Occupation

Yesterday, I had a very depressing experience at The Ministry.  Nothing specifically happened, it was just an all-round depressing place to have to be for about half an hour.

I thought the Trail office was depressing enough.  There’s always some guy in there a week after payday yelling to an overworked worker that he’s entitled to a $20 crisis grant even though he’s spent all his welfare on cigarettes and booze, or some young mom fleeing a relationship with two little kids at her hip, crying and overwhelmed a the paperwork she needs to fill out to get the help she needs.

Here at the MR office, you have to take a number from a ticket dispenser because their volume is so much higher.  When I got there at 2:30 I was #77 and they were serving #63.  In the waiting area, which has a huge job board in it with no job postings on it, there was a sad group of people.  One guy was completely passed out with all his worldly goods in a duffel bag at his feet.  There was a physically and mentally disabled man there with a walker and some big mobility issues and some communication barriers.  There were, what looked to me, like obvious drug addicts, and some people who I couldn’t really categorize at all: just average-looking folks you wouldn’t give a second glance to if you walked by them on the street.  The mood in the room was impatient, tired, and irritable, but a lot of these people seemed to know each other, so there was a bit of chatting going on.  People came in and out from smoke breaks.

With this volume and number of people in the waiting area, there were only two workers helping the walk-ins for most of the 40 minutes I was there.  At one point, for a few minutes, there were three.  There are 5 booths there and there were a lot of staff buzzing around in the background, but only 2 – 3 workers.

The worker I got was nice enough and helpful as much as she could be, so I didn’t really have a problem with the service I received.  But I came away with a feeling of hopelessness & despair that was hard to shake.

With all these Occupy Whatever City demonstrations going on, I wonder how many of the ones in Canada have people from the local social assistance circle participating.

The VAG in downtown Vancouver does not need to be occupied; the head of The Ministry in Victoria needs to be occupied.  Christy Clarke’s office needs to be occupied.  Stephanie Cadieux’s office, the Minister for Social Development,  needs to be occupied.  Setting up camps on city lawns will achieve nothing except creating an eyesore.  The Occupy movement in this country should go where the people who make the decisions for that 1% are and really make a statement.

Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s Magazine had a great article about the Occupy Movement in Canada, and I have to kind of agree with him. Especially this:

The gap that ought to trouble us is not between the top one per cent and the other 99 per cent, but between the bottom 10 per cent and the rest of us. Whatever harm may be imagined to arise from people being too rich, there is ample research on the harm that comes from being too poor, especially to children: poor, not only as a matter of absolute privation, but of relative inequality.

Across a wide range of development measures—health, behaviour, math and reading ability, participation in sports and other activities—the evidence shows consistently worse outcomes among children from poor families than others. And part of the reason appears to be a sense of being marginalized from mainstream society, from the ordinary expectations of what life has to offer. So yes, inequality matters: but inequality relative to the norm, not to the super-rich. What concerns a single mother on welfare isn’t that she can’t afford a yacht. It’s that she can’t send her kids on school field trips, or buy them a basketball, or a hundred other everyday things.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I detest having to occupy any space in The Ministry office locally at all.  I resent having to go there monthly to drop off paperwork (not everyone has to go in monthly but I do because I have an income from employment).  I feel slightly humiliated that I am one of “those people”, as my father so nicely puts it, that partially lives off government handouts.  It’s humiliating that I am well-educated, highly -skilled, and high-functioning and still need to rely on The Ministry.

But this Occupy Whatever Whatever thing isn’t going to solve anything.  It’s not holding anyone accountable, it’s not going to help poverty, it’s not going to cure illnesses or solve any societal issues from which poverty arises.  It’s not going to get people off the streets or more workers in The Ministry offices.

So, sorry, I can’t get on the occupy bandwagon.  There has to be a more credible form of activism out there that can make a difference.