Writings

Organizing the Suburbs

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

Published in Briarpatch Magazine
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/organizing-the-suburbs

During the 2018 Ontario elections, a campaign pamphlet for Progressive Conservative (PC) candidate Raymond Cho was distributed with the words “為人民服務” – “Serve the People” – in bold. The phrase is one of the most iconic Maoist slogans – but in this case, it was used as a crude translation of Doug Ford’s slogan, “For the People.”

While the NDP won the majority of downtown Toronto ridings, they were locked out of the suburbs, where the PC Party rode to a decisive victory across the commuter belt of Mississauga, Markham, Etobicoke, and – to a lesser extent – Scarborough.

For some this was unexpected: suburban working-class and immigrant communities might have been expected to side with the Liberals or NDP, more so than the generally whiter and wealthier downtown communities. After all, left-leaning parties are supposed to be the champions of the poor and racialized. For others, election results confirmed a growing belief that Canada’s new wave of immigrants is both socially and fiscally conservative, innately.

We reject these two presumptions. Instead, we draw on the case of Chinese suburbanites in Scarborough and York Region to argue that the electoral success of the right is the result of decades of disengagement by the left and sophisticated politicking by right-wing politicians.

The detachment of intersectionality from its Black feminist roots: A critical analysis of social service provision training material based in Ontario

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

Wong, E. H. S. (2018). The detachment of intersectionality from its Black feminist roots: A critical analysis of social service provision training material based in Ontario. In Intersectionality in Social Work (pp. 51-65). Routledge.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315210810

This chapter takes as a starting point the use of intersectionality in a range of social services training materials. The critical analysis shows that the training material detaches the concept of intersectionality from its radical political roots. This has potential negative implications for social work practices. Most importantly, in emphasising service provision over mass movement building, there is a failure to undertake the social work task of advocating for societal change, and the spirit of Black feminist thought and liberation movements from which intersectionality emerged is lost.

“The brains of a nation”: The eugenicist roots of Canada’s mental health field and the building of a white non-disabled nation

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

Wong, E. H. S. (2012). Not Welcome A Critical Analysis of Ableism in Canadian Immigration Policy from 1869 to 2011. Critical Disability Discourses/Discours critiques dans le champ du handicap, 4.
https://crsp.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/crsp/article/view/40261

This paper examines the literature published by the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene (CNCMH), a precursor to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), from 1918-1921, and its connection to eugenicist social policies. Specifically, this study involves a critical discourse analysis of the Canadian Journal of Mental Hygiene (CJMH) published by the CNCMH, which illustrates how the roots of Canada’s mental health field are linked to a nation-building project deeply intertwined with eugenicist notions of race and disability. Foundation myths that reinforce the Canadian nation were also imbued in the literature, including: Canadian identity as linked to white non-disability, Canada as tabula rasa, and eugenicist fears of the ‘over-population’ of ‘undesirables’. On the basis of these foundation myths, the CNCMH considered mental hygiene discourse and practice as a means to further Canada as a white nondisabled nation. The desire to further the Canadian nation in this manner led to the promotion of eugenicist social policies. Many of these policies – especially, immigration controls – were put into place by the Canadian government and remain to this day.

Social Work as a ‘Bullshit Job’: Critiques of Social Work’s Potential for Social Justice in the Context of Professionalization and its Code of Ethics

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

I recently participated in a focus group examining “contemporary social work students’ responses to social justice practice principles as stated in the Social Work Code of Ethics”, and thought I’d collect some of the ideas I had shared about the topic. Some see the code of ethics and mobilization within Continue Reading

Anarchist Re-Imaginations of Mental Healthcare

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

Today, I attended a great talk by Bonnie Burstow on anarchist re-imaginations of mental health care, entitled ‘Toward a World with Commons and without Psychiatry: an Anarchist Vision’. The talk spoke to a lot of my concerns having worked in the mental health field for the past couple years, but Continue Reading

The Mental Health Field and Our Complicity in Police Brutality and Repression of Racialized People

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

During Canadian Mental Health Association’s annual Black History Month panel today, I was pleasantly surprised, even shocked, to see Kabir and Letanya representing the Justice for Jermaine campaign at my office. They gave a great talk about the circumstances behind Jermaine Carby, another young man murdered by the police and someone whom Continue Reading

Life in Jane and Finch: A Product of Apartheid, but also of Resistance

Posted on by yellowsweatygorilla

In the late hours of Monday, 11 February, the tragic news of a young child killed by gunshot hit the news with “Jane and Finch” becoming front and centre in headline after headline. As a community mourns, dozens of ‘internet warriors’ have also gathered, but instead of commemorating the life Continue Reading