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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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There is an excellent letter about New Orleans in today's Globe and Mail by Judy Rebick, publisher of rabble.ca and long time activist. (An aside: unfortunately the Globe locks up their letters page online with a cute little red key icon
meaning that you have to pay to read it. Fair enough, I guess, newspapers gotta make a buck just like everybody else, but you'd think maybe the letters to the editor could be free). Anyhow, Rebick points out that a key factor in the "societal breakdown" in New Orleans, is the steady dismantling of the social safety net that started under Regan in the 1980s, and had continued every since. Instead of spending tax dollars on welfare and unemployment insurance, we pay for police. This is Canada's problem too. As Rebick says, "Cuts to social services and infrastructure to fund tax reductions and security services lead to a breakdown in a sense of community and caring for each other. In good times that breakdown is suffered by the poor while the rest of us look away."