OCAP MASS PANHANDLE OF ‘THE PATH’

Wednesday December 12 2007
11:00am
Meet in the Park just west of the King and Bay intersection
Breakfast will be served

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is preparing to mobilize
homeless people and their supporters to come down into the showpiece
underground PATH system for a mass panhandle. We want to make clear why
we are carrying out this action and what users of the PATH can expect from
us.

Huge cuts to social programs and a desperate lack of affordable housing
have fueled a crisis of homelessness in Toronto. Instead of meeting the
needs of the homeless, those in power are looking to drive them out.
Hostels have been closed and people forced onto the streets to beg. Then,
police are used to harass and criminalize people trying to survive.

It is the developers, the major merchants and suchlike who press for a
policy of sweeping homeless people under the rug. They don’t want their