Women Occupy Toronto Metro Hall for Right to Food

On Tuesday December 8th, while the Toronto Police ETF gathered outside Metro Hall, over 20 determined and courageous women mainly from Toronto's Somali-Canadian community, alongside members and supporters of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty occupied Metro Hall for 3 hours while over 150 supporters remained in the Metro Hall lobby, to fight for their legal right to a Special Diet Supplement to social assistance. These women, the majority mothers, are an inspiration. It is their courage to take action that points the way forward for poor and working people and for students. They stood strong in this occupation even as the police with shields and assault rifles (no kidding) rolled up in front of the building.

They were unfazed as Toronto Police threatened arrest and pranced through the room with flexcuffs, counting heads. They defiantly chanted “we won’t be quiet, we need the special diet” for hours. They were clear and concise when they responded to security and police that they were prepared to stay as long as it took and would bring their children down and sleep in Metro Hall until they got what they came for , to claim their legal right . The police and city officials, reluctant to expose their reactionary brutal methods, knowing full well that arresting 20 vibrant and brave women from the Somali community would make for bad press were unable to convince these women to leave. An attempt to portray them as “led by OCAP” backfired when it became clear that OCAP members were in a supportive role and the women were claiming their rightful space and demands to their much needed money and their rights to protest. While welfare bureaucrats, hunkered down in their offices protected by police and security, the women showed tremendous courage and a determined spirit of resistance.

A decade ago the province of Ontario, reduced welfare rates 40 percent. This created a situation where individuals and families were literally unable to pay rent and buy food. This situation persists to this day. Part of OCAP’s ongoing RAISE THE RATES campaign was to uncover decades old provincial legislation that provided welfare recipients with supplemental funds for food – the “special diet.” Deliberately kept under wraps for years by welfare officialdom, OCAP began holding special diet clinics , working with sympathetic health care providers who signed thousands of forms entitling poor individuals and families to extra funds enabling them to pay their rent and EAT . A novel concept to politicians determined to crush poor and working people.

In due time , after tens of millions of dollars were legally extracted from the provinces coffers , the politicians and officials began to fight back, ultimately leading to a the current situation where the city is breaking the law by refusing to process forms for this legal entitlement. In typical brute fashion, using tactics similar to those used against striking workers, the cops were called in to defend hollow bureaucrats and cruel politicians who are breaking the law by denying people their legal rights. After 3 hours a collective decision was made to end the occupation ONLY because the police upped the ante, by threatening criminal charges, with implications for the women willing to face lesser charges of trespassing.

What are the lessons these brave women teach us? -that the capitalist class and their functionaries are always prepared to break the law in their never ending attempts to weaken us, to force us to accept the crumbs from their table. They will take our jobs, our homes and our food. They will deprive us of health care and the right to education. They will ultimately stop at nothing and we need to bear this mind at all times. The only way to stop them is to organize workers and poor people, students, single individuals and families to collectively organize and stand together, not only to resist but to put forward demands that point to the absolute need to organize workers, students and poor people’s committees in communities, schools and workplaces to take back and collectively own and administer the resources that we create and produce.