We Need to Stop the Denial of All Types of Violence in Canadian Society and Address It All

Pondering wrote:

Douglas Fir Premier wrote:

Pondering wrote:

How about blaming the right for what the right does.

Again with the wildly misguided assumptions.

I speak out against the Right all the time.

I never said you are right wing I said blame the right. You are the one making assumptions and ignoring the actual conversation which is about blaming the left for apparently not caring about people on social assistance.

The assumption was that I don't also blame the Right.

I do.

Maybe I need to spell it out more explicitly for you; all of those things I listed that I've never done for the Right, I've done countless times with the Left. I'm on the Left. I've been organizing with the Left since my high school days. Sure, it pisses me off that Tory supporters don't give a fuck about people on social assistance. But that doesn't necessarily feel like a betrayal, because I have no reason to expect any different from them. I get that my life doesn't matter to Mike Harris and Doug Ford. What I don't understand is why it doesn't seem to matter to people I've stood shoulder to shoulder with on picket lines when they've been on strike. I don't get how some people can be so outraged that workers are expected to survive on $14.35/hour, yet can't be arsed to say anything about people on OW being forced to get by on $733/month.

When racism or sexism surfaces in our movements, it doesn't get a free pass just because we think the Right is even worse. So why would it be any different when it comes to the oppression of people on social assistance? Why does it seem to bother you that I'm calling on people to do better?

You are not calling on people to do better. You are saying the left does nothing and is basically no different than the right. 

Hell... at this point I'd even settle for performative allyship. I'm not asking people to drop everything else they're working on to fully devote themselves to fighting for liveable social assistance rates. I'm just saying that it would mean a lot if folks on the Left would maybe - just maybe - once in a blue moon say something unprompted in support of people living on social assistance.

The left has been working on abolishing social assistance through federal basic income specifically because social assistance rates are so abysmal.

Provincial anti-poverty groups have worked at the provincial level at least in Quebec but getting a federal basic income is far superior and easier to achieve. 

You are not asking people to "do better".  You are accusing the left of being no better than the right and not even giving "performative" support. 

I don't care if you blame the right too. I don't care what your politics are. I disagree with your condemnation of "the left" because it is factually wrong. 

You are obviously living in difficult circumstances as are many posters on this board so you have my sympathy on that score but not on your take on "the left". 

You are challenged but you are well enough to post on this board. How much time do you devote to writing letters to the editor or interacting with anti-poverty groups or organizing petitions? How many hours a week would you say you devote to the cause? 

It's very easy to criticize others for not doing "enough". The truth is none of us do enough. Not even close to enough. It is still not fair to accuse the left of ignoring people living on social assistance. It is the core reason we are fighting for basic income. You say it has also been a thing on the right. True, a tiny bit, but it is the left fighting for it now and bringing it mainstream. 

The left is miles ahead of the right on all poverty issues. I don't see what you hope to gain by creating a false equivalency. 

NDPP wrote:

Not sure how much more arrogant hauteur from a self-identified 'leftist' lecturing and hectoring someone actually trying to live in the belly of the barbaric, beastly oppression of enforced, structural poverty in Canada in real time, I can take.

We have been told from someone with direct experience that people are killing themselves because the status quo is so completely unendurable. And the response is a rebuke and a scolding, falsely claiming 'the left' is on it. 'The left' is not on it and anyone who has eyes to see knows that.

Of course most of the left has been negligent or inactive on this issue.  In fact based on this thread, the situation is worse than that. Some are openly hostile.

I appreciate the words of support, NDPP.

I'm glad to have at least sparked a bit of discussion about the lived realities of people currently struggling to survive on social assistance. I'll continue to speak that truth... here and everywhere. I'm not losing any sleep over whether or not Pondering thinks I'm sufficiently deferential to the Left for all they're doing for me. I'm reminded of the song, The Preacher and the Slave.

With apologies to Joe Hill:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land of UBI.
Go away, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

I agree that the record of provincial NDP governments has been very underwhelming in regard to poverty reduction. Things have improved lately under the BC NDP government but looking at provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, many NDP governments in the past have failed at reducing poverty. We shouldn’t paper over that reality.

Pondering wrote:

It wasn't a terrorist attack. It was an attack by someone who is mentally disturbed. He didn't belong to any groups. He could have latched onto anything. 

Do you have evidence for this, or is the entire spiel just saved as a keyboard shortcut, to be deployed whenever there's religious violence? The British police are claiming it's religious and ideological. But maybe this is just like what America does whenever there's gun violence: "We can't talk about the cause! This is about mental illness!"

dp

My BBC link says "Police are treating the attack in Essex as a terrorist incident, which may be linked to Islamist extremism" and that the suspect is "further detained under the Terrorism Act".

[quote=JKR]

I think what happened here in BC during the 90's under the provincial NDP government is indicative of the centre-left's general attitude toward social assistance, disability benefits, and income supports in general. The BC NDP government cut social assistance rates and disability benefits during that time because it was felt that the rates had gotten too high and were hurting economic growth and costing the government too much money.

[/quote]

They did cut those rates but frankly the only people who thought the rates were hurting economic growth were right wing assholes. The NDP did it chasing the holy grail of the balanced budget. The hype Clark went over budget by less than a few percentage points was nothing but Chicago School driven economics that caused supposedly left wing politicians to attack the poor. BC Benefits was the right wing drivel that Clark and his advisors like Horgan implemented. There is no reason that the people who rely on social assistance, especially those on disability benefits should not be paid enough to live on. I agree with this assessment that the main movers and shakers in the NDP have a general disdain towards the poor. This article is from a few years ago but I agree with its conclusions.

"Although she said she can’t remember precise details about welfare changes made by New Democrats between 1991 and 2001, the 69-year-old activist will not forget what then-premier Mike Harcourt said during his time in office. “When Harcourt was premier, he called people on welfare ‘varmints and deadbeats’,” Swanson said.

Some of these details are recalled in a study commissioned by the Canadian Council on Social Development. Released in 2009, The Best Place on Earth?: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Poverty Reduction Policies and Programs in British Columbia notes what happened when the B.C. NDP introduced a program called B.C. Benefits in January 1996.

According to the paper, “income assistance rates were reduced for single youth, couples up to age 24 without dependents, single employable adults, and employable couples aged 25 to 54 without dependents”.

That “also set the stage” for further cuts introduced by the B.C. Liberals in 2002. The study points out that underlying both schemes was the “shared belief that an individual’s choice was the determining factor behind a life of poverty…rather than the inequitable systems that distributed society’s wealth and resources”.

Living on welfare is a reality for tens of thousands of British Columbians."

https://www.straight.com/news/356641/bc-ndps-poverty-platform-still-unclear

JKR wrote:

I think the NDP governments of the 1990's had a horrible record with social assistance but Horgan's governments have had a good record so far. They have risen rates and put resources into areas such as housing and mental health.

I think you need to take off your rose coloured glasses and start some real advocacy within your party rather than cheer leading its halfhearted and inadequate measures. The BC NDP is good at progressive photo-ops where they throw small amounts at good causes and behind the scenes policies that pump hundreds of millions into the coffers of the resource extraction industries.

" Today, First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition released the 24rd annual BC Child Poverty Report Card finding that not much has changed for poor children and their families. In 2018, the year this report covers, there were 159,570 (18.5%) children and youth living in poor households with many living in deep poverty.

“Once again, using Statistics Canada’s Census Family Low Income Measure after tax, our report finds one in five children in BC were living in poverty in 2018,” commented Adrienne Montani, First Call’s Provincial Coordinator. “And we are disappointed to see an increase of over 7,000 children under the age of six who were poor compared to 2017.”

https://firstcallbc.org/news/2020-bc-child-poverty-report-card/

New social assistance program is fuelling homelessness in Saskatoon

The old Transitional Employment Allowance and Saskatchewan Assistance Program (SAP) have been phased out as of Aug. 31, with everyone receiving assistance in the province now on the new SIS program.

Justine Yantz, a 30-year-old single mother of a 10-year-old autistic daughter diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy and intellectual disability, said she gets less money under SIS and wants the province to switch back.

Yantz said that on the old SAP system, she had her rent and utilities paid for, and also received a $305 rental supplement and a monthly allowance of $285.

Under SIS, she receives $955 from the province per month, of which $700 goes for her rent and the remainder barely covers her utilities. Her $305 rental housing supplement burns out quickly on groceries and other bills.

Yantz said SIS also doesn't pay some other expenses the old program did, like her daughter's special diapers, which are $100 per box. An extra $50 she used to receive for her daughter's dietary needs has also been stopped.

"It's like do you get diapers, or do you buy food?" she said.

NorthReport wrote:

https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2021/10/21/response-to-the-expensive-t...

Good article.
Social assistance is currently the responsibility of the provinces and territories. Consider the Ontario Social Assistance system has 800 rules, 240 benefit rates, 50 children’s benefits rates, and 30 specialized benefits. At the end of the day, it cannot afford to provide a single person in Ontario more than a fraction of the poverty line, around $9,646 per year. The argument that these rates should be kept deliberately low to encourage people to seek paid work, is out of touch with the reality that social assistance schemes end up creating barriers to work and a disincentive to participation in Canadian society including the workforce. Regardless of the amount paid, benefits in the provinces and territories and for some Indigenous Canadians are paid within a type of social assistance system.

Life-making or Death-making?

Today, 21 months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a “global health emergency,” warning us all of the dangers posed by the novel coronavirus; 19 months after most countries’ economies came to a screeching halt; and well into a fourth fatal wave of the virus, capitalists wake up to news that the world economy is projected to grow by six percent. Stock markets in Canada and elsewhere have largely rebounded, and certain sectors – healthcare suppliers, online retailers, streaming services, and grocery stores, to name a few – have profited handily from the pandemic. US banks are poised to see “record level earnings,” while Canadian banks are considered “stable.”

Meanwhile, as of the time of writing, 4.8 million people worldwide have died and 238 million people have fallen sick after contracting COVID-19 – and let’s not forget that these official figures dramatically understate the actual scale of this tragedy. The vast majority of its casualties are of course from the working classes, the people who make economic growth possible in the first place. And a disproportionate number of those stricken by the virus are workers tasked with caring for the vulnerable in society: disabled people, the very young, the old.  

Clearly, the capitalist economy has learned to ride out this deadly pandemic. Even if many businesses have gone under, and even if today’s economic recovery turns out to be shallow, as some critics warn, the system as a whole did not implode. Nor is its collapse imminent. That’s because – as the pandemic has made crystal clear – in the trade-off between economic health and workers’ health, capitalism sides with the former, which is another way of saying that capitalism sides with death over life. While regularly defended as a system of individual freedom, capitalism is first and foremost a system of profit-making. And profits can be generated only by thwarting our efforts to live full, meaningful, healthy lives, and by degrading, policing, and surveilling the lives of some people more than others. In other words, violence is necessary for the production of profit. 

In this violent process, the state is a faithful partner. It regulates workers’ life-making activities in ways that minimize the risk to capital’s ability to dispossess and exploit those over whom it rules. And the pandemic provides us with myriad concrete examples of how state-led social reproduction regimes, or what might be called “life-making-from-above,” offer only ambivalent and uneven support for life while routinely intensifying the vulnerabilities of the oppressed. Yet it also provides us with other, more uplifting examples – examples of “life-making-from-below,” in which ordinary working-class people organize to meet individual and community needs, and to enhance their lives by expanding their control over their social reproduction. 

But because violence and death-making are systemic to capitalism – that is, because they are built into the very logic of capitalist dispossession and accumulation – life-making-from-below will always sit in tension with life-making-from-above. Grappling with this core feature of capitalism can help the socialist left orient to many of today’s struggles over healthcare, education, housing, and more. For it suggests that anti-capitalist resistance can and must be built upon efforts to contest the state’s power to set the conditions of our social reproduction. And it reveals openings for strengthening solidarities among the oppressed, as well as the importance of centring anti-oppression politics in any struggle that aims to strike at the violent heart of capital.....