OCAP MASS PANHANDLE OF ‘THE PATH’
Wednesday December 12 2007
11:00am
Meet in the Park just west of the King and Bay intersection
Breakfast will be served
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is preparing to mobilize homeless people and their supporters to come down into the showpiece underground PATH system for a mass panhandle. We want to make clear why we are carrying out this action and what users of the PATH can expect from us.
Huge cuts to social programs and a desperate lack of affordable housing have fueled a crisis of homelessness in Toronto. Instead of meeting the needs of the homeless, those in power are looking to drive them out. Hostels have been closed and people forced onto the streets to beg. Then, police are used to harass and criminalize people trying to survive.
for more, check out the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty website, which should be updating with more info on this event soon. If my health and exam proctoring duties allow, I intend to participate in this event and welcome company 
vocabulary: for those who do not know what the PATH is, it’s the largest underground shopping complex in the world at 27 km in length. In addition to being a completely commercialized and privately operated zone, it happens to function as Toronto’s downtown underground pathway, connecting 5 subway stations and 100,000 people per day to their destinations. (talk about a conflation of the public and private spheres …) If you’re a transit geek (ahem, P) and haven’t already read up on it, you can find more data here.
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