I've recently taken on some caregiving responsibilities for a friend. I find it difficult to understand the reaction of people around me to this information. There are a number of puzzling points.
Several people have said things like "Can't someone else do that? It's not your responsibility." And I think, well, it's someone's responsibility, and I happen to be here. It seems to be regarded as some kind of optional extra, instead of a community responsibility for people to pitch in a little and make sure that this person has, say, clean socks.
It's hard to explain to people how this fits into my life. I'd like to be able to explain better what taking on this responsibility requires from me. The strongly negative words that many people seem to use to report their own experiences of caregiving doesn't seem appropriate for me in this situation.
A while back I wrote about being both a caregiver and a receiver of care, and re-reading it now, I note that I said very little about communities, except in terms of community attitudes.
The Tory party's "Big Society" policy is focused on scaling back national government in favour of local power, and volunteerism. For many people, volunteering time in their community is just part of being a person. My caregiving is "voluntary" in the sense that no money is involved (it's less clear that it's an "optional extra", for the reasons above). But this person needs more than just the support I can provide as a friend -- they need trained medical support too. The need more support than I alone can provide.
I wonder what would happen to someone who needed similar support if they were very isolated (as disabled people can easily become, because of mobility difficulties, communication difficulties, mental health, or other issues), or lived in a remote place, or lived in the sort of urban place where people don't talk to each other much. What good would volunteerism be if people cannot access support?
How would a volunteerist approach to caregiving provide the support for caregiving that caregivers need? Without appropriate support, caregivers can't provide the support that is needed, and then everyone loses out.
The Tory move to localism isn't intended to resource communities better -- it's a move to decrease funding, and decrease our notion of society as a nationally-constituted community. I am reminded of Thatcher's infamous claim that society doesn't exist. And this is why it matters. Our communities, whether locally or nationally conceived, have a responsibility to support those who need support.
And now that Margaret Thatcher is herself dependent, we might ponder at the irony of her entitlement to medical care that is paid for by tax, collected by the society she thought doesn't exist. The truth is this: everyone gets old and disabled unless they die first. We don't always get to plan the way things happen, so the next best thing is to preserve communities, and community support.
--IP
Showing posts with label public service cuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public service cuts. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Just the beginning
Earlier this evening, Parliament voted to raise tuition fees to £6000-£9000 per year.
My generation has been hit with a set of really brutal cuts. The elimination of Child Trust Fund, cuts to Child Benefit, cuts to youth services and sports centers and public libraries and schools and now higher education.
I couldn't make the protests today, although I've attended many of the other protests in the last few weeks, so I was home listening to the Parliamentary debate. And what I heard was a room mostly full of non-disabled White men who themselves received world-class free educations, and they are now denying affordable accessible educations to the current generation of young people, and slashing support to women, disabled people, and poor people. I saw a group of people who have benefited hugely from the welfare state decide that children too young to vote but old enough to protest and be arrested, should not themselves receive the same support. And when one MP asked another MP whether he would be willing to pay £9,000 a year for each of his years at university, I saw him dismiss the question and mock it.
But I also heard a spirited defense of public services, or student protests and occupations, of protests against Vodafone, and criticisms of kettling from Jeremy Corbyn MP and others. We have a great deal of public support. Some of our elected representatives behaved shamefully today, and we will remember that. We will also remember that we have huge popular following, that we can win if we work together. As Adam Ramsayreminded me earlier this evening when I was struggling not to cry, Thatcher's poll tax was also approved by Parliamentary vote, and later dropped following civil unrest. We can do that again.
The campaign against cuts to public services is about more than just tuition fees and university. We've lost this round, but we'll be back. We'll keep marching, keep working, keep protesting. This is just the beginning.
--IP
My generation has been hit with a set of really brutal cuts. The elimination of Child Trust Fund, cuts to Child Benefit, cuts to youth services and sports centers and public libraries and schools and now higher education.
I couldn't make the protests today, although I've attended many of the other protests in the last few weeks, so I was home listening to the Parliamentary debate. And what I heard was a room mostly full of non-disabled White men who themselves received world-class free educations, and they are now denying affordable accessible educations to the current generation of young people, and slashing support to women, disabled people, and poor people. I saw a group of people who have benefited hugely from the welfare state decide that children too young to vote but old enough to protest and be arrested, should not themselves receive the same support. And when one MP asked another MP whether he would be willing to pay £9,000 a year for each of his years at university, I saw him dismiss the question and mock it.
But I also heard a spirited defense of public services, or student protests and occupations, of protests against Vodafone, and criticisms of kettling from Jeremy Corbyn MP and others. We have a great deal of public support. Some of our elected representatives behaved shamefully today, and we will remember that. We will also remember that we have huge popular following, that we can win if we work together. As Adam Ramsayreminded me earlier this evening when I was struggling not to cry, Thatcher's poll tax was also approved by Parliamentary vote, and later dropped following civil unrest. We can do that again.
The campaign against cuts to public services is about more than just tuition fees and university. We've lost this round, but we'll be back. We'll keep marching, keep working, keep protesting. This is just the beginning.
--IP
Saturday, 27 November 2010
We're here, we're Queer...
...And we won't pay £9,000 a year!
Seriously though, I've been wanting to talk about the way that queer politics, interact with economic justice politics, because the connection is not really that obvious.
Most of you will have heard about the student protests across the country since 10 November, in opposition to fees and cuts to education and other public services. The National Day of Action on 24 November saw walk-outs, sit-ins, study-ins, demonstrations, and student occupations of university buildings -- about 20 universities (including 6 unconfirmed, but likely) across the UK have been occupied by students, in opposition to the cuts. 30 November will see a Scotland demonstration. What I've found encouraging has been the participation from secondary school students and sixth-formers. Many of the protests across the country have been led not by students at universities or colleges of further education, but by school pupils fighting for their future. This makes sense, since they'll be even more affected by the education cuts than current further/higher education students, but the response even from young teens has been overwhelming.
One thing I've been thinking a lot about though, is the kind of focus we put on our protest. When we march with banners and chants about education cuts, it's a great way of drawing attention to our personal investment. That's good in some ways -- it gives our protest the "human interest" that journalists love. But the downside is that what we are talking about, and what the media is talking about, is cuts to higher education -- the cuts that mostly affect people from middle class background (university hasn't been accessible to the poorest for a long time), and not, say, cuts to housing benefit.
This presents a curious dilemma. On the one hand, it's absolutely legitimate and important for people to say "I need to be able to pay rent, and put food on the table, and these cuts will stop me doing that, and for that reason I oppose them", and young people are particularly affected by cuts to education, rising debt, unemployment, etc.
On the other hand, it accentuates the problem of those who most need to be protesting not being able to, for various reason, or not being listened to.
There's a further issue though. And that's that if we accept that our tactical role is only to oppose tuition fees or higher education cuts, we've already lost, because we've already accepted the premise that education is an individual privilege, not a social good or a public investment. Education benefits everyone. Healthcare benefits everyone. Social housing benefits everyone.
Why they benefit everyone is an interesting question (but a long one, so it's another post -- or feel free to comment in the, well, the comments), but brings us onto what kind of future we, as young adults, want to grow up in. What kind of world we want to bring our children up in. These cuts aren't just for the duration of the economic crisis -- David Cameron has made that clear. These cuts will shape the coming decades -- our adulthoods.
So what I would like to see more of is discussion of the kind of society we want -- not just in terms of the minimum wage and the highest tax bracket, but what we want the structure of society to be. And this is where queer politics is relevant. I don't want a world in which some people just scrape by. I don't want a world where welfare is a social safety net. I don't want a world where some kinds of upbringing, or family units, or heteronormative lifestyles, are considered to be inherently better than others, and the stigmatised ones are financially or socially penalised. I don't want a world in which the concerns of materially-privileged teenagers heading for university are more important than the concerns of unemployed teenage single mothers on benefits. I think movements for economic justice can learn a lot from queer politics, by examining the unspoken premises in our campaigns.
In other words, what queer politics can contribute is this: what kind of lifestyles are we upholding as the ideals in a campaign for economic justice? Are we assuming that everyone comes from a two-parent two-income middle-class household and that that family is ideally placed to support them financially, practically, and emotionally?
As Queers Read This puts it:
Which I read as saying that queer rights movement requires not privacy, but a change in the structure of society, and structures of oppression and privilege (of which economic deprivation/privilege is one).
Or, if you prefer, we could take a different leaf from the queer politics book, and say that the similarity between the struggle for economic justice and the queer rights movement is that in both, Silence = Death.
--IP
Seriously though, I've been wanting to talk about the way that queer politics, interact with economic justice politics, because the connection is not really that obvious.
Most of you will have heard about the student protests across the country since 10 November, in opposition to fees and cuts to education and other public services. The National Day of Action on 24 November saw walk-outs, sit-ins, study-ins, demonstrations, and student occupations of university buildings -- about 20 universities (including 6 unconfirmed, but likely) across the UK have been occupied by students, in opposition to the cuts. 30 November will see a Scotland demonstration. What I've found encouraging has been the participation from secondary school students and sixth-formers. Many of the protests across the country have been led not by students at universities or colleges of further education, but by school pupils fighting for their future. This makes sense, since they'll be even more affected by the education cuts than current further/higher education students, but the response even from young teens has been overwhelming.
One thing I've been thinking a lot about though, is the kind of focus we put on our protest. When we march with banners and chants about education cuts, it's a great way of drawing attention to our personal investment. That's good in some ways -- it gives our protest the "human interest" that journalists love. But the downside is that what we are talking about, and what the media is talking about, is cuts to higher education -- the cuts that mostly affect people from middle class background (university hasn't been accessible to the poorest for a long time), and not, say, cuts to housing benefit.
This presents a curious dilemma. On the one hand, it's absolutely legitimate and important for people to say "I need to be able to pay rent, and put food on the table, and these cuts will stop me doing that, and for that reason I oppose them", and young people are particularly affected by cuts to education, rising debt, unemployment, etc.
On the other hand, it accentuates the problem of those who most need to be protesting not being able to, for various reason, or not being listened to.
There's a further issue though. And that's that if we accept that our tactical role is only to oppose tuition fees or higher education cuts, we've already lost, because we've already accepted the premise that education is an individual privilege, not a social good or a public investment. Education benefits everyone. Healthcare benefits everyone. Social housing benefits everyone.
Why they benefit everyone is an interesting question (but a long one, so it's another post -- or feel free to comment in the, well, the comments), but brings us onto what kind of future we, as young adults, want to grow up in. What kind of world we want to bring our children up in. These cuts aren't just for the duration of the economic crisis -- David Cameron has made that clear. These cuts will shape the coming decades -- our adulthoods.
So what I would like to see more of is discussion of the kind of society we want -- not just in terms of the minimum wage and the highest tax bracket, but what we want the structure of society to be. And this is where queer politics is relevant. I don't want a world in which some people just scrape by. I don't want a world where welfare is a social safety net. I don't want a world where some kinds of upbringing, or family units, or heteronormative lifestyles, are considered to be inherently better than others, and the stigmatised ones are financially or socially penalised. I don't want a world in which the concerns of materially-privileged teenagers heading for university are more important than the concerns of unemployed teenage single mothers on benefits. I think movements for economic justice can learn a lot from queer politics, by examining the unspoken premises in our campaigns.
In other words, what queer politics can contribute is this: what kind of lifestyles are we upholding as the ideals in a campaign for economic justice? Are we assuming that everyone comes from a two-parent two-income middle-class household and that that family is ideally placed to support them financially, practically, and emotionally?
As Queers Read This puts it:
Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred.
[...] And now of course it means fighting a virus as well[...]. Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It's not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It's not about executive directors, privilege and elitism.
Which I read as saying that queer rights movement requires not privacy, but a change in the structure of society, and structures of oppression and privilege (of which economic deprivation/privilege is one).
Or, if you prefer, we could take a different leaf from the queer politics book, and say that the similarity between the struggle for economic justice and the queer rights movement is that in both, Silence = Death.
--IP
Friday, 12 November 2010
Why I wasn't at the Fund Our Future march (but wanted to be)
If you're based in the UK, you've probably all heard about the protest for higher education funding that took place in London yesterday. I wasn't there, but some of my co-bloggers were, and I hope that they'll be able to write about what it was like to be there.
About 52,000 people, most of them students, but also a large contingent of academic and academic-related staff, marched through central London. The march was for the funding of public services, and higher education and research funding in particular; condemning tuition fees and graduate contributions, and the LibDem U-turn on student fees. There was also a large Free Education feeder march that unfortunately doesn't seem to have received much press coverage. Obviously it's the Millbank protest that's getting nearly all the coverage right now, and I'll let someone else comment on that, because I wasn't there, and my thoughts are still in a bit of a jumble. Maybe I'll do a round-up of interesting coverage later on.
So why wasn't I there? Ah. I'm glad you asked.
The "Look Ok...Feel Crap?" campaign from the Depression Alliance Scotland tweeted "Are you a student? Would you have liked to go on today's demo but didn't because of how you feel? Or did you go anyway?" Some of the replies they received on Twitter broke my heart -- students wrote back about issues with anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions that kept them home.
In my case, it wasn't a mental health issue that kept me home, but it was a disability. I told friends who asked me that this ways because I couldn't get my mobility scooter to London (most types of public transport won't carry them). This is true, but not the whole story. It's also that when using a mobility scooter, I'm vulnerable in certain ways because I can't maneuver quickly in a crowd. This isn't a small march in Scotland -- it's a big march in London with the Metropolitan Police of kettling and head-beating fame. In a big group of people who are kettled and stressed, I could very easily get hurt. Also, my disability causes fatigue, and overnight trips on consecutive nights could cause a week or two of fatigue that would make me unable to do coursework or totally trivial things like cook food or wash clothes.
I'm not the only person who couldn't go. A great many of my friends couldn't go because their disabilities prevented them getting to London (the transport isn't accessible, and with central London packed with demo traffic, it's hard to make adjustments), or walk the whole march route even if the march had been held locally to them. Some couldn't go because they find marches too scary or anxiety-inducing or confrontational or upsetting because of mental health issues. Some couldn't go because they are scared of police officers, especially the Met, because their sociodemographic group has traditionally been targeted by the police for violence and prejudice. Some people couldn't attend because they have young children and no childcare, and were worried about their toddlers potentially being in a kettling situation (after the G20 protests, this is a reasonable worry). Some friends couldn't afford to go because they live on or below the breadline and couldn't afford the transport, or couldn't afford to miss a day of work.
(Note that many of these worries apply not only to protests, but also work. Those whose disability stops them from protesting, may also, for similar reasons, be legitimately unable to work. Those whose children's need for care means they have to stay home, might also mean that they can't work paid jobs. Those who are discriminated against by the police are likely to also be discriminated against by employers.)
When the government calls us lazy and work-shy, we have to work extra-hard to defend ourselves, and it costs energy and resources we don't have -- in my case, it might have cost me the ability to feed and clothe myself for several days. When public services are cut, we're affected in multiple ways -- not just by higher education, but also by cuts to nursery/childcare and schooling, medical services, child and family benefits, personal care, disability-specific support, housing, and the list goes on.
The people who face this kind of dual discrimination are the people who need to fight the hardest right now because they have the most to lose. They're also the people least able to fight the hardest. Often, the most effective kinds of protest are unavailable to us -- we can ask nicely, we can write to our MPs, we can sign petitions, but when asking nicely fails, we have no options left. It makes us easy targets for governments to take away our basic needs -- we can't fight back the way more privileged people can.
So to those of you who are protesting (there will be more big marches), please go and shout loud for me. If you haven't been protesting, but you think you could, please please please think about going, because those of us who really need to be there, can't.
--IP
About 52,000 people, most of them students, but also a large contingent of academic and academic-related staff, marched through central London. The march was for the funding of public services, and higher education and research funding in particular; condemning tuition fees and graduate contributions, and the LibDem U-turn on student fees. There was also a large Free Education feeder march that unfortunately doesn't seem to have received much press coverage. Obviously it's the Millbank protest that's getting nearly all the coverage right now, and I'll let someone else comment on that, because I wasn't there, and my thoughts are still in a bit of a jumble. Maybe I'll do a round-up of interesting coverage later on.
So why wasn't I there? Ah. I'm glad you asked.
The "Look Ok...Feel Crap?" campaign from the Depression Alliance Scotland tweeted "Are you a student? Would you have liked to go on today's demo but didn't because of how you feel? Or did you go anyway?" Some of the replies they received on Twitter broke my heart -- students wrote back about issues with anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions that kept them home.
In my case, it wasn't a mental health issue that kept me home, but it was a disability. I told friends who asked me that this ways because I couldn't get my mobility scooter to London (most types of public transport won't carry them). This is true, but not the whole story. It's also that when using a mobility scooter, I'm vulnerable in certain ways because I can't maneuver quickly in a crowd. This isn't a small march in Scotland -- it's a big march in London with the Metropolitan Police of kettling and head-beating fame. In a big group of people who are kettled and stressed, I could very easily get hurt. Also, my disability causes fatigue, and overnight trips on consecutive nights could cause a week or two of fatigue that would make me unable to do coursework or totally trivial things like cook food or wash clothes.
I'm not the only person who couldn't go. A great many of my friends couldn't go because their disabilities prevented them getting to London (the transport isn't accessible, and with central London packed with demo traffic, it's hard to make adjustments), or walk the whole march route even if the march had been held locally to them. Some couldn't go because they find marches too scary or anxiety-inducing or confrontational or upsetting because of mental health issues. Some couldn't go because they are scared of police officers, especially the Met, because their sociodemographic group has traditionally been targeted by the police for violence and prejudice. Some people couldn't attend because they have young children and no childcare, and were worried about their toddlers potentially being in a kettling situation (after the G20 protests, this is a reasonable worry). Some friends couldn't afford to go because they live on or below the breadline and couldn't afford the transport, or couldn't afford to miss a day of work.
(Note that many of these worries apply not only to protests, but also work. Those whose disability stops them from protesting, may also, for similar reasons, be legitimately unable to work. Those whose children's need for care means they have to stay home, might also mean that they can't work paid jobs. Those who are discriminated against by the police are likely to also be discriminated against by employers.)
When the government calls us lazy and work-shy, we have to work extra-hard to defend ourselves, and it costs energy and resources we don't have -- in my case, it might have cost me the ability to feed and clothe myself for several days. When public services are cut, we're affected in multiple ways -- not just by higher education, but also by cuts to nursery/childcare and schooling, medical services, child and family benefits, personal care, disability-specific support, housing, and the list goes on.
The people who face this kind of dual discrimination are the people who need to fight the hardest right now because they have the most to lose. They're also the people least able to fight the hardest. Often, the most effective kinds of protest are unavailable to us -- we can ask nicely, we can write to our MPs, we can sign petitions, but when asking nicely fails, we have no options left. It makes us easy targets for governments to take away our basic needs -- we can't fight back the way more privileged people can.
So to those of you who are protesting (there will be more big marches), please go and shout loud for me. If you haven't been protesting, but you think you could, please please please think about going, because those of us who really need to be there, can't.
--IP
Thursday, 11 November 2010
And another thing about Remembrance Day
When I see photos of David Cameron wearing a poppy? David Cameron, whose government is cutting any last pretense we ever had at supporting veterans, and calling it "wasteful spending", and who is willing to drop some coins in a charity tin but not pay a fair slice of his income, because we all know that a few coins once a year is cheaper than tax and buys less for veterans, that David Cameron? The David Cameron who appears not to mind if veterans drop dead because they can't make the rent and bills or can't buy food because they've got no personal care and no mobility aids as a result of his public service cuts, but he's happy to take some PR credit for wearing a poppy in a not-at-all hypocritical manner?
I just want to puke.
--IP
I just want to puke.
--IP
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)