What is Trauma? 7

It is often very easy to talk about other societies, cultures and periods of history without taking into account our own contemporary life here in lovely liberal and progressive Canada in the twenty-first century.  Yes, indeed, the medieval Spanish were something horrible, violent and brutal, as were their Aztec contemporaries.  And as I have already illustrated so clearly (I hope!) in other blogposts, those horrific and traumatizing realities of barbarism and tyranny have been much more the rule than the exception for our troubled history of humanity.

What we still haven't worked out in 2017 is how to deal with the subtler and equally deadly ways in which our governments tend to traumatize us.  This most recently has occurred during these last twenty years or so of our crisis of homelessness.  In my city where I still live housing has become a luxury.  Try to imagine for how many decades it has been since the UN declared housing as a fundamental human right.  Now imagine that most developed nations, except for Canada and the US
have adopted housing into their constitutional charters as an essential human right.  Now read this little gem, article 25 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

During the nineties the newly elected Federal Liberal government of Canada scrapped the Canada Assistance Plan and dismantled its federal housing program, dumping all the responsibility onto the provinces, which have done next to nothing.

When Canada signed on to NAFTA and other global free trade agreements, opening the floodgates of unrestrained capitalism, that was the beginning of the shredding of our social safety net.  That was when our governments threw away their moral and ethical compass.  That was when the wellbeing of the citizens began to take not only a backseat to the generation of capital, it was when we were basically murdered and stuffed into the trunk. 

Since the nineties, throughout the country, all levels of government-federal, provincial and municipal- have actively participated in or idly stood by while our social services supports have taken beating after beating.  Voters have often been inflamed against people on welfare, creating a culture of poor bashing and outright hatred of poor people.  This began here in BC, my own province during the nineties under the NDP, our social democratic party, when then premier Mike Harcourt declared war on the poor, calling them cheats and bums.  There has been no turning back.

In 2001 the newly minted centre-right BC Liberal Party was elected by a landslide and then the assaults on the most vulnerable were really unleashed.  No one came to our defense.  With the drastic cuts in welfare programs and the expectation that everyone would be work ready following a couple of Micky Mouse job club programs, our homeless population soared by almost four hundred percent.  Soon, in many parts of downtown, our sidewalks were choked with helpless, dazed and traumatized people sleeping outside in all kinds of weather.

In the years that have followed all kinds of band aids have been applied to this spreading cancer and even with some token housing developments in place our homeless population keeps growing, the gift that goes on giving.  There appears no end in sight to this spectacle of inhumanity.

What really chokes me is that none of our elected officials, not even City Councillor Kerry Jang, a professional psychologist, have mentioned one single word about trauma.  The homeless are referred to as a problem, a crisis, something that needs to be solved.  Nowhere do I see, hear or read that they are regarded as human beings.  Persons.  Sons and daughters with mothers and fathers.  Many have children themselves.  And no one says anything about trauma, the intense emotional, mental, and psychological suffering and anguish that these people, these sons and daughters, are living with every day.  Yes, they are referred to often as people with addictions, as people with mental health disorders, as well as what their care and upkeep is costing the economy every year, but no one seems interested in naming the elephant in the room: these people are suffering and hurting.  Big time.

Had our illustrious mayor been willing to leave on the back burner his various vanity projects: bike lanes, the Arbutus Greenway and that hideous mess of sterility they have built in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, and taken all that money and invested it in housing first, then  I think we would now be seeing fewer people on the street.  Likely way fewer.  But, hey, we live in Vancouver.  This is the land of ableism.  This is the land of individualistic narcissism.  Yes, bike paths are a good thing.  So are parks and public spaces (especially when they look a lot nicer than the ones currently being developed).  But human beings and human suffering are way more important.  Where this, and other governments chronically default on their responsibility, is that they have absolutely no sense of moral imperative.  They are ethically bankrupt.  Homeless people with mental health and addictions matter no more and no less (or perhaps a little bit less) than bike lanes and badly designed public spaces.

What is wrong with us?  When are we going to have real moral and ethical leadership and mentoring coming from our elected officials?

Our elected governments, with our passive (sometimes not so passive) consent have spent years creating the conditions for collective trauma, right here in one of the wealthiest cities of one of the wealthiest provinces of one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  And you know what, Gentle Reader?  By extension, we also are being traumatized as the dehumanization of our most vulnerable members of society also dehumanizes the rest of us.