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Currently viewing articles tagged with Poverty.
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“If you have come here to help me ...”
I want to start by honouring those women who have lived the experience about which I presume to speak.
Women are the fastest-growing prison population world-wide. This is not accidental. Canada has been one of the first countries to be impacted by the now-globalized capitalist laws and policies that facilitate the desire for cash and products. These policies are destroying our social-safety nets - from social and health services to economic and education standards and availability. As we have recognized very concretely by the change of our mission, these laws and policies are increasingly coming into conflict with peoples’ lives.
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The Panhandler Law
The writer Anatole France once observed, “the law, in its magnificent equality, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges and begging for bread in the streets.” In rookie mayor Sam Katz’s new Winnipeg, we now have achieved the same magnificent equality. In a recent vote at Winnipeg City Council, a new by-law was adopted forbidding panhandling within the vicinity of “captive” audiences: bus stops, banks and ATMs, parking lots and parked cars, indoor public walkways, elevators and outdoor patios. This step effectively fulfills Mayor Katz’s entire anti-poverty program advanced in the course of his election campaign just over one year ago.
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Whatever Happened to Lula?
The election of Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva raised great expectations on the centre-left. For most, his election heralded a new progressive epoch, which, while not revolutionary, defined the “end of neoliberalism.” Noted progressive religious figures like Leonardo Boff announced imminent “change,” which would challenge U.S. hegemony and lead to great popular participation. These hopes have not been realized.
The rightward turn of the da Silva regime has spurred a range of explanations. In the first few months of his regime, da Silva loyalists argued that the orthodox neoliberal policies were “tactical moves” to stabilize the economy before turning to social reform. As da Silva’s policies, appointment alliances and legislation all converged into a logically coherent, orthodox neoliberal strategy, however, this explanation has gradually lost credibility. Among radical sectors of the Left, it has been replaced by a much more convincing, multi-causal explanation.
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Canadian Food Security on the Agenda
Canadian food activists celebrated World Food Day 2004 by creating a new national organization to be the voice and vehicle for accomplishing our food-security goals. Members are united in their commitment to the following three principles: “zero hunger,” “sustainable food systems” and “healthy and safe food”.
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Squatting and the City
Movies and television programs regularly invoke imagery of big cities as sites of pleasure and prestige — places for people to wear glamorous clothes, flag a cab in rhinestone-clustered stilettos, and taste the culinary delights of the latest trendy “fusion” restaurant. While the image of cosmopolitan opulence certainly does not convey the full story of Canadian cities, this type of “urban evolution” does provide a glimpse, at least in part, of what an ideal capitalist city aspires to be — a mecca of entrepreneurial opportunity, individual prosperity and rampant consumerism.
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Fighting for My Town: Looking Forward by Looking Back
We’ve lost ground in Toronto. Yes, we’ve made significant gains on a number of issues and in electing a progressive mayor and council. But the gauge that we used to determine what we are fighting for has shifted backwards over the last 20 years. We need to recognize this to move forward.
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My Urban Rez
am part of the massive migration of Aboriginal peoples to the city. I was raised by a single mother who moved us to Edmonton (and many other places) from the Heart Lake First Nation to avoid residential school for my siblings and me. Since then, and I have been on my own since I was 16 years old, I have lived in many sites: small towns, the bush and the highways, but the longest period of my life has been in the Urban Rez, especially Winnipeg and Edmonton.
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Adrienne’s Tour
Anti-poverty demonstrators jeered Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in September as she made a well-guarded, carefully scripted promenade through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. According to a spokesperson for the Anti-Poverty Coalition, the group offered Her Excellency a guided tour of Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood, but she chose instead the “sanitized” version offered by Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell.
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Community Development in Winnipeg’s Inner City
If you look hard enough in the midst of Winnipeg’s sprawling and decaying inner city, you will see scattered islands of remarkable creativity and collective action: innovative community development (CD) initiatives battling the seemingly relentless spread of urban poverty. Most Winnipeggers are oblivious to this struggle: they choose not to know about it — or to care.
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Judy’s Story
I am Judy. I lived at the Strathcona “Squat.” Today I am poor. In my life I have raised two children, I have loved, I have struggled and I have survived. I faced the struggles of so many Aboriginal women in a white world.
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