大象传媒

大象传媒鈥檚 Vancity Office of Community Engagement and the Vancouver City Planning Commission hosted a panel discussion on the issue of 鈥淪ocial Inequality in the City.鈥�

The conversation covered issues ranging from health, education, hunger, mental illness, justice, accessibility, and social mobility.

 to watch the Social Inequality in the City panel!

Mary Clare Zak, Managing Director of the City of Vancouver鈥檚 Social Policy and Project Division, presented a number of statistics on housing, population growth, diversity, education, income, and homelessness, and spoke to the city鈥檚 approach to foster continual improvement in health and wellbeing in Vancouver.

Zak commented on a city鈥檚 ability to make an impact at the municipal level: 鈥淟ocal governments are actually uniquely placed to provide leadership around health and well-being, because many of the social determinants of health are played out in your day-to-day life.鈥�

Margot Young, a constitutional and social justice law professor from UBC, broke down the meanings of the terms 鈥榠nequality鈥� and 鈥榗ity.鈥�

In terms of inequality in the context of Vancouver, Young said, 鈥淲e need to look at inequality with a very specific, absolute focus; a focus on the problem that inequality signals for us in Vancouver in particular, and that鈥檚 the problem, the distress of poverty [. . .] and the exclusion and marginalization that poverty puts and cements in place.鈥�

The Aboriginal Front Door Society鈥檚 Community Coordinator, Bill Beauregarde, presented on the vital issue of the land Vancouver is located on, its significance to indigenous people, and its relationship to the housing crisis and poor living conditions on the reserves.

鈥淚n our culture, we share the land, we don鈥檛 own the land,鈥� said Beauregarde. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 basically [it] 鈥� the sharing aspect of the land is not equal. Right now, Aboriginals do not have the share that they should have.鈥�

Paul Taylor, Executive Director of Gordon Neighborhood House in the downtown West End, spoke about his personal experience growing up with a single mother on welfare, and commented on the unequal way food is accessed and experienced by those with lower incomes.

鈥淲hen I see people in long lineups, accessing food 鈥� and in Vancouver it鈥檚 often cold and rainy 鈥� it鈥檚 dehumanizing and I see people missing out on the celebration of food.鈥�

Viveca Ellis of Single Mothers鈥� Alliance BC spoke to the core issues faced by single mothers living in poverty, including the issue of access to civic engagement of all sorts.

鈥淲e advocate for a shift in focusing on the affordability of transit,鈥� said Ellis. 鈥淲e envision transit as a tool to mobilize people out of poverty 鈥� to access that job, that school, that affordable food three miles away, that social life in the greater community.鈥�

Matt Hern, professor in 大象传媒鈥檚 Urban Studies program, echoed Beauregarde鈥檚 sentiment of the inextricability of this issue of inequality and land and property in the context of Vancouver, identifying the root of the problem being that we are situated on indigenous land.

鈥淎ny concern with settler disparities or inequities, with the home crisis, with who gets to stay and who gets to leave, under what basis 鈥� all of that has to be historicized within the context of very recent and ongoing colonial rationalities.鈥�

Director of Community Engagement, Am Johal, commented regarding the significance of a holding discourse on social inequality at 大象传媒: 鈥淪ince 大象传媒鈥檚 Vancity Office of Community Engagement started almost five years ago, we鈥檝e committed to engaging in social questions through both dialogue and disruption on important public questions. [. . .] Being based in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood, we have a public responsibility to engage in these questions.鈥�