Whatever the explanation, it was an inchoate blip in the history of attempts to address the issues related to homelessness. In fact, it was less than a blip because within a week not only were the persons who were evicted and told to move on- whatever euphemism used- were back within a week, but the encampment has grown up and down Pandora Street, past the pre-eviction boundaries.
The blip reminds one of various attempts to fully address the issue in the last thirty years. There have been multiple studies, work forces, papers, research, discussions by, among and with concerned groups of citizens, and engagement with various professionals but nothing has happened to address the underlying issues that cause people to become homeless and thereby create a coherent, long-term strategy.
There has been some specific progress on various solutions: some housing has been created and small groups patrol the city to help with food, clothing, medical issues for individuals, and so on. However, these sorts of programs have been short-term band-aid activities. Our Place Society itself is a long-term semi-permanent solution but as such it is larger band-aid. The creation of the Courtnall Society for mental Health at the Royal Jubilee Hospital is a very welcome, necessary and permanent aid to many.
There is a different approach or, rather, set of combined solutions. Bear in mind these are not impossible; they may prove to be merely improbable for a number of reasons, but not impossible.
What is necessary is the creation of a multi-disciplinary, multi-generational, multi-professional, multi-individuated and multi-economic, permanent long-term process. The basic description for this process contains an umbrella (the canopy) structure, beneath which all necessary sub-parts (the ribs) are researched and interconnected with one another to address the differentiated solutions that would come out of such a process.
The canopy can be called the permanent ‘working group’ that is held p by the ribs. Its members, ask and promulgate what the big questions are and works to develop practical means to create a robust structure that addresses the complex social concerns that are identified as homelessness, but also the hidden realities connected but not noticed, to that issue. The working group would ask for and receive information essential to address homelessness in Victoria, a process that could be replicated across the country.
A given municipality cannot address the issues alone. Engagement of both provincial and federal government partners is critical. In addition, as the process is created and grows, multiple partners would have to be engaged. Representatives from these partners would populate the ribs and have seats under the canopy.
The most important contribution of a municipality is to get it started and be the hub to gather human resources and data, pulling them together and making the argument for multiple, mutual, correlated solutions. What may be the most important role for a municipality or set of municipalities is to be resolute when the winds of negativity with slashing, cold rain try to dampen that resolve.
Again, the process itself and the results must be multi-disciplinary, multi-generational, multi-professional and multi-individuated and multi-economic.
Multi-disciplinary. By this word I mean a group of knowledgeable persons gathered to ask the initial big questions. By ‘knowledgeable persons’ I mean ethicists, medical folk, sociologists, practical financial minds (and others, no doubt). Some questions are these: What are the key questions we need to ask? What is the data we need to uncover? Is this umbrella group and the solutions it seeks going to be political or moral? What ideological concerns need to be identified, made explicit and discussed? What are the ethical foundations for the creation of the umbrella? What are the economic implications for either going ahead or not? Why should citizens support such an ambitious process/project/set of solutions? Is the status quo working? For whom?
Multi-individuated. It is no secret that persons living on the street are not of one kind; there are multiple explanations for why people end up on the street. In addition, the multiple reasons why persons are on the street leads to related issues; impacts on their families, the judiciary, the police, medical professionals, the public purse, etc.
Multi-generational. Identifying and considering the various issues cannot be a one-off activity. As noted above, there has been progress, but if the purpose is to simply create another programme, why would anyone participate? The set of issues to be identified, addressed and coordinated actions implemented cannot be addressed by a single municipality in a four year election cycle. Politicians may want to move on after a few years or the will of the people may suggest that they do. Parties get elected and then defeated and a major social issue such as homelessness gets lost or rejected by the next party or set of politicians who get elected. What we need then is politicians at a given moment to agree how they can work together multi-generationally on this multi-pronged issue, regardless of what party or set of politicians, or leaders are in place in the future. Some sort of explicit covenant that states the necessary continuance of working beyond ideological interests toward solutions must be crafted and agreed to by a first set of politicians, in such a way that all future members of their parties or ideological affiliates cannot either scuttle such significant work or chip away at it until it disappears under the weight of subtle ideological influences or quiet diversion of resources to other concerns. A covenant needs to backed up with solid, scientific, data-based, peer-reviewed evidence.
Multi-professional. Some of these are: medical personnel and resources, teachers and educational processes from K-12 and support for families with early age children, sociological studies and experts, current groups that work within the matrix of service and concern for homelessness and related issues, present and future legal matters, law enforcement, practical financial professionals and economists (see below). There are likely other professionals that would have to be brought into the work.
Multi-economic. I have cut out for commentary this category from the others because financial issues will be less complex than them but more potentially divisive. The inevitable duelling ideological principles, especially without reliable data, could bog down the entire process and project. For example, what does it cost a single municipality in terms of dollars to address the needs and impact of a single person who is on the street? There have been a number of studies that asked and answered this question.[1] These data need to be gathered and collated, based on best peer-reviewed studies with others that are significant from a ‘soft’ perspective. Other financial studies should be gathered. For example, the notion of a ‘universal basic income’ (UBI) for either all citizens or for the most disadvantaged.[2] This is an idea that has been floating around for decades. Experiments been conducted Canada (Manitoba), the U.S. (under Nixon), Great Britain, and elsewhere. Interest in the idea has grown and has occupied the time, researches, and thinking of many more people than even a few years ago. An interesting negative response to UBIs, was from certain billionaires who have created a lobby group in the U.S. to oppose any intent to create or experiment to see how a UBI might work.[3]
How to get started? I invite each of you, first, to think of words of wisdom that keep you alive and hopeful in the face of adversity. If it is hard to think of any, one can find any number of them on the internet,[4] some of which are icky sweet (and of doubtful aid) and some of which are profound. One place to start is to read Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists.[5] Famously, Bregman was once, on air, called a ‘tiny brained moron’ and told to **** off
by former fox employee and now Putin pundit, Tucker Carlson,[6] an altercation that demonstrates the value of Bregman and Utopia. I am happy to invest in your commitment and interest by purchasing a copy for each of you. Let me know.
But, second, the most basic question is: would you Victoria City Council members start to build the umbrella?
A related question is: is the status quo working and acceptable? If not, why not? Questions that arise from that question are; A) what is the status quo and what do we mean when we say it is ‘working’? B) if we find the status quo acceptable, what are the ethical roots that determine an answer? If there are opposite answers, which do you and we wish to live with? Perhaps we can start by asking and at least find initial answers to these questions.
[3]. More or less randomly chosen comment and arguments: https://www.unifor.org/news/all-news/universal-basic-income-too-good-be-true; https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/; https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1d1x3ve/billionaire_backlash_shows_the_power_of_basic/; https://www.quora.com/What-impact-do-hyper-conservative-billionaires-like-Richard-and-Liz-Uihlein-have-on-efforts-to-ban-universal-basic-income-schemes; https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/06/14/universal-basic-income/; https://officeofsarah.com/blog/the-evils-of-universal-basic-income; https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/commentary/universal-basic-income-has-been-tried-it-didnt-work; https://thewalrus.ca/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-the-economy/.
[5]. Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists:And How We can Get There, trans., Elizabeth Manton. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014 (The Netherlands), 2017 (Great Britain).
HEMMINGS, Jamison (Jamie) Harry
November 11, 1962 – March 27, 2024
Remembering Jamie with love. Mother, Faye. Siblings: Denise, Michael, Scott, their partners, his nieces and nephews, other relatives, numerous friends and colleagues. Pre-deceased by father, Al.
***
A Mnemonic Portrait
…accountable (to and for himself), ball caps, cats, coffee…and more coffee, competitive, compulsions, curious/inquisitive, eristic, Facebook#, moderator and contributor: Ancient Wonders of Archeology, Art History and Architecture (583.3K members), Facebook #2, moderator and contributor: Ancient Civilizations, History Origin, World Cultures (113.7K followers), generous, golf, grit, headstrong, history (vikings!) and palaeontology, horticulture, ice cream, irascible, jamieswrld.com, kind, lost and found, loyal, mischievous grin, NFL football, the Oilers, opinionated [see eristic], peach pie, pies (passion for and thief of), pizza, quintessential Canadian- Eh?, renovation (of himself), searching, sci fi, snow, strong, supportive, talkative, tenacious, Tim Horton’s, trimming trees (sometimes to the dismay of both their owners and the trees), rocks: odder is better, worked hard without complaint (ankylosing spondylitis); a [very human] masterwork…
***
A service for the celebration of Jamie’s life, with remembrances, witticisms and love will be held at First Church of the Nazarene (14320 – 94 Street, 780-475-9485), April 13, 2024 at 11:00 a.m.
We specially note and thank with profound gratitude Dr. Amy Franke, her colleagues and employees at the Allin Clinic** who were instantly at Jamie’s side when he was stricken in their office.
***
In lieu of flowers please consider donating toA Living Tribute* (Plant a living memorial for someone in Canada’s forests).
The essay is a must read for anyone concerned about the hatred’s rising out of academia, but especially those whose careers are centred in ‘halls of higher learning’. The ideal of ‘higher learning’ is to expose students to the challenging and awe-inspiring wide world of knowledge. One of the key principles of such learning is to assume no fact can be accepted as accurate until the hard work of asking questions, searching for answers and checking those answers against what others have discovered or found to be other facts is done. ‘Alternative facts’ do not belong here. As such, the ‘Jewish problem’ on university campuses, aside from study as an historical reality, has no place in these institutions. Antisemitism is a fact. The Sho’ah and its ramifications for the Jewish people is a fact.
In the same breath as it were, this fact also must be stated: the nakba ( https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/ ) and its ramifications for Palestinians is a fact. Regardless of the arguments about how the Nakba occurred, hte fqct is, it happened. The fact that neither side can feel that the pain of the other is the same as their own means that the violence will not end.
After stating he will not allow a Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank, the current prime minister of Israel (Mr. N), asked this non-rhetorical shrug-of-the-shoulders question: “What can we do?”
It is a question that reveals both cynicism and indifference. The indifference is to the harm done to Palestinians. The cynicism comes from a will to doom Israelis and Palestinians to more decades of violence and a man-made fate of Sisyphean proportions. But the good news is that that doom can be avoided because it is man-made. What is lacking is political and moral will, on both sides. The South African case before the Hague is an opening, if the two sides can stop arguing at each other from inside their own silos.
If a member of one side could sit inside the other’s silo, they would hear some of the same concepts that their side uses. For example, it is an unspoken curiosity that persons on both sides (successive Israeli and Palestinian governments and those who say they speak for the latter and those who have imposed their will upon them) use the same or similar words and concepts about themselves and at each other. There are at least six sets of words or concepts that need urgent consideration.
In order to explain that statement, I have chosen three authors who each penned recent essays published by Al-Jazeera. These are the articles: “Watching the watchdogs: The 5 Ds of US Middle East policy” by Mr. Rami G Khouri, “This past week, we all became South Africans” by Mr. Andrew Mitrovica, and “Gaza will be the grave of the Western-led world order” by Mr. Saul J Takahashi. They are all from Al Jazeera and discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Their comments are like each other, as well as to others around the world who have marched in crowds or spoken or written about the conflict. I will focus on the words and concepts, as they are the same from one to another.
The first concept is that each side cannot see/feel/know the other as a human, like them. If one sees the other as human, the human possession of Chesed/Love/Rhama can expand our perception of what is human and renovate behaviour. If the ‘other’ is only an ‘animal’, a ‘thing’, ‘disease’ or non-human entity, then indifference will enable repugnant and irrevocable, but repeatable, death-dealing. After all, the opposite of Chesed/Love/Rhama is not hatred; it is indifference. Indifference destroys the capacity to see another human being in our sights.
According to the second concept, each side has a history that has molded individuals to deny the humanity of the other. The experiences of Nakba (colonization, land theft) and Sho’ah (‘we will not disappear into the sea’) are both described with the same word in English, utter destruction (though banal in comparison). Each group, each person, has had the horrors of a collective experience embedded into their social and genetic code. Our three authors used words like; modern legacy, generational horror, crimes yesterday today and tomorrow, several decades ago, last half century, three decades. But they only used them as descriptors of Israeli culpability; they ignored similar culpability of the side they defend.
That concept leads into another. Events from history, clouded by the unwillingness of participants to name their ancestors’ responsibility for such events, allow them to justify similar actions and events today against the other. Thus, history repeats because each event today both reminds and justifies current behaviour.
For example, the people who march or those who write columns against the Israeli government ignore that Israel did not precipitate these specific events. Instead, commentators remember the patterns of old events which they overlay on today’s events and blame all of Israel for all of it. Commentators assume that Israel is guilty of all the events that have occurred; they are therefore guilty for, somehow, causing October 7. Cries of condemnation of Israel, genocide, the colonization of Palestine, land theft and so forth, ignore the fact that Hamas precipitated this round of the same pattern.
Mr. N’s statement reveals the same clouded memory. Every state has its founding myths, Israel included. Some Jews took actions against their Arab neighbors before 1948, killing innocents and frightening entire villages through threats and/or violence. Israeli historians have documented these actions, not without backlash. But who reads them? Either Mr. N and his political supporting cast have and ignore them or have not bothered to work their way through them. If based on the myths of memory and one’s unreflective absorption of those myths, why would one read an uncomfortable stripping away of myth? Myth makes wonderful, heroic stories, but historical nuance brings the wisdom that history is messy and no one is innocent. ‘What can we do?’
The third concept shared between Palestinians and Israelis is that each has or had an inextinguishable desire for self-determination. Beginning in the 1880s with pogroms in Russia, Jews started emigrating all over the world, including to Ottoman Palestine. From then to the end of WWII, tectonic events occurred, during which some Arabs and some Palestinians sometimes attacked Jews, some of whom sometimes responded in kind. One of our commentators pointed out that white European colonial racism arrived with some Jews when they emigrated to Palestine. Maps of the period clearly demonstrate an example of this racism in that Palestine looked like a vast, blank space, ready for colonization.
Palestinian desire for self-determination had a difficult birth because of the creation of the State of Israel and the previous decades of conflict between them. It is for historians to argue about data, stats and facts and counter-facts regarding how and how many Palestinians were driven from their homes in what is now called the West Bank. The arguments about those events hide the necessary detail. Since 1948, generations of Palestinians have lived in refugee camps, and this has now led to a fully grown desire for self-determination that cannot be ignored any longer.
The fourth concept is that both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples have a bred-in-the-bone, ancient connection to the same land-unacknowledged by each about the other. There have been both Jews and Palestinian peoples in that land for centuries. Again, historians argue about how to figure the numbers. But the argument, again, obscures the fact that commentators work very hard to deny the evidence of existence for either group’s ancestors before 1900.
It is also important to note that Jews for centuries, generation after generation, remembered that their ancestors came from that land, and that they practise a faith that keeps many elements that date to the first century bce. Some Jews emigrated back over the centuries. For example, when Jews were being slaughtered in the centuries before 1900, Ottoman rulers invited Jews to come back to the Ottoman Empire.
The last two ‘concepts’ are how each views retaliation. The fifth, then, is that each believes collective punishment is an efficient tool for both discouragement of future behaviour and punishment/revenge.
Hamas is but the latest group that shows this view. Since every action, time, and place involving Israel has caused suffering for ‘us,’ it is justified to consider all Israelis/Jews alive today as legitimate targets. Israeli bulldozing individual Palestinian homes in the West Bank or turning Gaza back into a field of stones, regardless of consequences to the Palestinian people, shows the same view.
If the Israeli government saw all Palestinians as human beings, as valuable as any Jew, and not just numbers on a page or dots from the sky, they could start turning back from the unequal devastation that has killed 40,000. Understanding the humanity of their enemy would be possible for Israelis if they imagined their own homes being bombed and had to pull a dead toddler out with a leg left behind in the ruins. Mr. N: how many Palestinian lives are worth one Israeli/Jewish life? Right now, that figure is around 400. Mathematics from hell on earth.
The last concept is that each side has their own ‘supporters and enablers’. Commentators refuse to note that it was Hamas who started this conflict; as such, Hamas is complicit for those 40,000 deaths. By orders of the Israeli government, their soldiers are directly responsible. Commentators also condemn the US, Canada, Britain and other countries as enablers and supporters of ‘the Israelis’.
But the commentators say nothing of Iran, a country that has for decades not only wreaked horror on Israel but also on other Arab countries by themselves or by their proxies. In fact, Iran has for decades used the Palestinian people as an excuse to do so. The commentators refuse to demand the prosecution of Hamas, an extra-national entity, for its ‘crimes against humanity’, while also ignoring Iran’s role as an enabler and supporter of various groups to kill every Jew possible.
Mr. Khouri made a curious statement. He wrote: the U.S. has “…kept most autocratic Arab governments dependent on US security and economic help to survive; and suppressed democratic aspirations and movements for socioeconomic justice in Arab states.” This is quite a claim.
It raises questions. Which Arab governments and how many? To what $$ level? Before or now? If there are any Arab ‘dependants’, why would they sacrifice self -determination under a regime they distrust or even hate? If the U.S. has done this in the past (e.g., under the Shah or the butcher of Baghdad) for oil, do they do it today?
And, most important, if such dependant Arab States take U.S. largesse, isn’t it then the responsibility of that government to build ‘democratic aspirations and movements for socioeconomic justice in Arab states’ rather than putting the monies in the pockets of cronies? It is necessary to reflect on history and present-day examples with nuance before accepting Mr. Khouri’s statement. Otherwise, it, like so many statements from these three authors, is a mere statement; emotion laden, non-factual assertions that would not pass a college-level logic or evidence test.
‘What can we do?’ asked Mr. N.
You and your coterie of personal enablers can regrow your stunted, blunted and ignored moral sense and expand it to include all humans, e.g. Palestinians. And you can resettle into Israel the settlers you have sent into the West Bank as personal shields/early warning outposts against incursions and for expanding Israeli territory. And you can cease bombing the hell out of Palestinians, their homes, and their children. And you can take the same legitimate moral outrage against the actions of Hamas and use as a cypher to analyze your continued actions in Gaza.
There are other questions that relate to human issues.
Who will help rebuild Gaza? Israel? Will oil-rich wealthy Arab states help? Will the U.S., Canada and other ‘enablers’ put their $$ into helping the Gazans? Will that grand enabler, Iran, help? Will the members of Hamas and other terrorist organizations so intent on wiping out Israel put aside their swords and make use of ploughs?
And which of all these participants will continue that support well into the future?
When I say “rebuild,” I mean starting over completely, on the ground but also supporting the Gazans to deal with the unthinkable emotional impact of their experiences.
The big question, of course. Once the Israel’s boot Mr. N and his government out and form a more democratic and humanity driven government, will Israel and Arab countries (or most of them) take the two-state solution and make it happen, regardless of which side tries to derail it?
If there is to be any hope to rise out of the dust and blood, let it be the will to see each other as human and work to give surety for everyone to ‘live under their own vine and fig tree and no make them afraid.’
Pause for a moment. Look closely. What do you see? People just living their lives and maybe their dream; sunning themselves, playing paddle ball, looking out to sea, walking about without a care… and, oblivious, a massive dark fire-caused fume nearly above them. At least 131 people dead plus 300 missing. A few blocks away and whole neighbourhoods are still burning. Crisis?
What metaphors can we create from this image?
Climate change is kicking our collective ass? But politicians bow to economic interests and put off the intent to do anything that matters.Can anyone spell COP?
Two wars and multiple vicious skirmishes being played out around the world? Claiming the humanity they know in themselves but cannot recognize the same in their neighbour whom they are killing?
Life is short; go to the beach; it’s not your problem? What can you do?
The umbrellas as metaphor for ‘if I don’t look, it isn’t there’?
Life really is short; if I don’t look, its not hanging over my head.
This attitude reminds me of two other images.
The first is a genre of images: the Dutch golden age painters who created magnificent still lives of flowers https://www.art.com/gallery/id–a25453-b1915/jan-bruegel-the-elder-flowers-posters.htmThere is beauty abd wonder in them and also a statement that beauty fades, life is swift.The Dutch golden era was called such because of the wealth pouring into their country (the usual rape and pillage of the Americas and Africa by Europeans).
In the Victoria Times-Colonist of December21, 2023, https://www.timescolonist.com/national-news/foreign-interference-inquiry-requests-postponement-of-first-report-to-may-8022576 Sebastian Skamski, Director of Media Relations for (the conservative party of the) House of Commons, states that an ad campaign by the fed liberals against the fed conservatives for ‘abandoning Ukraine by voting against measures to help Ukraine’ is a campaign to ‘divide and distract Canadians’. And, the liberals are desperate to ‘distractfrom the misery and pain’they have ‘inflicted on Canadians for ten years’. And, the conservatives voted against a new trade legislation bill (CUFTA) with Ukraine.
One must wonder how conservative thinking can be so narrow as to focus on a favourite bugbear than on the much bigger reality of what Ukraine has been facing for two years. Which should be more important for support: genocidal war or a quibble about carbon pricing? And who are they that they can judge Ukraine as well as Canada for carbon pricing?By focusing only on the quibble and voting ‘no’, the fed conservative party reveals a shameless intent, to say nothing of a myopic morality, to use whatever means possible to take down the liberals and gain power.Could they actually win the next fed election if they were less cunning and more transparent?
The second statement referred to ‘misery and pain’ all Canadians have suffered under the fed liberals. What misery? What pain? Do we live in a country whose government is at war with its own people?Do we have a medical system that is so inefficient and terrible that ‘Canadians’-there’s that all inclusive use of the word again- feel profound neglect of and fear for their health and safety? Do we live in a country where the rule of law and the separation of powers is weak or nonexistent?
The conservatives, to promote the validity of the ‘misery and pain’ comment, must tell us who and how many are in misery and pain. This statement and so many by the fed conservativesprovide no nuance, details, or stats; nothing that allows critics to critique in turn the assertion. Rather than speaking accuracy to power, then, there is a different intent behind the use of contextless and therefore meaningless words. Their’s is an appeal to emotion, not facts.But then to have facts and use them takes more work than cheap shots.
Does Canada have problems?Of course! But it is as naive to think Canada has no problems as it is to say ‘Canadians’ have suffered widespread misery and pain.
Are the fed liberals guilty of ‘dividing and distracting’ Canadians through nefarious means?Do its members have time to design and implement such strategies? They are rather busy with the work of governing.The fed conservatives, on the other hand, are busy finding whatever means possible to bring down the government so they can gain power. Of course, realpolitik allows for a wide range of desire for opposition parties but at least the pretence they are a loyal opposition could be maintained, and not distract Canadians with verbal inaccuracies.
Which party is actively trying to distract and divide Canadians?
