Downtown East Side Stop the Cuts

DTES by FTGU

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and their allies have had a long history organizing in the Downtown Eastside fighting for the rights of the poor, the homeless, and immigrants and refugees. Last summer they and other community members formed the Downtown Eastside Committee, which is one of 10 committees that are part of the Stop the Cuts Network. I spoke to Kelly O'Sullivan, president of CUPE local 4308, about their work in that area.

Partial transcript of interview:

Q: Can you tell me a little about the Downtown Eastside?

KO: The Downtown Eastside is the area east of Yonge St. But for those of us in the neighbourhood, we think of it primarily as three neighbourhoods east of Yonge, so St. Jamestown, Regent Park, and Moss Park.

One of the focus for us the Sherbourne and Dundas area. It’s an area of our community that has been impacted by cuts and systemic issues. It’s really a diverse and broad community as far as who lives in the community. There has been a lot of gentrification over the years, but there are still many people who live in poverty.

Particularly with Regent Park and St. Jamestown, there are a lot of newcomers that are in those communities. Obviously affected by the propose cuts and the gentrification.

Q: What are some of the issues you are working on in your neighbourhood?

KO: Those of that are already active in our community had some sense of the issue that we have seen around housing, around access to services, and childcare. But we didn’t want to assume based on what we experienced. So we held a broader community meeting back in July.

We had close to 90 people in that community attend. We identify priorities to work on. One of that was housing and the potential sell-off of housing. User fees at the community rec centre was another key issue because our neighbourhoods have been identified as priority neighbourhoods.

There had already been a cap put on the welcome policy so people weren’t able to access the rec programs through that access programs. In addition, there were talking about implementing user fees and that had done that at some of the community centres that provide services in the neighbourhood like the Wellesley community centre.

The third area that people talked about was around child care. Many of our community members rely on subsidized child care. We were going to see a potential loss of 2000 child care spaces.

The fourth one was shelters and access to shelters. There are a number of shelters in the community and we had concerns about those being pushed out and closed without actual housing being implemented prior.

Q: How many people are in your committee?

KO: We have a core group of about ten people that come to every meeting. We meet every two weeks; that’s a pretty decent number involved on an on-going basis. But we also have up to at least 20 people that are actively involved that will take on tasks like doing outreach or doing flyering in the community and to talk about issues that are coming up. As well, we have close to 200 people on our listserv and outreach list and who will come out and more specifically to do actions, activities or events that we hold.

Q: Can you tell me the impact gentrification is having in your neighbourhood?

KO: Services that provide programs to people who are poor or who are newcomers are targeted. There hasn’t been a decrease in the number of people living in poverty in our community. But has happen because of condo development is that there has been an increase in the number of people that have privilege that live in the community.

This concept of a mixed community being so healthy is completely false. Because what happens is people with privilege, they, not to stereotype them all, I’m sure some folks are open to a ‘mixed neighbourhood’, but it’s the people with privilege who move into the community who then don’t feel comfortable with the reality of the community is that poverty exists, there are issues that arise and they want to see those things changed in the community.

Stop the Cuts - Status For All

No one is illegal toronto by FTGU

Partial transcript of interview:

No One Is Illegal-Toronto is a volunteer grassroots migrant justice organization that has been fighting for access to city services without fear for all residents. They won the campaign to implement the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy at the Toronto District School Board, and have been working to have this policy in all city services. The cuts to city services will make life more difficult for undocumented and migrants. I’m joined by Hussan to talk about the impact these cuts will have on migrants and about their work around the Stop the Cuts campaign.

Q: Can you tell me about the work NOII has been doing to mobilize against these cuts?

H: No One is Illegal, in its May 2011 demo, dropped a large banner in Parkdale which proclaimed ‘Stop the Cuts!’ As part of our campaign against cuts at the provincial, municipal and federal level, we joined forces with other local organizations in the city. We already started mobilizing against Ford as far back as December 2010.

So by May 2011, we were ready to make this a major issue. We initially started with local community organizations and established a committee in Parkdale where we had our May Day. OCAP set one up in the Downtown East Side and another group started one in the Davenport Perth area.

Together we began to lay out what is now Stop the Cuts Network which is an organization comprising of ten neighbourhood chapters with an average number of 13 to 50 members in each group.

Q: NOII has been working for several years to expand city services for all. How will these cuts affect the fight for access to city services?

H: For about eight years, we’ve been mobilizing around three key things one is organizing against deportations and changing unjust immigration policy, the second is indigenous sovereignty, and the third is expanding services for undocumented people and migrants in the city.

When we see this age of austerity, at a time when we have build relationships across different service sectors and actually been able to expand services, access to undocumented people into schools, some access to shelters, and some access to health care, these cuts would have a dramatic impact on our communities.

It became imperative that we were part of mobilizing a force that not only could stop the cuts, but also expand services towards a broader campaign of creating a city where workers at the site of service provison and people that access them have the ability to determine what happens to those spaces.

So that means community control over a community resource and this idea that city council or a group of private consultants or some rich politician can determine what happens to a bus in a particular neighbourhood, or at school during a breakfast program didn’t make sense to us.

That’s why we helped establish and have continued to fully support Stop the Cuts. It was also a moment to really reach out to all the people that were beginning to come together in their hatred for Ford and beginning to notice city services, to say hey yes it’s important to stop the cuts, but these services are still inaccessible to a lot of people even if these cuts were stopped.

Where the Money Goes

From Toronto`s 2012 Staff Recommended Tax Supported Operating Budget - The Police Budget is about 50% or more than all the other services.

Why Toronto Doesn't Have a Fiscal Crisis

Countdown by FTGU

Partial transcript of interview:

Community organizing has saved 58 student nutrition programs and 12 school-based recreation programs from Mayor Rob Ford’s chopping block.

On Friday, it was announced that these services will be covered by a property assessment growth that is not included in the current surplus.

But there’s still over $85 M in city services facing cuts. In the Wellesley Institute’s report Countdown to Zero, Sheila Block argues that Toronto can balance its budget without cuts to city services.

Sheila Block joins me to discuss the report.

Q: The city says that they have a shortfall of $774 M and yet there’s also a surplus of over $154M. The numbers are a bit confusing to me. So does the city have a deficit or a surplus?

SB: You’re not alone in your confusion. A lot of people have been confused because both a lot of numbers have been thrown around by the city government and by politicians. And also the budget making process at the city is different than what it is at the federal or provincial level. And so that makes it a little confusing.

That $774 M that was originally talked about is what’s called an opening shortfall and what that really signifies is what’s the ground that needs to be covered during the budget making process. That number is often a bit bigger than what it will be at the end.

It compares 2011 revenues to 2012 expenditures. You have your prior year’s revenue compared to your following year’s expenditures so that accounts for some of the gap. And then through this process after that opening shortfall was identified , a number of things happen. You get actual information about where the actual revenues and expenditures are going to be and there’s a political process here where governments make decisions about how much to increase taxes and where your actually going to wind up.

So the surplus number that you talked about is actually the prior year’s surplus. The surplus from 2011. The opening shortfall of $774 is what starts the budget making process not what ends it.

The Fight for Jobs and City Services - CUPE vs Rob Ford

CUPE by FTGU

Partial transcript of interview.

The contract for Toronto’s municipal inside and outside workers expired last year. Members of CUPE 79 and 416 are facing a lockout and strike in 2012 as Mayor Rob Ford seeks deep concessions from its members including the removal of job security provisions as well at the elimination of 2,300 jobs.

CUPE 79 and 416 face a tough challenge ahead as the rhetoric of a fiscal crisis by Mayor Ford is used to justify these cuts. Julia Barnett, a community health officer and member of CUPE 79 joins me to discuss the stakes and strategy of this year’s negotiations.

Q: What are the stakes in this year’s negotiations?

JB: What is at stake as a whole is that these are about keeping programs public and the viability of communities. And allowing for communities to grow and live in a viable city. This is about opening up our collective agreement and privatizing services and opening it up to the lowest bidder. It’s about keeping what we have public, but it’s also about making sure all people can have access to services and not just those that can afford them.

Q: What would be the best strategy for this year’s negotiations?

JB: The key strategy should have been, could have been, and should be working directly with communities, grassroots organizations like Stop the Cuts, and other community based organizations to support community based initiatives like keeping libraries open, keeping community centres open, making sure student nutrition programs were going to be funded. We should we have been putting forward a campaign to support our cleaners who are about to be privatized and contracted out. Yes, it is about decent wage jobs. Yes, it is about how everyone should have access to decent benefits and pensions, but at the same time those decent jobs and decent services are intertwined.

Stop the Cuts - Neighbourhood by Neighbourhood

Stop the cuts by FTGU

Partial transcript of interview:

Mayor Rob Ford wants to cut $88 Million in city services in this year’s budget including cuts to homeless shelters, TTC routes, recreation programs, public health services such as the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre and HIV prevention programs, as well as 2,300 job cuts.

City Council will finalize the budget on Jan 17 to 19.

On January 17th Toronto Stop the Cuts will be holding a rally and action at city hall to demand city council reject these cuts. The group has been organizing against these cuts in neighbourhoods all across the city. I spoke with Victoria Barnett, an organizer with the Toronto Stop the Cuts Network, about their organizing.

Q: What impact will the cuts have?

VB: You see that it’s a very specific attack on people who are poor or who are marginalized and undocumented people or survivors of violence. When you think of the things they are cutting, they’re cutting from community centres, housing, that’s an impact on community relationships and community involvement. The strength of the Toronto Stop the Cuts Network is organizing people in their neighbourhoods and trying to keep those connections open.

Q: What are the advantages of organizing neighbourhood by neighbourhood?

VB: The network and in all the different neighbourhood groups- people have come together. And in those neighbourhoods, people that live two streets down from one another and didn’t even know each other a couple of months ago, are now meeting each other and building relationships. There are different successes in each neighbourhood. The one powerful thing that we have seen from this network is that people are talking and getting together. People are organizing lemonade stands or hot chocolate booths. They are organzing rallies in their communities. They’re organizing public forums. People are forming these relationships and telling Ford and their councillors that –we don’t want these cuts. We’re going to build our relationships and we’re going to be stronger than whatever it is you’re going to push at us.