A comment from 'Breaking the Silence' organizers
Our names are Andrea, Jessica and Helena. We decided create the panel and discussion " Breaking the Silence:: Making Youth and Children PovertyPublic." Brea Hutchinson wrote about this event for Arthur last week ("Community groups and students gather to discuss family poverty in Peterborough" Vol. 45 Iss. 21), and we were motivated to write after discovering the many statistics and information highlighting the importance of child poverty in Peterborough, highlighting the higher rate of child poverty in Peterborough, and the many programs running to address it. There are many institutions working towards ending child and youth poverty in Peterborough and despite all these efforts that have been done by government and organized civil society, for the last 20 years things have not changed that much.
How often do we hear why can't poor people just 'get a life', or 'get a job', and that people receiving Ontario Works are 'welfare bums'. Why can't 'poor people' just get a job? Why can't they take advantage of shelters? Why are 'these people' so lazy? Many of the policies that are supposedly addressing poverty are instead fighting against poor people and not addressing the causes of poverty; which, in turn, blames the poor for being poor. What better example of this than the bench removal from downtown in recent years, or the closure of the communal garden on George Street last November?
Defining and describing poverty is a difficult thing, but identifying the causes and the consequences is a bit easier. However, to address the causes and not the consequences is a very different thing. It is different because it does not depend on 'ordinary people,' reforms must be done to governmental policies and that should be done by the congress... that takes a bit more time. Understanding is the first step to addressing this situation, and to have a better understanding we need to know what is going on.
One of our guests was a worker from the Peterborough Family Resource Centre who ran a program for young mothers. A single mom and a young mom added to the collaboration of 13 participants who held a discussion about the perceptions of poverty, gendered poverty, and general life experiences. The discussion felt forced at the very beginning, until the group was questioned if poverty was experienced differently according to gender, when the group became quite engaged. Passion is the word we have to describe one of the mom's attitude. "I wake up every day at 6 a.m. to take my daughter to childcare, then I go to school, and still some people call me a welfare bum. Just because I am using the services from Ontario Works....I would kill for my children, do you think I wont lie to [Ontario Works] to continue the support that I have?"
Our goal is to raise awareness of the structural barriers that influence Peterborough's poverty situation among children and youth. We wanted to demystify the ideology that poverty is self-inflicted and individual, we approached this issue from a feminist perspective. Poverty is not an individual issue, but why is it that individuals living in poverty are blamed for 'their' situation? Behind every individual living in poverty in Canada is an economic system that that fights poverty while failing to address its causes, making it more difficult to climb out of poverty, driving more people to live in poverty, and then criminalizing those individuals for living in poverty: this is an economic system that cuts jobs; denies the right to adequate, livable and secure employment, to affordable childcare, adequate and affordable healthcare. It denies the right to safe, affordable food the right to safe, affordable housing, the right to dignity and independence; and deals with 'these people' through the criminalization and surveillance of 'their lives' and by creating a dominant belief that poverty is a personal issue in the first place.
We want to thank our guests for taking the time and energy to participate in our discussion, your knowledge has made this a success; also thanks to Beckie Evans and Robin Steed for helping us to organize this, your help is invaluable.
