I read about the politicians’ hasty reconsideration of their bellying up to gorge at the public trough. They just were not sneaky enough in this case to pull the wool over the publics eyes. There were no labels or somebody else they could point at to distract the public attention from the real issues, nobody to blame or absolve them of responsibility. So they had to stand naked before the public with their actions and the consequences of those actions in plain view. In pondering the question of how to force the effects of the government’s actions on the poor, homeless and those needing help I realized the bizarre fact that one of the side effects of charity is to aid in whitewashing these actions and effects.

So why do I say that a side effect of charity is aiding in a government whitewash?

Whitewash: n. Concealment or palliation of flaws or failures; tr.v. To conceal
or gloss over (wrongdoing, for example).

Palliate: tr.v. 1. To make (an
offense or crime) seem less serious; extenuate. 2. To make less severe or
intense; mitigate:

In taking on the feeding of the poor, those on social assistance and the homeless charities have allowed the government to conceal the flaws in and the failure of its social policies AND its fiscal policies. It is those fiscal policies that have given rise to a large class of working poor who struggle to keep a roof over their heads and rely on the food bank and other charities for food, clothing and luxuries such as shampoo. These same fiscal policies result in those struggling to get off welfare and onto their own two feet facing an uphill struggle in finding employment in their search for independence. This is not the place to list all the failures of its social policies, since such a listing would distract from the topic under discussion – although the government itself employs many forms of distraction in concealing its actions and the consequences for those in need of a helping hand.

I had to look up the word palliate when I decided to use the definition for the term whitewash. It seems very, very appropriate here. ‘To make less severe or intense; mitigate’. Imagine if you will (OK I stole that from Rod Serling, but I often feel I have entered the Twilight Zone) a world in which no charities undertook to feed the hungry. People would start dying from starvation. The pictures of children suffering from hunger and starvation would no long be from Africa but from the streets of BC. It would certainly strip away the concealment of just what the true effect of the governments policies are, pushing them before the public eye in the same way that the pay raises were.

I am glad there are people out there with generous hearts since I am currently one of those who (I had to go back to put in the word currently, if you let the system beat you down to the point where you become ‘one of’ this mindset can turn you into a permanent inhabitant of the system) depends upon their humanity for survival. I have now truly come to understand why those who work and strive so hard to help feed, shelter and clothe the needy are driven to do this. Still I am forced to acknowledge that their acts of basic human decency and kindness help sanitize the policies and actions of the government.

Sanitize: tr.v. To make more acceptable by removing unpleasant or offensive
features from

I do mean sanitize. Or I certainly hope I do. I fervently hope that hungry, starving people would be viewed as an offensive feature of current policies. I shudder to think what kind of society we have if we find it acceptable to have those in need of help, suffering and dying for lack of help. I mentioned this theory about the ‘whitewash effect of charity’ to a friend at lunch and he agreed with the logic. He just was not as sure that society would require action even if people started dying of starvation – “You hope” he said repeatedly. Frighteningly, I could understand his skepticism and had no way to refute it, which probably speaks volumes about the type of society we have allowed to grow. Where people drive by or step over those in need of assistance and when it hits the news (being a BIG story) we all shake our heads and say how terrible those bystanders were – but I wonder just how many of those head-shakers would have been driving by or stepping over the needy if they had been there themselves? Maybe, instead of pointing fingers at television, movies, magazines etc and bemoaning them as the cause for the direction society is headed, we should step up to the mirror and point at ourselves.

A society is a reflection of all its’ citizens behaviour. If you think society is corroding away, reflect upon your own actions – or inactions.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
James Baldwin

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
Noam Chomsky

When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves.
Anthony D’Angelo

I have acknowledged that it was mental illness that led me here. I have no words that would express just how thankful I am that I had started on the road to mental health and had built up a support system that helps me through the rough patches. If I had to depend on the so called ‘assistance’ system for help I shudder to consider how badly I would be doing or how ill I would have been driven to be. While the pettiness and stupidity of having to RE-register and RE-file may be driving my crazy; it currently remains just the craziness of any (semi)sane person coping with insane demands.

Far too many others are not so lucky. When you close mental institutions, facilities and programs the people do not cease to exist. Transferring them onto welfare may sound as if you are not abandoning them, it may permit the government to claim they were being cared for, but that is not reality. I have found what could only be termed ‘disgraceful numbers’ of the mentally ill trapped at the mercy of the system without any of the help they really need or driven onto the streets as homeless.

Some of those addicts that so many look down upon, were created by the Liberal policies. They are those in need of Mental Health aid abandoned by society. To escape the demons in their heads they turn to self-medication, for they have been denied any other help. The Liberals can claim what they want, their actions have denied these people adequate aid and in leaving them alone and without help the Liberals must accept responsibility for their homelessness, self-medication and addictions.

Some of the abandoned end up in the ‘care’ of the justice system, lacking the mental health help they so badly need, their illness plays itself out in their acting out and leads to incarceration. I suspect it would be far cheaper to provide mental health care as opposed to jailing them. I know it would definitely be more productive in providing help to these lost souls and far more ‘just’.

Some drop into the ranks of the homeless and onto the streets. They struggle to survive, day to day, but without the mental health resources they need they are condemned to continue this day to day struggle for survival without any chance of recovery and getting out of the ranks of the homeless and back into life.

Some live a twilight life. They exist in the system; shelter of some type, food enough and minimum basic needs met. They exist; they live, but are denied life.

We are our brothers’ keeper.

You may have noticed my use of the term welfare. Partly this is because I always found the trend to rename things just to make them sound better annoying, very annoying. A Sanitary Engineer is still a garbage man (woman). And ‘social assistance’ is still welfare. I concede the point that welfare as a label has its own baggage. Still any baggage would, over time, be transferred to the label ‘social assistance’. My real objection is that this term is truly misleading. Using ‘assistance’ implies that the system seeks to and does provide assistance (v. & n. 1. Help 2. NAmer: the act of helping). Based on my experiences and observations, applying the word assistance to the way the system currently functions is akin to saying that a guillotine is of assistance in curing a headache. Using the term assistance is of useful value to the ideologues of the current government since the word assistance carries with it the impression of helping. Applying the term assistance to the program suggests that the program is about helping people. Laughable. I question that even a group of ideologues , such as comprise the current government, could set out to design a system to assist people and end up with a system that hinders and raises obstacles as well as the current system. Or maybe I am hasty in ruling out incompetence.

The Liberal party has consistently excelled at the use of misleading labeling. When they first took office they enacted ‘tax reform’ and ‘lower taxes’, this being the labels they applied to their fiscal programs. Of course as part of lowering the tax rates fees and service charges rose or came into being. As a result of these ‘tax reforms’ and ‘lower taxes’ the working poor and middle class were out of pocket additional $$$, which flowed into the pockets of the wealthy. But labeling the changes what they truly were ‘Assistance to the Rich and Powerful’ (the rich got assistance by transferring their burden onto the poorest taxpayers) would have made it impossible to sell to the public. And politics and ideology is about selling and has nothing to do with truth.

So the public has to decide what it wants the system to Be or Do. If the purpose is merely to salve the publics conscience by convincing themselves they are rendering assistance to those in need, it can be left alone. The current government has demonstrated its ability to say things that sound good and apply misleading labels to soothe the public into inaction. It could be renamed “Guilty Feeling Relief System”, shortened to Relief System so as to sound like it is to provide relief to those in need – almost as good as the current use of assistance to suggest the system provides help.

In the event that the public decides that the system should in fact be of help and not full of hindrances, changes are needed. No just to the system but to other programs that can an impact in providing help. Mental health, education, training, transportation, treatment centers – and numerous other programs that impact on helping those in need. The system itself needs to be overhaul so as to provide less hindrance more assistance. Posting the definition of assist/assistance in plain view of those in charge and the workers would serve as a reminder of what the Purpose is. Perhaps the biggest change of all is in the attitudes of the public. Throw out the derogatory labels. These are people who need our help, we want to help them, NO we will help them.

We Can make the system render ‘Assistance’.