Anti-Poverty Walk was ‘life-changing, a huge success'

By Geoffrey Agombar

Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

Bill Knowlton describes his recent Bridgetown-Halifax walk to raise awareness about poverty reduction as “Mindblowing. Life-changing. Amazingly positive. It was overwhelming, really. The whole thing. A huge success.”

As previously reported, the small business owner left Bridgetown October 20 to travel on foot the nearly 200 kilometres to Province House, where he hoped to meet the Premier on October 27. Along the way he would gather signed postcards demanding a line in the 2009 budget dedicating financial means to the fight against poverty in Nova Scotia.

At the time of his departure, Knowlton was unsure of two things: how his body would withstand the physical challenge and whether the Premier would accept his invitation and meet him on the steps of Province House. “Physically, it was awful. I had sore feet, blisters, cramps, and the weather was brutal: pounding wind, rain and cold all week. But I was never at a loss for inspiration. Every town we passed through people came up to tell us their stories. By the end of Day 2, I knew I wasn’t going to have any trouble finishing the walk. It wasn’t about me or my sore feet any more. It was about all these people who desperately need help.”

Knowlton’s wife Wendy and daughter Julie accompanied him, sometimes in the support vehicle, sometimes walking alongside. Wendy remembers “At one point, [Julie] asked me, ‘Mommy, is this walk going to help?’ and I told her, yes, because all those people who kept coming out to tell us their stories, they felt alone before, and now they don’t.”

Not that road-side support was a given. Knowlton says, “There were people who drove by yelling, ‘Get a Job!’ or throwing pennies. One guy pulled up and aggressively argued with me that there must be no problem because he couldn’t find anyone to work for his business. But what he needed was skilled labourers. So I told him for the people I’m talking about he’d need to find training, find transportation, and find child care. It was a pretty tense discussion, but he did admit that only the government could do something about those problems. But every negative experience like that was outweighed by dozens of people honking their horns or stopping to lend their support.”

Knowlton heard many personal stories along the way.

EMOTIONALLY DRAINING “That part was pretty emotionally draining, but it made it easier to keep walking. What came through everywhere was a sense of urgency. People who needed help now. Particularly on issues of health and heating. For example, one guy on Day 1, not far from here, who was terminally ill with only a few months to live. He’d sold everything to pay for his cancer treatments, and now he didn’t have any money to pay for heating. He was wrapped up in blankets and came out to give us a couple bottles of water. That was all he had to offer, but he wanted to thank us for what we were doing to get people talking.”

He also met people and heard stories explaining how easy it is to end up on social assistance, and how hard it is to get out. “Ninety per cent of us are just six missed paychecks from entering the system. I met one young mother, 26 years old, with two kids under 10, who decided to get a job to get off of social assistance and be a better example to her kids. She found a job picking grapes. Then her daughter needed glasses, and because she wasn’t on social assistance anymore no one could help her. Then she broke a knuckle, and she didn’t qualify for EI yet and social assistance would not kick in for weeks if she stopped working. So she kept working. The farmer was so impressed he kept her on long enough to qualify for EI for the first time in her life. Then while she was waiting for her first EI check, temperatures dropped and she couldn’t afford heating oil. Her pipes froze and burst. Now what! It’s not that people are lazy or don’t want to work. The system’s broken, people are falling through the cracks, and our government needs to do something about it. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Look at Ireland. They set clear goals, and set aside real money to achieve them, and their economy is booming.”

PREMIER A NO-SHOW

While Knowlton was encouraged by political response from the opposition parties, he was underwhelmed by the response of the ruling Progressive Conservatives. “Steven McNeil (Liberal Leader) and Trevor Zinck (NDP Social Services Critic) were there to meet me. The PCs sent no one. First they were emailing me to say the Premier couldn’t come, but a minister would. Then a deputy minister would be there instead. Then no one. Basically, they said no one in the entire PC party was free that day. But they sent a letter of congratulations with a nice picture of the premier on it. In it they tried to lay claim to achievements like infrastructure improvements – which is not an anti-poverty action – and changes to transfer allowances to the municipalities – which is not an anti-poverty action – and Bill 94 – which was a Liberal bill passed with the support of the NDP, and they have basically ignored the findings of the anti-poverty study that it mandated. Basically, they had done nothing, and had nothing planned. I called the Premier out in a CTV interview that night saying he was out of touch with Nova Scotians, and that his letter was insulting because he thought I’d be happy to be congratulated personally for my achievements. He doesn’t understand that it’s not about me. It’s about these people who need help and their government, which doesn’t have the guts to do anything to help them. (Liberal MLA) Leo Glavine said it pretty good, when he told me ‘I’m no expert. We have a group for that. The problem is the group came back with 30 recommendations – We don’t have a government that can deal with 30 recommendations right now.’”

In one way, the Premier’s snub was helpful, Knowlton said. “If he’d come to accept the postcards in person, he could have just said some nice things, and put them in a drawer somewhere. But because he wasn’t there, the NDP took them and submitted them in the Legislative Assembly as a petition the next week, which means the government has to explain in the Assembly how it will respond. It was immediately tabled, so we’re still waiting for the official response. But, at this point, we have 29 MLAs (from the NDP and Liberals) who say they are committed to fighting for this anti-poverty budget line in the 2009 budget debates.”

THE FUTURE

From his discussions with politicos and his observations at the Assembly, Knowlton’s hopes are low that the opposition will carry through on this promise in the short term. “From what I could tell, (NDP Leader) Dexter is pretty much driving the agenda right now. Looks like it’s up to McNeil to decide when he’s ready to pull the plug. And, it sounds like they all think that will happen on the budget vote, with or without a line for anti-poverty spending, if not before.”

Knowlton therefore plans to continue his crusade to raise public awareness and maintain political pressure, “I’m not prepared to describe my plans, because they’re still taking shape. Sometime next year we’ll be ready to talk about that. But I can tell you that we’ll keep working on One Step at a Time; that it will stay grassroots/bottom-up; it will stay focused on putting individual faces on the problem; and that it will be activist, not militant. What I mean by that is, it will work within the system not against the system. It’s a political issue that requires political action, so progress will happen on political grounds.”

One thing is sure, says Knowlton, “I’d be a fool or heartless not to continue this work now. There’s a lot to be done. We’re busier now than before the walk!” ----

The Elminating Poverty One Step at a Time walk hand-delivered 500 signed postcards, and estimates another 500 were delivered by mail. Any future postcards sent to Province House should be added to the “petition” before the Legislature.

For more information or to get involved with future One Step at a Time projects, contact Knowlton through his blog www.theballsyfeminist.blogspot.com or at Bill & Lee’s Pizza in downtown Bridgetown.