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Poverty Night March Brightens Rosedale
– April.8.2006 The campaign to raise welfare and disability rates continued this month with Ontario Coalition Against Poverty protesters marching into Rosedale, Toronto. The Night March The crowd moves slowly through hilly, winding streets lined with mansions. Darkness eases out of the twilight in a bedroom community. Only a few local residents appear on the streets and that amplifies the rattle of the protesters' empty shopping carts and the continuous chanting and beat of drums. Lights from Toronto police and cameras brighten the streets; protesters overrun the front lawns of a number of mansions and then move on when police block them. The long spring walk nears its end and John Clarke calls a halt in front of Heather Reisman’s mansion. He points out that about 25 million was spent cobbling it together. A sum close to the amount transferred out of the downtown into Rosedale through tax cuts and government budget provisions. He remains angry over Regent Park’s demolition and some words later the protesters reflect that anger by burning an effigy of Dalton McGuinty. People start tossing their picket signs into the fire created by the fallen puppet and flames grow. This scene hangs for a bit. Police come up with a fire extinguisher and vigorously spray the fire, sending an enormous smoke cloud drifting to the south, east and north in Rosedale. The moon is above the smoke and if there is a vision in the night it might be another march that should’ve taken place, but didn’t. Dalton McGuinty, our provincial politicians and city councilors marching into Regent Park and Parkdale, beating their drums and reversing an OCAP chant to, “You got a 2% raise on your bloody welfare rates, now were giving the rich the other 38%.” Their supporters overrunning the lawns of Parkdale slumlords to shout news of continuously lower welfare rates and TTC fare increases. They don’t do it that way of course. Politicians sit in detachment from reality and call city budgets that raise transit fares miracles, or in McGuinty’s case come up with obsolete road/transit budgets that starve the social safety net. In the end the campaign to raise the rates remains long term. In Sudbury a 45 year old woman named Sara Anderson has begun a hunger strike to demand a substantial raise in social assistance rates. Perhaps empty stomachs will be part of the next night march. =================== ocap@tao.ca www.ocap.ca 416 925 6939 Links to files on Other Older Poverty Protests http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/ocfront.htm http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/rally.htm http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/squat.htm http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/june15.htm http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/return.htm http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/ocapgg.htm http://frightlibrary.org/citizen/act2001.htm#ocapc ================
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