Toronto Panhandler Murder

Last Thursday my roommate left the apartment shortly after midnight to get a snack at 7/11. When he came back he reported that there had been a stabbing across the street, in front of the church. This is literally 200 metres from our apartment. The next day we discovered that four people, possibly panhandlers, had been involved in an altercation with another man, and the man had been stabbed several times. It was also reported that one or more of the attackers had been injured and possibly stabbed. Over the weekend the man died in hospital.

Since that time, the media and some of Toronto's politicians have gone out of control. One after another, politicians and media pundits have called for a "ban" on panhandling. I guess we are going to have to lock up every street person, or possibly send them to a different city via Greyhound bus. There have also been woeful articles in the papers describing "the decline of Queen West" a phenomenon that I have not noticed. As a point of reference, my parents bought their house in this exact neighbourhood under ten years ago for about $150K. This month their neighbours, with the exact same house as theirs (give or take), put their house on the market for $400K and will probably not have trouble finding a buyer. The only decline that I have witnessed in the area is the fact that there are now far too many people living there who should probably be living in the suburbs - people who move into an apartment with graftiti all over the front door and then complain that there is graffiti on their door (that actually happened a few doors down from my place). Trust me, I lived at Queen and Dovercourt in the early-1990s and these people would not recognize the Queen West of those days.

Over the past week we have learned that the attackers were panhandlers and the victim was a "tourist" from St. Catharines. The attackers have yet to be charged with murder, although all four have now appeared in court and have bail hearing dates set for the end of August. The investigation is ongoing. Clearly things got very out of hand that night and someone has unfortunatley died. That being said, my fear of people on the street has not increased, I do not feel like my neighbourhood is in decline, and I do not think that a clampdown on panhandlers would have prevented this. Have some perspective people.

Larry Flynt versus the Christian Right

Sex scandals are nothing new in politics, but I have to admit that it is pretty satisfying when the self-righteous politicians of the Christian Right are exposed for their hypocrisy in matters of sexuality. The most recent case involves David Vitter, a (married) Louisianna Senator who is notorious for his "family values" positions against same sex marriage and in favour of abstinence-only education. Recently Hustler magazine's Larry Flynt unearthed Senator Vitter's phone number in the rolodex of the D.C. Madam, and Vitter was also reportedly a client of a New Orleans brothel. Alternet reports that "that brothel's former madam, while insisting he had been a client, was one of his few defenders last week. 'Just because people visit a whorehouse doesn't make them a bad person,' she helpfully told the Baton Rouge paper, The Advocate."
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with the madam, but just wish that these blowhards for "morality" would shut their mouths when it comes to other peoples' sex lives. I also love the Larry Flynt angle to this story! According to the Washington Post: "Flynt took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post in June to offer $1 million for 'documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a congressman or senator.'" Maybe if we expose enough of these right wing wingnuts (both politicians and evangelists) for the hypocrites that they are, we can start to make some progress.

Jen B. - not sure if you still read this, but I sent you a message to your myspace account earlier this week since I don't have your regular email and still have not signed onto facebook!

Preston Manning, Lou Dobbs, etc.

According to his Wikipedia page, "Preston Manning is a right-wing populist politician." Manning is part of the Canadian political elite - his father was premier of Alberta for about 100 years and young Preston founded the Reform Party back in the 1980s. Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper was one of Manning's first key policy advisors. In the late-1990s the Conservative party merged with the Reform party and formed the American-style populist/Conservative/Christian values Reforma-Tory party.
I have a well-defined hatred for these people. In my mind, fiscal conservatism is something that can be debated. My belief that all citizens in a wealthy country are entitled to a minimum standard of living (including health-care and housing) is not held by everyone, and I can accept that. What I cannot deal with is Social Conservatism. I find the acceptance and election of politicians such as Stockwell Day embarassing. I believe in evolution. I am pro-choice. I support the rights of gay people, including the right to marry one another. I am not racist. I believe in the separation between church and state. I consider myself a feminist. I strongly support universal healthcare (a cause that Stephen Harper fought against for years in his role as president of the National Citizens Coalition)
When I first heard that Preston Manning would be hosting a show on CBC radio, I rolled my eyes. The show is called This I Believe and is based on a 1950s radio program by the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow (who I became familiar with via the movie Good Night and Good Luck). Every day a "prominent Canadian" reads an essay that they have written. I was expecting irritating anti-gay and pro-capitalist rants, and I was completely wrong. The essays have been surprisingly progressive and interesting. It has made me interested in Preston Manning - someone I dismissed for years. Don't worry, I will never vote for the Conservative Party, regardless of how many times they change their name.
Meanwhile, on the American front, I have been thinking a lot about CNN host Lou Dobbs lately. Dobbs is the so-called champion of the American middle class. He even wrote a book called War on the Middle Class His issues aren't necessarily Republican, or conservative, or right-wing. That being said, Lou focusses on the issue of illegal immigration every night on his show. It is my belief that the unwillingness of the American government to deal with illegal immigration is based on the corporate need for undocumented, under-paid labour in certain industries (fish/meat processing for example). In that respect, Dobbs is correct in associating the decline of the middle class with illegal immigration - illegal/underpaid labour = lower wages and standards for legal/documented workers. On the other hand, his rants reek of racism. Recently, he has been promoting the idea that a huge number of cases of leprosy have been brought into the United States by illegal immigrants. And when I tuned in the other night he was complaining about the fact that a federal judge had struck down Hazleton Pennsylvaina's anti-illegal immigrant law - a ridiculously xenophobic ordinance that the city's mayor described as having this effect: "I see illegal immigrants picking up and leaving -- some Mexican restaurants say business is off 75 percent - the message is out there." Really, I find it hard to believe that illegal immigration is such a huge problem in Hazleton Pennsylvania....were it not for this law, I would have never heard of Hazleton Pennsylvania. I am actually shocked by the fact that Dobbs is given a forum to air these views every night at 6pm on CNN, but maybe I shouldn't be. His other remarkable feature is that he shouts down his guests, Bill O'Reilly style, every time they disagree with him.