It was a day for the Media Food Drive, a media initiative which, over the years, has succeeded in raising large quantities of funds and foodstuffs, and challenging citizens around poverty issues, while putting on a big show. . We saw the emergence of a particular genre: the hyper-moving report featuring a victim of poverty, dignified and grateful, although embarrassed to go to a food bank. This year, the results are not all collected, but obviously, after two years of pandemic media modesty, donations are less present than before. Why ?
Exit from the pandemic, but above all, explosive inflation which perhaps makes those who gave insecure? Difficult to make ends meet for many, who previously were not in a fragile situation? However, the media have not skimped on the portraits of hunger, on the different faces of poverty. We have all seen a Jessica explaining without rage, with resignation, why she used the food bank.
Beyond the faces, there were also the numbers. One in five Canadians is less than two weeks away from food insecurity due to lack of savings.
Among those who use food banks; 18% are single-parent households, and 24% working two-parents! Labor can no longer guarantee food security. Centraide has shown that 21% of the poorest families in Greater Montreal devote 80% of their income to housing, whereas it should not exceed 30% in an ideal world. In some neighborhoods, children are now working for the sole purpose of supplementing the family income, jeopardizing their studies and therefore their future. Students, seniors whose retirement income has been hit by inflation are using food banks for the first time.
It’s to scream.
We get used to these reports, we tell ourselves that these are individual journeys, accidents of life, that it will not happen to us. We look away. We count our pennies, look at our bills, and we give less, hoping that “fatality” does not strike us.
But perhaps we should talk about poverty differently? All these human, sensitive, exemplary reports individualize poverty. It’s a catch-all word, a fact, a state, which avoids talking about the course of impoverishment, of the social classes that have been robbed. As if it were the unlucky individual who was struck by poverty. When such high percentages of the population seek help, are hungry and not just at Christmas, it is no longer a touching individual story, but a social phenomenon that must be faced and analyzed with tools other than tears. People suspect it well, that they are not a case. These are social classes, a collective dynamic of downgrading which is explained by socio-economic factors: inadequate income, prohibitive housing, immigration, minimal educational progress, non-indexed pensions.
In our gentrified society, social classes have disappeared in favor of individual, gender, race and group identities. Economic categories are out.
Or else, become election unicorns à la Justin Trudeau, obsessed with his famous middle class. There are, however, 100 middle class categories, some of which are becoming dangerously poorer. The poor are bloodless while the real rich get richer than ever, far from the Guignolée. Social class dynamics are hardening these years without being talked about too much…
We relieve our conscience by considering individuals in difficulty one at a time, as if our donations were going to stem systemic fractures. If we considered poverty through the dynamics of social classes, we could see more structuring solutions: increase in the minimum wage, massive investments in social housing, sustained educational paths for young people. The big food brands that are reaping record profits should also take their responsibilities, as is done in Europe: limit the price of basic foodstuffs.
While we feel sorry for ourselves, we don’t look up, where the super-rich get even richer. We do not look at the center, where the social safety net is unraveling quietly, in health, in education. Public administrations are not questioned about their housing policies. A breach is wide open in the social. Unfortunately, it is not with Christmas baskets that we will permanently seal it. I’m sure Jess agrees with me.