Tag Archives: food

link, video

(1214) Bagels & Bentleys: undercover with the temps


Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed in today’s Toronto Star. The paper sent a writer to work at a large industrial bakery in Toronto recently.  Her findings should shock us.
Wages are low.  The pace is fast.  Safety is a hit-and-miss affair in a profitable establishment making bread products for corporate clients.  There has been loss of life at the plant where most of the workers are female newcomers.  Their employer has received grants, loans and praise from the government.  The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board gives them rebates.  Through their lawyer the owners say that safety is important.
Temps pick their wages up in cash at a payday lending office thirty-five minutes away by bus.  Their employer drives a Bentley and lives in a mansion.
On Twitter alone, mentions of this feature have grown steadily all day.  This feature deserves a wide audience and is exactly the kind of reportage the Star should be coming up with.
Undercover in temp nation
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(1212) Houston’s socioeconomic disaster


Nearly a week was required just to get a basic description together of the damage done by Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans, Louisiana in 2005.  Assessing Hurricane Harvey won’t be any easier.  If Katrina is the template we know that lower income and racialized groups will be bearing the brunt of this, big time.
An item from Thursday’s Washington Post is a good starting point regarding this multi-layered event and its consequences.
Poor Texans are going to suffer the most in Harvey, thanks to state politics
(video 1:22)
Media largely blind to Harvey’s devastating impact on poor Communities.” Hurricanes don’t care if you’re rich, poor, white, or black—but that doesn’t mean that every person is equally vulnerable to a storm.”
commondreams.org
Houston’s human catastrophe started long before the Storm. Decades of neglect, inequality, and disenfranchisement mean that all Houstonians, but especially the poorest and most vulnerable, have been left utterly undefended
thenation.org
Consider how inappropriate regional development makes Houston so vulnerable.
Hurricane Harvey wrecks up to a million cars in car dependent Houston
wired.com
More zoning wouldn’t have protected Houston from Harvey’s fury but less sprawl would have
nymag.com
Houston must plan an inclusive recovery after Harvey flooded its public housing
urban.org
Harvey tests the limits of how we feed people during disasters
citylab.com
See also: (1207) Hurricane Harvey
image: screenshot of newsreel from Texas Archives holdings
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(1185) Hygiene poverty


As with food and fuel we can attach hygiene to the word poverty more easily than we like.  Making poverty a plural may be pushing it a little at the moment but if we continue with our present economic systems we might just have to.  This UK item squares with our observations of a busy drop in centre in the Greater Toronto Area where personal care supplies were always very popular.
Poverty driving people to choose between eating or keeping clean. In Kind Direct charity warns of ‘hidden crisis’ facing thousands after it distributes £20.2m of hygiene products in one year
theguardian.com
See also:
(1094) Period poverty
(597) Free tampons!
link, map

(1083) 86 million acres


Enormous pressure will soon be placed on the world’s croplands as they are exchanged for human habitat.  Mind boggling stuff, even without consideration of climate change!
By 2030 megacities may devour more than 86 million acres of prime farmland
modernfarmer.com
An elegant monochrome map of the  world’s settlements.
German scientists made this excruciatingly detailed simulacrum of the “global urban footprint”
citylab.com

image: Duncan Rawlinson via Flickr/CC

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(1076) Ontario food bank usage [Report]

kd
A smidgen of good news on food bank use in Ontario: a slight drop in the number of users.  The ‘hydro or food’ angle in this latest report from the Ontario Association of Food Banks was picked up in Orangeville, Sarnia, Guelph, Woodstock, the GTA, Hamilton, Parry Sound, Flamborough, Sault Ste. Marie, Belleville, London, the Kawarthas, North Bay, Ottawa, Niagara Region, Brant, Perth, Simcoe, Ingersoll, Cambridge, the Muskokas, Durham Region, you know, pretty much the entire province.
Number of food bank users down in Ontario but still 335,000 a month: report. High hydro bills, precarious work, inadequate social assistance all contributing, association says

image: Ginny via Flickr/CC