Stories I’d Like to Share
Bed Bugs
When running for office, you meet a lot of people. Many stories touch you, but often stories have an ability to make you see an issue through the lens of another, and sometimes, change your own views. Often times, it is anecdotes and the stories of others that give one a far better lens to view an issue through. I met a single father and his eight-year-old boy who did just that. Together they showed me their modest apartment, the plaster less living room wall, the drywall falling into their bathtub and the holes in the baseboard that allow cockroaches to migrate into their apartment. The dad informed me of an eight-month-old maintenance request that has gone unanswered, how his son’s school was implementing a uniform policy and he did not know how he was going to pay for it. What really got me was something each of us ought to be ashamed of; bed bugs infesting community-housing buildings in our city.
Every few months, the father was forced to throw out their furniture, go to the furniture bank and arrange for new mattresses for him and his son. As it was, they had no couch, just a single large chair in the living room, a basic coffee table and a small TV resting on pieces of wood. His son told me about waking up in the night, being bitten by bed bugs, and bleeding for the sores because it was hard not to scratch. As he told me his story, he began jumping up and down, and frantically rubbing his arms and body to show me what it is like for him.
I was shocked that in a city like Toronto, we would allow conditions this bad to exist for our most vulnerable citizens. Simply put, it is not right, and particularly a government run entity should not be forcing people to live in conditions like this. Why should a boy go through his childhood fearing his bed and waiting for the next time it needs to be replaced? I thought back to my childhood, and can only recall having two beds while living with my parents and once since. I simply could not imagine such a frequent need for a new one. The amount of worries this single father had to deal with were daunting enough without having to teach his son life lessons like putting the cereal in the fridge to keep cockroaches from crawling into the box, or worrying about the next time the bed bug infestation would get so bad a new mattress could be the only solution. This day changed me. It showed me something that I could not forget, nor wanted to. It gave me something to fight for and something to want to change.
As the days and weeks went on after meeting this family, I shared the story of a father and a boy living in Toronto Community Housing and going through all they had to. I told people if elected I would fight community housing on things like this, and bring light to the backlog of maintenance requests publicly, even in the Council Chamber if I had to. I met a lawyer who told me each year he devotes two weeks of his time to helping low income tenants with landlord issues for free, and that if I were serious about this, he would help and ask some of his colleagues to help too.
I consider the time I spent in that apartment hearing their story and talking and thinking about it in the days and weeks that followed central to changing my thinking around social justice. It really opened my eyes to people not being served by their government and the need for activism within government as well. More than that though it showed me that we as a society cannot turn a blind eye to those who are less fortunate and struggling to get by. While we may feel that this family having affordable housing is a blessing, we need to also think more about the conditions of that housing and the impact it has on both father and son in this case.
New Voters
One of the most touching parts of any campaign is the personal interaction with your neighbours. While canvassing in a lower income part of the ward, I met a man who had been a citizen for just three weeks. He was very excited about the upcoming election, and so happy that I had come to see him to introduce myself. I was the first candidate he’d met in Canada. I thought that was pretty cool, and I think he did too. We spoke at length and at the end of our conversation, after telling me about his own very impressive involvement in India he promised me his first vote in Canada would be for me.
A feeling nearly as gratifying as speaking to a first time voter, is speaking to someone who has given up on politicians, but was refreshed by my style and the fact I don’t fit the “mould”. I met many people like this while campaigning. I often got frustrated and extremely frank with my views on their approach to civic involvement. In some cases it would be enough to convince them.
I met three people in a community housing building on a hot day in the summer. They were sitting in a small apartment, having a refreshment when I knocked on their door. I was invited in, at first I think just for a laugh, but as we spoke, the conversation changed to their reasons for not voting instead of why I was to be the solver of all things bad, I touched one of them. He had not voted in over a decade, and articulated his disappointment with politicians in a way that was hard to argue with. I told him the race would be close, and it would be votes like his that could be the deciding factor. I added that should I break my word to him or not do a good enough job for him, he could go back to not voting next time and say “told ya so”.
He told me that if he was left to vote on his own, he wouldn’t, but if we came and got him and took him to the polls he would gladly cast a ballot. So we did. On the first day of the in ward advanced poll, I showed up at his door and went upstairs to bring him down, and together we went to the polling station and talked about the other positions he’d be asked to vote for as well. He gave me the energy to go on for hours that day, pulling others and sharing his story as a reason why they too should vote.
You may need to experience theses conversations from the prospective of a candidate to really understand, I don’t know. What felt really good about it, at least for me, was knowing that the issues I was determined to tackle touched somebody else enough to get out and vote. I have something in common with the man I met who’d been a citizen for three weeks, we care about the same things, and voted for the same candidate in the 2006 municipal election, when each of us was eligible to vote municipally for the first time. (Yes, I did in fact run for Toronto City Council at the first legal opportunity.) To me at least, finding someone who would place their confidence in you, particularly when they were not a seasoned voter was a strong statement, better than any endorsement from any organization, because it came from the kind of people who should matter most in politics. While some reporters were fascinated with “Laforet, 20″ as a way to describe me, it really did not seem to matter to many of the previously apathetic and perhaps that is what also helped me develop a bond with people who have similar stories as those who I met and saw vote for the first time in either a long time, or ever.
