LOGIC (Featuring Lowkey and Renee Soul) – I Wish
This is Siegfried, you’re listening to Back in the
USSR on CFRU 93.3 FM in Guelph. I want
to take the time and the opportunity tonight to shine a light on an issue that
is both local and global in scale, and that is the issue of homelessness. A very real life and death issue for many
thousands of people in this country, in North America, and in many other
countries, as social programs are cut, rents are raised, the cost of living
explodes, and genuinely affordable public housing remains unbuilt. That’s the case in Guelph right now.
Last Saturday, November 3rd, I took part in
a rally in front of city hall in downtown Guelph, to call for urgent action to
be taken, and urgent assistance given, to the homeless brothers and sisters in
this city before the onset of winter…which is coming on very fast now. People are literally going to die unless
action is taken. It was a small
crowd. Not many people want to show up
to these things when they happen on a cold, rainy and altogether grim November midday. Most people who showed up were part of the
group “Your Downtown Guelph Friends”, which my friend Kate started earlier this
year, and which gathers donations and provides support to the growing homeless
population in downtown Guelph. There
were also a number of allies and supporters, but nowhere near enough given the
urgency of the problem.
A number of people spoke at the rally, in particular
calling for the immediate establishment of a new overnight shelter for the
homeless, without any curfews. Kate
rightly pointed out that this is not something long-term strategies will fix, action
needs to happen right now, “This is a do-or-die moment”. People need shelter now, or they will
die. She rightly spoke about how “Our
current shelter system is inadequate…With limited amounts of beds, inaccessible
shelter locations and red-tape procedures, such as having to reserve beds
beforehand and having curfews earlier than 8 p.m., which makes it impossible
for people to get back in time for dinner programs makes it extremely evident
that there’s extreme issues...These people are human. They do deserve community
support. It is their right.”
Other people spoke too, calling for the creation of a
medical detox center for recovering addicts, and pointing out that homelessness
and addiction are systemic issues in society.
And I want to play a spoken word poem now, by an amazing indigenous poet named Zaccheus Jackson, which delves into both of these things. It’s called “Dominoes”.
And I want to play a spoken word poem now, by an amazing indigenous poet named Zaccheus Jackson, which delves into both of these things. It’s called “Dominoes”.
Zaccheus Jackson – Dominoes
I also spoke, and, even though the full speech and those of the other speakers can be found on Adam Donaldson’s Youtube channel, given that he graciously filmed the whole event, I want to run through it again for y’all, because I’m happy about the speech and what I said. I feel that I don’t address local concerns enough on this show, I should do more, but in this speech I think that I managed to connect local concerns with international concerns, but you can be the judge of that.
It goes like this:
“My name’s Siegfried and before I say
anything else, I want you to repeat after me:
“Housing is a human right!”
Louder!
“Housing is a human right!”
Louder!
“Housing is a human right!”
Thank you brothers and sisters. You were loud. And we gotta be loud because capitalist
politicians have a terrible habit of thinking that having a roof over your head
is just an optional accessory in life.
It takes a loud voice to reach people like that.
We shouldn’t have to do this. We shouldn’t have to be standing here
now. We shouldn’t have to be calling on
you good people for donations. And our
people shouldn’t be freezing on the streets in the winter because they don’t
have housing. They shouldn’t have to
brave the cold, the snow, the ice, not having a safe place to come home
to. None of this should exist. Because housing is a human right.
And there’s more than enough resources in
this society to solve this crisis, but it hasn’t been solved, why? Because we
live in a society, in a culture, in a system, a capitalist system that views
certain people as surplus, as valueless, as throwaways; unprofitable.
As a socialist, as a believer in socialism,
as someone who rejects running society according to the profit motive, this
kind of thing is horrific to me. It’s a
crime. It’s an abomination. It’s murder.
But these folks in city hall, and the folks at Queen’s Park, and the
folks on Parliament Hill, let alone the folks on Bay Street and Wall Street,
think it’s normal to have people living on the streets, without housing,
without adequate shelter, trying to survive in the freezing cold.
And I’m not surprised. Nor should you be, brothers and sisters. Because when I say that I’m a socialist I can
see the alarm bells going off in some of your heads out there. I can see the stereotypes bubbling up and
rising to the surface. I know that some
of you are thinking “police state” and “third world poverty” and “historic
failure”, and all that kinda stuff. Some
of you might even be looking for a mental backdoor and thinking, “oh, by
socialism he must mean Sweden, Denmark, some nice country like that…not Cuba”.
Well, I hate to break it to y’all, but
it’s just a fact that Cuba has eliminated homelessness and Sweden has not. And Cuba is a poor country; it was kept down
by centuries of colonialism and after it had a revolution in 1959 to overthrow
that legacy of oppression, it was held down by a blockade and all kinds of
sanctions as it still is to this day as the United States continues its
aggressive campaign to overthrow the Cuban revolutionary government. Cuba’s been dealt a difficult hand, no doubt
about it, but it’s still managed to do something that no rich capitalist
country on the planet has EVER been able to do and that is put a roof over
everybody’s head. Why? Because that’s
what happens when you have a system that puts the needs of people first and
where the profit motive is not in command of society.
But so many Canadians would dismiss the
Cuban example. Just throw it away, like
it doesn’t matter, like it doesn’t have meaning. Because we think we’re better than the
Cubans! We think we’re better than people in the Global South, in the Third
World, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
And we don’t want to learn from those we perceive as lesser, poorer,
underprivileged – non-white, we feel that we should be telling THEM what to do. Telling them what’s good. So we don’t listen to them. We don’t let them teach us lessons. Just like we don’t listen to indigenous
peoples in this country who live on reservations where they can’t even drink
their own water. So why should we be
surprised when capitalist politicians, who are all about the profit motive and
keeping the markets primed and the corporations happy, don’t really care about
those our society writes off as “failures” and throws them under the bus.
There really is a sickness in this
country, brothers and sisters, and it’s symptoms are really nasty. It blocks our ears, clouds our eyes, stops us
from perceiving the truth and coming to the understanding that it does not have
to be this way. That everyone has a
right to eat, drink, have a job, have a life, have a home, have an education,
have medical care when they need it. All
people have the right to live. But no
one has the right to colonize.
Thankyou all very much.”
Victor Jara – A Cuba
Peter Garrett – It Still Matters
You’re listening to Back in the USSR. At the conclusion of my speech at the rally
last Saturday I read a poem. It was the
poem that I’ve read on this show before, entitled “The Bread of the People” by
Bertolt Brecht, and it’s probably my friend Danny’s favorite Brecht poem. So I’d like to read it again:
Justice
is the bread of the people.
Sometimes
it is plentiful, sometimes it is scarce.
Sometimes
it tastes good, sometimes it tastes bad.
When
the bread is scarce, there is hunger.
When
the bread is bad, there is discontent.
Throw
away the bad justice
Baked
without love, kneaded without knowledge!
Justice
without flavour, with a grey crust
The
stale justice which comes too late!
If
the bread is good and plentiful
The
rest of the meal can be excused.
One
cannot have plenty of everything all at once.
Nourished
by the bread of justice
The
work can be achieved
From
which plenty comes.
As
daily bread is necessary
So
is daily justice.
It
is even necessary several times a day.
From
morning till night, at work, enjoying oneself.
At
work which is an enjoyment.
In
hard times and in happy times
The
people require the plentiful, wholesome
Daily
bread of justice.
Since
the bread of justice, then, is so important
Who,
friends, shall bake it?
Who
bakes the other bread?
Like
the other bread
The
bread of justice must be baked
By
the people.
Plentiful,
wholesome, daily.
Billy Bragg – The World Turned Upside Down
You’re listening to Back in the USSR. Last week on the show I talked about the
uprisings going on in Ecuador, Chile, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere, and
the common theme that the vast majority of these protests have is that they’re
up against capitalism gone berserk. A
capitalist regime of austerity that has slashed just about every human service
down to almost nothing so that the Fortune 500 and the IMF can keep lining
their pockets with fat profits. And people
aren’t taking it anymore. They’re rising
up and fighting back all over the world.
And just like I said last week, international solidarity to them. I’d like to round out the show by playing an
interview that I did back in 2015 with progressive author and scholar, Michael
Parenti, about his book “Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies” which gives a
pretty thorough overview of the situation that we’re now in. Please stay tuned.
Michael Parenti – Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies
No comments:
Post a Comment