The 2010 Winter Olympics has escalated the homelessness crisis in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the Greater Vancouver area. Since the Olympic bid, homelessness has nearly tripled in the GVRD, while real estate and condominium development in the Downtown Eastside is outpacing social housing by a rate of 3:1. Meanwhile, a heightened police presence has further criminalized those living in extreme material poverty in the poorest postal code in Canada.

Less than a week away from the gongshow that will be the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Chris ‘Okibi’ will be in the midst of the protests, hopefully bringing back some valuable footage and insights. For more information on Olympic resistance checkout the No 2010 website.

As I type this, leaders from the biggest industrialized nations are meeting in Copenhagen to discuss a possible treaty to diminish worldwide carbon emissions. As reported last month, it is already known that no deal will be reached during these talks. Many scientists say time is running out and others say it’s too late. Meanwhile in Canada, the forces of capitalism and industry are moving full force to extract the last bits of oil from the Alberta tar sands. The insanity of this project perfectly exemplifies Premise 10 from Derrick …

The EyeWriter project is an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people who are suffering from ALS with creative technologies. It is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes.

Stimulator aka Franklin Lopez serves up his own take on Black Friday, while critiquing Adbuster Magazine’s Buy Nothing Day, and presenting his own alternative, Steal Something Day. With poetic, anarchic words from Crimethinc, and Lopez’s cut-and-paste editing, Why I Love Shoplifting from Big Corporations makes for a nice short.

Hip-hop artist, Cody the Catch, and two others were assaulted by Calgary Transit police while shooting a video on a station platform. The incident was caught on film. Cody faces a number of serious charges, but many Calgary citizens are banding together in resisting police brutality. Please share this video.

Kyle of Coast Media Collective recently came across our Video of the Week this week entitled Pigeon Pilfer, and managed to snag an e-mail interview with the creator Michael Stevenson. This is the first interview we have done with Michael but we are pretty sure it won’t be the last. As you can see he has done some great work already, and we at Coast Media Collective are looking forward to seeing more projects from him as time goes on. He has some great talent and we will definitely be keeping our eyes on him.

Pigeon Pilfer is Michael Stevenson’s stop-motion animated student film from San Francisco State University. It was completed in four months with sixty pounds of clay, a digital SLR camera, and one tiny hot room.