Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (Essay Sample)

Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Ontario Coalition against Poverty The fight against poverty dates back to the world war two where economic crisis emerged. These crises are believed to be the cause of devastating irrational logic of capitalism. Capitalists have taken advantage by transforming most economic systems to the new and latest plants in societies. This has eventually led to over-accumulation where private investors take on huge costs and come up with massive equipment which ends up with losses or rather inadequate profits. Thus, majority of the plants collapse due to bankruptcy. This is the chief cause of poverty in the society. Many individuals suffer of low wages and poor working conditions that manifests from capitalism (McNally, 124). The concept of surplus value roughly refers to the new value that is created by employees in private business entities. This value is always excess of their labor cost thus it is available to the capitalist. Moreover, it gives room for growth of profits hence it is believed to be the basis of accumulation of capital. In a capitalism economy, exploitation of human labor is the order of the day. The owners of private businesses tend to work towards the surplus value by engaging their workers in surplus labor which goes unpaid for. Precisely, surplus value is directly linked to the rate of exploitation of human labor and capital accumulation by capitalists. Therefore, many individuals spend lots of time offering extra labor of which they are not be rewarded for; employers are the ones benefiting since it increases the surplus value. The push for surplus value by capitalists accelerates the level of poverty and staff humiliation. Ontario coalition against poverty (OCAP) is among the famous movements or rather organizations that struggle to eradicate poverty in Ontario. The coalition was established in the year 1989 by a number of activists based in Toronto. Most of its founders came from the Toronto Union of Workers which used the slogan “March against poverty.” The aim or objective of this coalition was to promote the concerns and various actions related to homelessness, poverty and gentrification in the downtown Toronto. The reputation of the coalition is gained through its use of the “direct action” strategies and tactics. Apart from homelessness, the movement fights for affordable housing, the rights of refugees and general welfare of citizens. It always stands by the poor in the society thus it is proven a vocal critic in the State. OCAP has been successful in implementing its “direct action” tactic and strategy in order to effectively fight poverty in the state. The strategy is meant to build the strength of people in the society by bringing together different individuals from diverse communities, with similar needs and concerns which are not effectively being attended to by immigration officials, welfare officials and housing offices. In a group, the gathered individuals alongside their supporters march towards appropriate offices to demand solutions to their claims and in most cases they refuse to leave until the offices meet their demands (McNally, 148). Ontario Coalition against Poverty is being funded through donations from private sectors and support from the labor unions across the country. The movement has blocked major streets and squatters abandoned a number of buildings in order to apply pressure to the authorities for them to be converted into housing. Furthermore, it has staged various public demonstrations, crashed several political events and conducted confrontational demonstrations in some of the wealthy neighborhoods. Among the associations which are always confronted by OCAP are the Neighborhood organizations which attempt to close various homeless shelters and evict the poor people from neighborhoods. However, the tactics being applied by OCAP to attain its objectives are believed to be controversial. Thus, some of the leaders of the group have been charged in courts of law and convicted. OCAP’s confrontational approaches have earned it significant publicity and fame from the public, the police and politicians. The movement argues that it has managed to produce substantial results in changing some of the government policy, increasing general supply of quality and affordable housing, stopped deportations and helped individuals gain the social support and payments. Direct Action This is a tactic used by OCAP to attain its objectives. It is conducted under three major principles which include: Combining legal work and disruptive action, not to copy the work done by legal clinics and other agencies and forwarding political goals but never to compromise the interests of your colleagues in the process of work. To start with, Combining legal work and disruptive action means that one should have an understanding of every bit of detail about what individuals are entitled to as provided in the law. At the same time one should realize that the poor have much power in staging disruptive action. Through forwarding of several cases of people who do not receive entitled benefits under the law, one creates an acceptable legal support to their demands. Thus, by through combination of laws with disruptive action, one manages to bring teeth to their demands. Landlords, government bureaucrats and other bosses often break laws and rules at the cost of poor people in the society. These parties always to do this without any challenges from the people involved since the official channels meant for appealing are lengthy, ineffective and costly. Therefore, direct action strategy is specifically designed to cut through such so as to enable the poor people get what is rightfully theirs. For many years revolution has been a contagious issue since the rise of capitalism. OCAP has been fighting the tension in the organization and general society through restructurings and active drastic transformations. The movement uses reforms to amend and improve what is unsatisfactory among the lives of people in Ontario. Furthermore, the organization implements drastic transformations by getting down to the root sources or rather causes of the problem and apply direct action to fight and create a change in the society. Self-activity and mass action staged in one place escalated explosions from state to state. The trade unions have that power to stage strikes by withdrawing their labor and stopping all their contributions to the systems. If poor individuals fail to take part in such mass actions, they gain no power and their lack of participation in fights for their welfare definitely benefits the governments since less cash will continue to be offered. Instead, the poor individuals should fully take part in such revolutions, stage mass action and engage in disruption of regular operations of systems so as to gain and secure power (McNally, 336). The second principle that supports direct action, not to copy the work done by legal clinics and other agencies implies that so many agencies and organizations receive funding from legal authorities to service the poor and fight on their behalf. Unfortunately, there are gaps where these groups fail to provide the people with the services they deserve. They tend to exploit these opportunities. Thus, through direct action actions, these gaps are filled. For instance, in welfare, a legal clinic is supposed to make appeals if someone is treated unfairly. They take longs periods of time to do this, forgetting money is really needed by their clients. This is always evident in capitalism, an economic system that is made up of many private investors. Therefore, it is extremely crucial for the coalition not to copy the job done by other legal clinics and agencies since one could easily fail to implement appropriate policies after being funded. Instead, OCAP advocates for awareness of the services it provides to people so as it can give relevant refers to people who need them. In most cases, the coalition deals with people who have already exhausted all the legal and official channels. The third principle, forwarding political goals but never to compromise the interests of your colleagues in the process of work implies that for every case the coalition deals with, it must be made political. Obviously, OCAP is serving its client but on the other hand, it is protesting against an unjust system and forwarding several political goals should be done where possible. The principle states that these actions should not compromise with the interests of the people being served. Winning is the coalition’s priority once it has taken on a case. Furthermore, OCAP belie...