OCAP, LCAP, and Direct Action Casework

[hugsandmarxism]

I'm writing a paper on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, the London Coalition Against Poverty, and their tactics. I have their websites, and am using information from them to write my paper, but I could really use some more information and insight.

Has anyone worked with or otherwise encountered these groups before?

Is there any information you can give me in addition to what I already have from their websites?

Is there any other group or groups that I should look into?

My deadline is Monday (12/21/09), and I would greatly appreciate your help if you have anything to contribute. Thanks in advance. :)

[The Ungovernable Farce]

There's also the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (http://www.edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk/), if that's any use. Never actually worked with them myself. Oh, and there's this archive of stuff related to similar campaigns (http://www.afed.org.uk/nottingham/claimants/), some of it might be a bit out of date tho.

[syndicat]

There is the Seattle Solidarity Network that works in a similar way.

Actually, I think the methods they use are also quite typical among workers centers in the USA. There are scores of workers centers in the USA that use protests and such to help workers get pay they were cheated out of, for example. These often develop in immigrant communities. Centro Obrero de Detroit and the Workers Defense Project are two grassroots workers centers of Latino immigrant workers. WDP is a group of 200 Mexican immigrant construction workers in Austin, TX. In San Francisco Young Workers United is a workers center of 200 people who work in the restaurant industry which uses similar methods.

Sometimes workers centers help workers form unions, as for example Black Workers for Justice in North Carolina helping to form the Carolina Automotive, Aerospace and Machine Workers Union, to fight racism on the job (this union is affiliated to UE).

[Patchd]

Hey! You may want to ask specific users here. I think Forward Union was involved in LCAP (I think he's in Sweden at the moment though), and I think ls, Pogue and a few others are organised in it too. You may be able to get good primary examples for your work too if you approach them personally. Sorry I can't help anymore :o

[hugsandmarxism]

Well, I already submitted the paper, but I guess this sort of info could be of use to somebody. :)

[jake williams]

I guess this is way past your deadline, but all I can think to say is that I have a close friend who spends a lot of his time talking about the petty bourgeois anarchists in OCAP who have a delusional idea that the poorest of the poor, rather than the organized proletariat, is the source of social change. I'm not sure if I remember meeting more than one person who worked for them though and she seemed pretty politically sophisticated. If you want more information (read:rants, probably) I can probably get it for anyone interested, I have a lot of friends in Toronto.

[blake 3:17]

OCAP is one of the only anti-poverty groups that makes very open and concrete support for organized labour -- and that includes when organized labour isn't all that friendly. They were the first community group in Toronto to declare solidarity with the recent municipal workers strike. When I was active in the group, I often disagreed with analyses put forward. When I didn't have an alternative I didn't impede the process.

Coming on this board, I've realized how much I learnt from OCAP direct action experiences -- we'd go in and raise a ruckus on behalf of a welfare or refugee claimant and it would get dealt with. Other folks on assistance or looking for status would be given information about who we were but way more importantly, where to find friends and allies, how to appeal a ruling, how to fight back.

[Eastside Revolt]

I'm writing a paper on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, the London Coalition Against Poverty, and their tactics. I have their websites, and am using information from them to write my paper, but I could really use some more information and insight.

Has anyone worked with or otherwise encountered these groups before?

Is there any information you can give me in addition to what I already have from their websites?

Is there any other group or groups that I should look into?

My deadline is Monday (12/21/09), and I would greatly appreciate your help if you have anything to contribute. Thanks in advance. :)

Vancouver has the Anti-Poverty Committee

website:http://apcvancouver.org/

During the recent height of their struggle (2006/2007), they copied a lot of tactics used by OCAP. Mostly in the form of a housing campaign.

Being an expressedly anti-capitalist organization, there was always this irony within the group that we were asking the government to build social housing, while never being able to articulate which type of social housing we were demanding (and giving the state legitimacy at the same time). This came around to bite us in the ass.

The homelessness crisis in Vancouver we drew attention to was met with an emphasis on social control (by non-profits and politicians) that even managed to help the forces of gentrification and social cleansing. The social housing that was created came in two different forms.

1) Supportive Housing: This required the government to buy slum hotels, evict the tenants, renovate them, and turn them into open-air mental institutions, and rehab centers. In supportive housing, all tenants rights are lost, police are able to enter rooms at will, and middle class proffessionals are given total control over how people live.

2) Multi-income Dovelopments: This was a way for the government and dovelopers to pretend they were building new social housing and increase corporate investment into working class neighborhoods at the same time. They would begin with a big media hype campaign, claiming that the new units would be 50% market housing, and 50% low-income housing (sometimes even claiming that the market housing was a solution to the housing crisis:sneaky:). The end result was that massive condominium dovelopments were built, and the low-income units were reduced to a very small percentage, and sometimes cut all together. The low-income sections of the dovelopments are heavily surveilled, and have a diffent entrance. Class War at its finest, yuppies in castles, with working class and poor people in cages, all in the same building inluding ethical coffee shops and grocery stores nearby!

But that was just our housing campaign.

Do to the current political environment in Vancouver, where progressive politicians, cater to middle-class bike riding green yuppies, we have kind of lost the wind in our sails, as the housing crisis is considered to have been dealt with, by the mainstream.

Homes not Games????

More like 2010 squats not 2010 games.

[blake 3:17]

The homelessness crisis in Vancouver we drew attention to was met with an emphasis on social control (by non-profits and politicians) that even managed to help the forces of gentrification and social cleansing. The social housing that was created came in two different forms.

1) Supportive Housing: This required the government to buy slum hotels, evict the tenants, renovate them, and turn them into open-air mental institutions, and rehab centers. In supportive housing, all tenants rights are lost, police are able to enter rooms at will, and middle class proffessionals are given total control over how people live.

2) Multi-income Dovelopments: This was a way for the government and dovelopers to pretend they were building new social housing and increase corporate investment into working class neighborhoods at the same time. They would begin with a big media hype campaign, claiming that the new units would be 50% market housing, and 50% low-income housing (sometimes even claiming that the market housing was a solution to the housing crisis:sneaky:). The end result was that massive condominium dovelopments were built, and the low-income units were reduced to a very small percentage, and sometimes cut all together. The low-income sections of the dovelopments are heavily surveilled, and have a diffent entrance. Class War at its finest, yuppies in castles, with working class and poor people in cages, all in the same building inluding ethical coffee shops and grocery stores nearby!


We've seen similar things here. The situation in Vancouver has been much more acute for quite a while. For global capital to function as it wants the Olympics were perfect for Vancouver. All the leading harm reduction measures in the country have started in Vancouver, and they're likely to be wiped out in meaningful ways.

It will be important to hold onto harm reduction forms post-Olympics both for the local scene but also internationally.

Folks in the Tdot will need to know fairly detailed accounts of Olympics security --- please keep notes (on paper, not electronic or ???) The G20 is gonna be a shitstorm. Much less social displacement, way more security terror.

[Eastside Revolt]

In supportive housing, all tenants rights are lost, police are able to enter rooms at will, and middle class proffessionals are given total control over how people live..

Woops, fucked that up.

Cops are olny allowed to enter if the middle class proffessional deem it necessary, or there is a warrant.

[Forward Union]

I'm writing a paper on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, the London Coalition Against Poverty, and their tactics. I have their websites, and am using information from them to write my paper, but I could really use some more information and insight.

Has anyone worked with or otherwise encountered these groups before?

Is there any information you can give me in addition to what I already have from their websites?

Is there any other group or groups that I should look into?

My deadline is Monday (12/21/09), and I would greatly appreciate your help if you have anything to contribute. Thanks in advance. :)

I am a member of LCAP, but have not been living in London for some time now. But if you have any questions I'll o my best to answer