In another dispatch from an alternate universe where the Toronto Star isn’t the house newsletter for the Liberal party, Carol Goar tells poverty activists why the people they agitate for voted for Conservatives in the last election:
After being sidelined twice in the past eight months, anti-poverty campaigners need to figure out how right-wing cost-cutters connect with voters — especially low-income voters.
My soundings are limited, but a few themes keep popping up:
• People in low-income neighbourhoods are the biggest victims of the drug dealers and violent young offenders Harper is promising to lock up. They want relief from the violence they can’t escape. They want to rid their communities of the gangs that lure their children into gun-and-gang culture. Crime crackdowns make sense to them.
• What Canadians struggling to make ends meet want most is a job; not government benefits, not abstract poverty-reduction plans, certainly not charity. Harper tapped into that yearning, promising to stabilize the economy and create employment. The New Democrats, aiming to beat him at his own game, said they would cut small business taxes.
• It angers low-income voters to see secure middle-class bureaucrats getting pay hikes. Those trapped in entry-level service jobs seethe when public employees who earn far more than they ever will are rewarded simply for showing up. Those living on public assistance — employment insurance, welfare, old age security — dislike being treated with contempt by government officials. In both cases, cutting the public payroll has a lot of appeal.
Of course, her message not only won’t be heeded, it’s going to mark her as an apostate to be spurned and ridiculed by all right-thinking intellectuals — especially those in the poverty activist ranks. She may never lunch in this town again.
H/T to Elizabeth for the link.
