In the past few weeks, the news was filled with tragedy, ranging from a massive flood in parts of Alberta, the bombing of the Boston Marathon, a train wreck of a freight train carrying oil through a small Quebec village and the death of more than a dozen fire fighters fighting a fire in Arizona. With the news coverage, the public is presented with both heroes and villains, while both government and members of the community come together to provide whatever support the "innocent" victims of these tragedies need and deserve. Some of these tragedies are natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, while others are sparked by human error like the derailment of an oil freight train in Lac Megantic, Quebec. In any case, people are all around, while governments promise and deliver financial relief to individuals and families finding themselves in the thick of whatever happened. Thousands of families returned to their homes in Calgary, Alberta, to find they had to demolish their homes or they lost everything they had, while there is community support to bring these families back to at least a stable position once again. There is nothing wrong with lending a helping hand in these circumstances, or governments stepping in to provide aid when necessary, and for these circumstances, the public does not view this as a charitable act, but as a form of natural justice.
I wish Canadians and our respective governments would take the same approach to eliminating poverty in our country, which is otherwise blessed with wealth, resources and an abundance of talent. In the above scenarios depicted, most members of the public view these tragedies as being nobody's fault, or perhaps, being someone's fault, but not necessarily to the point of finger pointing or placing blame. Certainly, those who are directly suffering the effects of these tragedies are not being blamed for their circumstances and people all around want to ensure they are returned to a position of dignity. At the same time, our citizens and government still don't get the dignity part of this equation when it comes to eliminating poverty. We still want to blame the person who is poor for their circumstances, like they somehow brought it on themselves. It is as if these people woke up one day deciding they were going to get sick and unable to work, or they were going to find themselves at the other end of a layoff when the company they worked at for thirty years slams its door shut on them, or they decide to marry somebody who is later found to be an abusive alcoholic and in order to get out of the situation, they must turn to welfare.
First, before we try to understand our hegemonic concepts of what creates poverty and what solves it, we need to discuss issues of dominant theory and privilege. People have varying levels of privilege in our society, even though many people with privilege within the dominant culture are not always aware of how privileged they really are. I wrote in this column in the past about how people who have both their driver's licenses and access to their own reliable transportation tend to take this for granted, especially in a region like our own. They plan their days around their automobile, what routes they will take to their job or to their daily activities, and if they need to do anything else afterwards. Drivers usually have a pretty good idea how long it is going to take them to get to different places and usually know to allow more time in bad weather, or if they are going somewhere at a time there are likely thousands of others like them using the same roads they will be on, such as taking a trip to Toronto starting out at 8:00 a.m. here and holding out false hope they will get there by 9:30 a.m. That is why many commuters going there start their drive about 7:00 a.m., as they will more likely get there on time. The thought of leaving one's job and picking up their son after hockey, and then purchasing a few groceries on the way home is a minor detail for most people. However, take that car away, and the driver quickly finds out that their trip to work may or may not be accommodated by a bus, so a $30 taxi ride might be necessary each way. They would not likely be able to pick up their son from hockey or make a stop over for groceries on the way back, unless they want to pay additional taxi fare. They plan the groceries for a day they do not have to go anywhere else. As a consequence, the former driver realizes they have little time for their family, little time for themselves and much of their time is spent planning how to get places and when to go there. That is just one example of how privilege is instilled in people; how people in a position of privilege don't often realize how advantaged they are until that advantage is somehow taken away from them.
In our community, most people seem to believe in charity and goodwill towards others. People believe in these things because they naturally feel a need to "give back" to the community. We are socialized to believe that we all come from some type of privilege and how important it is to "help the less fortunate". There is nothing wrong with that. I do not object to the motive; I object to the method. The method of "giving back" to the so-called "less fortunate" is riddled with hegemonic ideas that are created by this same privilege and in many ways, serves to protect the privilege that people feel they have, as opposed to bringing the so-called "less fortunate" into a position of equal privilege themselves. We give to food banks because we feel we need to feed the hungry, but rarely do we hear from the hungry about what they need. We volunteer at nursing homes to keep an elder companionship, but rarely do we ask if there is a better environment this person could be in. We support the development of "affordable" and "subsidized" housing because we believe that nobody should have to sacrifice their basic necessities for the high price of shelter, but we don't ask what residents of social housing really aspire to become. We continue to donate to "charity" because we believe they are a "good cause" and in many cases, they are, but more and more, we are discovering that not all charities are equally effective at achieving their goals. While there seems to be a growing awareness of members of the donating public about how monies are being spent in a charity, as well as how much is being used to advance the reason for that charity's existence, we have not yet come around to ask the real questions that need to be asked. These questions surround the issue of what the charity is actually doing and if they are actually achieving anything for those they purport to serve.
I know these kinds of questions. My husband lost his mother last year to a rare form of cancer. For many months prior to her death and seemingly eternally after her death, he ranted on about how "billions" of dollars are being donated and/or granted to cancer research and cancer organizations, but there never seems to be a cure. We continue to see people die from the disease. One begins to become cynical, wondering if there really was a cure out there, how many of these people that currently work for these organizations or partake in this research and so forth would lose their jobs. It creates an industry of its own. "Cancer Can Be Beaten" is a mantra that was played over and over in my day, while today, we continue to have the same amount of cancer, but the Cancer Society appears to be replacing its mantra with other phrases, while millions more of us continue to die of the disease. The same applies to diabetes, a disease I suffer from and relentlessly curse because of bad genetics, poor health and disadvantage in my day, but to no surprise, there is also a significant diabetes industry out there. Many organizations "benefit" per se with the alleged tsunami of diabetes hitting our communities. There are organizations to educate people with diabetes, dieticians to set up meal plans for people with diabetes, doctors to prescribe and treat people with diabetes, clinics to test and assess the progress of diabetic treatment in individuals (e.g. A1C tests), charities to raise funds to provide support and find a "cure" for diabetes, as well as bemoan the world over with apocalyptic thinking how ten percent of our population will soon be afflicted. There is talk of a cure, improved medications, improved forms of insulin management, and greater knowledge, but no cure again for this disease!
This brings me back to the concept of both industry and privilege and how it deals with the concept of eliminating poverty. People who are not poor are the ones that are currently setting up and benefiting from programs and services that are supposed to "help" the poor. There are services of all kinds delivered to poor people, from food banks, soup kitchens, budgeting classes, housing agencies, counselling services, drop in centres, homeless shelters, street workers, etc., but no program in sight to help the poor become NOT poor anymore. For most poor people, what is needed is more money. Instead of spending "billions" of dollars, as my husband describes, on more "services" to make poverty more comfortable for the poor, perhaps these "billions" can instead be given to the poor people themselves and let THEM decide how to spend it. This is not only a scary thought for those who work in and are in particular, paid to provide "services" to, the poor -- it is seen as politically untenable. Yet when a city experiences a major flood, a small village in Quebec is struck with an exploding freight train, or the country of Haiti is struck with a god-awful earthquake, there is NO LIMIT to the amount of money and resources people think should be spent to get these people out of their straitened circumstances. After all, they are there by no fault of their own. I wish we would think the same way about the poor here in Canada.
As I said, nobody woke up one day to decide they were going to have a horrible accident at work that would leave them disabled and unemployed. Nobody woke up to plan their spouse on leaving them, trading them in for a new model. Nobody woke up to decide to become ill enough to make finding and keeping a job difficult, if not impossible. Nobody when asked what they want to be when they grow up, chooses "welfare" to be the career they want to have. These things happen. Programs like Worker's Compensation, Social Assistance, Old Age Security, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare, were created for a reason. Unfortunately, too many people are buying into the idea that only if people relied more on their neighbours, their families, their communities, to support them through rough patches, and then there would be no need for welfare, worker's compensation, minimum wages, and so on. Well, think again. We were in this position before, and if it worked so well, why is this not still the case? Perhaps, there was a time when capitalism began to show its cracks and we learned of its imperfections, which are leaving many people behind, either intentionally or unintentionally. As our recessions become deeper and longer, the only solution big business has to offer is to cut back further on these "entitlement" programs, so that people will have less "incentive" to use them and just get a job. Oh, if it was only that easy. I always ask those that make these assumptions if they know where they are hiring the thousands of people that seem to have chosen day after day recently to be unemployed and dependent on the pittance they get from welfare or unemployment insurance.
Niagara Region was recently determined by the Adzuna Group to be the worst place in Canada to find a job if you are unemployed, whereby there are allegedly 100 job seekers for every job vacancy. In the current way of thinking, the other 99 people simply chose to remain on social assistance because that lifestyle is so easy. The answer they give us to cut these programs even further. I have yet to see how this helps. Perhaps, if we withheld any aid to those people in Lac Megantic or to those flooded out in Calgary, perhaps these people will just learn to save their money for rainy days for now on and not live so close to the damn train tracks, right? The pre-historic thinking that surrounds the elimination of poverty needs to be eliminated as well. We need to fight poverty as hard as we fight to bring people involved in the above referred tragedies back to their normal lives to the best of our abilities.
We have to stop thinking about food banks and shelters and so forth as being the answer, but instead try to understand how continuing and perpetuating these sorts of programs keeps poverty intact and helps no one. Feeding somebody today is fine, but the same person will be hungry again tomorrow. What are we going to do about this? Are we going to continue to erode the dignity and prosperity of an increasing portion of our population by dividing our communities into donors/heroes and recipients of charity/helpless beings? Or are we going to recognize that the dominant culture that we live in is as much at fault as the economy at keeping this segment of the population down. Or is it that we fear that if we empower those we serve with the same privileges and rights to participate in the community that you and I have taken for granted will somehow take something away from you? Food banks didn't grow out of nature; they were invented in 1981 in the city of Edmonton. Since that time, this concept has grown and become institutionalized, whereby way too damn many of us have become smug and feel we are doing our part by donating to food banks, even partaking in food drives, thinking we are doing anything for those in need, when in fact, we still have not yet asked those in need what they really want to do with their lives, have we?
There is an important element of dignity at play here, which is something that we all need to keep in mind. We also like to believe that to continue to do what we do will continue to distance the poor and their problems from our own lives, to keep us in the privileged positions that we might someday be aware that we are in, but even this does nothing of the sort. We need to take steps to the elimination of poverty, put the responsibility for this situation at the feet of those that can do something about it and despite their pleadings to the contrary, can damn well afford it too. That is, business needs to start creating jobs that pay well and investing in our communities. Governments needs to stop paying businesses not to hire and not to invest, while tax breaks after unconditional tax breaks keep getting handed to them year over year, while it is so clear that there is a growing gap in wealth, the middle class is bleeding and that damned Emperor is walking down Bay Street buck naked! Let's start asking the questions of ourselves and demand answers. Let's stop assuming that hunger is "being dealt with" and that a massive restructuring of our society and our thinking is in order, in order for not only for us to maintain our position, but to keep the rest of us from falling further into despair and desperation at the hands of the one percent minority that none of us want to have control us.
Your thoughts?
Showing posts with label culture of poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture of poverty. Show all posts
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
SECRECY IN NIAGARA REIGNS!!!
Did you know that the Social Assistance Reform Commissioners had been in the Niagara Region earlier this month?
OK. You are probably asking: (1) What is a Social Assistance Reform Commissioner?; (2) Whatever they are, what were they doing in Niagara?; and (3) Why should I care? I spoke to people in the broader social services and legal community and they were aghast as usual, but then again, given our recent "consultations" on the HIP (or Hospital Improvement Plan, anaethema to anybody in Niagara who even sees these three little initials), this is sort of the expected thing that goes on around here.
First, late last year, as a part of the Poverty Reduction Act, which was passed provincially and agreed to by all three major political parties in the Legislature, the Provincial Government appointed Frances Lankin, of former NDP Cabinet and Toronto United Way fame, and Munir Sheikh, made famous by his departure from Statistics Canada when our wonder Prime Minister decided we can do away with a major part of our National Census, to go on the road to consult the community on how to make social security programs and systems work better in Ontario. It is not limited to Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), and will encompass housing, training, employment supports and related programs, to see how people can improve their lives (mostly by returning to work, but not necessarily) and to streamline the systems.
Anyways, the Social Assistance Review, is arms length from the government, although it includes some civil servants who have been seconded from their jobs in other parts of the Ministry, as well as some external researchers. On visiting their website, we learn about who they are, why they were appointed and what kind of job they are going to do. There are numerous resource documents being posted to their website, one of which they have asked for from me, which will be made available to them as soon as some minor adjustments are made to it. They have made a commitment to visit twenty-two Ontario communities to meet with social service people, agency folks, advocates and people who have direct and "lived experience" with both programs.
While each region was asked to set up their own meeting, and how they set it up was up to the regional contacts, not the Commission itself, almost all of the meetings set up around Ontario were public to some degree. By the term "to some degree", I mean, some of them were organized by anti-poverty organizations that reached out to others and basically set it up conference format. Others like the one in Hamilton, opened up its convention centre, and opened it up to anybody that registered in advance. However, when Niagara set up theirs, they shut it up tighter than a drum the minute they agreed to a date with Commission organizers. I looked it up the minute the Ontario calendar was put up, and made a phone call and email to the persons identified as contacts for Niagara.
The first thing they said was that it was "full". Upon further probing, I learned it was not even open to anybody in the "public" to begin with. Nevertheless, I feel badly that the Commissioners did not have the best opportunity to hear about some of the unique challenges presented by persons in Niagara. I am not saying the people there or even organizing the event did not have good intentions; I am saying it was completely wrong to exclude legal advocates like myself, and probably about thirty or forty other persons (easily) that I can bring with me that have "lived experience" to speak for themselves as to their own personal dilemmas created by either program.
So, as usual, I created my own hornet's nest, not because I am trying to embarrass anybody, but trying to show people what consultation and community inclusion actually involves. I personally never felt included in this Region (for a number of reasons), even though I lived here since 1983, and the least these people could have done was to make an effort to seek my input, and allow me to bring a few individuals I feel would be representative of the Niagara community of "lived experience". It is not that I don't have other ways of making my views known and articulated, because I am involved at other levels where I have provided comprehensive input, and will continue to do so with selected groups. It is that segment of the community I work with that were very upset to know this happened, and they were forfeited an opportunity to present their stories in person. As one of them told me, "there is a difference if I were presenting on my issues face to face, than even if I put it in writing". This particular woman single handedly organized a poverty forum a couple years ago with almost a hundred people in attendance. Why wasn't she invited?
There is symbolism in my presentation, different than anything I can ever write. I was gently prodded by a friend that reminded me of a story I relayed to my local MPP while the Mike Harris government was in charge. This story created a greater interest among even those with financial conservative leanings, when they understood why the policy of making oneself "permanently unemployable" was not a good thing. It killed somebody here, and as executive director of a local community group at the time, I made this an issue, which in turn led to a lot of the push province wide around the ODSP eligibility criteria we have today. I read about myself in Hansard, on Google, in the special collections department at the library, and in other records, and I envy the perseverence and energy I seemed to portray in those days. My friend, who I shared many of the links with, said I can do this again.
I am concerned that somebody might be worried about too many people going on ODSP and not going off, and who might want to tinker with the definition of eligibility once again, therefore putting more vulnerable people at risk. There have been musings by the current Minister that there were too many people on ODSP and the definition of disability is "too broad". This Minister has also been in charge of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, almost leading one to believe that this hugely watered down Integrated Accessibility Standard is going to get employers province wide to suddenly open their doors to people with disabilities. As I tell people, because I was also involved in this process as well, that the standards are an important step, but it is not going to cure the labour market of most of its ills. To tell a person on ODSP who is trying to work, for example, that they will no longer qualify for the higher benefits this program offers, will discourage any of this effort from going further, or worse yet, lead to more people like Stella Mae Williams (the name of the person who chose suicide over likely and imminent eviction when she was cut off her then Family Benefits cheque for trying to keep a part-time job).
I mention this incident because it happened right here in Niagara, and our beloved Peter Kormos, took this to the legislature, as just another example of how mean social assistance rules can become. I wanted the Commissioners to hear about Stella Mae Williams, and others like her that did not become known through the legislature or through my usual publicity pushing efforts. I wanted the Commissioners to know some of the people by name that I have known, year over year, who have turned to suicide, as opposed to continuously living in abject poverty and alone in this world that is created by ODSP, as well as its predecessor, Family Benefits. The rate of break up in relationships between ODSP recipients and working spouses is very high, over ninety percent of those I have known have split, while the so-called divorce rate for the rest of us is about forty percent. Some ODSP recipients have died, while others continue to live desperately alone.
In my community, I am a paradox. I work professionally as a paralegal advocate, taking cases to courts, tribunals and appeals all over. Many times, I attempt to mediate solutions between parties to get something for both sides, at times in very difficult circumstances. While most of my cases are typical events involving companies, individuals, employers and others, and all of them are very important to me, as all have a legitimate issues that need to be dealt with. About twenty five percent of my caseload is poor, many of them trying to qualify for various disability benefits, or to deal with some other circumstance, such as trying to seek health care that is not available in Ontario. I see the world that nobody else sees, other than some of my peers, as well as folks that work directly in social services. I see for myself what has not worked over the years, and I hear from people all the time what would make things work better for them.
It is unfortunate in our society today, there appears to be an addiction to charity and other ineffective solutions, which only deflect the issues, and continue to fail the people they serve. The culture that is created within the charitable context solidifies the dichotomy of our community between us and "those people" (who would be the intended recipients of charity). Donors are told to feel good, be proud and some even seek their fifteen minutes of fame for running major campaigns to support these charities that in the end produce nothing. It is unfortunate in places like Niagara that people that run these kinds of charities have more say about what should be done than those that live the issues. I am not saying that those that run these charities are bad people or do their work with ill intentions; they fail to understand the effect of the dichotomy this creates, and how it impacts on the self-esteem of the people that are provided for.
In other words, I missed my opportunity to tell the Commissioners what my people tell me they need to become more financially self-sufficient or to bring their families out of the kinds of desperate circumstances that lead them to the door of these charities. I value the adage that if you feed a man a fish for a day, he will not be hungry today, but if you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime. We need to get more people that think like me on board to make sure that we stop covering our gaping wounds with band aids and congratulating those that provide the strips. We need more people that can heal the wounds, and make people whole, or at least to the point, where they can choose.
If anybody in charge here in Niagara is reading this, I certainly hope they make attempts to contact me, as I need to belong, and teach people how to stop the bleeding. Your thoughts?
OK. You are probably asking: (1) What is a Social Assistance Reform Commissioner?; (2) Whatever they are, what were they doing in Niagara?; and (3) Why should I care? I spoke to people in the broader social services and legal community and they were aghast as usual, but then again, given our recent "consultations" on the HIP (or Hospital Improvement Plan, anaethema to anybody in Niagara who even sees these three little initials), this is sort of the expected thing that goes on around here.
First, late last year, as a part of the Poverty Reduction Act, which was passed provincially and agreed to by all three major political parties in the Legislature, the Provincial Government appointed Frances Lankin, of former NDP Cabinet and Toronto United Way fame, and Munir Sheikh, made famous by his departure from Statistics Canada when our wonder Prime Minister decided we can do away with a major part of our National Census, to go on the road to consult the community on how to make social security programs and systems work better in Ontario. It is not limited to Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), and will encompass housing, training, employment supports and related programs, to see how people can improve their lives (mostly by returning to work, but not necessarily) and to streamline the systems.
Anyways, the Social Assistance Review, is arms length from the government, although it includes some civil servants who have been seconded from their jobs in other parts of the Ministry, as well as some external researchers. On visiting their website, we learn about who they are, why they were appointed and what kind of job they are going to do. There are numerous resource documents being posted to their website, one of which they have asked for from me, which will be made available to them as soon as some minor adjustments are made to it. They have made a commitment to visit twenty-two Ontario communities to meet with social service people, agency folks, advocates and people who have direct and "lived experience" with both programs.
While each region was asked to set up their own meeting, and how they set it up was up to the regional contacts, not the Commission itself, almost all of the meetings set up around Ontario were public to some degree. By the term "to some degree", I mean, some of them were organized by anti-poverty organizations that reached out to others and basically set it up conference format. Others like the one in Hamilton, opened up its convention centre, and opened it up to anybody that registered in advance. However, when Niagara set up theirs, they shut it up tighter than a drum the minute they agreed to a date with Commission organizers. I looked it up the minute the Ontario calendar was put up, and made a phone call and email to the persons identified as contacts for Niagara.
The first thing they said was that it was "full". Upon further probing, I learned it was not even open to anybody in the "public" to begin with. Nevertheless, I feel badly that the Commissioners did not have the best opportunity to hear about some of the unique challenges presented by persons in Niagara. I am not saying the people there or even organizing the event did not have good intentions; I am saying it was completely wrong to exclude legal advocates like myself, and probably about thirty or forty other persons (easily) that I can bring with me that have "lived experience" to speak for themselves as to their own personal dilemmas created by either program.
So, as usual, I created my own hornet's nest, not because I am trying to embarrass anybody, but trying to show people what consultation and community inclusion actually involves. I personally never felt included in this Region (for a number of reasons), even though I lived here since 1983, and the least these people could have done was to make an effort to seek my input, and allow me to bring a few individuals I feel would be representative of the Niagara community of "lived experience". It is not that I don't have other ways of making my views known and articulated, because I am involved at other levels where I have provided comprehensive input, and will continue to do so with selected groups. It is that segment of the community I work with that were very upset to know this happened, and they were forfeited an opportunity to present their stories in person. As one of them told me, "there is a difference if I were presenting on my issues face to face, than even if I put it in writing". This particular woman single handedly organized a poverty forum a couple years ago with almost a hundred people in attendance. Why wasn't she invited?
There is symbolism in my presentation, different than anything I can ever write. I was gently prodded by a friend that reminded me of a story I relayed to my local MPP while the Mike Harris government was in charge. This story created a greater interest among even those with financial conservative leanings, when they understood why the policy of making oneself "permanently unemployable" was not a good thing. It killed somebody here, and as executive director of a local community group at the time, I made this an issue, which in turn led to a lot of the push province wide around the ODSP eligibility criteria we have today. I read about myself in Hansard, on Google, in the special collections department at the library, and in other records, and I envy the perseverence and energy I seemed to portray in those days. My friend, who I shared many of the links with, said I can do this again.
I am concerned that somebody might be worried about too many people going on ODSP and not going off, and who might want to tinker with the definition of eligibility once again, therefore putting more vulnerable people at risk. There have been musings by the current Minister that there were too many people on ODSP and the definition of disability is "too broad". This Minister has also been in charge of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, almost leading one to believe that this hugely watered down Integrated Accessibility Standard is going to get employers province wide to suddenly open their doors to people with disabilities. As I tell people, because I was also involved in this process as well, that the standards are an important step, but it is not going to cure the labour market of most of its ills. To tell a person on ODSP who is trying to work, for example, that they will no longer qualify for the higher benefits this program offers, will discourage any of this effort from going further, or worse yet, lead to more people like Stella Mae Williams (the name of the person who chose suicide over likely and imminent eviction when she was cut off her then Family Benefits cheque for trying to keep a part-time job).
I mention this incident because it happened right here in Niagara, and our beloved Peter Kormos, took this to the legislature, as just another example of how mean social assistance rules can become. I wanted the Commissioners to hear about Stella Mae Williams, and others like her that did not become known through the legislature or through my usual publicity pushing efforts. I wanted the Commissioners to know some of the people by name that I have known, year over year, who have turned to suicide, as opposed to continuously living in abject poverty and alone in this world that is created by ODSP, as well as its predecessor, Family Benefits. The rate of break up in relationships between ODSP recipients and working spouses is very high, over ninety percent of those I have known have split, while the so-called divorce rate for the rest of us is about forty percent. Some ODSP recipients have died, while others continue to live desperately alone.
In my community, I am a paradox. I work professionally as a paralegal advocate, taking cases to courts, tribunals and appeals all over. Many times, I attempt to mediate solutions between parties to get something for both sides, at times in very difficult circumstances. While most of my cases are typical events involving companies, individuals, employers and others, and all of them are very important to me, as all have a legitimate issues that need to be dealt with. About twenty five percent of my caseload is poor, many of them trying to qualify for various disability benefits, or to deal with some other circumstance, such as trying to seek health care that is not available in Ontario. I see the world that nobody else sees, other than some of my peers, as well as folks that work directly in social services. I see for myself what has not worked over the years, and I hear from people all the time what would make things work better for them.
It is unfortunate in our society today, there appears to be an addiction to charity and other ineffective solutions, which only deflect the issues, and continue to fail the people they serve. The culture that is created within the charitable context solidifies the dichotomy of our community between us and "those people" (who would be the intended recipients of charity). Donors are told to feel good, be proud and some even seek their fifteen minutes of fame for running major campaigns to support these charities that in the end produce nothing. It is unfortunate in places like Niagara that people that run these kinds of charities have more say about what should be done than those that live the issues. I am not saying that those that run these charities are bad people or do their work with ill intentions; they fail to understand the effect of the dichotomy this creates, and how it impacts on the self-esteem of the people that are provided for.
In other words, I missed my opportunity to tell the Commissioners what my people tell me they need to become more financially self-sufficient or to bring their families out of the kinds of desperate circumstances that lead them to the door of these charities. I value the adage that if you feed a man a fish for a day, he will not be hungry today, but if you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime. We need to get more people that think like me on board to make sure that we stop covering our gaping wounds with band aids and congratulating those that provide the strips. We need more people that can heal the wounds, and make people whole, or at least to the point, where they can choose.
If anybody in charge here in Niagara is reading this, I certainly hope they make attempts to contact me, as I need to belong, and teach people how to stop the bleeding. Your thoughts?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
THE TALE OF TWO NIAGARAS AND THE DSBN ACADEMY
There has been a recent announcement by the District School Board of Niagara about their plans to create a "DSBN Academy" aimed at educating students from low income families, and to encourage more of them to move on to college or university. This announcement came out of the air. It was not campaigned about in the recent municipal election, nor was there a period of public meetings or consultations on the topic. Again, this was yet another idea from some Sunshine Club member deciding what was "best" for low income families, especially with nary an organization that speaks for low income families in Niagara -- despite the region having the second highest rate of unemployment in Canada.
The response to this issues was predictable, according to the Board chair, but they are pushing ahead with it anyways. They have several "partners" on board, such as the YMCA, Community Care, Brock University and Niagara College. The post-secondary institutions may soon host this "school", but even that is not guaranteed. Community Care is on board, of course, so they have a permanent place for their "poor" clients, as opposed to making an effort to get people out of poverty to begin with so they wouldn't need segregated schools of this type in the first place. The YMCA also offers employment programs.
My first question was, "Did they ask a single low income family if they wanted a program like this?" Of course not. I did. Not a single one of those that I asked will enroll their children in this school. In the regular mainstream school system, there are thousands of low income children in attendance, and some schools are better than others at addressing the problem. The schools that do the worst job of it expect the parents or the students to identify themselves as "in need", and then be given "charity". Because only a small minority of such families in this position come forward this way, the number of low income families is grossly underestimated. Moreover, most of the low income families I know do not even go to food banks or other agencies for help, because of the shame and ridicule they feel they will get in response to their request for help.
Even on Face Book and on the public section of websites for the newspapers themselves that published the story about the new school, it is opposed at least 5:1 by the public, many of whom are also low income themselves. I know for the period of time in my youth when I was from a low income situation, I was not eager for others to know about my situation, so I kept a lot of my feelings and experiences to myself. I would not ever consider asking the school or anybody outside for help, nor did any of my friends that found themselves in similar situations. There is no evidence to suggest any of this has changed, where children are coming to school without boots, saying they "forgot", the same with their lunches ... easier to forget than to admit there are no boots or lunches to be found. I am also aware of at least two families with kids that say they are "allergic" to pizza on pizza days, or simply don't feel like going on that camping trip.
The school board tries to tell parents to come forward with their situation and ask for help, but in my experience through working with these families, this often came with other strings attached, such as Children's Aid getting called, teachers expecting less of the students in these circumstances, or unnecessary referrals to "diagnose" the child with some type of ADHD or other mental illness de jour. Parents know these risks. They hear it happening to others in their housing complex, or to their friends and neighbours, and then they do not want to dare. It is less costly to do without than to put onself in the spotlight of being amongst the "unwashed, unclean and generally less valued" of our society. I have heard many earfuls given to me, even when I suggest a trip to community care, emergency welfare assistance, etc. I can only imagine the horror that would be felt by their kids who would not only have to self-identify to their teachers, etc. of their situation, but to their neighbours, etc. when they see them bussed off to the "poor kids' school".
The other issue with this school is that students not eligible for enrollment if either parent is college or university educated. This continues to feed on the stereotype that people are poor because they are not educated and lack skills. I have come across many well-educated low income persons, many of whom do not even readily admit being low income because of this stereotype that also blames them for whatever it was that did not lead their status to rise with their education. Many live at home with their parents, attempting to stay off the welfare rolls. Others attempt to continue their schooling, at least on a part-time basis. Others are working in low wage, low skill jobs that don't even require any education to do, as they have been screened out of better paid work for various reasons.
The other requirement is that parents have to put in 15 hours a month in volunteer time for the new school. Again, there is a broad assumption that even though they are bussing the kids in from all over Niagara, that the parents in question have their own means of transportation to do this volunteer work. Niagara always had a belief that everybody living in the region can drive and has access to a personal vehicle, and if they don't for whatever reason, it is because the person is a drunk, a drug addict or did something criminal to "deserve" having lost their license. Most non-drivers in Niagara do not fit that description at all, yet they are ridiculed, blamed, attacked and belittled, and left out of most opportunities that Niagara's employers reserve only for drivers. The one study that I am aware of is that among adults that use employment assistance services in Niagara, 93% of them do not have both a driver's license and a car.
While their education would be streamed to college or university attendance, and these students would be guaranteed summer jobs, it would also seem to me that the resources, limited as they may be, will only be taken out of the maintstream schools where the vast majority of low income students will continue to attend. For those remaining students, or those that apply and do not get into the Academy for whatever reason, will only continue to remain close-mouthed about their circumstances and try to survive the mainstream school system that will only be more hostile to them, as there will even be less resources to go around.
To me, more work needs to be done to get the PARENTS out of poverty, as opposed to trying to stop what some call a "cycle of poverty". The cycle needs to stop at the children's parents, not at the children themselves. If a parent has financial resources, then there will be less of a need for a "poor kids' school" in Niagara. While politicians continue to pretend the recession is over for people in this region, as well as most of Canada, they ignore the fact that there has been little job recovery. I am still talking to adults that don't even care if they work minimum wage, etc., who are having major trouble even finding part-time minimum wage work at a Tim Horton's. If there was a job recovery, there would be nobody like this.
The problem that people do not see is that I understand people's lives from an ethnocultural approach. This is how people live out their lives on a day to day basis, what they talk about, what they look forward to, who they hang around, how they set up their homes, etc. If you speak to people who live in long term poverty in Niagara, they do not talk about being part of anything, like a community group or even a church group. They do not talk about working out a gym, nor do they talk about going for a recreational swim or a skate. They purchase most of their clothes at thrift stores, if they have extra money at all. Most have never been to other parts of the region, measured in lengths of time in years, not weeks or months. They have friendships, but they are usually unstable, or only with people who are in similar circumstances. Only a minority of them attend agencies for assistance; when I ask them why, they say that the agencies in question "won't do anything". They never talk about going to the movies, eating out, going on vacation, or anything.
When I speak to people of the middle or upper middle classes of Niagara Region, they speak of activities they have enrolled their children in, some involvement they may have had with their children's schools, a recent trip the family took up north to "relax", or a garden they are attempting to grow in their backyard. They talk about books they've read, meetings they've attended, or items they recently heard discussed on the news. Some like to talk about their "gadgets", as many people like to use electronics that seem to be falling in price over time ... they talk about their iPods, iPads, Black Berries, cell phone plans (and which ones are a rip off), as well, where their family went to eat last weekend. Occasionally, there may some discussion about investments, particularly in who is best to work with, and how badly or how well they fared in the recession.
Among the better educated middle and upper class, politics, economics, theories and medical advances become more of a topic of discussion, and these people appear to be more inquisitive and open about different ideas. Among the lower income people, I only hear questions, "Do you think McGuinty is going to give us a raise? What do you think is going to happen to my special diet allowance?". To these people, the "rich" are a monolithic group of people, who the lower income people perceive to be receiving a disproportionate amount of help for their issues. Whenever I try to explain that people are very different from one another even within their respective economic positions, the lower income people find it hard to believe. That there is as much unhappiness among the middle and upper classes is hard for them to believe as well, although the source of their issues tend to be very divergent.
However, among lower income people, the issues are less divergent, as lower income people are unable to experience the same range of experiences as people in the middle and upper middle classes. Low income people don't concern themselves as much about the stock market, or the economy, because they do not feel they are a part of it, even though many of these issues also have some impact on their successes as well. It is not that they do not want the same things as anybody else. They do. When I ask low income people what they want, their answers are very similar to what the answers are from middle and upper income families. They want their own homes, good schools for their kids to go to, good health, an interesting job, to take a trip somewhere, etc. The difference is that the lower income people often don't have the range of experience with many of these issues as others do, and tend to involve themselves less with their children's schools, with the community, etc. than others do.
However, because the lower income people want the same things as others, they do not want to be be distinguished by others as "poor", and they are very much aware of how most others think about them. If you were in a situation where others would typically think negatively about you, would you be public about belonging to this disadvantaged group? Mental illness is a good example. Many people suffer from this issue, or have family members that do, yet many people, regardless of wealth or lack thereof, refuse to seek help from the traditional "mental health system" because of its power to label one and deem you to be "different" and "not like other people". Poverty has a similar impact on one's experience - most try to hide it. A recent study on food insecurity found that 1 in 8 people are insecure with respect to being hungry at least part of each month. Yet less than 1 in 5 of those food insecure persons ever sought help from a food bank.
I do believe if there was a voice for low income people in Niagara, this "poor school" would be a non-starter. The lives of Niagara's poor have been and continue to be depicted and assumed by Niagara's non-poor, usually those that have some degree of power. To me, this is unacceptable. The poor should have their lives determined by others, no more than the lives of other people of at least some means should be. If the education bureaucrats really wanted to find a way to decrease the drop-out rate among poor students and get more of them to attend college and unversity, there are other ways to do this. One great example is called Pathways to Education, which was started in Toronto's lower income neighbourhoods, and has since spread to other communities. The success of this program is unprecedented - drop-out rates have been cut to less than 20% of the percentage they were prior to the introduction of Pathways, and the number of participants going on to college or university have substantially increased to a level that is closer to those from non-poor families.
The difference with Pathways is that it is conducted in the child's home school. They do not go anywhere else for this program, nor do they line up for a special class or some other tell-tale location for this program. Nobody has to know about the child's participation in this program if the child chooses to keep it this way. The why of Niagara's public board choosing the segregated option is obvious to me; they why not of choosing the integrated option is not so obvious. Hopefully, there will not be enough poor families registering for this school to make it worthwhile, so it would have to be cancelled and perhaps, Pathways be put on the table.
Your thoughts?
The response to this issues was predictable, according to the Board chair, but they are pushing ahead with it anyways. They have several "partners" on board, such as the YMCA, Community Care, Brock University and Niagara College. The post-secondary institutions may soon host this "school", but even that is not guaranteed. Community Care is on board, of course, so they have a permanent place for their "poor" clients, as opposed to making an effort to get people out of poverty to begin with so they wouldn't need segregated schools of this type in the first place. The YMCA also offers employment programs.
My first question was, "Did they ask a single low income family if they wanted a program like this?" Of course not. I did. Not a single one of those that I asked will enroll their children in this school. In the regular mainstream school system, there are thousands of low income children in attendance, and some schools are better than others at addressing the problem. The schools that do the worst job of it expect the parents or the students to identify themselves as "in need", and then be given "charity". Because only a small minority of such families in this position come forward this way, the number of low income families is grossly underestimated. Moreover, most of the low income families I know do not even go to food banks or other agencies for help, because of the shame and ridicule they feel they will get in response to their request for help.
Even on Face Book and on the public section of websites for the newspapers themselves that published the story about the new school, it is opposed at least 5:1 by the public, many of whom are also low income themselves. I know for the period of time in my youth when I was from a low income situation, I was not eager for others to know about my situation, so I kept a lot of my feelings and experiences to myself. I would not ever consider asking the school or anybody outside for help, nor did any of my friends that found themselves in similar situations. There is no evidence to suggest any of this has changed, where children are coming to school without boots, saying they "forgot", the same with their lunches ... easier to forget than to admit there are no boots or lunches to be found. I am also aware of at least two families with kids that say they are "allergic" to pizza on pizza days, or simply don't feel like going on that camping trip.
The school board tries to tell parents to come forward with their situation and ask for help, but in my experience through working with these families, this often came with other strings attached, such as Children's Aid getting called, teachers expecting less of the students in these circumstances, or unnecessary referrals to "diagnose" the child with some type of ADHD or other mental illness de jour. Parents know these risks. They hear it happening to others in their housing complex, or to their friends and neighbours, and then they do not want to dare. It is less costly to do without than to put onself in the spotlight of being amongst the "unwashed, unclean and generally less valued" of our society. I have heard many earfuls given to me, even when I suggest a trip to community care, emergency welfare assistance, etc. I can only imagine the horror that would be felt by their kids who would not only have to self-identify to their teachers, etc. of their situation, but to their neighbours, etc. when they see them bussed off to the "poor kids' school".
The other issue with this school is that students not eligible for enrollment if either parent is college or university educated. This continues to feed on the stereotype that people are poor because they are not educated and lack skills. I have come across many well-educated low income persons, many of whom do not even readily admit being low income because of this stereotype that also blames them for whatever it was that did not lead their status to rise with their education. Many live at home with their parents, attempting to stay off the welfare rolls. Others attempt to continue their schooling, at least on a part-time basis. Others are working in low wage, low skill jobs that don't even require any education to do, as they have been screened out of better paid work for various reasons.
The other requirement is that parents have to put in 15 hours a month in volunteer time for the new school. Again, there is a broad assumption that even though they are bussing the kids in from all over Niagara, that the parents in question have their own means of transportation to do this volunteer work. Niagara always had a belief that everybody living in the region can drive and has access to a personal vehicle, and if they don't for whatever reason, it is because the person is a drunk, a drug addict or did something criminal to "deserve" having lost their license. Most non-drivers in Niagara do not fit that description at all, yet they are ridiculed, blamed, attacked and belittled, and left out of most opportunities that Niagara's employers reserve only for drivers. The one study that I am aware of is that among adults that use employment assistance services in Niagara, 93% of them do not have both a driver's license and a car.
While their education would be streamed to college or university attendance, and these students would be guaranteed summer jobs, it would also seem to me that the resources, limited as they may be, will only be taken out of the maintstream schools where the vast majority of low income students will continue to attend. For those remaining students, or those that apply and do not get into the Academy for whatever reason, will only continue to remain close-mouthed about their circumstances and try to survive the mainstream school system that will only be more hostile to them, as there will even be less resources to go around.
To me, more work needs to be done to get the PARENTS out of poverty, as opposed to trying to stop what some call a "cycle of poverty". The cycle needs to stop at the children's parents, not at the children themselves. If a parent has financial resources, then there will be less of a need for a "poor kids' school" in Niagara. While politicians continue to pretend the recession is over for people in this region, as well as most of Canada, they ignore the fact that there has been little job recovery. I am still talking to adults that don't even care if they work minimum wage, etc., who are having major trouble even finding part-time minimum wage work at a Tim Horton's. If there was a job recovery, there would be nobody like this.
The problem that people do not see is that I understand people's lives from an ethnocultural approach. This is how people live out their lives on a day to day basis, what they talk about, what they look forward to, who they hang around, how they set up their homes, etc. If you speak to people who live in long term poverty in Niagara, they do not talk about being part of anything, like a community group or even a church group. They do not talk about working out a gym, nor do they talk about going for a recreational swim or a skate. They purchase most of their clothes at thrift stores, if they have extra money at all. Most have never been to other parts of the region, measured in lengths of time in years, not weeks or months. They have friendships, but they are usually unstable, or only with people who are in similar circumstances. Only a minority of them attend agencies for assistance; when I ask them why, they say that the agencies in question "won't do anything". They never talk about going to the movies, eating out, going on vacation, or anything.
When I speak to people of the middle or upper middle classes of Niagara Region, they speak of activities they have enrolled their children in, some involvement they may have had with their children's schools, a recent trip the family took up north to "relax", or a garden they are attempting to grow in their backyard. They talk about books they've read, meetings they've attended, or items they recently heard discussed on the news. Some like to talk about their "gadgets", as many people like to use electronics that seem to be falling in price over time ... they talk about their iPods, iPads, Black Berries, cell phone plans (and which ones are a rip off), as well, where their family went to eat last weekend. Occasionally, there may some discussion about investments, particularly in who is best to work with, and how badly or how well they fared in the recession.
Among the better educated middle and upper class, politics, economics, theories and medical advances become more of a topic of discussion, and these people appear to be more inquisitive and open about different ideas. Among the lower income people, I only hear questions, "Do you think McGuinty is going to give us a raise? What do you think is going to happen to my special diet allowance?". To these people, the "rich" are a monolithic group of people, who the lower income people perceive to be receiving a disproportionate amount of help for their issues. Whenever I try to explain that people are very different from one another even within their respective economic positions, the lower income people find it hard to believe. That there is as much unhappiness among the middle and upper classes is hard for them to believe as well, although the source of their issues tend to be very divergent.
However, among lower income people, the issues are less divergent, as lower income people are unable to experience the same range of experiences as people in the middle and upper middle classes. Low income people don't concern themselves as much about the stock market, or the economy, because they do not feel they are a part of it, even though many of these issues also have some impact on their successes as well. It is not that they do not want the same things as anybody else. They do. When I ask low income people what they want, their answers are very similar to what the answers are from middle and upper income families. They want their own homes, good schools for their kids to go to, good health, an interesting job, to take a trip somewhere, etc. The difference is that the lower income people often don't have the range of experience with many of these issues as others do, and tend to involve themselves less with their children's schools, with the community, etc. than others do.
However, because the lower income people want the same things as others, they do not want to be be distinguished by others as "poor", and they are very much aware of how most others think about them. If you were in a situation where others would typically think negatively about you, would you be public about belonging to this disadvantaged group? Mental illness is a good example. Many people suffer from this issue, or have family members that do, yet many people, regardless of wealth or lack thereof, refuse to seek help from the traditional "mental health system" because of its power to label one and deem you to be "different" and "not like other people". Poverty has a similar impact on one's experience - most try to hide it. A recent study on food insecurity found that 1 in 8 people are insecure with respect to being hungry at least part of each month. Yet less than 1 in 5 of those food insecure persons ever sought help from a food bank.
I do believe if there was a voice for low income people in Niagara, this "poor school" would be a non-starter. The lives of Niagara's poor have been and continue to be depicted and assumed by Niagara's non-poor, usually those that have some degree of power. To me, this is unacceptable. The poor should have their lives determined by others, no more than the lives of other people of at least some means should be. If the education bureaucrats really wanted to find a way to decrease the drop-out rate among poor students and get more of them to attend college and unversity, there are other ways to do this. One great example is called Pathways to Education, which was started in Toronto's lower income neighbourhoods, and has since spread to other communities. The success of this program is unprecedented - drop-out rates have been cut to less than 20% of the percentage they were prior to the introduction of Pathways, and the number of participants going on to college or university have substantially increased to a level that is closer to those from non-poor families.
The difference with Pathways is that it is conducted in the child's home school. They do not go anywhere else for this program, nor do they line up for a special class or some other tell-tale location for this program. Nobody has to know about the child's participation in this program if the child chooses to keep it this way. The why of Niagara's public board choosing the segregated option is obvious to me; they why not of choosing the integrated option is not so obvious. Hopefully, there will not be enough poor families registering for this school to make it worthwhile, so it would have to be cancelled and perhaps, Pathways be put on the table.
Your thoughts?
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