feminisms

feral feminismsComplicities, Connections, & Struggles:Critical Transnational Feminist Analysisof Settler Colonialismissue 4 . summer 2015The Right to Remain: Reading and Resisting Dispossession inVancouver’s Downtown Eastside with Participatory Art-MakingAaron Franks, Andy Mori, Ali Lohan, Jeff Masuda, andthe Right to Remain Community Fair TeamAll photographs by Trevor WidemanThe Right to Remain Community Fair Team are coordinator Ali Lohan andcommunity peer arts facilitators Quin Martins, Andy Mori, Herb Varley,and Karen Ward. The RRCF is the arts phase of the three-year “RevitalizingJapantown?: A unifying exploration of Human Rights, Branding andPlace in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside” community research project,in partnership with Gallery Gachet, the Greater Vancouver JapaneseCanadian Citizen’s Association, the Nikkei National Museum and CulturalCentre, PACE, the Potluck Café Society, the Powell Street Festival Society,the Strathcona Business Improvement Association, and the VancouverJapanese Language School and Japanese Hall.Powell Street Festival/Oppenheimer ParkTent City Postcard Project, August 2014Reflection, in response to Nishant15 November, 2014Dear Nishant,Thank you for your interest in theRight to Remain Community Fair(the RRCF) currently taking place inOccupied Coast Salish Territories.We are glad you enjoyed our work atthe Powell Street Festival in August(http://www.powellstreetfestival.com). As neighbourhoodartists with the RRCF we arecontributing to the research project“Revitalizing Japantown?” (www.revitalizingjapantown.com) througha peer-led series of participatory artsworkshops for and by DTES residentsand allies. One element is thatlabeling neighbourhoods can be a wayof gentrifying them. Maybe there is aneed for “counterlabels”? Maybe, ifmarketable new “lifestyle” names like“JapaGasRailtown” (http://twitter.com/cuchilloyvr) are commodifyingFront of Postcards: (1) from Powell Street Festival goers to theOppenheimer Park Tent City campers: Asahi Men’s BaseballTeam, Paueru gai, Vancouver; (2) from Oppenheimer Park TentCity campers to the Powell Street Festival goers: Tent City,Oppenheimer Park, Vancouver, August, 2014The Right to Remain Community Fair:Participatory Art as Research in TheDowntown Eastside“Revitalizing Japantown?: Aunifying exploration of HumanRights, Branding and Place inVancouver’s Downtown Eastside”(www.revitalizingjapantown.ca) isa three-year community researchproject funded by the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Councilof Canada that links the currentrapid gentrification via capitalistaccumulation in the DowntownEastside of Vancouver to priorcolonial appropriations from FirstNations, Japanese, other racializedresidents, as well mental-healthsystem survivors and low-incomepeople.From June 2014 throughJanuary 2015, we are working withGallery Gachet (http://gachet.org),the Nikkei National Museum andCultural Centre (NNM) (http://centre.nikkeiplace.org) and sixother partners to engage lowincomeresidents in a Right toRemain Community Fair (RRCF) in43