Week 4 Class Excercise: Toronto's "Women Against Poverty Collective", 3 June 2007 Women's Housing Action

Excercise instructions:
As I spoke to you all in class last week, at one point during the seminar on Sept. 27 (this Thursday) we're going to conduct a class debate. We're going to look at the lead up to and the consequences of the June 3, 2007 WAPC squat of an abandoned apartment building in downtown Toronto from the perspective of "reformers" and "social changers," as defined in the Fontan & Shragge reading from last week.

I will randomly divide the class into two groups, one group will be made up of "reformers" and the other, "social changers." You will then convene as a group for about 10 minutes and prepare a "reformist" or "social change" case for the social economy issues that the WAPC action brought to light: poverty, housing, women's rights, the plight of the marginalized, the role of the state in provisioning for our housing and safety needs, and perhaps other related issues that permeate urban Toronto and that were touched on by the WAPC action.

Each group will get 5 minutes to present their case and then each group will take turns rebutting or commenting on the other group's position. We will then have a respectful discussion interchanging ideas and try to arrive collectively at how the June 3 case study helps us understand a bit better the "tensions" with the social economy that Fontan & Shragge mention in their essay.

Here are some questions you might want to ponder from both sides of the social economy debate:

1) What specific issues did the WAPC's June 3 action bring to the surface?
2) How might "reformers" and "social changers" critique or support these issues? In other words, how would each side respond to the social issues that were brought to the surface as a consequence of the direct action tactics taken by the WAPC?
3) How, if at all, might each side support or be opposed to the tactics used by WAPC? (For eg: Would reformers agree with taking over private property in order to secure housing for homeless and battered women? If not, what might their solution be to the social issue? How would social changers respond to the tactics used?)
3) What institutions were affected and/or implicated in the June 3 action? How would each side react to the actions taken by the state (i.e., city hall, the courts, the police) during and after the June 3 squat?
4) How would each side address or seek to change these social institutions in light of the issues brought up by the June 3 action?
5) How might each side suggest we deal with homelessness, poverty, and the plight of the marginalized?

Brief background reading and viewing:

• Lead up to June 3, 2007: Women Against Poverty Collective - Women's Housing Takeover
  
• June 3, 2007: One minute YouTube video of the June 3 squat.
  
• July 17-19, 2007: WAPC reacts to police crackdown of the squat in a July 19 press conference.
  
• July 19, 2007: WAPC-led rally in front of Toronto police HQ.
  
• July 27, 2007: Police withdraw charges against four women involved in the June 3 squat.
  

Lecture 1: Marx, Alienation, and Capital 101

Marx’s essay, “Estranged Labour,” a chapter from Marx’s early work written in Paris and known as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (and only published in the 1930s), is at core about how humans feel as they work within the capitalist system. In a nutshell, Marx claims that capitalism, through its construction and use of private property and the capitalist’s ownership of the means of production, alienates the real producers (i.e., the workers) not only from the very products they produce and the processes of production they work with, but also from themselves and each other.

What does it mean to feel alienated? To be alienated means to be separated from something. Marx uses this to describe how workers feel within the capitalist mode of production. He used the term to “denote the division and separation between the upper class (bourgeosie) and the lower class (proletariat). In recent years, the term has been used to suggest estrangement, powerlessness, and the depersonalization of the individual” within our contemporary society. So why does Marx claim we are alienated within the capitalist system? What is inherent to capitalism that alienates most of those who work within it? Trying to answer these two questions is the focus of this essay. Attempting to answer them also necessarily means we have to understand some of the key structures of the capitalist system, as well. Let’s start by looking briefly at the essay “Estranged Labour.”

Read the rest of the essay/lecture.