Action on Poverty in Canada: Write your Elected Official

So I'm starting another new blog :)
It is currently titled Write your Elected Official and it is my term project for my Advocacy Writing course.

The goal is to make it easy for people like me to take action on subjects near and dear to their social justice bleeding hearts. The way I see it, easing the pathway to political action will leave people feeling involved and good about themselves. I am quite aware that my recent swoop towards the depths of depression was partially brought about by overwhelm at situational problems, but more significantly, was triggered by over-exposure to social injustice on several fronts - local and global, affecting children, women, and traditionally marginalized groups such as people with disabilities and different sexualities and racialized others.

What has brought me from the brink, and is getting me through, is taking each day as it comes, focusing on maintaining hope and optimism, and focusing on campaigns which leave me feeling empowered. Thus, I plan to avoid issues such as violence against women and prostitution/sex workers legal/constitutional rights. These issues leave me feeling vulnerable and exposed, and unable to articulate or argue my point of view. I plan to stick with universal, individual rights we have as Canadian citizens. I intend to start with poverty reduction.

Writing letter templates on social justice issues will be a challenge for me as an academic writer. The object is to keep the message simple, clear, concise. No big words. Describe all terms that may be construed as jargon repeatedly. Make a request, suggest a pathway to action, to policy change. Couch it in terms of mutual benefits - how will those currently opposed see potential change as a benefit to themselves as well as to people living in poverty?

I'd like to write about 5 or 6 templates to start, over the next two weeks. The project is due at the end of the month, and it'd be nice to have 8 to 10 done by then. They'll only be a page long each :)

looking up

yes, things definitely started looking up for me the moment I wrote my last post :)
Now it's time to get it off the top of my page!!

Hubby has been focusing on positive interactions with the kids (he taught them a bit of backgammon) and I've been focusing on happy family time (ice cream cones and a walk on the beach after dinner). We have been being deliberately kind to each other (he made me coffee without asking how).

And...
It's summer vacation!!
and maybe it's more than school's out for summer, maybe, for our kiddos, it's "school's out for evah!"

sometimes in my tears I drown...

My depression and anxiety seem worse, lately, although neither have ever been at clinical levels. I'm not coping overly well, ignoring and avoiding things. But I'm coping, obviously, as I'm not experiencing clinical symptoms... or, my symptoms aren't up to clinical frequencies? Regardless, it's all a spectrum in my mind. The volume on my happy dial has been turned down low, and the volume on cranky-resentful, anxiety-panic-attack and sad-lie-in-bed-all-day are turned up high. I'm not interested in seeing my doctor about it, though, so I've got to focus on getting my needs met :) Elementary school is almost over for the year, so that will turn the anxiety-panic-attack knob down at least half-way, I'm sure. (Cue soundtrack: Alice Cooper's School's out for Summer!)

We attended a meeting of Home Learners South of the Fraser on Monday. It being June, not too many were there. The host explained to me that many families "take off early" for their summer vacations. There were the hosts 4 teenage daughters, who were doing their own things, my boys, and 10 year old twin boys. Later another two girls came, one a teen, one younger. Mostly the boys watched one of the host's daughters play a video game and the moms chatted. Kinda boring, but it's the last meeting until September, so I suppose it's not a typical meeting?

I have a concern that I'm focusing too much on the kids and their school as the "solution" to my anxiousness-purposelessness. There's also money, and hubby, and my school. We're going to move soon. There's other people's opinions about all of that - people are very free with their opinions. I've also been feeling a deep, deep sadness at the state of world affairs and the global lack of social justice. Much of my recent course work has focused on violence against women, and I feel a deep despair about that, as well as an inability to express my opinions and stance without people wanting to argue facts that have been studied enough by academics in a systematic, empirical way, that I see them as a given, and a waste of time to debate.

I've been looking at blogs and videos about hooping recently, especially The Happy Hoop, where I watched a video which used the song One Day by Matisyahu, which inspired the title for this post. That line especially unlocks my sadness, because I seem to be letting it get me down.

I think about Paolo Friere, and about Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Friere says that the act of oppression, the refusal to see those we oppress as human, causes us to lose our humanity. Hegel says the master needs the acknowledgment of the slave, however, Glen Coulthard, a Dene and a political scientist from UBC, says the colonial master doesn't care about or require such recognition. Friere says the oppressor cannot free himself, that the oppressed must use their humanity to do so. It seems like such an insurmountable task.

my last post was May 4th?!

yeah, I don't blog anymore...
today was Sports Day at the elementary school.
I've talked to a few people about home schooling next year. No one thinks it's a good idea. Several have said there are some things you just have to do in life... (I thought only death and taxes were inevitable?)
Life is harder when you're poor. We live below the unofficial Canadian poverty line - Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut-Off. Yet recently the provincial government significantly reduced my access to Childcare Subsidy. They've told me my income went up. Actually, they've just started counting my federal student loan grants for low income families as income. I've been getting both for at least 2 years. So now life is a little harder than before. I just really need a break, y'know?