Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011

From: Four Directions Walk <fourdirectionswalk></fourdirectionswalk>

Subject: Four Directions Walk Cte meeting – Tues, Nov 1

Four Direction Walk to End Poverty in Manitoba

Dear Friends, Sisters and Brothers,

Thank you everyone who attended, walked and helped out with this year’s 4DW last Saturday! We’ll be having a meeting to see how things went and make plans:

Four Directions Walk Committee

Tues, Nov. 1, 4:30 pm

St. Matthews Maryland Church

641 Maryland

(Use the South door on McGee)

Everyone is welcome.

Numbers, media, etc.

This was our largest annual Walk to date; more than 100 people participated including 10 Walkers from the perimeter with another 20 joining along the way.

A larger number of groups participated, swelling the numbers including Occupy Winnipeg, Action 1:21, FemRev Winnipeg, Feed My Lambs (thank you for the food!) and The Urban, among others. We want to thank all the groups that helped out, some of which are not listed here!

For the first time, we both major newspapers in Winnipeg covered the Walk.  The articles are appended, below. Cheryl-Anne Carr, a Walk Committee member, is quoted accurately:

“The problems have been studied long enough, the situations have been looked at long enough, the problem is that there are not enough jobs, and the pay is not high enough. The problem is the province wants to keep people poor so that theres a huge pool of labour that’s frightened and can be used to keep wages down, and prices high. There’s a shortage of housing, theres a shortage of education spaces.”

Paul Graham with the help of Ken Harasym has produced a 30 minute video of the Walk, which will be broadcast repeatedly on Shaw Cable’s community channel: http://paulsgraham.ca/2011/10/24/video-four-directions-walk-to-end-poverty/

Many thanks! This is a must-see!

There is another video on youtube, but I don’t know who produced it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gva-25OyKEU

It looks like we’ll have to have another Walk next year, because we had zero response from the government. We invited all elected politicians to listen, not speak). Only Harvey Smith from Winnipeg City Council attended (J Gerbasi and J Browaty sent their regrets they could not attend).

Of Winnipeg’s MPs, 3 Conservatives sent regrets (Fletcher, Toet and Bateman). Of MLAs, only one Progressive Conservative sent regrets (R Eichler, chair of the caucus).

If you have qs, we are at 792-3371 or reply by email.

Yours For Ending Poverty in Manitoba,

Four Directions Walk Committee

* * * * * *

Anti-poverty rally held at Legislature

By,Winnipeg Sun, Saturday, October 22, 2011

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2011/10/22/anti-poverty-rally-held-at-legislature

[Ed. Note – Edited to comply with Fair Use which must be observed; one may not copy and paste an entire article here at MyFDL.]

Politics blamed for plight of poor

Marchers rally at legislature

By: Alexandra Paul, Winnipeg Free Press, Sunday, October 23, 2011

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/politics-blamed-for-plightof-poor-132398748.html

[Ed. Note – Edited to comply with Fair Use which must be observed; one may not copy and paste an entire article here at MyFDL.]