Kingstonist file photo.
Editor's note: The following is an opinion piece submitted regarding the City of Kingston's Daytime Evacuation Ordinance, which is part of the City of Kingston's Parks Ordinance, and the City's new Community Standards Ordinance. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Kingstonians.
I'm embarrassed lately. why? Because Kingston is becoming famous for its cruelty.
Friends in other cities who read the news can see what's happening. Kingston's ongoing attack on the poor is not the kind of propaganda that civic leaders should be promoting. Nor should they be tolerated.
On my regular walks through Bell Park with my dog, I notice the courage and resilience of the park's brave and resourceful residents, whose courage and resilience I have long admired, plunged into despair in the face of the city's new measures. I witnessed it.
The Bell Park evictions are terrorizing some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Those who support the poor and resist evictions protect their fellow citizens using the only means left to them: their bodies.
Amazingly, our city is going to expel people from encampments and at the same time make it illegal for people to loiter in the streets. The infamous new Community Standards Ordinance (soon to take effect) targets people who loiter or urinate in public. Where should people who have been evicted go? Where are the public restrooms we need?
This is a combination of cruelty that ignores satire. The city built a pressure cooker. I can't believe the City Council could be so mean and short-sighted. And, frankly, he is extremely ignorant by enacting two policies at the same time.
Recently, tents have been erected all over the city. I noticed that there were tents in places where there were no tents before. Shopping carts laden with belongings are appearing in places where no such signs of poverty have been seen before.
Kingston criminalizes poverty, frog-marching the poor from their encampments, and making them the targets of cruel new ordinances.
dawn clarke
Retired Unification Church pastor
Kingston, Ontario.
Please share your opinion! Send a letter to the editor or an op-ed to Kingstonist Editor-in-Chief Tori Stafford. [email protected].
