Every fall for the past six years, Raise the Rates has challenged participants, including politicians, celebrities and chefs, to live on provincial welfare rates for one week. In 2017, after subtracting rent and other basics like bus fare, that meant $19.
But with recent rent increases, participants this year would have only $5.75 to spend on food for the week.
“This year we can’t possibly ask someone to voluntarily live on $5.75 a week for food,” organizer Kell Gerlings said during a news conference announcing the 2018 challenge.
I feel like the poor people could have told you this one. I know groups like this often mean well, but I feel like there’s a lack of listening to poor people implicit in these events.
“We can’t ask anyone to do this voluntarily but we can sure force them to by necessity.”
I suspect that might be the point, though.
It’s a non-profit advocating for change that’s been doing this for six years so they’ve had pretty much all the kinds of coverage they’re going to get on this event – the same articles every year about how hard it is, the same coverage they’ve always had. Cancelling it because it’s literally impossible to feed yourself for what we expect poor people to feed themselves on is a great way to get new coverage and point up the urgency of the situation.
The article even points out that part of Raise the Rates’ platform is rent control:
Raise the Rates is calling for rent controls to stop landlords from raising rents between tenancies, as well as increases to income assistance.
I mean…I’ve seen more coverage of this issue because of the cancellation than I’ve seen the last few years events like this have been in operation. Once Gwyneth Paltrow spent like half her “eat like a poor person” budget on limes, I feel like that exercise was pretty well over.
self care is watching those all gameplay & cutscenes videogame compilations on youtube in order to simulate the experience of playing games you dont have the money for
me, sitting down to watch 6-8 full hours of fun content while someone infinitely better than me at videogames handles all the hard parts:
white people aren’t allowed to say poc anymore bc they don’t know the difference between an adjective and a noun. now they have to spell it out, and it’s spelled “PEOPLE OF COLOR,” since a lot of you also don’t know what these abbreviations even stand for
white people can reblog this, especially if you have a lot of white followers
bc a lot of ppl in the notes have seemed to miss the point:
poc stands for people of color and person of color. “pocs” is wrong.
it’s not “poc characters,” it’s characters of color.
it’s not “poc men” or “poc women,” but men of color (moc) and women of color (woc).
thanks for explaining it; i got tired of doing it lol
The experiences of conventionally attractive people and conventionally unattractive people can be so jarringly different and it really deserves some conversation. But I hate how the only mention of this comes from incels or anti-feminists or other right aligned losers with not an ounce of nuance in their bones lmaooo
Like, your physical attractiveness can shape not just your interpersonal experiences but also real tangible things such as but no limited to whether or not you get a job or being believed as a victim or what kind of roles you can get as an actor or perhaps the length of a sentence or how much help is offered to you in a time of need etc. etc.
i think part of the reason this doesnt get talked about is that people are often more concerned with telling people “oh youre not ugly! everyone is beautiful!” instead of “your worth shouldnt be determined by how conventionally attractive you are” which like. is well intentioned but misses the point entirely. obviously not everyone is conventionally attractive–thats as obvious as the fact that some people look different from other people. the issue is that when someone isnt conventionally attractive, theyre considered lesser for it, which shouldnt be the case!
I really do feel that the cult of personality around stan lee is reflective of a larger contemporary misunderstanding about how art production works but like frog emoji tea emoji
is the iliad good bc of the first poet who had the idea of a guy who’s immortal everywhere but his ankle? do we have to keep building monuments to individual men instead of recognizing how many different artists’ work goes into creating a single comic book or movie, never mind an entire pop culture mythos? hark! the days of the people’s cinematic universe are fast upon us
bongdanceking 