I think it is fair to say that climate change is now considered the most serious issue facing us all. Given this, I am baffled as to why the City of Vancouver is now planning on further penalizing cyclists who do not wear helmets [“Sullivan bullish on ”˜disorder’”, December 7-14] when the city’s anti-idling bylaw is not on the list of bylaws to be streamlined.

I do wear a bike helmet myself, but there are many well-functioning ?cities in the world where this is not required. Amsterdam comes immediately to mind, a place where cyclists feel safe and cars generally obey the rules of the road. Cyclists not wearing helmets may not be wise, but it hardly affects civil disorder. Idling cars pouring pollution into our community seriously affect us all.

What does this say about our priorities?

> Mary Sherlock / Vancouver

It seems that Mayor Sullivan is a politician who, with his new “Project Civil City”, is “criminalizing homelessness and poverty”.

It also seems clear that with the Olympics on the horizon and poverty on the streets, Vancouver’s mayor and his supporters feel that they must deal with what they see as this unsightly “disorder”. To do this, they have singled out the poor for attack in order to cover up their ideology or their lack of ideas. This tactic is definitely not new.

At the beginning of last century, there were vagrancy laws that made it illegal to be caught on the street without money, especially if you looked poor. During the Depression in the 1930s, it was illegal to ask for money on the street. In fact, if you were single and unemployed, you could be thrown in jail or forced into work camps where you were relieved of your civil rights. Like now, these laws had nothing to do with keeping the streets safe or “orderly”; they were in place and are being proposed today to target certain people who fit a certain description: those who are poor and have been marginalized.

Why do governments, at all levels, run public-relations campaigns to “clean up our streets”? The straightforward answer is they do not want to see the results of their failed economic and social policies walking those streets. The idea is to move people along, run them out of town, so they do not embarrass us or make us feel uncomfortable.

In the case of Mayor Sullivan and his majority on Vancouver city council, they solemnly call their attack on the poor, “Project Civil Society”, even though most of us know that the vast majority of people who are homeless or ask for money on the street are not aggressive or disorderly. They are just poor.

> John Shayler / Vancouver