| Homeless Awareness Week began in Calgary with a small group of protestors almost getting arrested for writing messages about poverty and homelessness in chalk on the sidewalk in front of City Hall.
Three police cars and five police officers arrived at City Hall early on the morning of September 20 to deal with about eight protestors. Police warned the members of Food Not Bombs, a not-for-profit organization that feeds Calgary’s hungry, that if they didn’t stop writing their protest messages in chalk they’d face charges. About 10 minutes later, city staff members had removed the chalk from the sidewalk and there was nothing visible remaining.
"For people who weren’t actually interfering with anyone and were just putting chalk on the ground, it’s pretty heavy-handed. I wonder what would happen if we chalked pro-Flames stuff?" asked Food Not Bombs supporter Grant Neufeld.
Carrie Neilson, chair of Homeless Awareness Calgary, was also amazed at how many police cars and officers were tied up to stop the protestors armed with chalk.
Homeless Awareness Week has been staged for the last nine years to raise awareness about the underlying causes of homelessness and to motivate people to take action on the problem.
Neilson says this year she’s particularly concerned about the large number of families that are homeless. On Sunday, September 19, for example, there were 218 kids in the city who needed a shelter bed, she says.
"It compromises the future. We’re now seeing generations of homeless families," she says.
Neilson says there still aren’t enough services to address the underlying problems that lead to homelessness. She points out that Calgary doesn’t have enough treatment facilities to help people suffering from addictions and she says there aren’t enough support services in place for the mentally ill, especially after they’re released from psychiatric institutions. Meanwhile, the chronic shortage of affordable housing remains a huge problem.
Neilson says societal attitudes about homelessness also need to evolve.
"We’re dealing with a society that’s still trapped in the conservative notion (of) ‘Pull up your socks. What’s wrong with you?’ We lack compassion…we’ve come to normalize homelessness and poverty in our society."
Neilson says that, in a time of record oil and gas revenues pouring into government coffers, she’s disturbed that more isn’t being done to address homelessness.
"I find myself angry and disheartened that in such a wealthy province we even have to debate funding services for our most vulnerable citizens. It is appalling," she says.
Neilson is calling on Calgarians to make homelessness an issue in the upcoming municipal and provincial elections. "It’s not going to come up unless people push the issue," she says. |
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