Occupy Vancouver protesters will have to go: mayor
Posted October 24, 2011 3:11 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Vancouver’s mayor has stopped short of issuing an ultimatum, but Gregor Robertson says he is ramping up efforts to negotiate with protesters camped out at the Art Gallery.
The mayor had said the protesters could stay as long as they remained peaceful, but Robertson now says city staff and police are trying to start a dialogue around ending the ten-day-old protest.
“There’s no certainty around an end date right now, it’s really ensuring that we’re on a path to resolving this and I want to see it resolved peacefully,” he says.
He says other groups want to use the space in the coming weeks for holiday displays and other events, and “frankly it’s public space that needs to be respected as that.”
He says other cities have tried forcing an end to Occupy protests.
“We don’t want the kind of chaos we’ve seen in many other cities who have gone in with mass arrests and created real chaos, that’s not the kind of ending we want here. We want it to be peaceful.”
Robertson says police and city staff have been checking in with protesters every day trying to negotiate a peaceful end.
Protesters have heard what the mayor said. Nobody speaks for the group, but some protesters, like Eagle, say they’re willing to listen.
“I would be willing to hear out a proposal and communicate that intelligently without hostility, with only love, intelligence and kindness,” he says.
Occupy Vancouver will be holding a General Assembly at 7 p.m. tonight. The mayor’s request that the camp leave the Art Gallery is expected to be discussed.
The city has spent about $500,000 on policing and other costs since the protest started.
