Today is the International Day of Peace 2024. Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox. What better time to talk about Basic Income's potential than these days for celebrating peacefulness and change!
The theme for this year's United Nations celebration of Peace is "Creating a Culture of Peace". Imagine how implementation of a Basic Income Guarantee might aid in a just transition and the cultivation of a culture of greater peace and well-being!
I thought about Basic Income a lot this past summer. It seemed that everywhere I turned on this little Island in the sea there was more and more evidence of people living in poverty and the increasingly desperate manifestations of its inherent suffering.
Homelessness, food insecurity and increasing financial precariousness are seemingly inescapable realities for far too many Islanders (and persons the world over). Despair and addiction can so easily go hand in hand with these incredibly challenging realities.
Over and over again I said to my family, that from all I have read on it, a Guaranteed Basic Income would help alleviate the suffering of so many. It would bring much needed hope and dignity instead of hardship and despair.
Last November a pan-Canadian group of volunteers released a Proposal for a Basic Income Guarantee for Prince Edward Island which has been described as:
"... politically feasible, affordable and socially acceptable."In other words...in “the realm of the possible.” https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2024/p-e-i-guaranteed-basic-income/
When I think of the hope that is so desperately needed I cannot help but feel a sense of brightness about the dignity that could be returned to people by increasing their personal sense of agency over the trajectory of their lives via improved economic circumstances.
When you are caught in trauma's grip, whether that trauma is of a personal nature and/or inter-generational and/or collective trauma, you lose your sense of agency over creation of a more hopeful tomorrow.
Living under the incredible constraints and excesses, production and destructiveness of neoliberalism has been and continues to be, a trauma crisis we all are part of to varying degrees. Same too with living in a time of climate upheaval. These are both moving parts of the traumatically complex world we now live in. Our ability to navigate these realities is inherently dis-equal. Those most marginalized by the current economic system are also the most negatively affected by the polycrisis. They are more easily traumatized by the harms of modern life and less well equipped to manage these harms.
Trauma's effect on the nervous system can cause you to no longer believe that a brighter future is possible. It can freeze you in the past. It can turn off creative problem solving. It can make you believe that you are not deserving of better days ahead.
Helping restore hope to those who live their lives mired in difficulty is vital. It is the responsibility of caring communities to care for those whom, for any number of reasons, are unable to meet their own basic needs at a given time. And especially so as we are still living out the consequences of our western culture having its roots deeply entrenched in capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism with grimy tentacles still reaching to the living earth for resource extraction and towards us for human spirit manipulation and exploitation.
To paraphrase Thomas Hubl's words from a webinar I took on healing collective trauma the weekend before last:
"How vital a return of a sense of agency is to embodied hopefulness." Thomas Hubl
You don't have to walk very far through any downtown to see what embodied despair looks like. It is also not limited to inner cities. Despair and hopelessness do not exist solely in certain geographical regions though cities and towns are most often the sites of homeless encampments. And so often despair has its roots intertwined with a history of trauma and the brutal realities of poverty.
Imagine what embodied hopefulness might look like for those knee deep in the struggles of poverty and/or caught by trauma's stranglehold!
Imagine how beautiful it could be to return agency and dignity to those most marginalized by our current economic model!
Imagine what a culture of radical care such as this might look like!
Imagine how a Guaranteed Basic Income could pave the way towards improved ease for those living on the margins!
Another beautiful event I caught a bit of online the weekend before last was the Atlantic Conference on Basic Income held in Halifax with several amazing Islanders taking part as presenters, on panels and via zoom.
While the weekend did have several presenters from PEI take part, I only managed to catch a brief segment with Sean Casey due to some technical difficulties on site but I did, earlier on, get to listen in full to my dear friend Marie Burge as she spoke eloquently on her hope for the establishment of a 5-7 year Basic Income demonstration project on PEI.
She told of the "new federal-provincial group being formed to begin a cross-jurisdictional discussion about the (November 2023) Proposal for a Guaranteed Basic Income Benefit for PEI". She spoke of the "gift of jurisdiction" that we have here in this small province of PEI and the widespread support for the project here.
As well, she answered the question "WHY NOW?" regarding PEI and Basic Income:
"Why Now?
the clock is ticking on basic income
we are currently on the verge of a basic income breakthrough
we can make new progress on our goal of a basic income for all
we already have widespread community support as well as political will on all sides (data shows we have 75% of the population in favour of basic income)
this is a crucial time to pull out all the basic income stops and carry the strength of this support (a potential federal election in the offing)
let's do it together as one Atlantic voice
the people themselves have to decide that we are going to go forward with this
we must move forward and not be discouraged
we need to use basic income to help address those problems rooted in capitalism and colonialism" (Marie Burge, Atlantic Basic Income Conference Sept 2024)
"GO FOR IT PEI!" said Marie in her jubilantly hopeful way! I could not agree more!
Let's see what good basic income could do here as part of a just transition towards a more equitable, sustainable and well tomorrow. It would seem to this heart and mind that we only have a whole lot of suffering to lose in doing so.
There was another very engaging speaker who I did manage to catch (after Marie and a panel discussion) named Dr Gary Bloch.
Dr Gary Bloch is a social justice advocate whose work as a physician working with marginalized communities in Toronto has led him to believe that prescribing income is a vital next step in helping to cure what ails us in the modern world.
He continually presses medicine "to recognize the vital importance of social realities on health outcomes."
As he stated, "poverty is already known to be a hugely impactful part of the social determinants" of health.
He, like Marie and many others speaking at the conference, has spent many, many years working to better the lives of those living in poverty. He implores people to consider "what social realities actually look like on the ground for those who are living socially marginalized lives."
He welcomes us to look at "the real complexities involved" and not just consider things in silos such as "stories of racism, poverty, ableism" but instead look at the deeply "interwoven stories of their lives".
(Me, Jill, in bed at night... I sometimes just dream of what a world without siloed information might look like and imagine the possibilities if people realized everything is intimately interconnected and inextricably intertwined...but I digress.) :)
He, Dr Bloch, urges people to consider asking the hard and real questions of "who owns the stories being shared and how can we shift power back into these communities where people's actual lives are being lived?"
He sees and works towards a much needed shift in medicine (as moving from one which is deeply conservative, colonial and capitalistic to one which centers those whose needs are being addressed) as similar to the economic shift which implementation of basic income would provide. He envisions the ways each shift would center those on the current margins to have real community voices heard.
He is a powerful voice of compassion in the world.
And speaking of powerful voices of compassion in the world, I must include a word or two from the amazing Senator Kim Pate whose steady, caring nature comes through in all she does towards building a more just world. She reminded Atlantic Basic Income Conference attendees that "poverty already costs us billions each year to keep people in poverty" and that "the prisons are full of all the people every other system fails."
Golly, she speaks her truth with jarring honesty.
What might a culture of radical care look like to you?
Do you see the incredible value a basic income could have in reducing poverty and its inherent suffering?
After reading this post can you see how a basic income as part of a Just Transition could help reduce the violence in the world that occurs as a result of so much despair and othering?
Can you imagine how it might help bring about a culture of Peace?
Are you willing to imagine a more peace-filled world via a basic income guarantee as part and parcel in bringing about a more Just Transition?
Thanks for reading!
Peace and Love to you!
In breath,
Jill
Addendum:
On this Int'l Day of Peace 2024, in the words of a dear, recently deceased, beloved friend who was a voice for a more inclusive, caring, peace, justice and love filled world, the wonderful Phil Callaghan as published in the Guardian Oct 19, 2023:
The Island Peace Committee stands in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the Middle East. We do so as the clouds of destruction of an unparalleled nature rise over the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza but in other parts of the Palestinian lands such as the West Bank.
The Island Peace Committee, since its beginning in the 1980s, has continuously demonstrated against various wars around the world. We believe that war is humanity's greatest crime. We believe most, if not all wars, could be prevented with peaceful dialogue and negotiations. So we call upon the governments of the world to insist on an immediate ceasefire in the war on Gaza and the people of Palestine and the opening of negotiations to return the Palestinian territories according to the borders established in 1967.
While always condemning violence of any kind, it is especially in our time necessary to remind ourselves that the media, in particular mainstream media, has an obligation to demonstrate non-biased, anti-discriminatory reporting. This it certainly is not doing in these days. This only adds to further bloodshed and violence and results in deepening hatreds. The media must change to contribute for the furtherance of peace. We join with all who hope to stop this war with its horrific brutality and carnage and many others wars around our world and hold out our arms to embrace all other peoples, but especially the brutalized people of Palestine, in peace built on justice for all.
Philip Callaghan, Island Peace Committee
ps...a big thank you to the wonderful Michael Lewis of Synergia Institute's MOOC Towards Co-operative Commonwealth:Transition in a Perilous Century, for sharing with me the link to the upcoming zoom meet on How can Universal Basic Income Aid a Just Transition
pss...a few more links...
You are so right Jill, and hopefully the time will soon arrive when basic guaranteed income will finally become a reality. It needs to happen as the time is way past due. An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped. Keep hoping, working, praying. ma