A NEW WAY OF THINKING? TOWARDS A VISION OF SOCIAL INCLUSION

Focus Paper

by Josephine Grey

Poverty in a wealthy society has unique characteristics, very different from poverty in poor societies or societies with a tradition of a high percentage of poor people, or even other wealthy societies with a strong sense of interdependence and social cohesion.

Some of these are:

The lack of security-the ability to plan beyond the next week occasioned by the lack of assets
The total lack of control over events and circumstances the frustration of apparent but inaccessible opportunities for advancement
The public perception that the poor in the south are victims while the poor in the north are simply losers
The tendency of society to believe in simplistic reasons for poverty and to believe it is a matter of will to escape it
The utter isolation and lack of social interaction
The public perception that we live in the best society in the world so our poverty is only relative and minor compared to “real poverty”
The suspension of human rights and freedoms available to all other groups in society
The invasion of privacy and extremely demeaning treatment the poor receive from social security system employees
A culture of intolerance and shaming which leads the poor to be complicit in their own oppression through silence and or duplicating the attitudes of oppression towards other poor people in self-defense
The stress and anxiety of uncertainty, lack of control lack of security and loss of basic rights which having no means of expression or relief leads often to mental illness or chronic anger problems

I will express a concern that social inclusion could be interpreted to mean homogenization of culture and lifestyle-or social control of vulnerable people. I will argue that the unique nature of poverty in North America is convenient to the agenda of ensuring the growing underclass is isolated and undefended, and above all kept invisible from the rest of the world.

I will also point out the risk that in this pliable environment, enhanced by a total lack of public sympathy, carefully conditioned by negative propaganda-human services become a target market and the people who will generate the revenue will be the resource of a publicly funded private industry which can only benefit if the crises and miseries which create and occur from poverty are exacerbated rather then resolved.

Josephine Grey is a human rights activist, a widow and mother of four who has been active in the struggle for economic and social justice for over 15 years. She is a founder of Low Income Families Together (LIFT) in Toronto, a resource centre run by and for low-income people. LIFT does community education on human rights, economic and political literacy, and helps provide a voice for low-income people to the media and government.

She has been involved internationally as a co-founder of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, a network of over 300 national organizations working to challenge and propose alternatives to the current free trade regime, alternatives which respect human and environmental rights. She became the first international member of the U.S. National Welfare Rights Union in 1994 and continues to work with them on their Economic Human Rights campaign.

She coordinated, authored and presented the Ontario People’s Report to the UN committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1998. Josephine is now the International Secretary for the National Anti-Poverty Organization and continues to work at the community level with fellow volunteers on empowering people to stand up for their rights. She now also works for an international committee on using human rights treaties to address global economic policy.

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