CARNEGIE

CARNEGIE Carnegie didn’t just happen along like some flower girl in the beer parlours smiling & selling teddy bears. Years of hard work went into forcing political dragons to give up dreaming about businessmen’s clubs & parking lots. Years of hard work – to turn this stone building into something like sunrise. Day by day – year by year Making it happen down here. I don’t know how many people come & go, or how many hours Volunteers work to get things done, or who’s responsible for what, because my mind doesn’t work that way . But we all take care of business more or less; sooner or later we all join hands. Day by day – year by year Making it happen down here. A centre like this is Something that holds the outside together; a circle of safety. a point of communication for anyone – everyone – young or old, smart or dumb, clean or dirty, sane or crazy. Where else could lifetimes like these get lived together? Even when it’s only sharing tobacco or spare change on the second floor… reading the newspaper on the first floor… playing a guitar on the third floor, in the theatre, on the stairway… Learning to listen To see each other To remember the names & faces of real people in a real neighbourhood. Day by day – year by year. No place can be heavier than here No place can be lighter At the centre of Vancouver’s basement community the street signs, bars & boring hotel corridors almost disappear. Even the cops have to be polite when they come in here. People agree to respect one another but that doesn’t stop them from speaking their minds. Maybe you’d be surprised…. what’s on people’s minds these days – the newspapers couldn’t print it, couldn’t even tell the whole story. There’s no other community centre where you’re waiting to get in off the streets as soon as the door opens every day. No other community centre to something like the Downtown Eastside. No other community building a spaceship like Carnegie – full of black sheep, aliens in a neighbourhood of aliens, a family of aliens learning to trust one another, to remember who we are -who we always were – at the heart of a community. The experiences of just opening the door for every new person who walks in off the street with a trust in sober survival. Survival of social disaster Survival of personal tragedy Survival of changes like Expo & restraint Survival of urban development where they try to wipe out your personal history & replace it with an answering service. We are the people – day by day year by year – we are the people making it happen down here. Remembering to keep the traditions of street survival alive; the traditions of down-to-earth characters, like the reality of everyone who walks through the door, everyone who knows they’re sharing something real in an unreal world. You want to build a new world that will fire the imagination & free the hearts of your children? Build it around something solid, something real, like the Carnegie Centre, like the Learning Centre, like waking up with steady hands – with coffee & communication in the Cabaret on Tuesdays, with politics & paint & woodwork in the basement, music & technical skills, reading and writing on the top floor – with healing encounters, fascinating characters crazy contrasts – growing strong for survival. Stronger than the welfare freeze Stronger than booze Stronger than the rent increase Stronger than the street front with commercial claws. At the Centre we’re building an alternative to living alone At the Centre we’re making a success out of failure. Day by day – year by year Growing up all over again Making it happen down here. From the ashes of yesterday’s tragedy burning in the streets – Climbing out of the dark, the loser’s soul reaching for something that’s so close it’s already getting true. Day by day –year by year. Everyone says something’s happening down here Everyone’s got their own idea about what’s happening too. But Carnegie’s got some kind of magic with people… Making it happen, Day by day – year by year Making it happen down here. Tora, 1/3/87