One of the many hard things about having to depend on social assistance is the stigma. People often assume you’re lazy, even though invisible disabilities stop you from working. The other day poverty advocate Kendall Worth talked with one such person, who got verbally attacked by her fellow passengers on the bus.
On Wednesday evening several MLAs from all three parties attended a screening of My Week on Welfare at the auditorium of the Nova Scotia Art Gallery in downtown Halifax. My Week on Welfare is a wonderful documentary, produced by Jackie Torrens, that offers glimpses into the lives of income assistance recipients, families and individuals both, trying to make ends meet on a scandalously low food and shelter budget. The screening was organized by BRAG and CASAR members. What follows is what poverty advocate and Nova Scotia Advocate contributor Tim Blades told the MLAs.
Too many lives are lost or ruined through traffic accidents, writes Martyn Williams. “Who in local and provincial governance will stand up and admit that road safety in Nova Scotia is not a problem, it is a crisis?”
This Labour Day the Burnside prisoners are asking for solidarity: “We know that fighting for human rights for prisoners is not popular. But we remind the labour movement that it used to be popular for children to work in factories, for women to be burned alive locked in sweatshops, because people thought that workers and the poor deserved it. Now is the time to rise up collectively and to fight against injustice everywhere.”
“I have been reading about the prisoners’ strike at Burnside. I understand that the conditions are not humane and that prisoners at Burnside are asking for necessary improvements in health care, exercise, visits, food, quality of air and library access. As a Palestinian and former resident of Gaza, I get the feeling that I am reading about the people of Palestine in general and Gaza in particular.”
We talked with El Jones to better understand what is driving the protest inside the Burnside jail, and how people on the outside can support the prisoners. “The prisoners are not saying anything that is in the least contentious. The demands are all very basic, we have known of these issues for a very long time.”
The YWCA Halifax has issued a statement about the Halifax smoking ban, an they don’t mince words. “The proposed smoking by-law will disproportionately affect Halifax’s Black, Indigenous, homeless, and poor citizens. It is, in effect, a social policy whose outcome is to criminalize the poor and increase scrutiny and risk into their lives.”
The notion that as a reporter you should talk to all parties affected by a story is often held up as what distinguishes real journalists from bloggers and spreaders of fake news. Except, apparently, when the story is about social assistance.
Sometimes all you need is a lucky break! Kendall Worth with a heartwarming story how a community came together to put a young woman on social assistance back on her feet and how her future now looks much brighter than ever before.
“The best path out of poverty is a job,” Community Services (DCS) deputy minister Lynn Hartwell told a CBC reporter a couple of weeks ago. Sure, responds community legal worker Fiona Traynor. But it’s a stigmatizing thing to say when 60 to 70% of people on assistance are unable to work because of disabilities.