Kingston forum takes on "yoyo society".
from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union
Nearly 300 people gathered in Kingston June 10 for a discussion on rising inequality, its effects, and next steps for tackling it head-on.
The second of "The Rich and the Rest of Us" forums organized by leaders of several Ontario provincial unions, the Kingston meeting focused on countering the right-wing attacks on unions and the middle class.
"We have to talk about revenue," said OPSEU executive vice-president Chris Cormier, referring to the austerity message from governments and corporations that good jobs and public services are unaffordable, while banks and corporations are given billions in tax breaks.
Kingston community development worker Marijana Madovic said Ontario and Canada should stop the cycle of tax breaks to corporations in good times and cuts to public services in bad times. Madovic is involved in the campaign to raise the minimum wage in Ontario to $14.
"To refer to people as taxpayers and not citizens is socially corrosive, obnoxious and destructive," said writer, activist and lecturer Jamie Swift.
Invoking the bank slogan, "you're richer than you think", Swift said there is no need for the increasing trend toward a "yoyo society — you're on you're own."
Ontario is more than twice as wealthy as it was in the 1980s, he said, yet there's been "a revolution of falling expectations, attacks on unions, attacks on pensions, and decline of good jobs."
While wealth doubled, income inequality rose every year, he said, to the point that the middle class is struggling to hold ground, and those dealing with poverty are falling farther behind.
NUPGE President James Clancy told the group "the right engages in fear and misdirection. They want us to fight over whether your pension is too great. They want us to squabble over whether the one per cent you got is too much. There's lots of money, but it's in the wrong hands."
OPSEU President Smokey Thomas said it was "a proud moment" in his hometown of Kingston to hear so many voices of solidarity "in the battle to claim, with no apology, the share of wealth that rightly belongs to the people in the form of good jobs and public services."
The Kingston forum's conclusions were to get engaged in public debate and elections, hold elected leaders accountable, and to "take back the language of a democratic society made up of people who need to look out for each other".
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