Every few months on my personal Instagram, as the seasons change, I share a photo of the vines attached to Creekside Community Centre in my neighbourhood of Southeast False Creek, the Olympic Village for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. I posted this photo with a thank you note and some thoughts attached, which I'm reposting here and expanding on because your City is doing something really, really awesome, and its something you can help with.
So first, a thank you to Bob Rennie and Peter Wall for collectively donating $50,000 to the initial effort to send BC's first openly gay politician (Vancouver City Councillor Tim Stevenson) to Sochi 2014 in place of our mayor. You might know Bob and Peter as a real estate marketer and a developer but they're also philanthropist gentlemen and without that donation that they chipped in we might not be sending a message to Russia and the world about the importance of human rights.
A motion passed at council today whereby the City is paying for Tim's travel costs to go to Russia during the Sochi 2014 Games and to speak with the IOC advocating that sexual orientation be included in their rights charter for the countries that they work with, and that Pride Houses be established in each of the host cities during the Games. Pride Houses were first established in Vancouver and Whistler in 2010, then London picked them up in 2012, and Rio is also working on one for their 2016 Games. Russia won't have one in Sochi as their government is run be cavemen and has essentially made being gay illegal, and Councillor Raymond Louie likened Tim's brave move of advocating for one in Sochi to "Walking into the bear's mouth and pulling on its tonsils".
Instead of Mayor Gregor attending Sochi 2014, your City is sending a message to Russia with Tim that human rights are important.
Going along with Tim, with help from the community, is a delegation of two other folks who will be crucial in him delivering his message. The first is Maureen Douglas who worked with VANOC as their director of community relations for 8 years and who knows the IOC better than most. She's going to be the project manager, coordinating meetings and making sure the team is walking in prepared for the discussions they'll be having. The third person is Dean Nelson who actually founded the Pride House movement. He'll be able to speak on the impact it's had and of the benefit of including policies that don't exclude the LGBT community in future Olympics.
I mentioned a large donation a couple paragraphs back but you don't need to have tens of thousands of charitable bucks at your disposal to help make this happen. Your tax dollars will be paying for Councillor Stevenson's travel but his delegation is being funded entirely by the community. In fact, Tim accepted a random cash donation of $10 on the street recently, and you can find out how to pitch in RIGHT HERE.
Lastly, a thought I'd like to share is that despite Russia's policies being neanderthal I'm still really looking forward to watching the 2014 Olympics on TV and cheering for our athletes. We shouldn't let anything affect our enthusiasm and pride for Canada and our team competing with the world. Let's deliver some rainbows and bring back some gold in Sochi!
