Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History

Contents: Part 1. Introduction: The Long History of Toronto's Poor. Conceptualizing the Dispossessed: Capitalism, Crisis, and Class: Why Have the Poor Always Been With Us? -- Dispossession: The Nursery of Class Struggle -- Capitalist Crises: Class Conflict From Above and Below -- Toronto: A Locale Within the Global -- Class Struggle in Our Times -- Bringing the Dispossessed into the PictureVClass Politics and Dispossession: The Left and the Wageless. Part 2. "Cracking the Stone": The Origins of Toronto's Dispossessed, 1830-1928. Land and Labour in Old Ontario -- Toronto's House of Industry -- In the Era of Confederation: Capitalist State Formation and the Poor -- The Underside of the Great Upheaval, 1873-1896 -- Protesting "Labour Tests" -- The Black Flag Remembered; The Tramp Reviled -- Capitalist Consolidation and the Left-Led Unemployed Movement in Pre-Second World War Toronto -- The Left and the Toronto Jobless Before the Great Depression, 1915-1925. Part 3. "United We Eat; Divided We Starve": The Toronto Unemployed Movement, 1929-1939. Reds and the Unemployed in Canada's Great Depression: From Third Period to Popular Front -- The Single Unemployed and Toronto's Communist Battle for the Streets: Heroes 1914-Bums 1933 -- The Single Unemployed: Bound for Anything But Glory -- Laver vs. The Lodge: The Voucher War of 1932-1933 and the Consolidation of a Regulatory Order -- On the Trail of Harvey Jackson, William M. McKnight, Clifford Mashery, and George Haig: The Single Unemployed Present at Their Own Remaking -- Marginalizing the Marginal: Single Unemployed Women Toronto Trekkers -- Depression's Denouement: The Winding Down of the Struggles of Single Unemployed Men, 1937-1939 -- Crisis of Unemployment = Housing Crisis Evictions: "They Shall Not Pass" -- The Jobless Take Job Action: Early Relief Strikes, 1932-1933 -- A "Red" Among Relief Recipients: Long Branch's Ernest Lawrie -- Reds, Riots, and Raising the Relief Rates: March-May 1935 -- Upping the Ante: The Hepburn Offensive and the Militancy of the Unemployed, 1936 -- Lakeview Militancy and a Hepburn Ambush, 1938 -- Closing Out the Decade: Relief Strikes and the Call to Abolish Relief Work. Part 4. "A Hopeless Failure": The Limitations and Erosion of the Modern Welfare State, 1940-2015 -- The Uneven Origins of an Incomplete Welfare State -- In the Shadow of the Great Depression, War, and the Emerging Welfare State: Episodic Struggle in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s -- A Sixties Turn: The Just Society, the New Left, and the "Discovery" of the Poor, 1965-1975 -- Hard Times: Capitalist Crises, Ideological Initiative, and the State Assault on the Dispossessed, 1973-2015. Part 5. "Fight to Win!": The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and the Return/Revenge of the Dispossessed, 1985-2015 -- Marauding Through the 1980s and into the 1990s: The Many-Sided Attack on the Poor -- Mobilizing Against the Marauders: The Revival of Poor People's Agitations in the 1980s -- Marching to Mobilization: The Beginnings of OCAP -- Mulroneyville, NDP Welfare Cheats, and Operation Desert Gypsy -- Revolution from Above, Against Those Below: The Poor Fight Back -- Homelessness and the Freezing Deaths Inquest, 1995-1996 -- Squats and NIMBYs: OCAP Escalates the Struggle -- More Deaths, More Protests, More Complacency (And Worse) -- Squeegees, Soliciting, and the Safe Streets Act: OCAP Continues to Counter -- Ottawa Bound and Bringing the War Against Poverty Back Home to Queen's Park -- "The Long Retreat is Over": Common Fronts -- Evicting Flaherty, Snake Walking Through Toronto's Financial District, and Squatting for Affordable Housing -- Squatting With the Pope and the Tenants of Tent City -- Miller Time: Streets to Homes and the Death of Paul Croutch -- Two Faces of Social Cleansing -- A Women's Squat -- Raise the Rates! The Special Diet Supplement -- Turning on the TAP: Toronto Against Poverty -- Another Demolition Job: The Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit -- Hostels Under Attack: OCAP Fights Back. Part 6. Conclusion: "Bread I Want, And Bread I Will Have."