Homeless Deaths and Canadian Federal Politics

I intend to write an entry on the ongoing federal election campaigns in both Canada and the United States, but I have suspended work on that to respond to the comments that NDP (that's Canada's social democratic party) leader Jack Layton made about the role of Liberal (that's Canada's parallel to the Democrats, in case any U.S.-based folk ever read this) leader and then-finance minister Paul Martin has played in the deaths of homeless people.

Layton said, "Deaths due to homelessness in this city took a rapid rise immediately after Paul Martin cancelled the affordable housing program, and their names stand in testimony to the neglect that has been rained on our city."

I have been quite involved in housing and homelessnes issues. In fact, I made a rather similar point to Layton's in a radio interview done during the last federal election. A bunch of us were staging a rally outside the constituency office of a local Liberal MP during the campaign, to promote the 1% solution -- the idea that all levels of government should invest 1% of their budgets in building affordable housing. A reporter from a local radio station asked why we were targeting the Liberals in this action, since we claimed to be non-partisan. I replied something to the effect that we were targeting the Liberals because they had created the problem. Not only did they slash and download social housing programs, but they made a variety of other changes to Canada's social safety net which allowed right-wing provincial governments to implement much harser welfare regimes, made it much harder to qualify for unemployment insurance, and generally contributed to a change in the role of the state by reducing social spending as a percentage of of GDP.

Since that time, I have spent two years working for an organization doing community-based research, much of it on housing and homelessness issues. We weren't allowed to connect the dots quite as directly as Layton did in our reports, but they definitely linked the upsurge in homelessness to social policy decisions at the federal and provinical levels.

Now, it's unfair to place the blame solely on Martin's back. He was finance minister, and was therefore very powerful within the cabinet, so his choices definitely played a role in creating the situation which has led to an increase in homeless deaths. The rest of the Liberal caucus deserves a share of the blame as well, as do many if not all provincial governments (especially the Harris government in Ontario), and of course all of the institutions and forces of global neoliberalism, of which these changes in the role of the state are a part.

So I say: Go Jack Go!

(And I am not an NDP partisan, but rather someone who...well, I'll get to that general entry on federal elections soon.)

I am also intrigued both by the media coverage and the Liberal response to these comments. It is quite easy to find data, at least for Toronto and probably for a number of other cities as well, showing that Layton's accusations are factually defensible. I have not exhaustively read the mainstream press on this issue, but I have read some, and I have not yet seen use of this documentation -- essentially, I suspect, because it would support Layton. He, after all, has published a book about homelessness, which I don't necessarily agree with 100%, but which shows a broad knowledge of the subject area.

In the CBC article I read, they at least outlined some of the historical background:

"Cuts to Canada's affordable housing program were slashed by
the Progressive Conservative government in its 1993 budget, and
implemented by the Liberal government when it came to power
that fall in an effort to reduce the deficit.

"Under pressure from cities, in 2001 the federal government
committed $680 million for the affordable rental program. To
date less than half has been spent."

They also cited the number of homeless deaths in Toronto since 2001, which is interesting but hardly relevant to the point under contention on its own.

I would also add that the description of the 2001 program is not entirely accurate. It is a rental supply program, not an affordable housing program. In some provinces, it has been implemented to create actual affordable housing. In Ontario, thanks to the way the federal Liberals insisted on structuring the program and to the obstinancy of the previous provincial Tory government, it is very much about rental supply and will not do much to help people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

However, this ignores the research which shows the correlation between the restructuring of the Canadian state's role in social responsibilities in the 1990s (through both federal and provincial actions) and the increases in homelessness (and, as a consequence, homeless deaths) in urban centres. It exists, but mainstream media seem to be ignoring it.

The Canadian Press article I read on the subject was even worse. It fell into a very typical mainstream media trap by defining balance as quoting people on two sides of the issue and then not bothering to include any documented facts which might show one person was right and the other wrong. They quote Layton's accusation and Martin's denial, and leave it at that -- superficial balance at the expense of accuracy.

(Although I do like the response of NDP strategist James Heath to the Liberal indignation at Layton's remarks: "Nobody is putting blood on anybody's hands . . . Paul Martin made choices, homelessness increased and some of them died. If Paul Martin doesn't like that fact, he should have made a different choice." Refreshing directness.)

All of this relates to a larger issue that I have been thinking about a lot lately: the ways in which knowledge, which supposedly flows so freely, can stay segregated within society, or even within an individual.

For example, take the abuses at Abu Ghraib. As far as I understand it, it was fairly common knowledge in Iraq that this sort of thing was going on -- at least some people who were in U.S. custody had been released, they talked to their friends and relatives, and word spread. As even the LA Times noted in a story last week, the lack of surprise and novel outrage from Iraqi sources at the release of the magical pictures is quite telling. It was old news there. And, in fact, anyone who follows human rights and dissident sources in North America has known for ages that torture of this sort was part of U.S. operations in Guantanimo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Yet now, with the release of some of these pictures, it has become accpetable knowledge in mainstream circles in North America.

Now, I think the answer provided by Tom Engelhardt to the question of why this change happened is the best I've seen so far -- bureaucratic infighting in the U.S. government, in particular a decision by the CIA, the Pentagon, and senior moderate Republicans to go after the neocons, has made it acceptable fare for mainstream media in the U.S., which historically limits the range of dissent it treats seriously to that offered by the Democrats (currently next to nill) or that demonstrated by differences within the state bureaucracy.

But what amazes me (despite how common it is) is that millions of people in Iraq treated this as part of their commonsense reality, yet to most people in North America, if you had suggested this was going on prior to the release of those photos, you would have been treated as a nutty leftist or an al-Qaeda supporter, even if you brought the documentation that existed at the time.

Returning to the issue of homelessness, it is this ability to count on knowledge being segregated within society that has allowed much of the worst right-wing rhetoric in Canada to be politically viable over the last decade. The bread and butter of the Harris Tories in their Ontario election victories, particularly the first one, was poor-bashing. They got away with it because most middle-class Ontarians know little or nothing about the lives of poor Ontarians, so if some classist bigot tells them they have been duped into paying for lots of welfare fraud and all the other baloney that goes with that line, they have no basis of their own to reject it.

It is important to highlite the role of privilege in this active rejection of or at least teflon-like passive ability to shed any awareness of the realities of people who are oppressed in the face of lots of available information. Privilege, whether it is class privilege or white skin privilege or male gender privilege, makes itself hard to see, so you can just sit back and enjoy the privilege without dealing with the fact that you are enjoying it because others are oppressed.

In this case, the Liberal strategists who are responding with righteous indignation at what they are characterizing as a personal attack are counting on the same thing. They are counting on the fact that middle-class voters, and even many working-class voters, are ignorant of the realities of homelessness in Canada, how it went from problem to crisis to disaster, and how it is experienced by real people. The sad part is, this may work.

However, it may not -- I don't have a sense of whether this was a deliberate ploy by Layton or something he said off-the-cuff because it is a part of his commonsense, as someone who has dealt with homelessness issues for a long time, but I think working in his favour is the fact that a lot of money, including effort and money from this Liberal government, has gone into raising awareness about homelessness in Canada's urban centres. The Liberals have done pretty much nothing to deal with the root causes of the homelessness crisis they created, but perhaps some of the inadequate shut-the-agencies-and-activists-up dollars that they put into public awareness-raising on the issue will actually have done some good, and significant numbers of citizens will sense the truth in Layton's words.

More On Dellinger

For more rememberances of long-time activist David Dellinger, you can check out today's edition of Democracy Now!. Unfortunately, it looks like you can no longer listen to archived episodes online, only the current day's episode, so the link will not age well. Still, the series as a whole is very much worth checking out.

You can also read the text of an email of rememberance sent out by Toronto Action for Social Change, an affinity group in the Homes Not Bombs network in Ontario. (I was involved in Hamilton Action for Social Change, also part of HNB.) The email also contains the text of a speech given by Dellinger in Toronto in 1988, which feels just as relevant to today's circumstances.

Another Passing: Dellinger

I don't intend this blog to become an activist "in memoriam" site, but I just received word that David Dellinger, active for more than six decades in struggles for peace and social justice in the United States, has passed away. I saw him speak once, in Toronto, but it was after his Alzheimer's had already begun to affect him. However, I have read his autobiography and other writings by him and I find him phenomenally inspiring. He came from privilege but led a resolutely radical life. His commitment to nonviolence was unwavering, but he was not afraid of "revolution" as either a word or a goal. I remember once characterizing, in a tongue-in-cheek way but still kind of meaning it, the affinity group I was active with for a number of my later years in Hamilton as being "anarcho-Dellingerist" in its politics. For various reasons, including the fact that I knew I would be moving to the United States, my profile of activity has changed somewhat in the last two or three years but I still consider that approach to be central to how radical social change can and will happen.

Los Angelean Interpretation of "Park"

When I see the word "park" on a map, generally what comes to mind is an open space covered in grass, often with some trees as well as some play-related amenities (like swings) and perhaps a concrete court or two for sports. We have investigated the two "parks" nearest to us in Los Angeles, according to our handy street maps. The one slightly less close by is community focused, but it has little greenspace -- in fact it has more parking than grass -- and a community centre building which seems to be the actual focus. The one nearest to us is devoted to plant life, but it does not seem to be open to the public. It is filled with lots of garden-like spaces growing lots of interesting looking things, but you can't get in. In fact, one section of the fence that surrounds it is actually topped with barbed wire. I don't know if this is a repository that the city uses to grow plants it uses in other places, or if residents who don't have yards get to rent space and grow whatever they want. Particularly if the latter guess for the nearer park is correct, both of these are pretty cool uses of urban space. But they are not parks.

Labels, Their Limitations, and My Blog Title

The first venue in which I was regularly published was the McMaster Sillhouette, the student newspaper at the university I attended. The first few items were book reviews, but after that I wrote regular op/ed pieces for a couple of years. As with all writing done more than a handful of years ago, when I go back and look through them, it is always a mix of, "Oh my, I can't believe I signed my name to that," and, "Wow. That's actually pretty good." Though I think my knowledge base has expanded considerably since then, and my analysis has become at least a little more sophisticated, those articles were produced when I was first exploring in a substantive way the fit between my values and the broader world, and so the underlying themes reflect the me of today as well.

I write this because one of the articles I wrote at the time expressed my dislike for the left/right spectrum as a metaphor for describing worldview. Since I nicked and modified Mark Twain's title for my blog, I have been wrestling with unease from the very same sources that prompted that article.

The title of this blog is, in effect, a label; and more than a label, it is a claiming of identity. Identity is complex, and truly capturing it in text is an enteprise for a poem or a novel, not for headlines or clever catch-phrases. By choosing this title, I am emphasizing certain aspects of who I am for public consumption. Put another way, I am using words to take certain pieces of me and link them to narratives and structures in the broader world, and saying, "This matters to me."

In the title of this blog, I have selected three aspects of me to so emphasize.

One is that I have moved to and am now a resident of the United States; moreover, I have indicated this in a way that expresses some disapproval of the current leader of this particular state, or perhaps of its system of government. Given the sorts of things I will probably be writing about, and the fact that The Move was the occasion for starting this blog, including this facet of identity in the title is both relevant and trivial. Place matters, and I'm sure my location will permeate what I write. Moreover, the way I have chosen to indicate place also reflects my initial standpoint with respect to it. (And if Kerry wins, it will be easy enough to change "George" to "John".)

Another aspect that the title emphasizes is that I am, in fact, Canadian. This is factually true, but is not something I generally choose to emphasize. There is a certain inevitability that this would take up a more visible place in my life upon the occasion of no longer living in Canada -- that which is framed by contrast is easier to see. I also do not wish to deny this particular piece of identity, because growing up in the particular social, cultural, economic, and political environment connected to the label "Canada" cannot help but have shaped me. At the same time, I am not exactly proud of this link. Yes, being connected to a collective of other human beings is meaningful, but the connection between myself and most of the other 30 million or so Canadians feels arbitrary, forced, tenuous. If I am going to claim connection that is so widespread and abstract, why not claim it with all 6 billion of my fellow humans?

The label "Canadian" also implies connection not only to a nation of people, but to the state that, to a great extent, defines that nation. I most definitely do not wish to be seen as exhibiting any pride because of my connection to the Canadian state. Yes, in contrast to the U.S. there are a few small niches that have been carved out for the benefit of the citizens of the country -- a somewhat better social welfare system and socialized medicare, though both have been weakened and both face continuing asssaults, and a greater recognition of the rights of people to love those of the same gender -- but the Canadian state is still a state. It was founded on the genocide of the Aboriginal peoples of the northern section of Turtle Island, and it remains complicit in doing what it can to complete the theft of Aboriginal land and the destruction of Aboriginal culture. While Canadians often exhibit a certain smug, liberal superiority that we do not get our hands dirty with the blood of others as exuberantly as our southern neighbours, the truth is that Canada (the state and its elites, and to varying lesser degrees many of the rest of us as well) has always benefited from and been complicit in the imperial adventures of Britain and, now, the United States. Our relative unimportance allows us to remain aloof from the worst offences, and choose when and where to get our hands dirty, and the very wealth we derive from imperialism gives us the space to be liberal about it all. Even during Vietnam, which Pierre Trudeau kept our soldiers out of, no country on earth other than the United States (and possibly Japan) benefited more economically from the slaughter of millions in Southeast Asia (via the Canadian war industry).

I could go on at great length about the complicity and active participation by the Canadian economy and state in environmental destruction, oppression at home and abroad, and all sorts of other unpleasant things, but I think the above adequately makes my point: I am not embracing the term "Canadian" out of any desire to be a cheerleader for the state to which it is connected. However, the society that is also connected to that word has shaped me, and if my new location is important to what I will be writing in this space, then so is the place from which I originate.

The final label is the characterization of my politics in the title. It is (can you have any doubt after the rant two paragraphs up?) accurate. However, though I feel less discomfort with such political labels than I did when I wrote that op/ed piece seven or eight years ago, I retain my basic wariness. Political labels tend to shut down dialogue -- people often assume they know what they mean to those who claim them when they do not, and put those people in a slot instead of listening. This is particularly troubling because political labels, especially the left/right spectrum, tend to obscure complexity. The attitudes to race and gender issues, to process, to violence, to hierarchy, and to lots of other things vary dramatically within the overarching term "left". It is very easy for political labels to alienate people to whom they are unfamiliar or even (often for personally understandable if socially distressing reasons) threatening.

Finally, I also am wary of political labels because I feel that excessive attachment to them feeds a tendency to identify our politics and ethics with words rather than actions. It is very easy to claim a label, to say, "I believe X is right and Y is wrong." It is very easy to say, "I am anti-racist" or "I support the working class." However, you can have all the analysis and all the good intentions in the world, and it is what you do with them that matters. The importance of ethics and politics is material, not rhetorical, and I think it is crucial, in this society that treats political analysis/action as at best an intellectual exercise and at worst an enterprise of branding and manipulation, not to do anything that encourages the substitution of labels for practice.

Yet my blog has a title, and the title is what you see above. Obviously, we need labels, and pieces of published work generally benefit from titles. There is no profound reason why I have stuck with this one: I like the play on the Twain title; my title is not inaccurate; and though it portrays only a small number of the many facets of me, its more important function is to prepare the reader for what they are about to read, and I think it probably gives a good idea of the standpoint from which the material is coming. I could change "Canadian" to "Hamiltonian," but that would confuse those who do not know Hamilton. I could change "Lefty" to "Progressive" or "Radical" or "Activist" or "Writer" or "Writer/Activist," but I think that would hurt the rhythm of the phrase.

I will stick with what I have, because it is adequate and, at heart, it really does not matter that much.

Anzaldua Passes Away

I just found out that activist, writer, and academic Gloria Anzaldua passed away a week ago today. Though I'm sure many others have engaged with her work longer and more deeply than I, her essay "Now Let Us Shift...The Path Of Conocimiento...Inner Work, Public Acts" in This Bridge We Call Home has been quite important to me. There are a few paragraphs in it about inner struggles during difficult periods that could have been written specifically for me. I have returned more than once to its words as a source of wisdom as I search for ways to live a healthy, balanced, radical life. My condolences to those who knew her personally.

Abu Ghraib in Context

As so often happens in the mainstream media and even at times in the alternative media, the scandal-of-the-moment is being fetishized to the extent that the overall oppressive nature of the context does not receive the attention it deserves.

Here's a piece of trenchant analysis of the so-called "prison abuse scandal" that powerfully links scandal and context, by academic Joseph Massad in the Egyption weekly Al-Ahram.

Comforted By Corruption

Much of my media and activist energy in Hamilton, Ontario, had to do with local government. I wrote articles. I produced and hosted radio shows. I wrote policy briefs. I helped organize some and attended more protests and actions. I contributed to a major project focused on identifying and addressing barriers to the participation of racialized people in local political life. I was involved in other research and report writing about social issues in the city, and even if those did not have a focus specifically relevant to municipal government, they involved me having to understand, write about, and function in the local institutions (broadly understood) of and around the state.

In other words, through both deliberate choice and random chance, the local came to play a much larger role in my experien ce of the world than I ever expected. In the process of preparing myself for the move to LA, and then actually moving, I have gotten the sense that this has meant a greater attachment to place -- or perhaps a greater interlinking of identity and locality -- than many other (urban-dwelling young) people experience, outside the inevitable kinship and social links in which we are all emeshed.

It is, therefore, important to me to develop a connection to LA, and not treat it solely as a temporary storage location for my carcass and belongings. Sure, it is twenty times the size of Hamilton and we expect to be living here for one-fifth as long, but it is important to me that I avoid using temporariness as an excuse for detachment. (My first years in Hamilton were as an undergraduate university student, and I largely avoided and faintly disliked the city in which I was living. I also did an eight month stint in Ottawa, and though I really liked the city, I still remained somehow aloof from it. I don't want to repeat that.)

I am still in the very early stages of exploring what that means, obviously. To the extent that carlessness and adjusting to full-time childcare responsbilities allow, I'm trying to be in the city, to ride the transit system, to walk the streets. I intend to go to political events and actions, and learn about the local political cultures. I'm being deliberate about consumning local media: LA Indymedia, the LA Weekly and other free weekly papers, and, yes, even the LA Times. I don't feel that mainstream news media are worth my time and money unless I have a specific reason to be consuming them -- in this case, taking in as much information as I can about my new city is reason enough.

And I've reaped an unexpected benefit. Just from reading the local section of the Times on Sunday and yesterday, I have come to feel more at home.

Let me explain.

Hamilton has a reputation as being a corrupt sort of place. It has historically been a big Mafia city, and even today there are indications that such activity is present at some level. Local dissidents will occasionally trot out vague and unsubstantiated allegations that it is really "the boys" (as a former working-class Italian-Canadian colleague referred to the Mafia in the only occasion during our acquaintance when he referred to them at all) who run things. In my years of observing and reporting on the local power structure, I never saw any serious evidence of this. Of course, I never really looked that hard, either. Personally, I see a good analysis based on such concepts as hegemony, elite consensus, media filtering, and all the various manifestations of what bell hooks calls "imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" to be more compelling in this regard than bad rip-offs of Sporanos plots.

However, political life in Hamilton is under the sway of unaccountable power, no doubt about that. The majority of city councillors are rabidly in favour of rapacious, unsustainable development and, what do you know, the single largest source of money for municipal election campaigns has traditionally been the development industry. Untendered contracts are signed with disturbing frequency, including one that privatized the operation of the city's sewer and water system and has proven absolutely disastrous. A construction company owned by the brother of a city councillor has done well from public contracts. The municipal government's push to build a particular piece of expressway in the face of fierce public opposition has involved many instances of deception, secrecy, and dirty tricks.

So what made me feel more at home in LA? Dedspite having read only two editions of the LA Times, I have already come across articles indicating my new home is really not so different from the one I have left behind. There is an ongoing federal investigation of some muncipal contracts. As well, there has been a sharp rise in city use of external legal counsel, and the firms who have been getting the biggest pieces of work also happen to have given large chunks of cash to the election coffers of the mayor and the attorney general of LA, who happen to be the people who have control over how much legal work is contracted out. The politicians in question, of course, insist there is no connection.

I may have to get used to all of the paper money being the same colour, but at least I can count on servility to money and power on the part of the local state.

Of course, one big difference between Hamilton and LA is that I actually read about some of this stuff in the local newspaper of record. Sure, the Times remains a mainstream newspaper, and I have no illusions about what that means, but it appears that media competition and/or popular struggle have opened at least some space for investigating and covering some of this stuff, a stark contrast to the complacency and largely uncritical or even absent coverage of analagous issues by the Hamilton Spectator.

Two Degrees of Chomsky

One more small post for tonight, more a neat coincidence than anything substantial: We only put the pieces together after she had left and so didn't have a chance to ask her about it, but the woman whose house we are subletting for the first three months of our stay in LA did her graduate work many years ago at MIT, under the supervision of none other than Noam Chomsky.

The Decision To Blog

Hi!

After some playing around, I have decided (a) that I will try having a blog and see how it goes, and (b) that I will use this service to do it. I am quite early in the process of settling into a routine here in our new life in Los Angeles -- I hope that this new situation allows me to do lots of writing, including blog posts and more polished pieces which I will also be publishing via this site. My posts might include application of political analysis to my own experiences, comments on politics in the broader world, discussions of popular culture, or any number of other things. Or I might stick with it for two weeks and decide my time is better spent in other ways. We shall see.

I have two things I want to accomplish with this blog:

1. I want to use it as an outlet for writing. I love to write all different kinds of things, but I am also very good at finding reasons not to write as much as I would like. One excuse I tend to use for starting pieces but then not finishing them is that I don't really know any place that publishes work of whatever sort I happen to be plugging away at. Well, now I do.

2. I also hope this will be useful as kind of a broadcast way of keeping in touch with people back in Southern Ontario, and trying to say semi-thoughtful things while doing it. Yes, many of those semi-thoughtful things may interest noone but me, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

My other main concern is with the constraints that the broadcast nature of this medium puts on me being myself. The self we present is slightly different to each person, and by using a medium that is open to everyone I am forced to be discrete about certain aspects of me. I believe very strongly in the importance of openness and honesty, though I make no claims to practicing them perfectly, so the idea of having to be "me minus a few bits and pieces" as I write on this site instead of just "me" rankles. As with the question of how I will actually end up using this site once my life reaches a place of greater stability, only time and experimentation can lead me to a sustainable answer.

Wish me luck!

Initial Test

I'm playing with the idea of maintaining a blog, and with using this site to do it.