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.

How to Spot an Ineffectual Do-Gooder. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako



How to Spot an Ineffectual Do-Gooder.


The ineffectual do-gooder’s preferred habitat is the front page of your local media outlet.


Their most distinguishing feature is that they are always ‘raising awareness’ of some significant topical issue, and a distinct absence of ideas of exactly what to do about it. They want to hold a candlelight vigil. More than anything, they want a pat on the back and reinforcement of the idea that they are good people, that they love Jesus and they’re just trying to do God’s work for Him, when in reality, these privileged, dull, unimaginative children of the middle class are just looking for a little publicity and a feeling that they are making a difference, when, really they are not—


If I was a Canadian journalist, confronted by yet another ineffectual do-gooder, ever so sincerely trying to raise awareness on the front page of my media outlet, I would have just one question for them:


“On this particular issue, if you could offer one single, concrete, and specific suggestion to address the situation, if you were given the power to take action, what would you do?”


< resounding silence>


“What’s the first thing you would tell the government to do. Right? They have the power to pass laws and fund programs, what would you suggest…? Right?”


<more silence>


And, ladies and gentlemen, if they don't have anything, then they don't get in my newspaper or other media outlet. That's because you're wasting all of our time. As a self-absorbed, egotistical little shit, this shocks you in some small way. But, as an example, 'the opoid crisis' is in the newspapers, on TV news and radio news, at least once a week.


How much fucking higher do you think we will have to 'raise awareness' of this issue, considering the idea or concept of the opioid crisis has well over a 95% 'penetration rate', in terms of public awareness. So, if you get that up to 98%, will something miraculously happen to solve the problem…??? Because that’s the impression I get. The power of positive thinking is useless without positive, by that I mean concrete, specific suggestions. Ideas. What exactly would you have us do? Go downtown and burn a candle on the riverbank with you? All that does is get us in the paper.


You honestly believe it will work—


You honestly believe that somebody, somewhere else—surely not the likes of you, will take concrete and specific actions to address the issue. As long as it’s not you—because you don’t have one, single fucking idea. Just feelings—hopes and dreams—thoughts and fucking prayers.


And you can't—or won't—answer that one either. It's okay, you're in good company. Canadian journalists can't answer it either. No, far better to raise awareness and have no ideas at all. At least that way you can’t fail. That’s because you can’t try. You have nothing to try—nothing at all.


#practical_suggestions #Canadian_journalism

Simply put, you're a bunch of fucking dummies.

A dummy is someone who doesn't have any ideas.

They’re fucking everywhere.

Are you aware, young man, that income levels are closely linked to outcomes in terms of mental health issues?

And that mainstream media and the middle class have forever inextricably linked mental health and addictions as being one and the same issue...??? #fuck_off

Have you ever wondered why they do that? You know, like slandering anyone who ever had a beer or smoked a joint as mentally-ill?

Oh, yeah, and then turning around and slandering anyone with a mental illness as an inveterate substance-abuser?

When the Establishment does that, government, CMHA, corporate media, it is an attempt to make an expensive problem look unsolvable. They’ll drib and drab with food banks, mental-health outreach programs, all of it underfunded because it’s hopeless anyway.

And they’ll never be out of a job, either.

And, if the middle-class, the taxpayers, (the rich, the big corporations, duck their fair share in a multitude of ways, and of course poor people are below the tax threshold on CRA tax tables), think it's a lost cause, why, then, they’re obviously not going to want to spend their tax dollars on it. They’d rather plunk it down on something that works, like roads, bridges and hospitals.

Those are more tangible—you can see them, and they seem real. The average middle class person has no expertise when it comes to solving poverty.

I’ll tell you this much: you have no ideas. No one is going to hand you a big pile of cash, not an effective amount of cash. Because it takes billions, year in and year out. Fifty or sixty grand, some grant money, (but you haven’t even got that far yet, that’s because you have no fucking ideas), buys you a storefront for a few months. It hires one entry-level professional just out of school, for about six months, and it buys a few pens, pencils, an ad in the local paper—who are only too happy to take the taxpayer’s money.

You're all talk and no cock, Boyo.

What impresses me most about you people is how little you know about the people you are ostensibly planning to help.

More.

“It’s difficult to validate, but we do believe that several deaths have been prevented since Naloxone or Narcan kits have become available,” he said.


Yeah, it's a lot like claiming success in suicide prevention, while at the same time, resisting all calls to track ODSP/OW suicide statistics. Because we all know what that would show. It would show that ODSP/OW clients are a high-risk group. They are at-risk. We all know it to be true, even though there are no stats—it is a self-evident truth.  


And we also know that the only solution is time, money, expense, trained people, working at effective programs. That money would have to come from somewhere, probably the taxpayers.


We can’t have that now, can we.


Ideas do not come from ineffectual do-gooders.


#fuck_off

Another one.



...would this, by any chance, have anything to do with the fact that ODSP clients are living thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line?


Then why not fucking say so.


The funny thing is, he never will, and neither will local radio.


#fuck_off


St. Myles of Yappi.


What’s interesting about the more effectual do-gooders, such as St. Myles of Yappi, is that never, so long as they live, will they bring up the fact that ODSP clients are living thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line, and that the landlord is taking seventy percent of their disability pension in rent.


Saint Myles will never call for a raise in ODSP/OW rates.

He will never call for a raise in the minimum wage, or rent controls, or an increase in allowable earnings for people on social assistance. In that sense, he is a stooge for the bourgeoisie. But then, they’re the ones donating all the tins of soup, which is of course in their best interest—they don’t want to see the situation coming down to class warfare.

***

Ultimately, an ineffectual do-gooder on the front page of the newspaper is just another damned suck-hole, looking for easy publicity, mostly for no reason at all.

End