Shunpiking Online Vo.4 No.4 Anti-poverty demonstration against community services minister

Shunpiking Online has received the following press release and photographs from the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty which we are printing for the information of our readers.

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Anti-poverty demonstration attacked

HALIFAX (28 April 2007) - The Halifax Coalition Against Poverty (HCAP) disrupted the annual general meeting of Provincial community services minister Judy Streatch on Saturday evening. A delegation of 44 poor people and HCAP organizers attempted to enter the site of the Chester-St. Margaret's Riding Association's Annual General Meeting in order to make clear to Streatch and her supporters the full impact of her department's policies on the poor. The non-violent act of civil disobedience was met with direct assaults by Streatch's supporters.

"Today we chose to interrupt business-as-usual for Minister Streatch," said HCAP member Susan LeFort.

"We felt that asking for dignity was not enough. We felt that it was necessary for Streatch to come face-to-face with poor people in Nova Scotia, the people who live with the day-to-day reality of the deplorably low rates of social assistance in Nova Scotia."

The HCAP delegation was shut out of the meeting, but continued to press their demands through chants and speeches outside of the front doors. Organizers and supporters demanded that the Department of Community Services double social assistance rates for all recipients in Nova Scotia. After moving around the outside of the building, a scuffle ensued with Tory supporters, including South Shore MP Gerald Keddy, who exited the building and began physically assaulting HCAP organizers. Police on the scene made several threats of arrest of HCAP members, but made no attempt to question the violent and abusive Tory supporters.

Currently, welfare rates in Nova Scotia are between 30 per cent below the poverty line. This, coupled with a disastrous lack of affordable housing across the province, indicates that the growing levels of poverty and homelessness in this province are simply being ignored by the Tory government of Rodney Macdonald and Judy Streatch.

HCAP's four main demands of the Provincial government are to make the Department of Community Services double income assistance rates and peg these income assistance rates to inflation, end the claw-back of wages earned by income assistance recipients, and to make students with student loans eligible for income assistance.

HCAP is a direct-action anti-poverty organization that fights on a daily basis alongside poor people in their struggles against the Department of Community Services.

For More Information

Susan Lefort, 422-5273, susan.lefort@gmail.com

Roland Kafka, 446-5248, (cell) 237-3359, (cell) 237-3358, roland.kafka55@hotmail.com