I wrote the following April 20 2005, when I first heard about this campaign. Comments from SDOH subscribers about the matters I raise would be appreciated: ----------------------------------- I applaud your compaign to erradicate poverty worldwide. Its celebrity endorsement may mean that governments start listening, which would be great. It's too bad, isn't it, that celebrity is what it takes, that the voices of 'ordinary' people, especially those marginalized by poverty, are not given equal attention. I've a couple of concerns with respect to the wording used on your website and in the recent ACT NOW e-newsletter you sent out. I hope you will take my comments as intended. I want to help and support what you are doing. 1. As someone who researches and writes on poverty, I'm disturbed by the tendency in Canada to focus on CHILD poverty, as opposed to poverty period. By talking about 'child poverty', a term which the federal government began using decades ago, public and media attention is effectively turned aside from the far larger societal problem. Poverty in our country is widely systemic and affects all generations. We are unlikely to uncover the broader societal patterns that permit (increasing) poverty in Canada if we turn our focus only to one segment of the population. I urge your organization to talk of ending poverty in Canada, not to use the words 'child poverty', which could suggest you're buying into the language set by government. 2. On the What We Want page on your website, there are these two paragraphs: "In January, Prime Minister Paul Martin said 'the number of people who live on a dollar a day in this world is just unacceptable. I'm not going to leave that to my children and my grandchildren nor to yours'. "In 2004, Canada produced a surplus of $9.1 billion - its seventh consecutive. Money is available for these urgent issues." It's important to make clear that the $9.1 billion surplus results from policies which have caused increased poverty in Canada, both in depth and the numbers of people affected. Also, that the $1-dollar-a-day phrase is an obfuscation and another diversion. It attempts to put in absolute terms a phenomenon that defies such reduction. It suggests, for example, that people in industrialized countries can't possibly be living in poverty, whereas we know that increasing numbers are. That is, we know that someone whose income is $16/day is in desperate circumstances due to the cost of land for housing and to grow food, clothing, and so on. Chrystal Ocean, Coordinator. Wellbeing through Inclusion Socially & Economically http://www.wise-bc.org/ 250-748-8093 ORDER NOW! Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health: Stories from the Front http://www.wise-bc.org/CVProject/book.html ------------------- Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask] SIGNOFF SDOH DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU. To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header. SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask] Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant. For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask] To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask] SET SDOH DIGEST To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html