Nuance 25

Don't you just love those privileged journalists and broadcasters at the CBC who just don't have a clue what it is really like to live with difficulties, challenges and marginalization? I mean, sure, they get it all in their research and interviews but to listen to those airheads on public radio gloating on about their loving families, their coddled childhood, that they could live in Chateau Mommy and Daddy till after they finished university, and then go on to establish their shining professional careers, marry their perfect spouses and pop out their perfect little minnie-me's, and it is all so revolting and so nauseating. I phoned the Early Edition at the crack of dawn to give them a blast for having that kind of conversation of their own personal privilege live on air, offering them as a reality check that I had to leave home at 18 because of my crappy family situation, was never able to finish university, nor earn a living wage, and now have to live in subsidized housing. I would have loved to have seen their faces upon hearing my little comment. And they are typical of the class of journalists in this country. Most of them have known nothing but privilege, white and otherwise, and so all the experience of the so-called lower orders gets filtered through their distorted privileged lens, and the rest of the privileged folk who live on this great stolen land of ours get their privileged interpretation of the life experience of people like me. This is always a bit infuriating, as it is unfair, because poor people simply do not have the resources that they do, and so we cannot really tell our own story, and we need to, because the rest of the country keeps getting a distorted version of our lives. This is especially problematic with our current homelessness crisis. This is a humanitarian catastrophe, and will only be realistically addressed once it is treated and tackled like the national emergency that it is, so that all the necessary resources can be funnelled and channelled into getting people off the pavement and into decent housing situations. The huge mistake that the news media makes about these people is in their lazy and arrogant way of lumping every single one of the homeless into a category of disenfranchised losers, little or no consideration given to them as individuals, each with gifts and strengths as well as challenges, who have simply fallen through the wider than ever cracks in our social support infrastructure. I was never street homeless, myself, but I did spend ten months or so couch surfing, some twenty years ago. There were, as there still are, some very broad and sweeping assumptions and generalizations about people like me, that I ended up for a while buying into. I no longer accept these definitions. This is what being poor has done for me: I have become extremely grateful for the little I have. Instead of becoming grasping and acquisitive, I appreciate what I have, and even if I am demographically poor, I feel incredibly rich. I have a roof over my head, and it is a decent, if modest place to live; I always have enough food to eat, and clothes to wear. I of course live modestly, and within my means, but because I have never had much, I don't expect much. I am very responsible with money and finances, maintain a strict but not onerous budget, have a savings account and am able to travel every year. All this on poverty wages, with help from BC Housing. Among all the low-income adults who live as I do, there are many like me. CBC and other media don't seem to know or care that we exist, perhaps because we are not newsmakers, but more because we do not gratify the public's craving for dirt. Our lives are too together for that. Neither do we make it easy for any of those bottom feeders to reinforce their favourite stereotypes about us (no, we are not lazy), nor to break out of their mental and intellectual laziness about perpetuating dumb and negative stereotypes. Do poor people have addictions? Some of us, yes, but I don't, and many other poor people are substance free, but perhaps for the common caffeine addiction. By the same token, we are not all mentally ill. How about all you privileged folk? With your daily martinis, and your neurotic obsession with wellness and perfection? Try and convince me that you aren't also sick. Go on. Convince me!