Yes, We're Still On This "Defund The VPD" Thing!
The Thorn On Thursdays | Nov 26
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Budget 2021 coming to a vote soon: Time to Defund the VPD
In a move that flies in the face of calls to defund the police, Vancouver’s proposed 2021 budget from staff includes a 0.7% increase to the Vancouver Police Department’s (VPD’s) budget. Many activists and some City Councillors oppose this move and are gearing up for a major push to cut the Vancouver Police Department’s (VPD’s) 2021 budget.
Staff will present the proposed budget to City Council on December 1, with deliberations and a vote scheduled for December 8. COPE Councillor Jean Swason has indicated she plans to push for a cut to the police budget. Back in the spring, council approved a 1% cut to the VPD’s budget, but the Vancouver Police Board subsequently rejected this minor cut.
A 1% cut to the police budget is quite frankly too small to address the culture of over-policing in Vancouver. The City should cut the police budget by at least 20% - or $63,055,656.20 - and re-invest that money in community-based services, housing, and other essential needs. Should the Vancouver Police board reject further cuts to their budget, city council should exercise their power to set the budget regardless of objections from the police board. (The Police Act allows the police board to appeal to the provincial government, but the City should push the case while also demanding more democratic control over policing.)
Back in July, City Council passed a motion from Councillor Swanson to “de-prioritize policing as a response to mental health, sex work, homelessness, and substance use and to prioritize funding community-led harm reduction and safety initiatives in these areas.” The motion directed city staff to consult with a number of community groups to determine how to implement the community-led harm reduction and safety initiatives. Staff indicated that this consultation process would cost $30,000; and yet the proposed 2021 budget does not include any money for this consultation process.
Councillor Swanson has indicated that she plans to bring forward an amendment to the city budget to redirect $30,000 of the proposed cut to the VPD towards the community consultation process on her July motion.
In advance of City Council’s debate and vote on the budget, activists are flooding City Councillors with emails in support of defunding the police, with at least hundreds of emails received by councillors so far.
You can find all the necessary information to email City Councillors or sign up to speak before Council (via telephone) on the Budget by clicking here.
COPE is hosting an online town hall this Friday, November 27, at 7pm under the title “Reshaping Public Safety: The People’s 2021 Police Budget Proposal.”
Zoom link
At the same time, the VPD is leading a push back against attempts to cut their budget and reduce the scope of their activity. They are organizing business groups, strata committees, block watch groups, and other similar organizations to lobby City Council not to cut the police budget.
And as we reported earlier this month, the Vancouver Police Department announced the creation of a new unit to respond to “low level crime and street disorder”, a blatant affront to Councillor Swanson’s motion from July.
Net Zero by 2050 is too late: Canadian government unveils grossly inadequate climate plan
Last Thursday, the federal Environment and Climate Change Minister tabled legislation to require the Canadian government to set climate targets aimed at reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Read the following story from the CBC for a fuller picture of the plan: Trudeau unveils new net-zero emissions plan to meet climate change targets.
Net zero by 2050 is too late to prevent the worst case scenario of runaway climate change, a fact climate scientists are increasingly pointing out.
It should also be pointed out that net-zero climate plans are a trojan horse, in that they allow the use of carbon offsets to avoid actually eliminating carbon emissions entirely as is required to address the extent of the climate emergency.
The Canadian government has failed to meet all of it’s previous climate targets, and there are no penalties in this new bill if the government fails to meet any of the targets it sets out.
The Liberal government’s approach to climate change is part of the new climate denialism, which involves not a denial of the existence of climate change, but rather a denial of the severity of the emergency and the measures necessary to address it.
Slow Learner #4 “No Masters, No Flakes” (Simon)
Dean Spade. “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).”
Dean Spade is an Associate Professor at Seattle University of Law. Spade is an accomplished activist who has been involved in queer and trans liberation struggles for the past two decades. Spade has been involvement in a plethora of projects including ‘The Silvia Rivera Law Project’, ‘The Queer Trans War Ban’, the 'Big Door Brigade’, and the ‘Black Agenda Report', among others. He has published two books ‘Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law’ and ‘Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis, (and the Next)’ which is here reviewed. Mutual aid is published as part of the Verso pamphlet series. The other books in the series, Grace Blakeley on ‘Corona Crisis’, ‘The Care Manifesto’ written by the Care Collective, and Andreas Malm on ‘Corona Climate', have all already been reviewed in previous Thorn newsletters, and can be read on the Thorn’s substack.
Spade says he wants to ‘open the door’ to build a mass movement to respond to dire challenges that exist today. As such, his text is what it promises to be. ‘Mutual Aid’ is a short primer for those who are interested in joining emancipatory movements, how they should welcome themselves and others into the organizing process, and how to avoid burnout. It is not a theoretical economic or political text, or a guide to how specific challenges should be faced and overcome. The text offers a brief survey of the current situation, and a history of recent struggles. The text is divided into two parts; part 1 ‘What is Mutual Aid’, and part 2 ‘Working Together on Purpose’. Dean’s book sits beside the other texts in verso’s pamphlet series and Jacobin’s ‘The ABC’s of Socialism’ as a useful introductory text for those newly joining emancipatory movements. The book is a clear explainer for those unfamiliar with the term mutual aid or how it differentiates from charity and non-profit models of community support. For those already engaged in mutual aid projects, this text can be a familiar, welcome reminder. It reads as a kind of Robert’s Rules toolkit for mutual aid organizations and consensus decision making. Spade puts his academic skills to work here, detailing the necessity of struggle in a clear, accessible way.
Spade is not shy about the gargantuan task needed to cultivate solidarity and mobilize large social movements against the intersecting crises of climate change, capitalism, and the continuing global pandemic. There are many governments who want to implement austerity. We can see how quickly great suffering and death can be justified as necessary for the continuation of the economy. Mass mobilizations and continual pressure against the government will be needed to resist exploitative forces. Mutual aid is an effective strategy as while social justice movements are built the interconnectedness of seemingly divergent issues is revealed. A wide horizon of political possibility allows for the cultivation of a multi issue and solidarity based approach within mutual aid groups that is able to address overlapping vulnerabilities.
Dean simply states “Mutual aid is collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them.”
For many the cooperation and non-hierarchical nature of a mutual aid approach may seem alien. We are taught from birth to respect authority, the police, politicians. We move through life from one hierarchical institution to another, families, school, jobs. It is difficult to conceive of any system that operates based on equal cooperation and not coercion. We must act without permission from authorities and against them.
Most nonprofits are strictly hierarchical and delegate volunteers toward duties where they feel they can ‘help out’, but have no say in the direction or structure of the organization, which is left to an unelected board or director. The horizontal logic of mutual aid groups runs counter to this and calls for the egoism of hierarchies to be unlearned. We have to learn that those who can speak best about someone’s experiences are those who lived them. We must break from the norms of passivity coerced upon us by dominant hegemonies. We have to learn to act in a new way that treats each other as ends in ourselves and not mere means. At the same time it is not enough to believe we are ‘post-racial’ or ‘colour-blind’. We must recognize the inequities of our material conditions that have been conditioned into us by centuries of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Spade details the establishment’s three possible responses to mutual aid projects that must be resisted. The first approach the status quo can employ is to simply ignore mass movements. Secondly, governments can attempt to co-op mutual aid programs, and claim they are aligned with their efforts and not diametrically opposed. Politicians love nothing more than to celebrate individual heroic accomplishments and volunteerism that ‘manage’ social problems while doing nothing to address the root issues which cause these crises. Politicians love the idea of volunteerism replacing the infrastructures of a welfare state, and saving their budgets. The charity model is based on the idea that poor and marginalized people have ‘fallen’ because of their own mistakes, and need to be ‘saved’ by superior, benevolent, charities. Those who cannot rely on family or church, or charity for support, are perceived as unworthy. The third approach that governments can employ towards mass movements is to unleash the police powers of the state against them, to surveil, harass, or arrest them.
There is a fashionable centrist view today that politics is meant to be a boring background issue that requires little attention as we pursue our individual desires. This is the call that says ‘We want to go back to brunch’ and ‘return to normal’ Politics is meant to be an inconsequential minor bureaucracy that operates outside of everyday life. The reality that our current system inflicts enormous suffering on billions and the planet is an inconvenient truth. This thinking is a result of the narrowing of the political horizon that has occurred under neoliberalism. We are constantly told to expect less and accept that most things aren’t possible. Spade wants us to realize the central position politics takes in our lives. Mutual aid should be another daily act along with eating, sleeping, playing. In this sense Spade critiques the idea of activism as a kind of fashionable lifestyle accessory. Spade is interested in mutual aid as a central project of life, in which participants live, discover friendships, eat, breathe, and sleep. Mutual aid should be as natural or normal as work, sleep, and play. Spade is interested in mutual aid as a shared recognition we are capable of building movements strong enough to challenge the status quo. We have to stop power from hurting people, whether through use of the police, or extractive resource policies that threaten the planet. Spade’s text is a welcome reminder that we need to be generous to others in these movements, and to ourselves. We cannot rely on electoralism, centrist parties, or corporate media. Mass moments based on mutual aid approaches must be mobilized. We cannot wait for elite politicians or someone else to do the work. Through custom and habit we rely on the myth of a benevolent government that will awaken to protect us. The truth is no one is coming and our only hope is each other.
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) is available wherever fine books are sold or directly from the Verso Website.
Coronavirus Cases Continue to Rise and Death Follows For Many Older Adults
Many in BC support more accountability and transparency with how long term care (LTC) is provided in the province.
Poll finds majority of British Columbians support phasing out for-profit long-term care
Many concerns regarding privately-run LTC facilities persist - from understaffing to lower wages for the same work carried out in publicly funded LTC facilities. How are the health care workers supported in this most challenging and profound work – caring for our elders and those living with disabilities. For a quick guide to what is going on with residential care in BC review the BC Residential Care Facilities Quick Facts Directory put out by the Office of the Seniors Advocate BC (this is a provincial government office under the MoH).
https://www.seniorsadvocatebc.ca/app/uploads/sites/4/2018/01/QuickFacts2018-Summary.pdf
Not all private LTC facilities are “bad players” however there are definitely a considerable number of for-profit LTC facilities that need much better oversight. Our public and non-profit LTC facilities also need better oversight.
https://theprovince.com/opinion/dan-levitt-a-new-deal-is-urgently-needed-in-long-term-care
We urge the provincial and federal governments to review standards of care in long term and continuing care facilities. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/higher-standard-0
Does BC need a formal inquiry into why there are so many Covid-19 deaths in LTC facilities? The Thorn has previously published on these grave concerns and we will remain vigilant in our pursuit of health care justice for older adults in LTC facilities and their families and for all of the dedicated health care workers that support them.
International News: Diego Maradona, presente!
One of the most electrifying soccer players in history died Wednesday. Diego Maradona passed away Nov. 25 after a heart attack at age 60.
Jahanzeb Hussain, writing in Ricochet, described the significant political impact of the dynamic but troubled Argentinian superstar: “His strident anti-imperialism and embrace of leftist leaders made him a sports icon with political influence surpassed only by Muhammad Ali in recent world history.”
In The Nation, Dave Zirin summed up Maradona’s political impact in the Global South: “Maradona always stood with the oppressed, particularly with the people of Palestine. He made sure they were not forgotten, saying in 2018, ‘In my heart, I’m Palestinian.’ He was a critic of Israeli violence against Gaza, and it was even rumored that he would coach the Palestinian national team during the 2015 AFC Asian Cup.”
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