Recovery without reimagining is a fallacy
Prioritize community frameworks and people’s needs over profits and free markets
Dear Hamilton:
As we adhere to physical distancing prescribed by our province, we have realized that we need to band together to support each other in times of need. What does working together mean? What does it look like? What are the components to achieve community success?
In uncertain times we look to political leaders at all government levels for information, guidance, and direction. This global pandemic has shown that our governments are ill-prepared to safeguard the safety of all residents and citizens. The history of government in this country is one that intertwined with blatant acts of racism and discrimination in the form of white supremacy. White supremacy that expounds that Indigenous children are uncivilized and thus need to be civilized in residential schools via the Indian Act. Provinces who are responsible for health care have continually discriminated against marginalized and racialized groups, and at the municipal level, there was a time when only white men who owned property were allowed to be “aldermen.” What does all this mean?
It means our governments have been preoccupied with maintaining the status quo and not adapting and learning from the bountiful knowledge in community and academia that aim to serve the public interest. Many of our political leaders are stuck in an era of self grandiosity, gatekeeping, and personal success at the cost of public responsibility.
As we think about recovery or reopening the so-called economy, we should prioritize community frameworks and people’s needs over profits and free markets.
In a time of distress, the influence of private capital and the economy still take precedence over people’s safety and well being. Our governments have become managers of problems and not fixers of problems. At the municipal level, there is constant gnashing over wanting to save taxpayers money. What good is it to save taxpayers money, and then when those taxpayers need a break, they are treated like overdue customers?
For municipalities that rely on property taxes for revenue, they will have to start prioritizing the social needs of the community. Municipalities have to move beyond the rhetoric of “saving” taxpayers’ money. With an approximately $1billion expenditure, there should be a focus on community, sustainability, putting labour before capital, investing in people and place, and designing systems that allow for resident ownership and stewardship.
As talks heighten to open up the economy, let us not repeat the failures of the pre-pandemic society. If we are serious about ensuring a safe world for everyone, our recovery discussions should include reimagination, or we are doomed to repeat the gross inequalities that have been exacerbated by this pandemic.
The first order of reimagination involves relationships with the land. Before the pandemic, the continued colonization of this land was evident. Are we as settlers going to continue to ignore Indigenous voices, communities, and nations? Land acknowledgments have been exhausted, and it is time to honour treaties. Any diversion of this topic by all levels of governments betrays the rhetoric of working together and banding together.
Another order of reimagination involves investing in community organizing.
Here I am talking about ways we support residents to enforce their agency to hold the government accountable. For so long, residents have replaced their agency for hope in politicians. With this attitude, we as residents have been depoliticized. Meaning politicians and bureaucrats become the experts of our lives, thus telling us what our housing should look like, how much we should earn, how much taxes we should pay, the list goes on and on.
On the other hand, we are the experts, we know what is going on in our communities, we have the answers, the methods and the ideas. We have neighbourhood associations, but more needs to be done in order to organize residents across our city based on wards and across wards. When residents are politicized, we can hold elected officials accountable and hold them responsible for their actions. Our agency is in our hands.
My last point revolves around democracy. After ballots are cast, democracy needs to take flight. What does that look like? It looks like dialogue, civic engagement, and civic inclusion. Most politicians and government entities pay lip service to these critical markers of practicing democracy. Resources need to be earmarked to create spaces for civic engagement to happen. For so long, politicians have used demographic positions to further decimate our agency. For those of us that have worked with and within various communities, we know that our differences and experiences are linked to the byproducts of capitalism and neo-liberalism.
Without reimagining a new society with a new set of community principles we will only be repeating history. The disdain for collective action, public and social responsibility by the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek will continue to destroy society. It is time for people and community to be centred in how our society, community and world looks like moving forward.