toughenough
“Somebody give (her) the Hook!”
April 7th, 2011
by toughenough
I live in several parallel realities; this morning I woke up here- dismal, hopeless and bleak. The sun refuses to break. The end yet is not in our sight.
Since moving my bed to the south north position I cannot remember the nights anymore, such a sharp contrast to the sleepless hours of west to east. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
I feel I am falling into a deep dark hole.
The apartment is too quiet, too cold, not quite right these solitary days. I know there’s something in it for me, I’m just finding my way. But not on days such as these. I become aware of the pain in my body, in my mouth and head and I am angry at the Heavens and implore Them yet again.
My neighbor Mariella owns and operates a family restaurant on the corner of our street. I am her first customer in the morning, if I’ve got the $1.25 for a coffee. This morning I do. She’s on the phone to her ’home’ in Albania. Her mother recently passed and her father is having a difficult time. His blood pressure escalates and he’s rushed to hospital again. The strain is evident on Mariella’s face here some $2,000 away.
It seemed for me at the beginning of 2011 that a great hope and light were on the horizon. Don’t ask me to explain that. But the events both personal and global of these first few months have planted another sense in and over me, one of heaviness and of plodding and in trepidation of what is to come next. Many people close to me have been afflicted with “sudden tragedy”, the unexpected passing of loved ones, of parents and children alike, grave health issues such as stroke and cancer, more poverty and yet more. The general expression in everyone’s tone and posture is struggle, challenge and change.
And of course, there’s Japan, among a multitude of other natural and man-made disasters.
The coffee is brewing and while I wait I grab today’s Toronto Sun newspaper and begin to read. I don’t know why I subject myself to this assault every morning but my mother always told me, “read everything” and then think. Think, that’s critical, okay, but there is also something very visceral in the vehemence of one such as Sue-Anne Levy.
I was a starry-eyed newbie at City Hall and scared like a dependent child then, there to represent and introduce (the first class of) Voices from the Street with Becky McFarlane. I remember it as if it happened yesterday although it was some six years ago. Of course, with six years life experience to my credit my conviction today would’ve not have been so frightened or frightening to me.
What Sue-Anne said to us in response in her column the next day we also heard the mayor’s brother say to members of OCAP (Ontario Coalition against Poverty) when they stormed City Hall recently, and that was, in no uncertain terms: “Get a job!”
Based on an auditor’s report that has yet to be released our new Mayor Rob Ford fired the entire board of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation through a long and some feel undemocratic process and went on to appoint and infuse one single man with the authority to make unilateral and binding decisions about the future of social housing in Toronto.
In his first decision on a board that is still referred to as a board though it has only one member, Casey Oates has decided to and declared in a private news conference that he will sell 22 single family dwelling homes currently interspersed throughout the city with private market homes on quiet streets.
Sue-Anne Levy was present at Mr Oates single-manned (with his appointed interim CEO) meeting where TCHC tenants were seemingly given the opportunity to perhaps inform that decision making process. Sources tell me this was a matter of process more than anything else, as the decision had already been made.
In her article boldly entitled HOUSES AREN’T ‘THEIRS‘: No one’s entitled to homes for life at taxpayers’ (sic) expense, Ms Levy refers to the tenants still strong enough to fight as “whiners and moaners” with “absurd arguments.” At this point in the article I think of the people I know in social housing and who are active in social justice and inclusion movements for all. Very few whine or complain. Rather it has been my experience that they seek answers that will best serve us all. Of the dedicated and passionate tenant former tenant reps she wished that “someone would give them the hook”.
The so-called “absurd arguments” included the proposal of waiting two months until a real board is in place with tenant representation (surely 2 mos is not unreasonable), that, why would you sell off social housing when so many are on the list without providing more, that these people were seniors who had spent decades in their homes and would loose communities and support when they need it most, and that, “could we please meet at city hall” instead of being squished like sardines in dangerous numbers and for hours without water.
Sue-Anne goes on to talk disparagingly about a senior who lives in one of the 22 homes and has for the last 20 yrs. (My sources tell me that most of these 22 homes are resided in by long time senior tenants, some of 40 yrs.) She remarks on her clothing, calling it “nice” and describing it, as if tenants should look a certain way to qualify for help, as if that were pertinent to the discussion and not loaded with implication, judgement and scorn, and insinuating the senior is “cheating the system“, an accusation which too many are ready to accept as fact prior to investigation. She refers to another senior as having “armed herself with her son” (who came as a translator), She refers to councillors that disagree with this decision the dictatorial and rash process of it, and the social statements this city is declaring under the (some feel) dictatorial rule of our new Mayor Ford, as “poverty pimps”. and the whole lot of tenants as “long-term squatters”.
She goes on to express her indignation over the TCHC tenants referring to their homes as “their homes”; apparently she would like them to qualify that they belong to the “taxpayers” and that somehow that doesn’t include them, the tenants of TCHC.
Wading through this diatribe, this thorough poor-bashing, my heart is stabbed with pain. For many of us, the scorn and ridicule, the isolation, is often worse than being hungry because it can make one feel not only hungry, but dirty too.
I pay for my coffee and chat with Mariella about the rising rates of cancer and newly discovered causes, about how difficult and challenging the times seem to be for us all and I agree. But some of us are better equipped to withstand what feels like an utter onslaught. I wonder home pondering the plight of this city’s poor, of the war against us and what it all means.
Over the course of the next few hours what comes to me by way of people who attended the meeting is a reality almost too brutal to swallow. As I’m told, there was a packed house of tenants in the small room touching shoulders, crouching, and stretching to be seen and heard.
No water, inaccessible toilets, no seats, no circulation, and for four long hours. Long time dedicated leaders in the community gave their depositions.
Nothing that was said mattered. There was a staged press-conference where none of the tenants were welcomed. In fact, they were escorted out of the room. Most disturbing is the fact that the press followed the staged guidelines and the tenants voices did not get heard, except for the ‘feel good’ comments of the son of the woman who had won her right to remain. He was spoken to for a few moments in the hallway. I am told that the only voice that made it to press was the most desperate and one that actually cried, “please, please help and let us stay in our homes”.
The most pervasive concern for me is our brutal treatment of our most vulnerable as we agree to allow and participate in the stripping of rights, dignity, respect from all sides, even mainstream media, and our willingness to stand by and watch without nary a whimper.
After all, don’t Sue-Anne levy’s comments and portrayal of poor people amount to bashing on the basis of wealth and privilege? Would we tolerate it if it was a racial, sexual or cultural slight?
No matter how long I put my mind to this puzzle, I cannot understand the intolerance for those in need. People seem to prefer their rose-coloured glasses and anything minutely disturbing to their accustomed comfort level is reduced to a personal failing and responsibility, cripple, senior, mentally ill, illiterate and the slew of other citizens that find themselves simply unable to keep up.
Last Sunday morning I walked into my bank, also on the corner of our street. “King” had taken up residence in the entrance way. He is a homeless man who I nicknamed “the King” who wanders the neighborhood, and has for years, back and forth, looking for treasures to feed his hoarding addiction. In the bank stall he had 4 shopping carts filled to the brim. He had made a little chair with some newspaper and a ledge. Clothes were hung to dry here and there. It was warm and even welcoming. Yes, he had made it his “home”.
Upon entering and wafting in the smelly air I became for a moment indignant. But I stopped and thought, just what IS required of me in this moment. I must say, even though it was just a bank entrance way, it surely felt like a home when I walked in to it.
I could say such things to myself as “What does this guy think he’s doing? He’s in my way and it smells in here! I know, I’ll take the bank manager later today! I simply won’t tolerate this smelly vagrant taking up stake in my bank. Why doesn’t he “get a job!”
Or, I could remember that I about to retrieve some cash that will feed me today and I will cook it in the HOME yes HOME that I rent and I will not have to worry about the weather, about the people coming into the bank, about where I will sleep and what I will eat.
And beyond that, instead of blaming this wise and kind man who I have happily come to know, I can think of such circumstances as a social disease that we are all responsible for addressing, that it exists for me to see, feel and do- it is my responsibility.
I can choose to wish and want for “King” the very best, and at least to have as much as a place to call home and enough to eat. But that requires compassion. I decide on compassion and say good-morning, how are you and he says I’m okay thank-you one day at a time.
I am praying for Sue-Anne Levy to receive, to give, a big dose of that to those of us who but there for the grace of God go the rest of us. Including, and maybe even especially, Sue-Anne Levy, Casey Oates and the Fords.
Tomorrow there will be no $1.25 for Mariella, for the Toronto Sun or Sue-Anne Levy; they may well bash and continue to stomp on us, but in this case my ignorance will be bliss. In this case, I get to take a rest.
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An Open Letter to the Governing Men and Too Few Women of Our Times.
Toronto, Canada
April 5, 2011
toughenough
Welcome to my world.
I am an ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) recipient. Because we are always suspect and must prove our innocence (our validity, authenticity and need), I must disclose that I am challenged with “debilitating mood disorders” (PTSD, BiPolar2), breast cancer, frail bones and a failing body that includes gum disease and falling teeth. The mood disorders serve to isolate, marginalize and stigmatize, which begins in our family of origin and extends out to the larger community. The physical manifestations of gum disease and breast cancer serve to distinguish further and more concretely. The cancer journey is an entirely new dimension to add to this mix.
In my laboured life of paid jobs where we’re taxed at income source in the ‘free’ market, I laboured in the service industry for many years (witnessing), waitress-ing, bartending, and managing. I also workeded in retail, factory/office, cleaning, care-giving and as assistant to physically ‘disabled’ adults.
From a young age, around 4 yrs old, I began taking care of my 5 brothers and sisters and my (sometimes in psychotic breakdown) ill mother. There was no father save the abusive sex offending alcoholic that threw her down the stairs when she was eight months pregnant with my little brother. I don’t know why I remember that.
The state raised me through a series of placements, seven to be exact, between 4 and 15 yrs old.
There’s no controlling memories- no getting over the facts of your life save through toil and strife. The horrors and collateral damage of physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, coupled with the utter neglect inherent in our state run care agencies, such as produces these broken adults at the end of its ‘care’ mandate, unleash a mighty force in a young man or woman.
(My mother was also raised by the state.Four generations of my family in total. Can you see the pattern? Can you see the opportunity to change the outcome at the source and while in ’care’ as per CAS’S mandate- thereby saving millions in lost productivity, drugs legal and illegal, hospitals, prisons and health care, and the rampant self-destructive behaviours of this much maligned and misunderstood group of trauma survivors?)
Four generations of state care for mixed and lost-raced children- all horrific experiences, jolting, ripping, displacing, discarding the family- not one of them with effective treatment and/or a single opportunity for direction and discipline to move forward successfully with their lives. Generations of tragedy, of loss and of waste.
Nonetheless, we persevered. My family set the standard for Mexican restaurants in this city with Chile’s Mexican Flavors. My sister is a successful business owner in Vancouver’s Kitsilano. Another sister is a goat farmer with many other talents who is also a land-owner. One brother is a talented musician and another sister is a clinical social worker.
One brother, the one my mother was preganant with when she was thrown down the stairs, the baby, committed suicide (indirectly related to the ritual sexual abuse he experienced while in foster care and which ripple effect has negatively impacted, if not destroyed, many lives. It certainly caused an unbearable pain for many.
Both of my sons are iron-workers and their five children will finally be the generation to make it to college or university. All of my brothers and sisters are self-taught. None of us went to high school. We were educated at home. I went to York University as a mature student and achieved a B+ average, before diagnosis, treatment, or any cognizanze but ill. Very challenging and socially painful. At the time I was unable to complete the degree and now face a life long bar on borrowing funds to return and better my economic outlook.
Out of all of us many labourers, I am the only one to require financial assistance; in fact, I held my last fulltime and paying job about 7 yrs ago up until I could not do the hard physical labour any longer. Now with ‘assistance‘, I am poorer than I’ve ever been and getting poorer and more desperate by the day. I continue to work without pay as it is integral to living a healthy life.
I am of mixed (Native, French Canadian) race. I have lived in Toronto for most of my life, born at St Michaels’ Hospital and raised in a mixture of private market and social housing. My most vivid and good memories as a kid come from this time. Upper Cabbagetown belonged to poor people then; that was our home. I attended Sprucecourt Public School.
I remember the steep fluffy tobbanning hills of Riverdale Park where we spent the winter and the zoo up the street where we spent summers picnicking on jam and peanut butter sandwiches and Kool-Aid, me and my five brothers and sisters. Milk, ice and bread were all delivered back then. We would hit up the bread and ice truck for goodies; even a chunk of ice made us feel happy. It was our hood and we roamed it freely, in between the war at home and the brutal placements in the CAS.
I once went back there about twenty years ago wanting to stir blocked memories of my youth. I was stunned at the transformation. It now looked like a movie set- beautiful, reminiscent of life but like a picture not really alive. And exclusive. Even the corner store screamed wealth and abundance, no nickel popsicles here, and even somehow “cleanliness” and I felt as if I were dirty by comparison. This was no longer my home.
We survivors not only have no home; we have not each other through all the long and natural passages of our lives-we have to find and build our families and communities and they are rarely found outside of agencies these social working days. Four generations alienated, estranged, and outcast we pass our lives alone in lonely rooms. There is no celebration of our birth, death or anything in between. We each stand alone no matter how things turn out for each of us and look back on what could’ve been.
Our community, the poor, racialized, disenfranchised, but mostly poor, still suffers under the rampage of gentrification and revitalization. And now we have all come to accept such decimation of communities as a necessary sacrifice for the wealth of a few and thereby supposedly for all of us collectively but I’ve yet to see those figures or any benefit to me or people like me. Currently the rumbling of construction and facelifts are outside my door still. They do not take us into consideration and they care not where we land.
St Clair W has been my new home intermittenly for almost thirty yrs now. I was surprised, to say the least, when I heard the story as told by CTV of this ‘rebirth’ of St Clair W. A lot of us were living in the so named demise and non-thriving of this community without realizing it was pitiful at all. We raised families, we shopped, we cooked, we went to school, and our neighbourhood was affordable, grassroots, organic and ethnic. It is not so diverse now. In fact, the immigration police scour the area looking for ‘illegals’.
Through the revite process and the TTC right-of-way, they have put our small family business owners out of business, refer to their lawsuit as frivolous and because high-end corporate businesses have replaced them, they refer to the area as revitalized. None of these plans, shops or services cater to poor people and once again its as if we the poor and disenfranchised, the discarded, were dirty. One new condo owner (@$350,000) says, “I feel like I own the city”, and we with less have to be gracious and concede.
But still we persevere nonetheless. In all the career testing I ever managed and for many years I have been told to go to journalism school at Ryerson and I find myself now at this late stage about to begin a course of study in journalism; that is something I could do that might pay but what are the challenges I and too many others face, economic, social, physical and spiritual?
What about my teeth? It is difficult to chew and chewing only comes with more pain. Many of them are missing and they continue to loosen and fall day by day, yet ODSP dental insures have denied me three times for a full set of dentures citing rules that say I have reached the limit on spending for dentures for five years. There is no way to appeal, no contact with the insurers is permitted by the recipient and their word is final regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Further, there is no other money available for dental services from any source whatsoever. As a cancer survivor, knock wood, not being able to eat properly surely effects my prognosis as healthy food is the basis of all good health and which we hear endlessly with regards to cancer, along with exercise and productive activity.
Always having pain in my mouth causes headaches, an inability to concentrate and social isolation. Where once I could augment an income with Public speaking, now my ability to be hired is greatly reduced as is my motivation to go out and do it. The disease in my gums is affecting my entire immune system, leaving me drained of energy and tired, nauseated, and distracted.
Many people incl social workers know of this precarious health issue but none seem to care enough to help and stare at me blankly glazing over.
As poor people, we are constantly being asked to support lower and lower lows of quality of life with grace and gratitude as we see global catastrophes and compare these to such individual experiences. Poverty is not even at the table for discussion during election campaigns or platforms and if it is it is about only those “most adversely affected”. In fact, whatever “cause” is being funded, is the “cause” that will be heard and it appears that systemic Canadian poverty is the least of our concerns.
While some might consider the economics of top priority this is not my view. Choosing between my family, generations of lineage, support and love- or enough money to live reasonably well, I would choose the family; without that, enough money is vital- because nobody will be there to help at any point.
Lately, I have had to let go of utilities, leaving me without a phone, internet or cable. Cuts of up to $200.00 per mth to an already slim allowance has meant the loss of these tools for education, communication and connection. The impact this will have on my upcoming schooling has yet to be realized but I do know that I have been effectively cut off from my support system.
It takes a lot of doctor’s appt’s ect to effectively treat the conditions I find myself living with and not having a phone simply is not in my best interests, but neither is not having a home. Forget the food. After the first week of the month I am and stay hungry relying on the kindness of my neighbors and small bills run up in convenience stores.
Hunger is horrible. When you feel it, its all you can think of. Smells and aromas waft through the air in the streets making you weak in your knees from want. You see people dining and laughing everywhere. You notice the billboards with the huge hamburgers on them. You want to ask, to tell someone, but you can’t, it’s just too embarrassing. And you feel dirty again. Not only hungry, but dirty too.
Three quarters of the relatively meagre ODSP allowance is paid to a landlord in rent ($900.00 for a 1 bedr apt in Toronto when we are allotted $457.00 for our rent). Then you pay your debts from the last month. Then you do a shopping which cost $100.00 but has put no real food in your absolutely empty fridge and cupboards.
Items on the shelf are being raised by twenty and thirty cents every time you go back to the store. Everybody is talking about the high cost of food, but by current standards of devastation, we are expected to be gracious and concede that Canada is indeed generous and we should consider ourselves lucky.
Even the middle-class managers of the poor, the usurped and so-called poverty activism/t now dictates/ing to us what we can or should expect- decreeing whose deserving and of what, where and how- while they themselves do not live our lives of want and need, having enough and even more, and who must need rely on our experience for their authenticity.
Over the span of my life I have seen my beloved Toronto transformed into something unrecognizable and unwelcoming of me a native daughter-home of my birth- and all of us who have worked as hard as we possibly could just to catch up to others and all the rest and yes, some of us did not make it quite enough of the way but we cleaned the tables and the toilets, the hotel rooms and the homes, all along the way.
Once a thriving lower working class, we have lost our jobs lost to the middleclass, to our age and to our youth, we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff just when we were suppose to put our feet up and rest. Canada, Ontario and Toronto has rejected us, does ignore us, shame us and constantly put us to the test. No affordable housing, no food supplementing income, no help from communities that no longer exist, and no, no relief.
Oh, and there is no giving up either for us-forever forging onward no matter what we face. But I wonder how many of you could do that too? In measuring our worth, take all of this information into consideration for your calculations and make it for the highest good of all and not just a luck of the draw few for a real change.
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