Vancouver’s DTES is is a strong and proud community, but it’s also one of Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods. Among other problems, it is plagued by heroin, alcohol, and marijuana addiction and abuse.

Some of the first people I meet there are Jason and Westcoast. They, like everyone, recognize that the current money system is unfair. Westcoast asks how he could help get my message out. After campaigning for more than a month, he is the first stranger that has volunteered help.

I give him a dozen of my cards and then next day another young man said he’d heard about me through Westcoast.

Westcoast and Alex

Teresa is probably in her forties and wears thick makeup. She has a five dollar debt to a dope dealer. Her debt doubles every two hours.

She also has stuff to sell: a cold beer, a can of soup, homemade jam made by her mother-in-law, and stain remover — “the kind you don’t need to wash off.”

I believe Teresa is partly a victim of easy government money. Today’s money is loaned into existence, at low rates, to banks. Banks re-loan the money at higher interest rates. By the time money gets to the poorest people, only very high rates are offered. Our system begins with loans, and those at the bottom are slaves to their debt.

When money was gold and silver, all the major religions in the world forbade lending money at interest, in order to prevent debt-slavery. I hope we revert to that idea in the coming era of decentralized money.

Jason is sitting on a curb playing with a gold coloured coin when it falls into a crack in the sidewalk full of used heroin needles. He quickly pulls out some tweezers and fishes it out. A friend gives him an alcohol-soaked tissue and and he cleans the coin. He asks smart questions about bitcoin. How is it transparent? How can he get some?

Then he gives me the coin — 100 Costa Rican colones — worth about 20 cents CAD. It is my first donation from a stranger.

I tell him to download a bitcoin wallet and next time I see him I will give him some bitcoin.

I have great hope for the Downtown Eastside.

I’m D Alex Millar, candidate for parliament in Vancouver East. You can find my platform here in text and here in video