Eko Joshua Goldberg

Social work as social control

with Flora Pagan

We can learn a great deal from the state responses to Super InTent City (SIC). In contracting the Portland Hotel Society (PHS) in April 2016 to “manage” the camp after losing their first injunction application, the provincial government showed that when it is unable to use police against homeless people, it turns to social work for social control. Once forcible eviction was denied by the courts, the state sought to break SIC’s political power through the provision of social services. (…)

Reflections on housing justice activism in British Columbia

I’ve been thinking a lot in the past couple days about the opportunity to engage in discussion about what we are fighting for and what we believe about what it would take to ensure that everyone has a safe, decent, affordable home. These are important discussions. My experience is not in government policy, law, or economics. I can’t pretend to be expert on any of these things or to know what from within the system would be most effective or most politically pragmatic. What I know from activism is that there are contradictions at every turn in trying to get the system to do things differently, because the worlds of policy, law and economics all share the same rotten foundation. (…)