In the interests of pointing out the obvious (to a group of people who clearly wouldn’t recognize it if it smacked them in the face), the dusty old game plan for dealing with poverty, addiction and homelessness, authored by Bruce Beck, John Smith, Bob Bos and Bob Rich has been failing on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis now ever since 2008 when Smith proudly announced it to the Globe & Mail after ordering Pastor Christoph Reiners to stop feeding the homeless.
We’re not sure how many failures it takes for a policy to become null and void at Abbotsford City Hall but we are beginning to think that failure has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you just keep doing things the same way.
If the members of the political class who have made such a mess of things in this City would learn to shut up except when reciting this mantra we might, someday, get somewhere.
Instead of beating people while they are down and moving them endlessly from one location to another, why is it so hard for our political class to aim just a small percentage of the the money they spend continually “dispersing and displacing” (to quote Police Chief Bob Rich) them on helping them fend for themselves.
It’s all they need or want. They don’t need our opprobrium, our lectures, our prayers or our billy clubs. They just need somewhere to live where they can take care of themselves.
If just one of the rich, white, old people who shovel our money around and waste it like stake air would deign to come down and talk to these people they would learn they are smarter, more qualified and more able of helping themselves than those in our community who are intent on beating them about the head and ears until they become white, rich and successful.
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Cover Art from relationship-economy.com