Dan, this is real life
My neighbour Danny is 63 years old. He doesn't have a lot of teeth, he's skinny, and he just received his high school equivalency certificate in the summer. He can afford to live in his small apartment because his nephew owns the building and Dan does odd jobs around the place to offset the fact he has no money other than the bare old age pension the government provides the elderly.
Danny has lived on the street for quite a few years. He says he's tried to take his life several times. He talks in a raspy old man whine, his voice cracked by black market cigarettes and cheap beer, his comfort vices.
About once a week I cook up something for us to eat. Dan, a street-wise scavenger, lives on about a hundred dollars worth of groceries a month. If the weather is nice we'll sit outside while I BBQ chicken or burgers. Usually I give him a couple beers, because I feel like scum if I sit and enjoy a brew while he goes without.
Not so long ago Dan was one of those people we pass by on the street, holding a hat out for change. He was the body huddled in worn blankets sitting on street corners. He lived in a homeless shelter in the winter.
Talking with Dan gives me perspective.
Dan and I talk about the economy. He's worried there may be a new Depression, like the one in the ‘30s. He thinks there could be rough times for a lot of people in Southern Ontario, dependant as we are on the auto sector, which is tanking hard and fast. I agree with him, to a point.
The Sterling truck plant closure is a case study that I often mention to Dan.
Two years ago the plant went on strike, for higher wages. The strike worked and the average salary at the plant jumped to just over $35 an hour. Months later the parent company, Daimler, started laying off workers and making plans for a similar plant in Mexico. The day of the Federal election in Canada Daimler announced, with no warning, the plant would close in the Spring of 2009, tossing over a thousand workers out of those high paying jobs. The Ontario Trucking Association and others in the auto industry knew the plant was in trouble for months leading up to October 14. But when I contacted local politicians, the freshly re-elected Joe Preston and the long time area Liberal MPP Steve Peters (former Labour Minister) they were simply stunned that the plant was closing. Stunned. Oh, well, what could they do? And off to Ottawa and Queen's Park they went, to enjoy their taxpayer subsidized steak dinners.
My sympathies for the Sterling workers, and other auto sector workers who are currently laid off or have lost their jobs, is mixed. If you've been making over $30 an hour running a punch press or a lift truck, you should have counted yourself lucky and perhaps thought about the day when you wouldn't be able to count on that big wage. Three days of work at that rate equals what Dan lives on for a month.... And Dan has sympathy for those people, for a reason I still can't quite grasp.
I'm guessing that there's going to be a massive renewal of interest in issues like a higher minimum wage. The service industry (Hello, I'm Jim-Bob, formerly CAW Local 27, would you like a crueller with that double-double?) is one employment sector still growing. And every year tens of thousands of migrant workers from foreign countries travel to the area to do jobs no locals will touch, like agricultural work. Those jobs don't pay $30 an hour. They usually pay minimum wage.
So it's with some evil pleasure when I think of Dan, who's lived most of his life in an extreme sort of poverty, now on equal employment footing with formerly fat and willfully blind CAWers, who didn't give two shits about poor people like Dan until they found themselves faced with climbing into a Tim Horton's uniform or singing the Wal-Mart song in the morning before the doors opened. Those same people now screeching that “it's not fair” and demanding the government “do something” maybe should have met Dan a couple years ago when he was happy just to get a hot bowl of soup and a warm cot to sleep on.
Grinding, persistent poverty is a global norm that most Canadians are shielded from. Balance starving people in Haiti, for instance, against the fact that two thirds of US corporations do not pay income tax. Try and figure out why the richest 140 Americans have more combined assets than the poorest 140 million citizens. Tell me why the London Police Service gets an annual raise in the city's budget, and it's HQ is expanding, when people are sleeping in public restrooms and diving through dumpsters for food scraps.
Think about being old like Dan and living from month-to-month on a fixed income while a Sterling worker cries because he has to sell his bass boat. Maybe try talking to that street person next time he or she asks for change. You might gain more than you bargained for.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
Danny has lived on the street for quite a few years. He says he's tried to take his life several times. He talks in a raspy old man whine, his voice cracked by black market cigarettes and cheap beer, his comfort vices.
About once a week I cook up something for us to eat. Dan, a street-wise scavenger, lives on about a hundred dollars worth of groceries a month. If the weather is nice we'll sit outside while I BBQ chicken or burgers. Usually I give him a couple beers, because I feel like scum if I sit and enjoy a brew while he goes without.
Not so long ago Dan was one of those people we pass by on the street, holding a hat out for change. He was the body huddled in worn blankets sitting on street corners. He lived in a homeless shelter in the winter.
Talking with Dan gives me perspective.
Dan and I talk about the economy. He's worried there may be a new Depression, like the one in the ‘30s. He thinks there could be rough times for a lot of people in Southern Ontario, dependant as we are on the auto sector, which is tanking hard and fast. I agree with him, to a point.
The Sterling truck plant closure is a case study that I often mention to Dan.
Two years ago the plant went on strike, for higher wages. The strike worked and the average salary at the plant jumped to just over $35 an hour. Months later the parent company, Daimler, started laying off workers and making plans for a similar plant in Mexico. The day of the Federal election in Canada Daimler announced, with no warning, the plant would close in the Spring of 2009, tossing over a thousand workers out of those high paying jobs. The Ontario Trucking Association and others in the auto industry knew the plant was in trouble for months leading up to October 14. But when I contacted local politicians, the freshly re-elected Joe Preston and the long time area Liberal MPP Steve Peters (former Labour Minister) they were simply stunned that the plant was closing. Stunned. Oh, well, what could they do? And off to Ottawa and Queen's Park they went, to enjoy their taxpayer subsidized steak dinners.
My sympathies for the Sterling workers, and other auto sector workers who are currently laid off or have lost their jobs, is mixed. If you've been making over $30 an hour running a punch press or a lift truck, you should have counted yourself lucky and perhaps thought about the day when you wouldn't be able to count on that big wage. Three days of work at that rate equals what Dan lives on for a month.... And Dan has sympathy for those people, for a reason I still can't quite grasp.
I'm guessing that there's going to be a massive renewal of interest in issues like a higher minimum wage. The service industry (Hello, I'm Jim-Bob, formerly CAW Local 27, would you like a crueller with that double-double?) is one employment sector still growing. And every year tens of thousands of migrant workers from foreign countries travel to the area to do jobs no locals will touch, like agricultural work. Those jobs don't pay $30 an hour. They usually pay minimum wage.
So it's with some evil pleasure when I think of Dan, who's lived most of his life in an extreme sort of poverty, now on equal employment footing with formerly fat and willfully blind CAWers, who didn't give two shits about poor people like Dan until they found themselves faced with climbing into a Tim Horton's uniform or singing the Wal-Mart song in the morning before the doors opened. Those same people now screeching that “it's not fair” and demanding the government “do something” maybe should have met Dan a couple years ago when he was happy just to get a hot bowl of soup and a warm cot to sleep on.
Grinding, persistent poverty is a global norm that most Canadians are shielded from. Balance starving people in Haiti, for instance, against the fact that two thirds of US corporations do not pay income tax. Try and figure out why the richest 140 Americans have more combined assets than the poorest 140 million citizens. Tell me why the London Police Service gets an annual raise in the city's budget, and it's HQ is expanding, when people are sleeping in public restrooms and diving through dumpsters for food scraps.
Think about being old like Dan and living from month-to-month on a fixed income while a Sterling worker cries because he has to sell his bass boat. Maybe try talking to that street person next time he or she asks for change. You might gain more than you bargained for.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
