Victoria Mayor Alan Lowe Pokes Fun at Panhandlers

What is it with mayors? At the west of the Capital Region, we have the developer’s best friend, Stew Young, whose reign of terror has included greenlighting and championing every development request that has crossed his desk, the worst being ecocidal projects such as Bear Mountain Resort.
In Victoria proper we have a mayor who refuses to properly deal with a growing crisis on our streets. Not only does he and his council refuse to provide the assistance that homeless, disabled and addicted people need in this city, he has now chosen to taunt the very people who his inaction is killing.
At a recent gala event on March 29, 2008, Mayor Alan Lowe amused guests by squatting on the carpet and chewing a steak as he asked people for ’spare change.’ Apparently this foolery brought chuckles from the surrounding sycophants.
I’m sorry if my language is bordering on offensive myself. I’m a bit angry, I don’t mind saying. Not simply over a little joke. Jokes can be forgiven. Other things cannot.
People are dying on the streets, basement apartments and crowded rooming houses of this city. Those not starving are malnourished. Those of us who are working to alleiviate this crisis street level have a much different perception of this problem than the well-fed baron-lords in their taxpayer funded castles. Crisis is becoming a tame word for the situation.
If the poor and homeless were an ethinic group, this would be genocide.
And what is the average response from the authorities and those who choose to parrot their bullshit?
Jokes, studies, studies to study how to write studies. Long-term plans that parcel out food and homes in a way that doesn’t even cover the growth of the problem. Perpetuation of lies and sterotypes that dehumanize the homeless, addicted and mentally ill.
These solutions are not meant to solve the problem, but to stifle any criticism that nothing is being done.
Three people have died on the streets of Victoria this week. Two men and a woman. Human beings, with rights to security of person under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Do you think they CHOSE to die? I guess the authorities have decided they did.
A friend of mine asked today, how is Alan Lowe different than the politician from Saskatchewan who was in a video released to the media this week mocking homosexuals? Why hasn’t the media taken notice and why are more people not demanding an apology?
It just goes to show how much work we have to do to present poverty and homelessness as a civil rights issue. It’s too easy for even well-meaning, compassionate people to write off a drug-addicted street person.
Other big cities in this country have alot to teach us about respecting people’s dignity. Cities like Vancouver teach us these lessons through their horrible mistakes. Vancouver had a choice once long ago to respect human dignity, dropped the ball, and now they feel the only way to deal with the problem is to just let the poor kill themselves. This process is being sped up by the closing of the downtown eastside’s last food bank. The poorest neighbourhood outside of a reserve in this country (and the situations on reserves is a whole other genocide taking place.) has no food bank, and far from new housing being created, affordable housing is being destroyed to make way for condos and housing for the wealthy. Poor people are being pushed out, and where do they go? Some die. Many die. Some come here.
So we have a chance here to reduce the amount of crime and human misery and death and disease that can happen in poor areas, by respecting people’s dignity, doing simple things like providing food, and providing safe places to heal and to live. It’s cheaper already than letting people die on the streets. So why are the authorities dragging their feet? They’ve read the same studies we have. They are aware as well as anyone how desperate life is on the streets.
Yet if they do nothing, or do the least amount of work so they still appear concerned as they help the situation get worse, no one will complain. Just a handful of people already busy and burnt out trying to feed and shelter ourselves and find proper care for our health issues.
Make no mistake. There is a war happening. Terrorists don’t need to bring it here because it has always been here. Class war has been an element of civilization since it’s inception. and the casualties are the people you walk by on the street and disregard as just another piece of trash.
We are human however, and respecting us as human is crucial to the smooth running of this society. It may seem like an easy fix to just let us die or kill ourselves, but it is causing you more problems than you think.
Like issues of race and sexual orientation, poverty issues have an element of civil rights struggle, and we are least equipped for this struggle, having no celebrities or wealthy people among our ranks. It will have to be a different kind of struggle than the one women faced for the vote, or blacks faced for desegregation, but at it’s core it is the same story.
It isn’t difficult to respect our human rights. We are not going hungry for a lack of food. Tonnes and tonnes of safe, healthy food are being thrown out every day in this city. The food is out there, but it is not getting to the people who need it. It’s not as if the logistics of feeding people are that complex. Put it somewhere people can get at it instead of putting it in the dumpster. If supermarkets gave surplus food to anyone who asked, they would save money on waste disposal, AND the people who do buy food would likely shop there more often. There is a growing crowd of consumers who would gladly reward such good behaviour. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
Unless of course you’re trying to kill the poor?
It’s a time-tested element of warfare. Seperate the enemy from their food source, and you kill them. This was the logic presented by the US congress for the buffalo slaughter of the 19th century, and helped them deal with their ‘indian problem’. It didn’t take though. Despite the continued destruction of their traditional hunting and gathering areas (such as Spaet Mountain where Bear Mountain Resorts has decimated camas and other wild plant crops) the indigenous people are still here, and are still struggling.
The ranks of the poor are growing too, and by definition we have nothing left to lose. Food is a right. Shelter is a right. Respect for our humanity is a right.
These Rights we will win back. But we need a bit of help.
I urge everyone to join us in this struggle, as poverty knows no race, sex of political philosophy. It can happen to anyone.
The people on the streets are your brothers and sisters. Put aside your judgements for a moment and help us win back our dignity. Don’t let anyone tell you food is not needed on the streets or by people living on assistance. It is still many years until we’ll be able to make that claim.
Don’t let anyone tell you that it is a complex thing to feed people.
Last Thursday Food Not Bombs found out there would be an increased for need for food on the street for a week.
So we’ve served delicious hot, healthy, mostly vegan meals to dozens of people for the past seven out of ten days. We did it with no leaders, no money, no advance planning, and we did it mostly with bicycles. We cooked in friends kitchens, and we urged the community to bring dishes as to a potluck picnic. It’s all volunteer, with donated food and donated gear. With a few more people we could keep this going forever. If there were a space we could bring surplus food that people could access with having to show ID, jump through hoops or prove their poverty; a place we could cook every day, where people on the street or from the community could come and help cook with us, prepare food for storage with us, garden with us, it would happen, and it would be something everyone in this city woul be proud of.
If we learned anything this week, we learned that the need is out there, regardless of what you may hear. The need is always there for the kind of food we cook.
The need for any kind of food is out there. The food is out there. The people willing to run with this kind of project are out there. It would work.
I don’t mean to insult the efforts of the agencies that deliver services to the poor and hungry in this city. They do a great deal with the little they are given. They should be given a great deal more by all levels of government and by more private donations.
The agencies follow a delivery method that autonomous community groups can compliment. Given that the level of funds available for these services is limited and seems to grow more limited still, methods need to be followed that are independant of the established funding structures.
There also needs to be space where those of us who feel alienated from the usual responses to poverty can work together to allieviate the situations we face.
All of us can work together at elevating the spirits of our friends, families and neighbours by working together to provide for our basic human rights.
No amount of food, volunteer organizations and initiatives can ever be enough when you consider that there is official resistance to everyone on this planet having access to food and health.
Look how our leaders teach us to treat each other. Look at how we know we must treat each other.
We aren’t the fools here.