PelaLusa said...
I loved these quotes in the Van Sun article:
"He [Simpson] believes that the agencies that are in the Downtown Eastside to combat poverty are actually codependent on the poor. "It's their raison d'etre."
"I call them the povertarians," he explains. "And they've created a system in the Downtown Eastside that is going in the wrong direction. It's a hell down here and I got elected to the Carnegie board by the members because I wanted to change the way these people are running things."
December 24, 2007 8:18 PM
See also.
Bob C said:
I must agree with William Simpson with his opinion of the so called service providers in the Downtown East Side. I have worked in and around the DTES for many years and have observed the people who provide these services to the poor become increasingly intrenched in what they do to the point that changing that area is the last thing they want to see. If the DTES was cleaned up and the poor were no longer poor and the addicted were treated then all of those nice fat grants the service provders get from the govenments and social organizations would dry up. Once the money is gone so are their jobs. So yes William Simpson is right when he called them "povertarians".These are responses to Miro Cernetig's recent Vancouver Sun column.
December 24, 2007 5:39 PM
Now, here is the text of an email from Dag to me, dated March 2, 2007:
I did a Google search to look for povertaria[n], and below is what I found. I think that in a month I can make it one of the most used buzz words in our culture. Look at some of the other things we now think of as given: dhimmitude, infantalisation, philobarbarism, poligion, neo-feudlaism. Some words are better than others. I think "povertarian" has legs. Let's find out this time next month.Here is what I get today, December 26, 2007, on Google:
Revised March 1. 2007:
Povertarian: 5 pages
Povertarians: 9 pages
Povertarianism: 1 page
Yalla, Dag
Povertarian: 33 pages
Povertarians: 30 pages
Povertarianism: 1 page
So, good work Dag, especially good work considering your typographical trials and tribulations. But we all have to do a little more work on the ism. Yeah, I know, we should be allergic to all isms. But maybe, in this case, we can drop it in every now and then for the old school crowd.
Kudos also to Reliable Sources at the Downtown Eastside Enquirer, who has been doing great and extensive work on the William Simpson story for many many months now, along with a host of other stories on the Downtown Eastside. There's someone working hard and braving the potential wrath of the Gnostic ideologues/postmodern slum lords to get us all closer to the truth about the open wound on the face of Ms. Vancouver.
UPDATES:
Povertarian • one who works in the ‘poverty industry’.
- Extracted and adapted from Schott’s Almanac 2008: conceived, written & designed by Ben Schott published by Bloomsbury on December 1.
4 comments:
"povertarian" is a word that sort of explains itself, isn't it ? Nevertheless, I think I'll keep using an old word for it : Tartuffe...
Zazie, last night we ate a box of French-made taruffes at our meeting; it seems we're on the same page...-:)
Truepeers, were they palatable ? Could I have a few names, for a future feast ? Those I have tasted (Kouchner, Jack Lang, Emmanuelle Béart, Bernard Henri Lévy.......) now make me a bit sick ; so I 'd love a little change !
Zazie, I coind the term "Povertarian" as analogous to Libertarian, leping from my bed one evening, disturbing the sleep of I don't know how many women, but certainly fewer than four, not being a Muslim myself, to dash to the computer to write about my new-found idea.
Povetarianism came to me as a way of describing those who make poverty a philosophical tenet of the Good. I thought of Pierre Prudhon and his evil rubbish of privileging poverty over wealth, of Marx longing for the poverty of the Edenic life before cities and industry imposed it 'cash nexus' of happy feudal peasants, and so on. There is that class of anti-Modernist who has corrupted sane Christianity's "Blessed are th epoor for they shall inherit the Earth" and "It is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven..." and the tale of the poor woman who gave her last shekel... and so on, the Gnostic who proclaims the beauties of poverty as a good in itself. These are the class of anti-Modernists who proclaim the virtues of the Noble Savage, of ecologism and orgainic food, the return to Nature, the Romantic idealisation of the peasant, the philobarbarist.... All of the evil rubbish of the Left now inheriting the evils of the fascism of the early to mid-20th century shows up in the extolling of poverty as the Good. Jews are rich, Palestinians are victims of, therefore, the poor Palestinians must be good. In every case where the Left loves poverty it is at the expense of Modernity in its wealth and democracy, in its claims for the good of poverty and the "poor." Hence, my excitement as I typed away at "Povertariansim."
Little did I know till next day that an East Indian had coined the term i advacnce of my, and for the same reasons: that Gandhi was a "povertarian." Look at the evils that man created in his push to sanctify poverty. Had I my way I'd have hanged him from a lamp-pos-- Whoops. I promised I'd stop that.
There is in Canada a repulsive name for those in the "poverty industry" as the locals term it, and they are called "poverty pimps." Its a loathsome term and it's not exactly accurate at that. Povertarianism is dead-on, even if I must give my admission of prior discovery to another.
And if you like truffles, Zazie, let me tempt you to come to Canada with more of Truepeers' best. Delicious. Poverty sucks. One knows that when there is a dearth of good chocolate.
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