the Newsletter funding to be rejected. The written reason points to their redefinition of the parameters and the conclusion that “The Carnegie Newsletter is not a P-R-O-G-R-A-M.” The staff people here are appealing this decision, making a benign but (hopefully) convincing argument in favour of reversing or overturning it.  Either way, it will take several months to go through whatever processes are in place to vet our appeal. Right now, and retroactive to January 1, 2012, gaming funds cannot be spent on the Carnegie Newsletter.

The cost for the Newsletter operation is $900 – $1000 a month. This includes printing, office supplies and some postage; the cost of Volunteer tickets (each worth 50c at the 2nd-floor concession, two per hour, given for time and submissions) is between $50 & $75 a month.

It cannot deteriorate into panhandling to pay for ‘the next issue’: it’s been a solidly reliable publication for its entire existence, always coming out on time. The Carnegie Newsletter is a vital and necessary aspect of this community, and your help is really needed.

Donations are tax-deductible and can be accredited in print, if there’s no objection. Make any cheques or money orders or ‘who to’ for your carrier pigeon to The Carnegie Newsletter, 401 Main St., Vancouver, V6A 2T7. If you are more technologically sophisticated, call 604-665-3315 and talk with Deleine, Administrative Assistant for the Carnegie Centre.

As matters stand right now there will be an edition on March 1 and April 1 of just three sheets – 12 pages – each. If anyone reading this has ideas on how to secure annual funding, please call Paul Taylor at 604-665-2289. This is just the beginning.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Taylor, Volunteer editor since 1986.