As some of you are aware, I’m an organizer with the Ottawa Panhandlers’ Union, a shop of the Industrial Workers of the World. We attracted some media attention last year when we filed a $1 million lawsuit against the City of Ottawa for putting up a fence under an underpass, specifically designed to prevent poor people from sheltering there.
It occured to me that there are some very bright, imaginative people here, so I’d like to put a problem before you and see what solutions you can develop. The short description is this: we would like to find some way of allowing our members to vend on the street. There are a number of impediments to this, and I’ll have to give a fair amount of background so folks understand.
Contrary to popular belief, quite a few of our members who are panhandlers (we also represent buskers, street artists, and so on) are not homeless. In fact, they panhandle because welfare rates are so low that they can’t afford to pay rent and eat. (To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, welfare in Ontario pays a maximum of $540; single rooms in run-down rooming houses start at $450/mo here and one-bedroom apartments at $700. It’s even worse in Toronto.) If they have any kind of addiction, whether it’s cigarettes, alcohol, or even food, there is simply no way they can survive except by panhandling. Most are dealing with mental illness of one sort or another (usually post-trauma and/or depression from sexual and physical abuse), so while they are unable to hold normal jobs, they are often highly skilled and very intelligent. Most of them have expressed a desire to vend on the street, which is something they can do on their own schedule, and as their particular afflictions allow. Some would like to do tarot readings, others are artists and artisans, and some would just like to sell ordinary knick-knacks like sunglasses and books.
Unfortunately, Ottawa is run by the BIAs. BIA stands for Business Improvement Area. They are associations of businesses which are accountable to no one, yet receive funding through a mandatory levy from all businesses in the city as part of their property taxes. The BIAs dictate policy at city council, and are completely, totally hostile to any kind of vending on the street by anyone except their own members. They say that street vending is unfair, since their own members have to pay for a storefront and the property taxes thereon, while street vendors can undercut their members without those expenses. To this end, the BIAs have convinced Ottawa City Council to ban all vending. Even the chip trucks and hot dog carts which were once prevalent are disappearing as a result of a moratorium on new licenses, again as a result of pressure from the BIAs.
Several years ago, the OPU started a newspaper distribution program where panhandlers could get copies of a grassroots newspaper called the Dominion at cost, so they could distribute it on the street in exchange for a donation. The police liked it because they stopped getting complaints about panhandlers; the people liked it because they saw panhandlers doing something useful rather than sitting with their hands out; the panhandlers liked it because it gave them a sense of pride in themselves, and several made enough money that they could get first and last month’s rent together and got off the street altogether. The only people who didn’t like it were the BIAs. To that end, they convinced the City of Ottawa to get their lawyers to redefine the word “vending” to mean: “Handing anything to anyone on the street without the intention of getting it back.” At the meeting, we incredulously asked whether this meant that a person handing someone else a pack of matches on the street was breaking the law. The lawyer scratched his head for a bit and replied, “Well… yes.” Our newspaper program was shut down.
At the same time, enforcement efforts against panhandling were redoubled. The province of Ontario passed the so-called “Safe Streets Act” which criminalized squeegeeing, and which gave police the power to ticket for “aggressive panhandling.” While what is considered “aggressive” is clearly spelled out, police simply wrote armloads of “aggressive panhandling” tickets to every panhandler they saw, so that they could enact “part III” of the Act. Part III allows police to arrest repeat offenders, even if they have not yet been convincted of anything.
In response, we started a ticket defence program, where panhandlers could drop off their tickets and be defended in court by a group of local activist volunteers. This successfully flooded the courts, forcing them to throw out most of the tickets even before they hit court. As a counter-response, the province introduced legislation which banned “agents” from court unless they were licensed lawyers or had the explicit permission of the Law Society of Upper Canada and (extremely costly) liability insurance.
Last year we got some media attention when someone using a computer either at city hall or the police station vandalized the article on our organization on Wikipedia. We started a copwatch program with local volunteers to put a curb on the worst excesses of the police, and in response full-colour posters went up all over the city showing me with a gun in my mouth and the phrase “Panhandlers: follow your leader.”
Things have gone on in this fashion for years now. They crank up the level of oppression, we respond, they counter-act, we counter-counter-act, and so on. The problem is that they have more resources, a shitload more money, and the support of the media. I’ve done dozens and dozens of interviews with media at all levels, local, national, and international; done live debates on television and radio; written letters, knocked on doors, and, on one notable occasion, went to jail for justice. In the end, panhandlers are just not very popular, and while it makes absolutely no sense to throw roadblocks in our way when we’re trying to find alternatives to panhandling, the public doesn’t give much of a damn.
So, here we are. Our lawsuit against the city is slowly winding its way through the gears of the courts; we sit down with the city on Sept. 8 for mediation, but we’re not holding out a lot of hope for the negotiations, given their track record.
Given these conditions, I’m interested to find out what suggestions and remedies you bright, imaginative folks can come up with. (And please, if your suggestion is “GET A JOB LOOZERZ!!! LOLLLL!!!”, I assure you we’ve already heard it more often than you can possibly imagine.)
