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July 12, 2002: City Hall Bylaw Task Force has refused to provide the # of hours consumed on this bylaw. We are conservatively estimating the total cost at $250, 000, since spring 2000. Nice use of public funds. Do you want your tax money wasted on 'stopping people from dancing'??? July 9, 2002: We just learned that the council meeting planned for July 17, 2002 has been postponed until September. This is apparently because they do not have the proposed amendments ready yet (it's been two years of waiting already). This whole process is loaded against the dance community. We have to take time off work to attend council meetings and that is a hardship for many of us. Please write your alderman and let them know we would like our right to dance returned to us. See the links in the left menu. July 5, 2002: There is a meeting before the Police and Protective Services sub-committee on July 17, 2002. This committee will then make recommendations to City Council. We plan to present at this meeting. Jun 09/02: The meeting with the Police/Fire/EMS/Bylaw people was not overly productive. We certainly learned something about the personalities involved and their attitude toward the dance community though. The Police and Bylaw people are the worst of the lot. They are inflexible and not interested in working out a reasonable solution. They seem dead set on their own agenda. We have to put a stop to this non-sense. May 30/02: June 6, 5pm-7pm Fort Calgary: Meeting with city re. bylaw 34M2000. This will be interesting. Please show up and just support the speakers. There has not been a meeting like this for over a year. May 29/02: We just got AADAC to finally remove the bogus references to raves on their website. This has taken over 4 months to finally get done. PHEW! Just in time!!! The next website we need changed is Calgary EMS's bogus site about 'club drugs / rave drugs'. May 20/02: Thanks to everyone that came out and showed support at the open house meetings. They were *really* shocked to see the people that came out. The City was totally not expecting that at all! Good Job everyone!!! The Rave Survey the City is passing around is an great example of how to manipulate peoples answers in your favour. May 9/2002: The City is trying to slip in a fake 'public consultation' next week so they can say we "Consulted the public, but no one showed". read up on it: http://www.gov.calgary.ab.ca/community_standards/whats_new/ideas_fair.html We encourgae everyone to show up at these meetings and cheer, clap, booo & hisss when appropriate. May 13: Village Square Leisure Centre, 2623 - 56 Street N.E. (Foyer) May 14: Lake Bonavista Community Association, 1401 Acadia Drive SE (2nd. Floor Lounge) May 15: Triwood Community Association, 2244 Chicoutimi Drive NW (Main Hall) May 16: Fort Calgary Historic Park, 790 - 9th Avenue SE (2nd. Floor) - all open houses take place from 5 - 8:30 p.m. with presentations at 6:15 and 7:30 p.m Apr 28/2002: Did you see that bogus survey the city had people fill out at Connected? The entire survey is to make the city look good in their mean spirited anti-rave bylaw. The questions were loaded. They will attempt to use this data as proof the bylaw is working and necessary. Apr 27/2002: We are out collecting e-mail addys tonight at Connected in support of fighting the bylaw. Find us and say hello. [Collected another 200 contacts. Thanks to everyone that came by and said hello. ] Apr 25/2002: We still do not know what the city is up to, but we believe they are going to attempt to ban all events from residential areas, that means community halls, churches, etc.. These are great nice clean places to hold events in too. They also intend to close any loopholes that allowed us to have events on holidays without payingexorbitant legalized extortion fees to do so. This will be a great loss. We are planning a LARGE rally at Olympic Plaza/City Hall in June 2002 sometime. Details to follow. Get on our mailing list to find out when. Apr 02/2002: The City has indicated it intends to amend the bylaw this June. It has become clear they wish to effectively BAN certain events. Specifically, the under 250 people parties that we have been barely surviving on. They are not willing to let us know what they have planned yet. Please stay tuned and get on our mailing list!!! Mar 03/2002: The first licensed event of the year took place without incident. 1 every 60 days so far this year, thanks to the bylaw. Imagin the same restrictions on Rock concerts, 1 rock concert every 60 days ??? Feb 13/2002: Expect a legal dissection of the bylaw soon. This will be very helpful for dealing with the media and Alderman. This will be a version that everyone can understand and use. Feb 12/2002: Plans are being made to organize strong political pressure on City Hall. Make sure you e-mail us to get involved. Feb 1/2002: The City asked for a 'Stay' of proceedings in the court case with Rollerland on Bylaw 34M2000. They did this because they know they are going to lose and the Bylaw ruled invalid on The Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This basically halts the City's case until they proceed further or 12 months elapses, after which time the courts throw it out. Rollerland is not pleased as they have already spent $30-50,000 in legal fees. This is not fair to Rollerland because the Judge did not get to hear arguments concerning the validity of Bylaw 34M2000. Nor is it fair to the taxpayers who expect their taxes to be used in a timely and cost effective manner. The City is playing legal games to avoid having the Bylaw thrown out. NOT FAIR!!! Put your money where your mouth is!!! Jan 15/2002: We just heard that the POWER HUNGRY City License Department had their feelings hurt re. Dec 31 events that took place with out a permit, despite the fact the bylaw stated Holiday Parties were exempt. Apparently they won't approve any Rave applications now. They should not have these type of arbitrary powers. Grow up guys! You know the Bylaw is a farse, fix it because it ain't working! Jan 13/2002: The City Licensing is threatening event organizers now. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Play fair boys! If we follow the bylaw, why can't you? Read the Calgary Sun article out today. Jan 1/2002: Calgary EMS is reporting to the news media all rave/dance related ambulance trips to scare the general public. Dancers and Ravers are responding by not using EMS for fear of their privacy being violated. EMS has also reported many such cases incorrectly -- see the Calgary Sun April 2, 2001. EMS needs to rethink it's scare tactic strategy -- it will do more harm if people are afraid to call or use EMS. Jan 1/2002: Happy & Safe New Year! There were a lot of bylaw exempt holiday dances. City Hall didn't seem impressed by the fact that we actually read the bylaw and discovered that we didn't need Police to baby sit us on Holiday Parties. Global News reported their own version of a drug overdose without bothering to find out the real facts. Dec 31, 2001: Event Organizers are tired of The Calgary Police Service extorting money from them in order to let planned events proceed. Tonight sees the first larger scale events (500 people +) proceed without a bylaw permit and unnecessary Police presence. HOORAY!!!! Dec 4/2001: Stay tuned. There are lots of special events being planned this month and in the new year. We might even see the current bylaw thrown out in January. This will force a new bylaw to be written and you can guarantee we won't let Calgary City Council railroad us this time!!! Dec 2, 2001: Calgary City Police admit to the Calgary Herald that if their current drug detail unit (18 officers) tripled in size, they could not even make a dent in the MDMA (Ecstasy) market. Since the number of Raves are down to 1/4 the numbers of pre-bylaw events -- it is clearly obvious there is no relationship between the growing Ecstasy use in Calgary and Raves. City Council and The Calgary Police Service put this bylaw together because they thought that they could control the proliferation of drugs by controlling dances and raves. Will they finally accept that the two issues are mutually exclusive??? Calgary Police Detective Steve Walton states to the Calgary Herald that the music at raves is between 250-350 beats per minute and that it is specifically designed to enhance a drug users high. This is completely false. Your average dance song is 125 BPM (Beats per minute), if you are doing high intensity aerobics, you might be able to take 160 BPM for a short while. This man does not know what he is talking about. Nov 17, 2001: One Event Promoter goes before City Council to request 2 PDO's instead of 4 PDO's at his event. City Council refuses citing items such as the recent Sep 11 terrorist attacks. This is exactly what terrorists strive for, people wasting money and living in fear. City Hall manages to extort another $1188.00 from the Event Promoter so another two off duty officers can drink coffee all night. Nov 1, 2001: Nightclub staff across Calgary are have been ordered by Management to keep quiet about the bylaw in order to avoid and Police repercussions. We may live in a democratic society, but the Calgary Police have been given too much power. Oct 18/2001: The Election is over. There are a few new alderman who said they do not agree with the bylaw. We hope they keep their word. Oct 15/2001: Voting Day. Oct 12/2001: There have been a few people asking who do they vote for. In some wards it's obvious, others it's too hard to call. You want to make sure your vote will be for someone who will actualy win, not a 'fringe' candidate. As it stands, Ray Clark and Richard Magnus for the mayors seat. Which one will depend on how well they do in the polls in the next few days. Bronconier and Longstaff are refusing comment which means they have an alternate agenda and do not respect our vote. We will try to pick a mayoralty candidate to vote for on Sunday. Oct 10/2001: Given a few interviews to various papers: Uof C Guantlet, The Straight, Fast Forward, Herald, Sait Weal. Also have heard from a few more candidates. The Herald said they were going to include this as an election issue (not sure of that). Better than hearing about that boring old Enmax and traffic issues over and over again (like we had to even mention that ?). Oct 5/2001: Finally heard from Richard Magnus (for Mayor). He was actually at Woodstock. He is the first of the main candidates for mayor to return a call. That says something at least! Oct 4/2001: Good article in Fast Forward about the Bylaw today. Should help inform Calgarians about this issue. Oct 2/2001: We have been trying to talk directly with the top-4 mayoralty candidates, but have not had much success. They seem to have 'policy' people to deal specifically with constituents. The top candidates are: ray clark, dave bronconnier, bev longstaff (who likely won't help us at all), and richard magnus. Focus your attention on these folks for mayor. Unfortunately, some of these people are from the 'old regime' and really don't seem that interested at this point. More people need to call their campaign offices to get their attention. We are hopeful they will finally respond. Sep 25/2001: We have been in contact with almost half of the aldermanic candidates concerning their official views on bylaw #34M2000. We will be publishing a list of candidates promising to improve the bylaw to something we all can live with. Calgary City Council stated they would review the bylaw in April 2001. Council then moved that date till September 2001. In July 2001 we learned City Council said they will not review this bylaw until next year (July 2002). Talk 'bout burying your head in the sand ... *** It is clear that City Council does not want this issue to come up at election time, so we *need* to make it an election issue for them. On June 13, 2001, 6 officers from The Calgary Police Service arrived at the Night Gallery Dance Club at 3:00 AM to shut down the DJ Kenny Ken event by kicking all the dancers out for no reason. This was a club night in a bar with an overseas DJ flown in at great expense to the promoter. Apparently The Calgary Police charged the event organizers under the Extended Dance Bylaw as soon as the party went past 5 hours. What is next? According to Police they are "just enforcing the bylaw". *** The 'rumor' is that The Calgary Police Service wants a 3:00 AM curfew, so that means no more after hours/club style events either. Clubs are not immune to this type of closed minded-ness. * There is a court case currently under way which could cause the bylaw to be thrown out based upon numerous grounds, including violating our rights and freedoms. We shall keep you informed. Final trial date is set for Jan 2002. City Hall is watching this carefully and they are actually concerned that the bylaw might be struck down by the courts. This would automatically lead to a 'new and improved' bylaw which could be worse or better than what we have now -- but at least we will be ready!!!