[van-announce] OCAP- Urgent Appeal for Funding

[ron]

OCAP CAN'T PAY ITS ORGANIZERS OR FEND OFF BELL CANADA MUCH LONGER

Please Rush us your Support and Circulate this Appeal Widely

    On April 17th, OCAP will rally outside the plush condo of Liberal Social
Services Minister to demand a 40% increase in social assistance rates in
Ontario.  This will kick off a major 'Raise the Rates' campaign that will
unfold throughout the year and that, we believe, can force the McGunity
Regime to meet basic human needs they would otherwise cheerfully ignore.

    Gallingly, on the very week we are making final preparations for this
key action, we are faced with a very unwelcome distraction.  Organizer's
wages remain unpaid since last week.  We have no means of paying our phone
  bill and meeting a number of other obligations.  We scraped up the rent
for  our office for April but the prospects for May are bleak.  Once again
and  more seriously than ever before, we have simply hit the wall.

    At this point, we can only repeat the points we've made on other
occasions.  We are a militant poor peoples' organization that has no hope
of  tapping into 'respectable' sources of funding.  No branch of
government  will hand us a grant.  No foundation will look at us.  It's no
secret that  even a number of major trade unions that normally back social
justice  causes consider the course we chart too controversial for them to
back.  We  operate mainly on the basis of relatively small individual
donations sent  in by the activists and community members who support and
respect the work  we do and it is to people like you that we turn to at
this time.

    We are an organization that holds major actions to win housing, resist
social cutbacks, racist immigration polices, etc.  However, we are also
rooted in the daily fight to defend poor people and communities under
attack.  We intervene in hundreds of cases to win social benefits, stop
evictions, prevent deportations and much besides.  We put out a list of
available housing that agencies throughout the City rely upon.  We go to
court to fight the tickets given to homeless people under the infamous
Safe  Streets Act and other 'social cleansing' laws.  We are on the front
lines  in the struggle to defend communities under attack.

    OCAP plays a role it is proud of and asks you to ensure we can continue
to move forward.  As we've said in other appeals, it's more than a little
unfair that we must scramble for very modest operating costs when those
who  try to silence us are awash in resources.  Last year's jury trials of
OCAP  members that failed to establish a case or result in convictions
involved  an expenditure or public resources that would have funded our
work for, we  calculate, the next  eighteen to twenty years!

    This is not a cynical appeal we send out to generate a little extra
operating cash.  By the end of next week, we will have to talk in terms of
  letting organizers go or some other basic cuts to our operations and we
are  determined to avoid such a situation because we have very little to
cut  into.  Please rush personal donations to us, let likeminded people
know  about our crisis and go to your union local or community
organization to  try and win further support.

Thanks,

OCAP

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
10 Britain Street
Toronto, ON
M5A 1R6