Mississauga Musings

Gotta say it's bad when the opening sentence of a Blog begins (once again) by the Blogger apologizing (once again) for the intermittent entries.

Last Blog, I wrote:

"I know that I've mentioned this in my Blog before --and in conversation.

I feel like I'm a character in a novel. Held hostage to a narrative. And I don't want to read it --let alone live inside it. I loathe that such a novel even exists. And yet there ya have it."

As readers know, MISSISSAUGAWATCH is just that --a Watch.

Any Watch demands rigorous observation, documentation --and something else, Research. Unless you research, your eyes can be fooled by what they are observing. Worse, a Watcher can miss key points.

Worst of all, he can miss The Key Point.

I'm embarrassed to admit today that this Watcher, The Mississauga Muse, had missed The Key Point. It took another Watcher, Mississauga's "Watcher", Don Barber to truly drive The Key Point home.

In the previous Blog entry, "Mississauga Corporate (City) Security --MISSISSAUGAWATCH pulls back The Curtain (just a teeny bit)" I wrote:

"After all, how accountable or transparent can a municipality be if it took 34 years, 3 months and 18 days before anyone could finally prove that "administrative policies, practices and procedures and controllership policies, practices and procedures" on "uniforms" with the power to tag, "jack" and arrest you, were not in place?! (And it had to be two citizens to bring that to light?)"

For I-can't-remember-how-long I've been obsessing on that "arrest you" part --especially how it related to At-Risk Youth.

But it took dinner on Saturday with Donald Barber for me to finally finally-finally GET IT.

Here's My Epiphany --and how it came to be.

Mr. Barber had been fencing with me --playing Devil's Advocate, trying to crystalize not just "My Ultimate Goal" but also The WHY. I kept repeating The WHY --telling him there were people who get ARRESTED --by municipal security guards. And who better to know that than him?

Don kept coaxing --telling me that I was "beating around the bush" --trying to get me to figure it out myself. WHY getting arrested mattered so much.

I said getting arrested affected Youth --especially Youth who've been labelled by institutions as "At-Risk".

And Don continued to ask patiently, "But WHY does an arrest matter?" (Now I'll try to reconstruct the conversation.)

"Come on, you kidding me, Don? YOU were arrested --you know way better than me."

"But WHY does an arrest matter?"

"Cripes! Because a frikkin' Arrest stays on your record your entire life! You know that."

"You're still not getting it, Ursula. You're hitting everything but the actual target. It's more than that. Arrests affect Youth --Everyone, because NOWADAYS to get any kind of job, an employer runs a criminal record check. But it isn't just that..." and then Donald Barber served up that elusive Key Point.

"Even if you're just arrested and they don't take their charges to court --say, you just get arrested, you still have an ARREST RECORD."

"Yeah. I said that already."

"You still don't GET IT. When you have a record of an Arrest, how do you think it feels to be pulled over by the police --say just for a spot check? Or because you carelessly let your car drift too far over the limit? Even just see a police car. Got it? Now try being a Youth."

Silence.

I (THE STUNNARD) FINALLY **GOT** IT!

This morning I went back to re-examine the Mississauga Corporate Security list of bans, trespasses and arrests from January 2006 to March 20, 2007. (Last week, I dropped down another Freedom of Information --this time requesting an updated list from March 20, 2007 to current.)

I know this list is in no way complete --there's common agreement that such "lists" are under-reported. And I look at the "ARREST"s and the "ASSAULT"s and the "TRESPASS"es ("Trespass" means someone had been "BANned" and returned).

But because of Saturday dinner with Donald Barber, I look at the category "OTHER" in a new dark.

"OTHER"... I wonder what happens to a citizen who gets "OTHER"ed in Mississauga.

This, readers, is what I'm working on instead of daily Blog entries. It demands research that delves into the most inconceivably-mind-numbing details --much of it provincial legislation.

And I'm also reading this book as parallel research, called, "The Politics of Public Space". It has relevance to Bans, Trespass, Arrest, and "OTHER".

Check this out. Chapter "Clean and Safe?" (reference to a thrust for "Safe Cities" --where have we heard that before?)

Page 149. (Now try and stick through all this because San Diego's 1980's redevelopment strivings mirror those of Mississauga/Peel. (Maybe Brampton, Caledon, I don't know). Here goes.

"Even public property is defined by the right to exclude --and by the monopoly right to use. The difference is that this right is held by the state, and the monopoly is often (though not always) defined as "the people." But to say that much is only to invite the questions: Just who are "the people" --and who are they not (Marston, 1990)?

For Blomley (2000a: 88), the property right to exlude necessarily implies a violent act:

"Explusion--- entails a right. The power of the state can be invoked to assist in that explusion. Police can be called to physically remove a trespasser; injunctions prepared, criminal sanctions sought. As such, expulsion is a violent act. Violence can be explicitly deployed or (more usually) implied. But such violence has state sanction and is thus legitimate."

And then it goes on about social justice (lack of it, actually) and its connection to redevelopment. The case study was "Horton Plaza and Horton Plaza Park" in San Diego and how San Diego's redevelopment affected the Poor and the Homeless.

Page 157.

"Downtown San Diego's redevelopment was on 'a collision course' with street people. (Los Angeles Times, 1990). For his part, Wolfsheimer was careful to separate what he called the 'crazies' from 'the homeless or transients who live downtown,' a distinction that became increasingly important in the discourse about street people and redevelopment downtown at the end of the 1980's. For on that distinction hinged a set of policies and practices geared towards, on the one hand, regulating the 'crazies' and on the other hand, managing the others. And in the interaction of both, new relations of property began to develop."

I'm not at all sure, mind you, but when I look at the San Diego dates (1980's) I'm left to wonder if the Ontario Trespass to Property Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. T.21 passed in 1990 isn't some kind of "parallel evolution" and reaction to... well, I'm just not sure.

But there's this Sub-Section, "Managing Homelessness"

"Redevelopment was having the effect of both increasing homelessness and making it more visible (Miller, 1985; Frammolino, 1985; Schwartz, 1985; Schraeger, 1994). This visibility, in turn, led to increased spending of redevelopment funds on low-income housing and social services. Indeed the visibility of homeless people seemed to drive much social service development (and business community support for it). According to a knowledgeable social service provider, Rachel's Center, a drop-in centre for women in East village, 'grew out of the redevelopment of Horton Plaza because it displaced so many people. And women homeless who were formerly invisible were now very visible, and there was no place for women to go to the bathroom, to just have a safe place just to sit and spend the day' (social service provider, interview, 1/24/01). When one of the authors noted to this social service provider that what 'is really striking to me walking around [the city] is there's no place to sit,' the provider responded: "It's deliberate. It's an absolutely deliberate thing. It's a city of contrasts in a sense of how can the citizens be so generous to support projects like St. Vincents, Catholic Charities, Rachel's... Salvation Army, and the works that we do, and yet have such a mean spirit legislatively towards the poor." (interview 1/24/01)

This "absolutely deliberate" thing isn't just "San Diego". I've sat in on enough Council meetings and read sufficient numbers of Corporate policies and strategic plans.

Our affluence here in Mississauga, (Brampton, Caledon, Peel --Ontario... Canada) comes at the expense of the working poor. Surely, it's got to be an "absolutely deliberate" moral construct.

As our city councils drive "redevelopment" and "gentrification", as they/we worship at The Alter of Enhancing Property Values, we increase both rents and taxes such that our neighbours and fellow-citizens, The Peel Poor, can no longer afford roofs over their heads.

They're forced into shelters or the streets --and so are the kids. (I wonder how many drift to Toronto... and thus stroked OFF Peel's needy lists.)

My husband and I have slept on beaches as part of our Momma Turtle Watches. We've tried to sleep at the same park as the Beach People. You don't really ever "sleep" as such what with all the night activity in a busy park.

Believe it, the strings of some of these Beach People's yo-yo's are severely frayed. I'm convinced that few started out that way.

After momma turtle finally drops her clutch, we get to head back to our condo, shower, eat, collapse in our comfy bed and sleep The Sleep of the Dead. On the "paradise island" of Maui --and even here in Red-Maple-Leaf-Canada, the Homeless enjoy no such amenities.

And no plague changes that.

It's the poor, the homeless, and especially the "crazies" --the very people who need Government the most, who are targeted for "removal" by Government policies/procedures in (a misnomer if there ever was one) "public spaces".

PRIVILEGED PEEL with "POCKETS OF POVERTY"

From the Mississauga News: Bank heist suspect broke, homeless

MissyNews reporter John Stewart writes:

"'She had absolutely no money on her,' Pollock told The Sun. 'Other than, basically, the clothes on her back, she had absolutely nothing.'"

The suspect had been working at two jobs until mid-January, police believe.

Christine Bartlett, 38, of no fixed address, faces 11 counts of robbery. Police say she is a divorced woman with no family in the immediate area."

I can tell you this. Christine Bartlett did not attend the first day of Kindergarten with the goal of becoming The "Covered Girl" Bandit. Her mother surely set loftier heights for the little girl as well.

In one way Bartlett's lucky she was caught by "Peelers". Peel Regional Police understand that no kid chirps up with, "I want to be homeless with no one giving a **** about me and holding up banks when I grow up."

Back in 1990, I asked, "Who Mourns the Marsh?"

April 7, 2008. WHO MOURNS ALL THE FRIKKIN' WASTED LIVES in all this MUNICIPAL PRETENDING?!

(Click here to go directly to the clip on YouTube or Google Video)

"Christine Bartlett, 38, of no fixed address, faces 11 counts of robbery. Police say she is a divorced woman with no family in the immediate area."

Christine Bartlett. This is one court case The Mississauga Muse will be covering.

Signed,
The (*sigh* to the gym. I have to work off some of this RAGE) Mississauga Muse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUIS CUSODIET IPSOS CUSTODES? "Who Watches the Watchers? --The Mississauga Muse

"We must employ every possible tactic to dissuade those who try to silence us with fear" ---The Mississauga News Editorial (2007-03-24)

Want (or worse, need) to learn more? Link to MISSISSAUGAWATCH.CA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------