Thom Vernon2013-05-23T22:33:37-04:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=thom-vernonCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Thom VernonGood old fashioned elbow grease.Women are the Bellwether of Global Rightstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11554152011-12-19T08:34:16-05:002012-02-18T05:12:02-05:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), in the midst of the local assault on social services has helped me to see more clearly how Mayor Ford's locally proposed cuts reflect global trends.
Think global, act local. AWID is an organization that is connecting the dots between local and global interventions and impact.
For instance last month, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Norma Andrede -- a mother and a longstanding and outspoken voice on behalf of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa -- NHRC (May Our Daughters Return Home) an organization that fights for justice for the victims of femicide and their families in the Mexican state of Chihuahua -- walked out of her house and was shot five times.
AWID's defend the defender's project goes to bat for those who throw it down for the rest of us. One of Norma's daughters, Lilia Alejandra, was abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered in Ciudad Juarez in 2001. According to Lydia Alpizar, the Executive Director of AWID, Andrede was subsequently evicted from the hospital where she sought care after it received death threats. A new study estimates that since 1985, almost 35,000 women, including Lillia, have been murdered. But some mothers, like Norma, are fighting back.
What happened to Norma represents how the relationship between local and global human rights and social justice can be expressed. Although it manifests in a number of ways, it is typical of the violence, says Alpizar, cutting into the lives of women and LGBT activists -- criminal, physical, and economic; global and local. Women like Norma speak out against narco- and government-sponsored (or ignored) violence, while women in India commit suicide to escape crushing debt.
Take Shobha Srinivas, a local women's micro-lending organizer, who doused herself with kerosene and ignited a match to escape debt created through micro-lending. Unregulated predatory lenders are able to earn massive interest (think over 36 per cent) while borrowers remain unprotected by the governments charged to protect them. Think the Occupy movement. Think Indignados. Mexico is one more place, among many, where the state of global women's and LGBT rights is being expressed on bodies and in daily lives.
As bleak as this may sound, it represents opportunity. In the last five years, major international actors such as the World Bank, the UN, Unicef, and CARE USA have shifted their attention to the plight of women and girls. But, according to Alpizar, that shift has missed fundamental structural inequities. The state of women's rights and development cannot be ameliorated solely through entrepreneurial endeavours.
Setting women up with the ability to borrow small sums (micro-lending) with the same predatory lending practices at work as in say, the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market, leaves whole families and communities vulnerable. If we listened to any of the Occupy critique, then this analysis should sound familiar.
Interventions, such as microlending, are linear and narrowly focused, says Alpizar.
It doesn't really do the trick, let's say. Transforming the lives of those women, to lives where they can exercise fully their rights, where they can live lives full of dignity and respect, without violence, with exercising reproductive choice and sexual choice, and really having meaningful political participation, as well.... The problem with those interventions is that they're designed in a very narrowly focused way. In the end, it doesn't work like that, especially for women because of the complexity of women's oppression and how it is structurally cannot be transformed with such simplistic interventions.
They're good, but not good enough. They do not address the underlying inequities that prevent women's full participation economically, socially, or politically.
The global financial crisis presumes a shortage of resources. As government social services are cut, women fill the gap, according to Alpizar. But, the needs remain. As the plight of women worsens, so it will for all of us -- exponentially. This is because most economic statistics, measuring the impact of cuts, do not recognize the work women do on an unpaid basis. When their role goes unsupported, uncounted, and unacknowledged, so does the devastation wrought when they, and services, are undermined or eliminated. We have the resources, but choose to not use them to support human rights and social justice.
A lack of accounting might explain why, for instance, among 1000 self-reported woman's rights organizations surveyed by AWID, the total budgets for all of them combined was about $78 million dollars. That's $78 million for 800 organizations who serve women's interests at the local, national, and international level. That amounts to slightly less than $100,000 per year per agency, if it were distributed evenly. However, most of these groups operate on budgets of between $10,000-50,000. In contrast, larger, similarly progressive actors such as CARE USA (assets at over $400 million or UNIFEM with income of just over $180,000), have substantially larger budgets.
We won't even mention the billions that have been, and are being, transferred into private hands. AWID and its members are connecting the dots between the knowledge/expertise built up over decades of feminist struggle and how the lives of women -- and ours -- can be transformed to favour human rights and social justice.
To address the gap in the interventions made on behalf of women's rights, AWID is active on several fronts. First, as an international actor that connects organizations, small and large, local and international, to each other. This means that a women's organization fighting for the rights of sex workers in Vancouver, for instance, could be aware of what similar organizations have learned in Mumbai.
Coordinated responses to oppression and violence is urgent but could, and should, target structural inequities. A sustained and systematically built awareness of practices and the flow of resources at the global level can emerge to have, with the help of an organization like AWID, exponential impact with local outcomes (and vice versa).
These practices emerge globally with AWID initiatives such as the young feminists project, the "CF" project challenging religious fundamentalisms, the "Violence against Women Human Rights Defenders" and projects that AWID supports, such as Take Back the Tech.
In order to discuss, disseminate, and discover alternative ideas -- grassroots activists, women's rights leaders, donor agencies, development practitioners, and activists will come together next year in Istanbul as they have every three to four years since 1983. The International Forum on Women's Rights and Development is the largest recurring event of its kind as it defends the defenders like Norma Arande or the exploited like Shobha Srinivas but also to build alliances that strengthen and coordinate engagement and action in both the global and local arenas. Women are in a unique position to assist themselves and their communities because of the way all of our interests intersect with their lives and the concrete initiatives with which they engage.
If you'd like to support the work of AWID, you can become a member of AWID or -- perhaps better -- read and distribute the information published weekly on their website to have your own exponential effect. What is happening is an opportunity. We decide whether to step up and use it -- or not. Use AWID to connect to a larger community of people who care about, and seek to transform, the lives of women -- and so, all of us. Our times warrant nothing less.
]]>What Happened to Aid for AIDS?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11379482011-12-09T22:19:39-05:002012-02-08T05:12:01-05:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/announced that Canada will fulfill the commitment it made to the Global Fund in the fight against AIDS. That is welcome news after a too-long struggle to do our part. Wish it were so down at Toronto City Hall.
With over 50,000 visits to sexual health clinics, 80,000 vaccinations against sexually transmitted infections (hepatitis B, meningococcal, meningitis, etc.) to middle-schoolers and the inspection of almost 6,000 "high-risk" food premises, not to mention the tracking and investigation of well over 12,000 cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and HIV, Toronto's city budget is the backbone of our public health system. As I type, a third marathon round of over 325 deputants since July is entering its final hours. All of this in spite of the fact that our actual budget shortfall is about $41 million, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy alternatives. That's a far cry from the $775 million Mayor Ford & Co. claimed. Our actual budget shortfall is about the same revenue lost to Ford's repeal of the personal vehicle registration tax. Thank you very much. Not smart budget management. But that's not the end of it.
As Mayor Ford's 10 per cent across the board cuts take aim at our public health, deputants should have expected to be heckled and talked over by Ford's allies. One tweet on my Twitter feed reads: "#ToBudget mtg turns ugly due 2 bullying of depupants by Clrs#DelGrande (calls audience Martians) #Mammoliti & #Nuzziata. Glad my turn soon." I know the feeling. I had the same pleasure from the Ford wrecking crew during my own deputation back in July. While the sledgehammer circus swings at Toronto's heart (public health, the TTC, public pools, youth, lunch programs -- you name it), the facts on the ground are that property taxes are going up and things like HIV prevention are going down.
Joan Anderson, Project Manager of Toronto HIV/AIDS Network (THN) is particularly concerned. The Community Partnership and Investment Program (CPIP) provides 100 per cent funding to a range of community services, including HIV prevention to city residents. Anderson positions the cuts not as good budget management but as an ideological stance: "Reducing the size of government is an ideological thing --to reduce the size of government. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't." Fifty-four per cent of city staff growth has been, according to Anderson, due to Toronto Police Services. Not, say, a bloated social services bureaucracy. "Over 14,000 children and youth would be cut out of the public health student nutrition program...and they want to apply this blunt budget tool to a program like that? It's mystifying in its thoughtlessness. It's just '10 per cent is the number'....but who gets trampled on in that process?"
There was no analysis, admittedly, regarding the impact of the cuts according to KPMG, Rob Ford's pricey consultant of choice. "We weren't asked to quantify the impacts of reducing or eliminating the service," company representatives replied. According to Anderson: "They want to cut things that will then create more costs down the road. That is not a healthy approach to budgeting." There's plenty of research, she explains, that shows that if students don't have adequate nutrition they will not do as well in school. For one example, click here.
In terms of public health: "If you're cutting HIV prevention programs, well, the obvious impact is that more people will get HIV. And then there's all of the personal, social, economic, and health costs to living with HIV," she said. "We've got medications and that's wonderful and so many people are alive that wouldn't have been alive otherwise but it's still no breeze living with HIV." And it will still demand on-going attention. We have to look at the implications of these cuts. Otherwise, we're just kicking the can down the road to the next council and being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Right now, our support for the homeless will diminish their vulnerability to HIV and other infections. Anderson is frank: "The community sector is a cheaper sector...the salaries and benefits are lower." This sector that serves immediate public health needs has always done a great deal more for a great deal less. But, says Anderson, "If you keep grinding away at a sector, you undermine it to a point where it just can't respond...so the HIV grants are part of the community grants...which will eliminate 83 programs including over 6,000 volunteer opportunities," which, of course, benefit all of us. Cheaply. All of us benefit from these volunteer hours as the unemployed, the homeless, and people living with HIV gain skills that result in financial health.
"We've certainly seen that with the lives of a lot of people with HIV. At first they're coming to AIDS service organizations, and the needs are just so much more complex than they used to be. So they're getting support, case management, peer support, different programs, food, et cetera. And they're getting help to stabilize. For a lot of those people, what they want to do is to respond, to give back, and to get involved when they're immediate crises are resolved. Often that volunteerism leads to greater confidence, greater skills, and then, their health willing, they are able to move on and perhaps be employed somewhere. All of that gets damaged when you impose these kinds of cuts."
Ford, we have to remember, didn't find any cuts in spite of paying KPMG $3 million to find them. In spite of this, the AIDS Committee of Toronto's entire gay men's community education and outreach programming will be eliminated. But we must, according to Ford's budget management, press on with the repeal of the vehicle tax and the $400,000 he will also spend to remove eight kilometres of bike lanes. Add that to the over $50,000 the Fords spent on consultants to make our waterfront into a megamall.
The gravy train is stationed in the Mayor's office, not the city budget.
]]>Occupy Toronto: We Know What We Mean (Even if We Haven't Said it Yet)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10146972011-10-18T09:24:18-04:002011-12-18T05:12:01-05:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/Occupy Toronto and the 99% is in full-swing. Entering off of Jarvis/Adelaide, I passed a logistics table, a library, a legal tent, a medical tent, a 'club' for dancing and a sacred space for prayer and sitting. When you come, you'll dodge curious TV crews and lots of critical debate. There are whiteboards and chalkboards where you can find out what's needed, who to contact for what and a schedule of upcoming activities. It is a marvel of conscious, self-organized organization.
The 99% are sticking to their principles: active, critical and persistent resistance. (I suppose that I am supposed to interject 'peaceful' into that list, but if you think that resistance to the 1% equals violence, you have no idea what's going on here.) What is happening here is far more potent than throwing Rob Ford-like sucker punches at the most vulnerable. Go listen to the critical debates happening in self-organized groups, listen to the joyful singing and dancing; heck, sit down and participate in mindfulness sitting for integrity, justice and fairness.
The Occupy chain of events are a response to the moral challenge of our time: a civilized answer to gross greed, avarice and mean-spiritedness. These have infected our private and public lives as wars without an end; the financial meltdown, the hunger, the student loans and the desperation among other ills. It is no accident that before he wrote capitalism's sacred text, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Another founding father of capitalism, Alfred Marshall, advised that, "the desire of men for approval of their own conscience and for the esteem of others is an economic force of the first order of importance." Wish it were so, Al. Wish it were so. Squarely facing the moral question of a fast-rising Canadian income gap means social tension, according to the Conference Board of Canada. And why shouldn't it? We've taken our fair share of hits to the chin. We are the 99%. Everyone knows what that means.
Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun calls Occupy Toronto events a "grievance convention" and wants to know how come the 99% don't know that Canada is a great place to live. Is there some other utopia we seek? If so, which one? "Which one would provide economic justice, fairness, equity and prosperity to all? And would this utopia embrace protests like the one they organized so well here Saturday? Is that standard set by Cuba? North Korea? Iran?" Cohesive criticism of an unjust and unfair economic system warrants comparison to the current Iranian regime. Not very comforting, but not very surprising either. We are the 99%. Everyone (else) knows what that means.
I've heard over and over since resistance coalesced (first in Zuccotti, and now globally, ) that Occupy had better come together around a list of demands and policy initiatives, a so-called white paper. And fast. But Occupy has resisted this fencing in. We refuse to be policy-wonked, shoehorned and mismanaged any further. We know from hard won experience that lists include some but exclude others. Once we have a list of demands, these can be co-opted by politicians (pro and con) for their electoral ambitions. In terms of that dirty word accountability, it would be too easy to disavow culpability around any particular demand. We've seen zero accountability in the States around the bold-faced deceptions that led to two wars and the selling of securities designed to fail. In a genius rhetorical move, Occupy has offered a list of demands. "There's a push, especially in the media, to define the Occupy movement" so writes the Toronto Star.
It is far too soon to label the Occupy event as a movement. We've been at this rodeo at least since Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney and Harris. The use of the word 'movement' to describe what is happening makes it easier to demonize the critique and suspect its motives. The challenge is more fundamental than any white paper could address. Morality, too, will not so easily be policy-wonked or shoehorned.
We all know why people are camped out in the park overnight, in the rain, wind and cold. And, make no mistake, it is cold out there. We know why they've camped out in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park for four weeks. Occupy Wall Street says it "is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colours, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." Wealth and income disparity is the thread that has woven these events into the same fabric no matter the racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality or any other line that can be drawn. That is how such different groups (the seniors and students, the Buddhists and Christians, the socialists and the Liberals, the queers and the straights, etc.) have found common ground enough to inspire self-organization. We are the 99%. Everyone knows what that means.
I hope Occupy Toronto and other Occupys resist the production of a white paper. I hope that we wait to articulate our demands. I hope that we don't surrender to the need to make a presentation at Sussex Avenue, Queen's Park or Toronto City Hall. As soon as we do, I know that the Toronto Sun, Stephen Harper, Rob Ford, Bay Street, Wall Street and the entire 1% will try to pit us against a mom who needs daycare or people who ought to have access to health care and medicine. We are the 99%. We know what that means.
]]>Death and AIDS Action at Toronto City Halltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9814802011-09-28T16:33:27-04:002011-11-28T05:12:01-05:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/
Because many of us have felt 30 years of impact and made huge strides against the onslaught of HIV/AIDS, Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford's proposed cuts to funding to HIV/AIDS prevention and services has provoked outrage. It is hard to believe that our governments are actually proposing public health cuts.
Make no mistake, these cuts are in favour of Ford's massive reallocation of city resources to things like consulting firms (KPMG), removing successful infrastructure (streetcars and bike lanes), breaking contracts (Transit City), and rejecting free nurses from the province. Ford is drawing a line in the sand. Increased infections and death lie on one side of that line (the side we're on) and our public wealth handed over to the private sector is on the other side. Maybe Ford has not been touched by HIV/AIDS. If that's the case, I am glad for him. I am. But many, many infections and deaths have been prevented because of 30 years of increased education, research, access to medicines and destigmatization. HIV/AIDS is a public health issue.
Last Friday, AIDS ACTION NOW! hosted a die-in in Toronto. A seven foot tall grim reaper and mournful clarinetist solemnly marched into Toronto City Hall's rotunda. There, we 'died' on the floor. After a minute or so, we were resurrected with chants of "Stop the cuts! AIDS action now!" Councillors Carroll and Wong Tam held the doors for us as we made our way back outside where we died again on the pavement. We drew chalk outlines around our "dead" bodies in memory of all of those, like Susan, whom we have lost. And, in honour of all of those who we could lose due to Ford's proposed cuts.
The cuts matter at the individual, municipal, provincial and national level. Two people helped me to connect the dots: Paul Sutton of the Regional HIV/AIDS Connection in London, Ontario and Richard Elliott of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. Paul told me:
"How things are being conducted here (in Toronto) really gives us a demonstration of impacts and consequences that are going to be seen around the country. Specifically in terms of the HIV work that I do, a lot of it is built in, around and out of the infrastructures that have developed in doing HIV work here." If cuts are made in Toronto, "then that is going to have ripple repercussions, not just through the province, but around the country as a whole...."
Across the board, Paul argued, Ford's proposals represent "a general lack of perception about what is actually happening here and what Toronto means to itself and to the rest of us who relate to it." While HIV/AIDS can be a chronic condition, it is manageable only "with the right conditions." That means education, medicine and support.
Richard made the connection that resisting the cuts is critical because it is more costly "down the road" -- an economic impact that Ford doesn't seem to understand. More fundamentally, though, "It is the right thing to do."
Harkening me back to what Paul said about 'the right conditions' for health, Richard asserted the following:
"People are made vulnerable. And this is a city that has the resources and the infrastructure to reduce that vulnerability, to support people with the services that they need that make for a good quality of life. And there's no reason we can't provide that and we should. I think it's particularly troubling that we're talking about scaling back on programs that we know actually work including addressing HIV that is linked to injection drug use, for example. It's a major public health issue for the city... why wouldn't we want to invest in those things when we can at a very affordable price?"
We all have a stake in the public health, Richard asserted. "That's why it's called 'public' health."
We have a self-interest in an altruistic approach. If we want less transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C, then we have to invest in programs and services demonstrated to work, Richard explained.
I pressed him to make the connection between the proposed cuts and the increased criminalization of HIV transmission at the federal and provincial levels.
"The idea of cutting HIV prevention services at a municipal level, like Toronto's," he said, "is damaging per se. But the damage that it does is heightened by the context in which it's happening. And the context in Canada is that we're seeing ever more attention focused on punitive responses to dealing with HIV, including this vast over-criminalization of people with HIV, that makes HIV out to be this, you know, horrible imminent threat that's lurking to get everybody at any moment and so we need to crack down and be tough. We're throwing out the window reason when it comes to responding to HIV by saying that the response is to criminalize people with HIV no matter what kind of risk that they pose or not pose to other people for transmitting the virus. And, at the same time we're cutting the services that actually are shown to be effective in HIV prevention. So the shift is completely backwards." Richard continued to say that arguably, HIV prevention efforts and efforts to make sure that people can get access to the services they need will be undermined by "applying federal, criminal law to people or as here in Toronto cutting, or proposing to cut, services that are actually shown to work and be good value for money."
It is shocking how, across the board, a mayor who jigged into office on the arguably false claim that gravy was drowning the city has become an out-of-control spender on consultants, broken contracts, dismantling effective infrastructure to the tune of more than half of the budget deficit he claims we must amend. And now, at the expense of public health.
]]>Resisting Ford's TO: Coming Together at Dufferin Grovetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9577622011-09-15T16:09:46-04:002011-11-15T05:12:01-05:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/Toronto Stop the Cuts event, I thought. But they were. They were there to imagine, join forces and devise plans.
The event was incredibly well-organized, right down to the food. That's right. A huge food table stretched out loaded with salsa, beans, tortillas. Taking in a pot of steaming rice, I overheard a person with a red armband giving a lay of the land. People were organizing themselves into about 17 different groups, according to priority interest: housing, policy, libraries, Scarborough, Parkdale, Jane-Finch, cycling, LGBTQ, etc. If it falls into a line in the city budget, there was a group discussing and strategizing about what would you declare to city council?
Getting a gander of each of the groups, several people told me why they'd come out. Yael, a parent and food activist, said that he came out to see what the organizing was about. He expressed his unhappiness with the direction that city has taken under the Ford administration. An ideological stand and movement inform this direction, he thinks. As his young son and partner darted off to the much more entertaining playground, he added, "The fiscal, social and cultural -- they are all connected. Yes, we have to make our priorities... I don't think the priorities are the ones I believe in..." He added, "It's a discussion of ideology and priorities."
Anna, a young woman but mature student, came to the park because, she said, "What make my life great are things that the city touches. City policy affects so much more than federal policy and provincial policy." She wanted to hear what other people were saying about it.
The city governs all of the things that make her life great.
"For a concrete example, I love running," she says. "I love it. I need that in my weekly life. And I can only do that because I have a beautiful park, which is maintained by the city. I can do it a lot more lately because we haven't had smog days. And that is something that is affected by the city."
The city budget supports park programming which increases safety, something she values a great deal as a single, female runner.
"I feel relatively safe there and I think that's because we encourage programs in the park, so there's families, there's dog owners, there's cyclists. And, that's all the city. And even policing. Like proper policing, focused policing, good policing policy." These are the factors that directly "affect how I safe I feel in the park."
While there were many ideas ricocheting around the park, an LGBTQ activist, Kim, whom I've caused some trouble with elsewhere, hit the nail on the head. "I'm here," he said overlooking the crowd, thoughtfully, because "we need to fight the artificial deficit that he's created." His concern is that the direction the city is taking will "decrease the quality of life for everyone..."
We all have ideas about what how we should spend public resources, he added. "But what's more important to me is the fact that we're watching Ford spend money on things that we don't have to spend money on."
Kim cited the removal of bike lanes, the proposed removal of the Scramble intersection at Yonge and Dundas and the plans for "steamrolling over Waterfront Toronto". This last move I have alluded to previously.
Kim found the most interesting thing in his discussion group around LGBTQ issues was the idea proffered that the mayor "shouldn't be allowed to cut any service unless he can prove that they are being replaced somewhere else." Now that the S.O.S. program serving trans, street-involved youth has been ended, the group is concerned that other resources will be directed away from these particularly vulnerable people.
As sun slanted into the late afternoon, I recognized a familiar face from my time with council and on the recent press coverage of his father's passing: Mike Layton. Leaving, Coun. Layton thanked a group working diligently to hammer out results of the day's discussion groups into a single, unified statement of resistance. A few whispered, "Was that Jack Layton's son?" Mike's dad, of course, inspires a great deal of reverence a few long weeks after his death.
When I came to Canada and Toronto, Canadians and Torontonians assured me they never get worked up over politics the way we tend to in the States. I have seen the people come together to resist more than several times now since Mr. Harper moved onto Sussex Drive and Mr. Ford into the mayor's office. The days of citizens rolling over as politicians sell off their wealth and health for private gain may be drawing down in North America. We can only hope -- and come together.
]]>Toronto's Water: A Reservoir of Ideas and Innovationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9188302011-08-17T14:03:05-04:002011-10-17T05:12:01-04:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/Water: the Exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum here in Toronto. The exhibit is educational and tactile. It inspires awe. I was there with my friend, Marjorie Ryerson, whose book, Water Music accompanies the exhibit. In the book, world-renowned musicians (Dave Brubek, Renee Fleming, etc.) express in poems, essays and texts how our liquid gold has shaped their music. Water, here, is lyrical, majestic and humbling.
Just past the steaming, dripping and freezing water-as- solid-liquid-vapor display, a large Earth dangles, blue and vulnerable, from the ceiling. "What is that?!" A little boy shrieked, using his whole body to point at the globe and hanging onto his yarmulke. Over by the meteorites (they carry lots of water) that same boy pointed back to the dangling globe and whispered to a mate, "That's where the aliens live." Fair enough.
The subject of water has been coming up a lot recently. Another pal of mine, Toronto's gifted clean water advocate Evalyn Parry plays a plastic water bottle in her song 'Bottle This.' She sparked my imagination. I have been working on a novel in which Toronto's rivers, aquifers, lakes, creeks and even our elevated wetlands play key roles. I have been educating myself on the history of water formation, usage and care in the area.
Coach House Books' HTO has been an invaluable resources with maps, testimonies and guides. I take daytrips up the Don River to Taylor Creek and then veer off into sleepy Mud Creek as far as I can make it. Along the way there are various educational displays where an urban adventurer can learn about the bees and trees, the Stagwood Sumac and the Bloodroot, the Serviceberry and the Trembling Aspen, the Night Herons, red-winged blackbirds and red-tail hawks. Each of these call our waterways home. These are largely cared for by volunteer organizations who get some space from the city to do the work that the rest of us are out there doing. This work includes clearing brush, planting and nurturing seedlings. With this work, our water systems begin to heal themselves and save us oodles of cash. This, after two centuries of industrial exploitation.
Maybe. We know it is finite and we know that it is a well that will, with stewardship, serve us well. Maybe. It depends on how we lay our oars. The next time you want to cast a vote for Harper, a supporter of the Alberta oil fields, or Rob Ford's spending cuts, I encourage you to visit the ROM's fourth floor where a beautiful and frightening show of Toronto's Edward Burtynsky's photographs of ship breaking fields, rubber tire graveyards and the densified oil filters of Hamilton, Ontario are on display as well. If you can't make it to the ROM (they have free days!), then check out Manufactured Landscapes, the documentary that uses Burtynsky's work as its subject. You might cast your vote or lay your oar differently. Maybe.
You can bet that Rob Ford, Toronto's new mayor, likes the water clean and fresh off his cottage dock in Muskoka. But Toronto's Waterfront Secretariat, the city agency charged with coordinating the renewal and revitalization of Toronto's waterfront, is recommended to be integrated into the City Planning Division. Its already teeny budget ($1.6 million) joins the sad line of proposed cuts: public libraries, public parks, public transport and public health. The operative word, as I have similarly argued elsewhere, is 'public.' We could chalk up our past exploitation as naïveté. Not now. Now, we have no such excuse. Ford seeks to sell off our public wealth in the name of balancing budgets. But budgets, like politicians, come and go. Revenue comes and goes, too. If Toronto's mayor had the vision to seek innovation, our waterfront, parks, libraries, etc. might stand a chance. Toronto could take its place as a leader in sustainable revenue generation and urban planning. There are an infinite number of intelligent and sustainable means to generate enough revenue to fill any budget gap -- if we think outside of the box. Pre-industrial thinking assumes that generating revenue equals privatization, user fees and tax hikes. Look out your window. This is the post-industrial age.
Toronto could look to herself for the answers. At Ford's 23-hour public deputation, the well of creativity that this city holds burst forth. The ways all of us are making the trickle of funding we receive multiply, stretch and do backflips ought to flood us with praise. Instead, it hardens their resolve. They voted to move KPMG's spending cuts further up the line for implementation. You think they won't? Don't blink.
Most city officials there -- but not all -- seemed very uninterested in revenue generation ideas that did not involved privatization, user fees and tax hikes. When I, for instance, suggested waste-to-energy initiatives the budget chief interrupted me, pointed behind him and laughed, "Hah, talk to them back there." At another point, "Miller killed that" was heckled.
Creativity, it was clear, is not our challenge. Short-sighted city government is. Over and over throughout the deputations, councilors and the budget officials (and Ford allies) accused deputants of not wanting to slice services but having no ideas about revenue generation. Those councilors had swimmer's ear.
It was crystal clear that day that cities like ours are surging with an enormous reservoir of creativity. We're soaking in it. At the Water exhibit, I saw water mills generating power in the East River in New York City. I learned of Bangladeshi women who are cutting cholera rates in half by straining their drinking water through saris. On Google, I see that Oslo has largely shifted their power generation from fossil fuels to organic waste transformation. They power their city infrastructure and private homes with this out-of-the-box generation. They sell the excess. In Toronto, as I learned in HTO, our grand tradition has been to bury our waste, contaminate the ground water and then run like hell when people get sick. Or, we pay millions to other regions (e.g. Michigan) to bury our waste in landfills.
Toronto has a choice. We can use our well of creativity and technical expertise to move the conversation about revenue generation from destructive and short-sighted or exciting and innovative. There are sustainable revenue generators that make the money earned from a vehicle or land transfer tax, increased user fees and cruel spending cuts look like chump change.
With a nod to the Jo-burg sci-fi action flick, District 9 -- Aliens, Unite!
]]>Rob Ford's Jigtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9160672011-08-02T12:35:04-04:002011-10-02T05:12:02-04:00Thom Vernonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-vernon/
Rob Ford, Toronto's recently-elected mayor, danced into office promising to "stop the gravy train" at city hall. Problem is, he and his strategy are still dancing but there is no gravy. After stacking the City Council Executive Committee with like-minded councillors, the mayor shepherded a spending audit by consultancy firm KPMG that promised to find all of the excess fat and waste that must be hidden in city coffers. Instead, "What they've delivered is a process that is rushed, incoherent, poorly thought out, heavy on political dogma," according to Royson James of the Toronto Star. The fat he's now holding is a $3 million dollar invoice from KPMG. The firm is notorious for helping governments (national, regional and municipal) who seek to shift public services (read: wealth) to the private sector
The first part of the strategy, just like we saw at our hoe-down in the States under George W. Bush, is to gut revenue through slashing taxes. Mayor Ford shoved, like former President Bush, a substantial tax cut to his base in the form of rescinding vehicle, land transfer and other taxes. With decreased revenues, there follow several overblown debt crises which demand spending cuts in this strategy. After public sector budgets are defunded, services begin to come up short. In Toronto, Ford campaigned on the promise to find excess spending and waste at city hall. Unfortunately, no one bothered to point out that the city had an estimated $275 million dollar surplus. Then, accusing the defunded public sector of not matching its mandate induces further rounds of spending cuts.
The remedy, as always, is to privatize. In the States, we saw this begin with our expensive hammers for the Army in the '90s, our mothers having children in order to get more Aid to Families with Dependent Children (remember that program?) and then an increasing privatization of prisons. There are a host of other examples. In Toronto, we're in the second defunding stage where our highly profitable and enviable Toronto Parking Authority would be, as happened in Chicago, sold off to somehow cut its gravy.
In the marathon 23 hours of deputations offered throughout the day and continuing until 7:00 a.m., there were very well-reasoned and passionate pleas by every single demographic (disabled, seniors, queers, children, youth, teachers, parents, etc.) to preserve what they consider to be must-have services. An inspiring testimony to just how far the sector is stretching, and multiplying, every single dollar they receive argues, for instance, that for every dollar the city invests in the arts, $17.75 of revenue is generated. By any measure that is a good ROI (return on investment). At two in the morning, crowds inside city hall erupted in shouts of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" The mayor had previously ruled that the crowds shouts would deduct time from a progressive councillor's question period. Shame, indeed.
Throughout the deputations, either the city's budget chief or another of the mayor's allies on the committee would counter a particular plea against a cut, with requests for suggestions as to how to fill the budget gap. However, when several of us actually offered sound suggestions for eliminating the gap, these same councillors didn't ask for further details. Instead they dismissed some ideas, such as waste-to-energy initiatives with, 'Ah, talk to them back there" or "Miller killed that" -- all allusions to the previous mayor. In other words, there is a full-court press to find cuts but not much interest in actually filling the budget gap. Ideology sets the rhythm and hopelessness the melody. However, if you were at city hall, then you know that Torontonians are now dancing to a very, very different tune.
We are charged, energized and bursting with creative capital. Now that we have seen each other in that committee room, and from behind a microphone, we must connect, strategize and resist. Direct actions such as the civil disobedience used during our horrific G20 protests last year are going to be required. Mayor Ford intends to sell off parks, subways, heritage sites and even our libraries. If you don't believe me, check @margaretatwood on Twitter.
As a newcomer, I have heard only that Canadians are politically apathetic. Their ho-hum political scene isn't nearly as exciting the dances south of the 49th. This may be changing. It sure seemed that last night, a sleeping giant was stirring. We'll see if he's up for a jig.
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