A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

I wrote a letter to the editor to the Victoria Times Colonist that they ran Sept 27 as an opinion piece , which I then posted on Facebook, where it got major traction primarily among people who aren't my "followers."  I'm saying all of that because it has led me to conclude that those of us who think like this about the social crisis burning on all of our communities' streets need to be way more out there in public spheres with our thoughts. There is more support than we might think, and governments that only ever hear from the highly active lock-em-up types need to know that.  Let's take a leaf from the populist playbook and get loud at every opportunity. (Ideally by pointing out the reality rather than just shouting angrily at the "other side" that they're idiots, though I admit I came pretty close to doing that in this particular rant, didn't I?) I fear that some of us in this fight have concluded that it's hopeless to openly push back...

I remember a time when I thought that online comment sections under news stories would encourage the sharing of fascinating insights and common wisdom, and that social media would be such a force for good in bringing us together in community around the world. Who WAS that stupid woman? She’s long gone now, though I do miss her optimism. She didn’t yet know that human beings are really quite awful and unstable when grouped by the millions into dangerous tribes brimming with hate and given free licence to say the most awful things about each other. I’ve done a lot of reading over the years to try to understand human beings. It has given me more understanding at a scholarly level, I suppose, but I’m still pretty baffled overall. We are wild animals dressed up in the thinnest veneers of civility. We achieve greatness, then we tear it all down. The blame for our increasingly outrageous ways gets apportioned depending on your tribe, of course. It’s the alt-right. It’s the woke. It’s the tran...

  I was standing on the beach at Esquimalt Lagoon a couple of days ago, gazing out across the sea at the Olympic Peninsula and having that usual thought of how lucky I was to live amid such beauty. But it isn’t actually luck, is it? It’s planning. If the beach I was standing on happened to have been located in a different part of the world, it would very likely all be private property now, bought up by people who love the vista too but want it only for themselves. Or it might be covered in garbage and plastics. Or reeking of raw sewage. There might be a factory on the shore, or uncontrolled industry spread across the landscape. Someone might have built a big casino there, or a 24-hour disco. There almost certainly wouldn’t be a protected bird sanctuary across from the beach, with nice paths in all directions and easy, safe roadside parking. That none of that happened had nothing to do with luck. Virtually everything about my very pleasant experience at the beach that day ...

The concept of “passing” has presumably been around since whenever the first person on the outside of the dominant social group of the day figured out they could hide in plain sight because they had the good fortune of looking like they belonged. You’re a black person in the pre-Civil Rights era, but your genetics gave you light skin and straight hair. You’re Jewish in Hitler’s Germany, but with an acceptably Aryan bone structure as to draw no negative attention. You’re a trans woman using a women’s washroom, but your physical appearance is sufficiently “feminine” that nobody has a thought about that. You’re a sex worker in a hostile room of those mean kind of feminists who hate sex work, but everybody treats you respectfully because you look like them and they have no idea what you do for a living. You’re LGBTQ in a land that will have none of it, living out your secrets from inside a heterosexual marriage. You’re a daily user of street drugs, but you’ve got a job, a nice house and a ...

I spent a bit of time on “the block” this past weekend, that stretch of Pandora Avenue that is currently one of the city’s most visible hot spots of social crisis. I hope the city’s big plan works out well for all concerned, and sign me up for helping. But after three decades of watching so many variations of Victoria councils trying to get a handle on this issue, it's obvious that we'll just be moving street problems into someone else's neighbourhood unless we grasp what really creates these hot spots.  There's a tough little core of maybe 70-100 people at any given point in time in our region who are youngish, hardy, and deep in a late-stage struggle with whatever substance has got them, generally with mental and physical illnesses taking an additional toll. Their chaotic and unpredictable lives place them far outside the many rules, online forms, waiting periods, and service restrictions they face when trying to get help. Like anyone, they need to get their needs met...

Anyone else like a radio opportunity that gives free range to say whatever you want to sound off about,  but then you listen to it and think good grief, couldn't I have been more eloquent and organized in my thinking? Ah, but then I wouldn't be me, right? Or that's what I like to tell myself.  Here I am, blathering on People First Radio this month about the street scene in Victoria. For some reason, I'm listening to it for the first time today, 10 days after it aired. I think that might relate to my reluctance to not want to hear myself talking in random, wandering, no-key-messages fashion. That's my dealio, but that's not to say that I love that I do it that way.  But all that said, thank you, Joe Pugh, for letting me sound off in my usual stream-of-conscious style, and for including some clips from the speaker series on the toxic drug crisis that I organized in partnership with Peers Victoria earlier this year.  On the upside, illicit drug deaths in BC fell t...

I hope the inquest recommendations that have come out of tragedy in a University of Victoria residence really do lead to major change. What happened to Sidney McIntyre-Starko is very sad, and there were some major stumbles on a number of fronts leading up to her death at 18 from toxic drugs. But if anyone is thinking that the terrible stigma that hangs over illicit drug use got eased by all the news coverage of this young woman’s death, just let that one go. If anything, the coverage deepened stigma. Right to the final stories, we have seen photos of beautiful Sidney in all her active, “normal” roles, been reminded that this was the first time she’d ever used drugs. She was a good person, we have been assured many times by those quoted in the stories. She died because of system failures, the stories emphasize, not because she was a drug user. And there it is. The stigma. The coverage is careful not to say out loud that Sidney was not like all the other drug users who are dying, b...