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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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A Tent Without Poles
In Winnipeg, a city divided along race and class lines like so many others, the two solitudes of white and Aboriginal were recently forced to confront one another after a police officer shot and killed an Aboriginal teenager named Matthew Dumas. The 18-year-old robbery suspect was waving a screwdriver at three heavily armed police officers. By some accounts, he had already been pepper-sprayed.
The incident re-ignited simmering tensions among the Aboriginal community. Native leaders accused the police force of racism, demanded a role in the investigation and called for more progress on a separate justice system for their people. Unfortunately, those charged with administering the “system,” including the Mayor of Winnipeg, dismissed the complaints, especially after learning that the officer who fired the gun was also Aboriginal. This simplistic caveat, however, ignores the the complicated reality of Native/police relations in this city and, indeed, in the country as a whole.
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New Cinema from Winnipeg Streets
I thought I would dislike Stryker, the newest film by acclaimed indie filmmaker Noam Gonick. The story is relatively simple: a struggle between two street gangs, certainly not an overly original story line and one which hollywood trots out on a regular basis. From West Side Story to Boyz ‘N the Hood, we’ve all seen the formula. But this is certainly no West Side Story.
In the case of Stryker, the protagonists are Native on one side and Filipino on the other, and the struggle is for control of drugs and prostitution in a rundown Winnipeg neighbourhood. Well, that’s kind of new, but…
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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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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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Glen Murray’s Failed New Deal
When he was president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Jack Layton called for cities to be recognized constitutionally so as to be independent of the provinces and to be able to create their own forms of taxation. The Federation backed his argument that cities could not continue to finance themselves through property taxes alone. The media and federal governments chose to ignore the issue until Winnipeg’s then-mayor, Glen Murray, picked up on the idea and made it a national issue to the point that a cities agenda has become a declared top priority of Paul Martin’s new Liberal government.
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Winnipeg: City of Contradictions
Winnipeg’s history is one of contradictions. On one hand, it was once the “Gateway to the West”. On the other hand, it was the city of labour and struggle. Out of their struggles sprung a wealth of labour and social activism and progressive political thought and organization.
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