Hello Greta.

My sympathies with your exasperation. You make three great points, which our
storytellers would support. 

First, in this less than ideal world, we do see a guaranteed annual income
for all (GAIA) as one step toward eliminating poverty. I say 'this less than
ideal world', since a GAIA isn't the first recommendation our storytellers
make. We dare to envision a perfect world in which 'income' is passé. (We
describe that world in our book.)

Second, when those "'well intentioned' folks warn you that a GAIA would kill
the incentive to work and that people would be unwilling to do the 'less
interesting work', I assume they are not referring to unpaid work - much of
which is less interesting, yet it still gets done. In our storytellers'
perfect world, the matter of interesting vs. less interesting work would be
a non-issue.

Third, that the majority of academics - not our Dennis! - do a lot of
INTELLECTUAL ranting and raving, without backing it up with political
fervour is a very sore point with us, particularly when we consider the huge
amount of public and private funding going to research and the insultingly
little amount to action for change. I've just finished an editorial on this
topic for the WISE Spring newsletter, to be published to our website on Tuesday.

Our storytellers urge other persons in poverty to get political, recognizing
that most academics, like politicians, have a vested interest in maintaining
the status quo. By 'getting political', we don't mean appealing to our local
MP or MLA. We've tried that; it doesn't work. We mean running for office
ourselves. 

But there's a problem in that too. We don’t see our political system as
having the flexibility needed to enable the necessary changes. Ontarians
have witnessed an example of what happens when someone from ‘our’ side gets
into politics. I’m referring to Ontario’s current Education Minister Gerard
Kennedy, former Director of the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto.

So what to do? I’d say that we 'grass roots' must become (more) active. I
also think that progressive Canadians need to be less well-behaved, less
polite, and start taking lessons from the social movements that are
happening all over Latin America.

Ocean

-----------------------------------
Chrystal Ocean, Coordinator
Wellbeing through Inclusion Socially & Economically
http://www.wise-bc.org/

BOOK INFO - Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health: Stories from the Front
http://www.wise-bc.org/CVProject/book.html

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