Systemic Change Comes Through Political Action. Louis Shalako.

The loneliness must be intense...

Louis Shalako

I saw this guy at the gas bar. Black Chrysler van, loaded with bags, boxes and crates. The exhaust system is shot. The van is dented, dinged and rusting through. A metal shield on the exhaust system is hanging down, scraping the road on every bump. I've seen him before, grabbing ten or twelve black bins at the Beer Store, which he takes out into the parking lot and fills up from other bins and bags, of empties he's collected over his travels.

He may stop in at the food bank, or the soup kitchen, but that driver's seat is where he lives. That is his bed, ladies and gentlemen, that is where he sleeps. With a 27-year waiting list, (only a slight exaggeration – ed.), for geared-to-income housing, and this guy's an older man, one wonders where he parks at night—I have been reliably informed that the Tim Horton's on south Indian Road is locking its doors at night. No walk-ins, only drive-through after ten or eleven at night. This is due to homeless people, getting in from the cold, it's also due to drug overdoses in the bathroom. How long can he keep that thing on the road, and after that, then what?

One wonders where he goes to take a shit, or to take a shower once in a while. And I rather doubt this one has been counted among the local statistics. One wonders how he deals with the hopelessness, the sheer loneliness of his position.

#statistics

Shortly after the 2018 municipal election, county council called for a five-year study of housing affordability. I wonder what sort of nonsense report the Bill Dennis types (an extremely conservative person in his own words) think they can get away with, or are we just supposed to forget.

#fuck_off

The report will focus in on 'leveraging paradigms' and stupid shit like that. Only fools talk like that, and this is a serious problem. 

They are, in the words of Karl Marx, ‘useful fools’, and they do know what is expected of them…they even get paid to do it.

According to news sources, something like 1,300 volunteers had been through the Inn of the Good Shepherd in a recent year, and they were serving 1,700 or more families and individuals per month, in a whole plethora of services. At some point I had to realize, that any asshole can go down there and make soup for the people. I know that sounds cruel. But it really doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to make soup, nor a doctor, a lawyer, or any skilled person. It is mostly church groups, service clubs and some of the union locals. The food bank serves some need in them as well, or they wouldn’t do it, would they. Some people make cash donations. Surely there is a surplus of cash out there, somewhere…perhaps it’s a problem of distribution. Maybe it's just a 'supply-chain disruption'.

But the only way to tackle systemic issues is by political means. It is a challenge of communication, not one of handing out food baskets, which are never enough and it doesn't solve the root problem anyways.

Making 'political statements' is something the food bank operators are loathe to do, as is the local news media, for related but different reasons. Non-profits are barred from political activity, although that has never stopped the conservative think-tanks. I recall one conservative government went after some left-wing think-tanks, claiming they were violating their mandate, which some might argue includes a bit of criticism of the social order—and the government stands at the top of that heap, don't they. The food banks don't want to scare off donors, some of whom are very conservative, and the media don't want to lose advertising dollars or have to deal with an inundation of angry letters to the editor. Oddly enough, the government does a fair bit of advertising in local media…

#analysis #Louis

This is why the never-ending food drive is a 'good-news' story about a 'sharing and caring community'. All propaganda, in order to be truly effective, must be based on some truths...and once it is swallowed, and accepted, it becomes 'truth', which is also a bit of a problem around here.

There is no surplus of truth, not in this town, ladies and gentlemen.

After more than forty years of, quite frankly, thoughtless media indoctrination, no one really questions it anymore. 

That, is the challenge of communication.

They have grown up with such stories for their entire lives. It takes great courage to question such an ‘unquestionable’ narrative, and that’s why no one ever does it.

If the local food bank can get 55,000 lbs. of food a month to distribute, the problem is not food. There is clearly surplus food. The problem is one of income. People don't have enough money to buy their own food. Many of those people are working.

Where does the Chamber of Commerce stand on this issue?

Take a wild guess…

More food drives, more charity, more mental-health outreach programs, more free Nalaxone kits handed out in clumps of bushes down on the riverbank...please, please, please, don't do anything that would actually solve this problem, for example raising the minimum wage...or business taxes, or property taxes, or meddling with any other funding stream.

The current welfare and disability regime in this province and this country are ludicrously underfunded. Always have been, always will be.

Nothing is ever going to change until we change.

And change, my friend, is hard.

 

END

Image: Morguefile.

Note. The passages highlighted in blue are from Facebook comments. The main text was pieced together in Fb posts. I tried saving as a .txt document, which will often strip out unwanted formatting, but it clearly did not work. - Louis

Louis has books and stories on Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

ODSP/OW Comfort Food. Stone Soup. by #fritz

 

Served with stolen, or 'foranged' cherry tomatoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to the fact that the Province of Ontario has zero intentions of raising disability pensions anytime soon, we are pleased to bring you this age-old, family recipe for Stone Soup.

I come from a Scythian background, thanks very much—

First, you will need to visit your local parking lot and do a bit of foranging. Basically, telling the disabled that they will need to forage for their food can be a bit degrading, a bit dehumanizing, a bit of a genocidal bourgeois fallacy, a statement which debases the speaker even more than the people he, she or it is talking about, but the fact is the English language has long needed a word that rhymes with orange…it just sounds a lot more fun.

Today’s recipe includes purslane, which grows in a base soil, for example cracks in concrete pavement, and which can be found everywhere due to crumbling infrastructure in this post-truth environment. Purslane is good for aches and colds and sore assholes, and pimples on the dink, so don’t be afraid to experiment. We like to give this a good, cold rinse and then a long soak, again in cold water. We do the same with any cannabis leaves we can scrounge, (or scorange), but the fact is that shit is barely smokeable…

Dandelion greens are a hearty, tasty, easily procurable salad vegetable, although you don’t want to use the ones found in a rich Progressive Conservative’s lawn as they are riddled with banned weed-control chemicals. A trace won’t kill you, but it’s not too good for the innards, and you don’t want to turn into a superhero, otherwise you will be wearing capes and leotards for the foreseeable future. It’s all right for the girls, but yeesh, buddy. How friggin’ gay is that. Anyhow, wash the bird-shit off that in the usual way.

The bourgeois idea of how the disabled should live...

This recipe calls for four or five large stones, and while beach stones are the best, nothing beats good old limestone. Honestly, it really doesn’t have to be igneous or metamorphic.

If you’re feeding small children, well!!! Kids just love those colourful little breakfast pebbles already; and who doesn’t enjoy a good day at the beach. Just give ‘em a good wash, to get the bird-shit offa there and place them in the bottom of a pan.

 

Cooking.

Place stones and four cups of cold water, along with any other ingredients, in a saucepan donated from the Inn of the Fucking Goof or any crummy, shitty thrift store, whom, as you know, are working very, very hard to prevent the government from raising ODSP/OW, (disability/welfare). I like to cook them to an internal temperature of 165 degrees per the Ontario Safe Food Handlers Guide. Salt and pepper, season to taste. A bit of margarine will put a slick on there, like Talfourd Creek any day of the week around here.

Meal prep is made easy-peasy!!!

***

Once you get that up to heat, poke holes in the rocks to let out the blood. When the juices run thin and clear, the stones are done. As for storage, (better yet, storange), stones need to be kept in a cool dry place, so a bucket under the kitchen cupboard will do just fine. No refrigeration required, and sometimes that is a good thing.

As you can see, even a single guy like me can make enough for leftovers.

Leftovers is good, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s time to eat. Try not to look like you’re enjoying it too much, hungry as hell as you must be by this point, i.e., the second or third day of the month after cheque day. If you are on ODSP and you’re not suffering enough, the middle class figures they are getting #ripped_off .

Next week: Cock Soup, which is actually just a dead rooster.

Although almost any dead bird from the side of the road will do.

Honestly, it’s not a cock. Not a real one, anyways.

Which give us something in common with the Minister, who, in my own impression, probably hasn’t seen a real cock in years. 

Which seems a bit odd, as she’s not a bad-looking lady.

 

#fritz

 

Fuck that, I'm outa here... #da_Rooster

 

Well, There Goes the Plan for Tomorrow. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako




This time of winter, the anger lurks very close to the surface. There's still a bit of winter left, and the first half of spring isn't all that nice either.

#winter

I was planning to go to work tomorrow morning, (that's because I desperately need the money) and then make it to the Salivation Army food bank in the afternoon. (That's because I don't have any fucking food in the house, and ODSP payday isn't until next week.) 

Unfortunately, my brother wants to drop his car off at the high school auto class so that they can work on it. (For free, right.) And he will need a ride home, and then a ride back later. My car acted up yesterday, but it worked well enough today. This is no guarantee for tomorrow. 

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I have my own fucking priorities.

I go to work in the morning. I go to work in the morning, not the afternoon, not the fucking evening, not in the middle of the fucking night. That’s so that I can get done, get paid, and get the fuck to the nearest God-damned grocery store, and yes, the smoke-shack, and yes, maybe even the liquor store, or, sometimes, maybe even just a good, old-fashioned, God-damned fucking food bank.

Hey, maybe I just want to go to the dentist sometimes. Right…???

The Salivation Army food bank is open four days a week here in Sarnia, Ontario, from one o’clock to three o’clock in the afternoon. I guess maybe that’s what I was thinking—I could go to work in the morning and then go there in the afternoon.

Having gone to the dentist’s office this morning to get a cavity filled, only to discover that the tooth was cracked lengthwise, and had to be extracted, I've had nothing to eat but soup today. 

He ain't exactly the world's greatest communicator. An even worse listener—

And now, if you don't mind, I will proceed to punch THE UNIVERSE right in the mouth, however symbolically.

#fuck

I had money a few days ago, (that’s because I worked), and while at Walmart, I noticed Swanson frozen dinners on for $1.77. Right next to that, they had Stouffer’s frozen entrees on for the same price. I asked the lady at the checkout if that was right, and scanning them, it seems that it was. I bought four of them, for $7.08.

I’ve been sort of rationing them out, mostly because I don’t always feel up to making some big, set-piece dinner. One measly fucking Salisbury steak dinner, 345-grams, will be the only solid food I get today. Yes, I know exactly how lucky I am to have that—after all, I’m the one who has to arrange all of these little secular miracles. Just to illustrate, I’m a grown man of 58 years of age, six-foot-five-and-three-quarters, and I weigh about 206 lbs.—a bit on the skinny side for my height, maybe, but after twenty-two years on the Ontario Disability Support Program, what in the hell else would you expect.

That’s the funny thing about plans, ladies and gentlemen. No matter how good, or even how simple it might be, there’s always somebody out there all ready and waiting to fuck it up for you.

END

Fuck. Anyways, I have some books and stories available from Kobo. Have a look if you like, there’s always something there for free.

Click the author’s name, and you’ll see quite a number of titles.

Images. Top: NASA, the UNIVERSE, about to get a symbolic punch in the mouth. Bottom. Self-explanatory, pic by Louis.

Thank you for reading my fucking shitty little rants.