Moms can make a difference

What if we made anywhere poverty resides a priority neighbourhood, and as part of the prioritizing, worked to empower all the single moms resident there.  This would include all the women who currently struggle at two or three jobs a day, forced to leave their at-risk growing children for long hours at a time, fearing for them but needing to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. 

Inner Ford

Tuesday night's mayoralty debate on CP24 was an improvement, more substance, less emphasis on cutaways.  The candidates let each other complete sentences and thoughts, and mercifully there were fewer interruptions from the painfully young reporter with the big microphone. The moderator is getting better at his job, and the audience was engaged and vocal. Still, not a lot of excitement generated about the election.

John Tory wrapped it up this way, and I think he's right. None of the candidates is giving us a vision of what our city would look like  if we vote for him or her.  George Smitherman talks about a safe city that gets you home quickly.  Not an inspiring vision, nothing to brand a T-shirt with. Rob Ford is all about cut, slash, abolish, and, after Tuesday night, it would seem a Toronto under Ford would have a great big wall erected around it to keep out those troublesome foreigners. 

Ford is his own caricature.

Smitherman needs to show us what his Toronto would look like, in all its aspects.  How business would do, how the arts would fare, how the poor would find a way into the mainstream from the margins, how social justice would play out.  He is an intelligent, well-rounded, interesting man, he has courage and ideas, he looks and feels like a competent and charismatic politician.

One of the reasons I like him is that when he was health minister, he reached out to the psychiatric survivor community, he didn't need to be supportive of us, but he was, and that meant a great deal.

Toronto would move forward under Smitherman, and maybe even onto the world stage, and he is the only candidate ready for that kind of profile. He has depth and smarts, he can be both  a street fighter when required  and a powerful debater, he has -and its just starting to show- a passion for the job.

Smitherman also has his drawbacks: he can be a bully, and I hope he's working to eliminate that side of himself. But he's someone Toronto needs, someone council needs, imperfect, yes, a work in progress, yes, but also someone Toronto can take pride and reassurance in.

About Pat Capponi

When living and dying are beyond your means

The headline in the Star declared that funeral directors can no longer afford to bury the poor on what the city gives them.  They will have to cut back on some of the extras, if they are not given sufficient funds.  Not even death releases people from poverty and cutbacks and indignities, large and small. 

Poverty is not high on the agenda in this campaign, but the future and ambitions of those marginalized men and women, the ones who form dispirited and straggly lines outside food banks, the ones lined up again for a space in overnight shelters, the ones living in concrete towers that sap the life out of them, their fate hinges on who leads the city after the election.

Though Rob Ford would likely not be aware of this, limited as he is to fiscal restraint and voting no as often as a Republican congressman, there has been great movement toward re-vamping the way the city delivers social assistance, a move away from the Harris years where interrogation and humiliation defined the experience of asking for help, to active engagement with clients, positive interventions and  real assistance with work searches or re-training. 

Morale is up among the staff, there is a renewed effort to listen to the voices of lived experience, to improve that fundamental relationship with the caseworker so that clients feel empowered, heard, and helped instead of policed and slammed for their need. There is no doubt that time spent with the worker can make or break a person, a person who desperately wants to be seen as an individual, as worthy of the investment the city makes in him or her.

Last year, I spoke to 1,800 caseworkers about that relationship with their clients, as a former recipient, as an activist, and was heartened by their response, which was overwhelmingly positive.  No one gets up in the morning rubbing their hands with glee over yet another opportunity to stomp on someone's soul.  We all prefer to find job satisfaction in helping, not hurting. Under the mean-spirited OW rules, under the regime of Harris and a mayor who had real difficulty seeing homeless people, never mind helping them, good people became bad cops. With David Miller, people breathed again, felt freer to be themselves, to do right by those in front of them.

All these advances can so easily be lost, reversed, tanked. The man at the helm sets the tone, people fearful of losing their own jobs, of finding themselves on the other side of the desk, will line up to do his bidding.

Lines around shelters and food banks will lengthen, more people will bed down on pavement, even more will lose hope that life will ever get better. And when they die, earlier and earlier as poverty diets and chronic illnesses increase their toll, we will begrudgingly bury them. 

Or we can continue our progressive march to ensure we waste no human potential, we abandon no one to the streets, we elevate our fellow citizens rather than excoriate them.

A lot depends on how you cast your vote.  

About Pat Capponi

Of cops and blocs

Here's the rub, there are no villains in the room. Not among the police officers and brass gathered at the far side of the auditorium, not among the activists and lawyers on the other.  Not even in the middle, where a scattering of Toronto Police Board members prepare for a long afternoon of accusations and demands for accountability.

The usual suspects have signed up for their five minutes before the board -- five minutes is all each will get, and in most cases that's a blessing, because really, nothing new is being said, and the tone some employ is so annoying and superior and over-the-top, it makes me want to rip up my activist card and go sit somewhere else. For these, it's about scoring points, posturing, while some of the others, to their credit, show a lot of reflection, pain and angst. 

Chief Bill Blair is present, but is ostentatiously displaying passive-aggressive behavior by leafing through manuals, chatting to those on either side of him, or staring at the ceiling. Only a few times does he look at presenters, and those times have to do with people who bring some balance to their remarks.  Even so, it clearly distresses him, having to sit and take these hits. And not just him, but the chair and the members as  well, who are quick to take offence.

When your life and your identity have been defined by fighting the good fight, for progressive policies, for inclusion, for fairness, finding yourself the target of finger pointing and blame and outrage leaves such a disconnect in people's heads that they can barely believe this is happening to them, never mind find the wherewithal to accept the onslaught with good grace and hard self-examination. People like the chair, Alok Mukherjee, members like Adam Vaughn and Hamlin Grange, these are not right-wing stooges, these are folks who've walked the walk and fought the fight, dramatically changing the tone since the days of the pistol-packing Norm Gardener. 

That's what's so damn sad about all this, that good people were put in a circumstance not of their making, much like a lot of those rounded up at Queen St.and Spadina Ave. during the G20, and in one weekend lost so much trust, so much credibility, that its difficult to know if they can rebound successfully. 

The police service needs to stop denying that bad things occurred.  They did.  It was clear to anyone watching the coverage (as I did, not wanting to risk the streets) on CP24, not exactly a bastion of left leaning ideology. 

The Officer Bubbles fiasco, the over-enthusiastic take-downs, the collective punishment meted out for hours to those caught up by the kettling tactic, these are not illusory things, there are tapes, there is testimony. 

To deny is to refute everything the Service and the Board has gained over the last number of years, the sense of a new day that Blair brought with him when he talked about the reality of racial profiling by the cops.  This isn't the time to throw up barricades, but that's what's happening.  And in this Chief is wrongly supported by the board, even as they vote to do a very limited investigation of themselves, and by city council, which unanimously voted their support before any public hearing was conducted.

And activists need to stop calling thugs- those who smashed windows, terrified store employees, they need to stop calling them political prisoners and demanding their release.  Violence, whether employed by the cops or by those using black bloc tactics, is wrong and should be punishable, surely we can all agree to that.

I left the meeting four and a half hours after it began, depressed and angry at what the feds have done to us, and what we're doing to each other. 

Mostly, how we're failing our city.

About Pat Capponi

Mayoral debate: time to focus on the good?

I knew it would be painful to watch. The vacuous "youth-oriented" reporters with half a thought between them, the moderator who wasn't up to the job, questions that fell flat and answers that couldn't be heard as candidates hectored one another: Thank you CP24 for further dumbing down what might have been a useful exchange of ideas.

Pot shots, cheap shots, predictable and demeaning to all involved. Though we did get a preview of what a Toronto under Rob Ford might be like, what powers he's prepared to assume during the great fiscal dismantling, as he spoke of how he'd have asked the police chief to "move in" on protesters. It's black and white, he claimed, support for the cops or support for the demonstrators. Why he hasn't completely self-destructed is beyond me. His red-faced blustering, his reduction of the only female candidate to "nice lady", his heavy footed dance around the two full-time jobs he holds, and the two salaries. Tick tock tick tock, Mr. Ford.

George Smitherman has started to move, literally and figuratively, walking the streets of our city last week, appealing for votes, talking to real people, and that is all to the good. He can't refuse to participate in these ridiculous televised debates, but it's much better to see him on his own, he takes on more stature when he loses the ballast of the other candidates. He looks more like a real challenger for the office, maybe the only one in the field.

It might be useful for Smitherman to highlight some of the good that city hall does for its citizens, to counter the accusations of fiscal irresponsibility. There are, in the bureaucracy, some very intelligent, very effective people with great ideas, Rocco Rossi may concentrate on their salaries, but viewing some of the initiatives out there, some of the ways Toronto really makes a difference in the lives of its people, from public health to social services, would go a long way to renewing some faith in our local government.

Things like micro loans for youth: brilliant.

Poverty is such a huge problem in many neighbourhoods, encouraging local entrepreneurs is one way to ensure ways out. I have been part of a committee delivering a similar type program, one started by the sons of Dr. Reva Gerstein, who donated $10,000 a year for 10 years to psychiatric survivors with big ideas and empty pockets. Amounts from $500 to a few thousand have supported dozens and resulted in: foster parents for pets when people need to go to hospital, an on-line magazine for and by the poor, a documentary on emergency departments and their treatment of the mentally ill, even paid tuition for survivors wanting to continue their education.

Poverty is about lack of opportunity: given a chance, people really shine. So I hope that Smitherman will focus on the good that can be done, Ford and Rossi have enough to say on the bad.

About Pat Capponi

Where is the voice of reason?

Might just be me, but maybe not.  Anyone else feeling this undercurrent of weirdness out there?  And not just weirdness, but a wholesale escalation of craziness thinly disguised as normality?  We are adrift without a captain, without one uniting voice, we are children left without a sitter, squabbling, posturing, pushing and shoving.  We have lost our way, lost sight of our goals, we are fractured, ill-tempered, and ready to turn on each other.  We are mean spirited and grim.

Our institutions fight for themselves and their reputations, not for the public they were created to serve. For instance, in a continuing effort to excuse their excesses, Toronto police dramatically released their Most Wanted List- composed solely of petty criminals and thugs- on a day when a woman is assaulted in a graveyard in broad daylight. Murderers and rapists and child molesters must appreciate the lack of attention and urgency.

I am starting to crave one voice, a voice of reason, of maturity, of gravitas, who can shake off the pack of mayoralty contenders and make us listen up. And can bring our institutions to heel.

Who can say, sternly and with conviction, that the golf courses who've benefited from tax breaks to the tune of $30 million must ante up to provide funds for at-risk children to play and swim and learn. Shame them, name them. And look for other  "welfare breaks for the wealthy" hidden in the books. Rob Ford's promise of saving $3 million a year looks pretty penny ante by comparison.

A voice that can admit city council is too large, too unwieldy, too partisan an institution and must undergo reform. 

Part of the disquiet I feel is undoubtedly a feature of what's happening in the States, and the clear limits to science and industry's ability to fix the messes they create. And the resurgence of racism disguised as the Tea Party movement, and the continuing efforts of the banks to fleece the public, and how Haiti, six months after the earthquake there, is largely a pile of rubble despite all the king's horses and all the king's men. 

These are times that demand real leadership, times that should create a leader.  Instead, we have, well, we have what we have.  Federally, no real opposition, no real courage, provincially, a leader, a premier who could make a real difference, who could inspire, who could and should live up to the promises he's made to the poor but chooses to turn his back.

We live in dangerous times, we are not immune to the craziness of our over-bearing neighbour, nor are we immune to viruses, and natural disasters, and a tanking economy. We distrust our politicians, and we should, for they are, in the main, more about themselves than the city, or the country.  We distrust statements on the economy, and we should, because if a politician wants to enhance his reputation there are millions to be found.

Ask yourself, if there was another SARS type outbreak or something similar, or a natural disaster struck, or God forbid something worse, who would we turn to, who could we depend on to talk us through a dark night of fears and tribulation?

Let's hope there is nothing on the horizon, nothing looming over our heads, cause frankly, you and me, we're on our own, and that's a pretty scary place to be.

About Pat Capponi

After the G20 party's over

Feeling a bit exhausted by all this, as many are, I'm sure.  The G's have gone, and the streets are slowly returning to normal, and the citizens of Toronto are shaken up and wondering what the hell happened. 

We have seen leadership of a sort over the last few days, and it's a good time, maybe the best time, to ask ourselves and each other, what does this great city need in a leader?  Who can speak for us, who can protect and defend us, who can bring out the best in us? 

I like and admire David Miller, I like and admire Bill Blair.  I think both men are good, decent people.  Maybe that's why its so hard to see them fail their city, forget their responsibilities to all citizens of Toronto. 

This nonsense of forcing people to stand for hours in a deluge of rain, shivering, sick, frightened, while the Mayor and the police chief hid from the media, instead of declaring it an outrage. This public scapegoating of a few hundred mostly uninvolved individuals out of some residual need to punish someone for the deeds of a pathetic few, to try and shame and hurt and humiliate these folks, these citizens, your neighbors and friends, is indefensible, and the more both men try, the more they lose my respect.

I want a mayor I can count on, in good times and bad, to do the best he can for the city.  I want a mayor who can represent all the people, who is equally comfortable with the well-off and the poor, with the banker and the addict, with the homeowner from the Bridle Path and the tenant in a Parkdale rooming house.

I want a politician who doesn't put his entitlement first, who doesn't feel he should be coddled and courted to do the right thing, I want a mayor who takes the subway and walks the streets.. 

I want a leader who is consistent and who is capable of empathy and deep thought, a leader who is action oriented, who cares and is committed, and who can listen and who can learn.  I want a Mayor I can be proud of, who I can call by his first name, whose hand I can shake cause he's not surrounded by staff whose sole job is to keep real people at bay.

I want a leader who can talk about his own struggles, and what it took to overcome them.  I want someone capable of inspiring those who need inspiration, who respects people whatever their walk of life and who will be there when these same people need them.

I want a mayor who puts the people of his city first, even before what's good for him, what's politically safe or smart.  I want a mayor who stands for his people, all his people, all the time. 

The election cannot come too soon.

About Pat Capponi

Now we all know how it feels

Its a good class barometer, all those fences and pictures of cops in riot gear. If these measures give you an enhanced feeling of security, it's likely that you're middle or upper class, and if it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, the likelihood is, you're poor, maybe homeless, maybe marginally housed.  It has little to do with a person's intent to demonstrate, but with the blunt and uncompromising show of power.

Still, as GO customers are warned to bring food and water in the face of what may be significant delays, as the US puts out travel advisories, as the downtown closes up shop, as windows are boarded and taped, and hospital patients sent home, as the billion dollar price tag for the privilege of being stopped and questioned by over-excited security guards and cops with dreams of arresting the next bin Laden, as all this goes on, it's an opportunity of sorts to put yourself in the shoes of those who endure the heavy-handedness of security even when there are no world leaders around to impress.

You too can feel like a "small person", an unimportant cog in the machine, someone who has to make way, step aside, stand in place, show identification, be refused entry or shown to the door. 

The G-20 will be a great equalizer, for those left in the city, no matter if you drive a BMW or a ZIP rental, stalled on the highway till the motorcade makes its way through from the airport or hotels.

You can use the time to stretch your imagination to empathize with those countries who won't be dismantling fences or laying off cops any time soon, you can view the guns and tasers and noise cannons and think about tanks running down protesters in China, or the hell that is North Korea.  We are very lucky, most of us, to live in Canada, to live in Toronto. Not so lucky on June 26th or 27th, it's true, but still.

I do worry though about those who are most vulnerable, those suffering from addictions and mental illness, those who can't find a place to sleep or a place to hide from all these heavily armed forces, I worry that not every one will make it through these few days intact, alive and breathing.  

It was not our decision to turn our city into an armed camp. It's been done to us.  There is no upside. And not only are we shut out of our city, we're paying for their privilege, and paying and paying even as we hear again about fiscal restraint from Harper, who surely has lost all credibility on the subject.  

It's a good time to think about our city, what we love about it, the tolerance, the openness, the freedom.  And how we could lose that by throwing away our vote, giving it to someone whose mantra is cut taxes, slash budgets. 

(And George, a word.  I heard your spokesperson say, in response to Ford surging ahead, that the voters need to wake up.  That's precisely the problem, the attitude that says the voters need to change.  George, it's your campaign that needs changing.  Don't hand the mayoralty over to Ford, start listening to people, start practising some humility before we're all done. You can do it, you need to do it. )

About Pat Capponi

Bugged

It's odd, the things that inspire gratitude in a person.  Reading about MPP Michael Colle's intention to introduce private member's legislation called  The Tenants Right to Know - forcing landlords to disclose bedbug infestations- really affected me.  It's so rare that  issues plaguing the poor find their way into the public discourse and public policy, and bedbugs are a deeply creepy subject that, at least for now, only torments those who have little power and no voice.

It infuriates me when workers and administrators, all pulling down fair salaries (and some more than fair), seem to shrug off their responsibilities to their tenants, to their jobs, and instead feel themselves to be victims when a hero like  Joe Fiorito- mostly on his own- writes his damming columns. It's like the head of BP whining that he wants his life back when others have lost and will lose theirs.

I have sat across from a public housing executive who characterized Joe's last column on the subject as "one perspective." I looked at this well-dressed woman, who would never ever tolerate a family member being tortured nightly by these creatures, and I was instantly transported across the decades, back to a private boarding home stuffed with ex-psychiatric patients, back to a dark and gloomy hallway where eighty year old Anna  still stands eternally in my memory, shivering and humiliated in a greying full slip, her arms crossed over her chest, black spots racing over the thin material, waiting to be doused with chemicals to kill the lice.

No workers or administrators cared about her, either. Though she had been someone's daughter, had been someone's friend.  That is what makes everything so much worse, the notion that people know, even as they sit in fancy offices, or drive in expensive cars, they know and still, still,  men and women are left to their plight.

Imagine being afraid to lie down, afraid to sit, afraid to turn out the lights. 

Vulnerable people, decent people, people like you and I, not a separate species with different sensibilities, need champions.  Colle has stepped up, and I for one salute him. 

About Pat Capponi

A taxing situation

The constant call for cutting taxes that is used to troll for votes on the right -- along with more police and less gay pride -- tends to reverberate well among a number of the better off, especially those who feel victimized by having to contribute to the communal pot. It seems this group will always find and support a simplistic and bombastic candidate for mayor, as long as the mantra of less taxes and less government is first and foremost.  It would seem to be the only criteria that counts.

It puzzles me as to why some folks chose to live in Toronto while at the same time actively trying to dismantle what makes this city a worthy address. 

What are the benefits of being a city dweller? Step out your door and look around.  First and foremost, the diversity of languages, colours, dress and class. I remember old Toronto, having spent a year here in 1968: how terribly white and plain and stuffy and cold after the streets and sights of Montreal.  I couldn't wait to leave.  Now I can't imagine living anywhere else.

And then there are the summers, the public concerts, the celebrations, the book fairs, the arts, the joy of meeting new people, hearing new music, watching good documentaries.  And the food, every possible taste, every exotic spice, if you can afford to eat, you are in the best place in the world to do so.

The different neighbourhoods, the public offerings of individual gardeners, the glorious trees, the relatively clean sidewalks and streets, the parks, big and small, the lake and yes, even the streetcars all enhance our lives. 

We put our garbage out on the curb, and a truck comes and takes it away.  We bring our children to day care, and there are staff there to welcome them. Restaurants are inspected, our water is monitored, our drive home kept safe by patrol cars, and our lives protected by firefighters. Living in community means sharing, it's pooling and growing our tax dollars so that we have big buying power, to keep our transit running,  our garbage collected, our food safe.

We can't go back to having a city in constant turmoil, to having a populist for mayor who appeals to greed and the "I'm alright Jack" mentality of gated communities and gated lives. Toronto deserves better, we all deserve better. 

So ask yourself, what's this city worth? 

Preserve the gains Toronto has made.  Speak up for the city.  Speak out for good government, and our need to ensure it has the funds to govern well.

About Pat Capponi