Gender studies Essay. Religion & Theology Assignment.

upload before the deadline please, read the requirement carefully. For the pictures required in the homework, you can find some pictures close to the subject on the Internet, just look for them.

You have an opportunity to assess how your local community has responded to CoVid and what this has meant for one particular marginalized community where you live (i.e. homeless, domestic violence survivors, the elderly in elder care facilities, inmates, low-income people, low-income workers or another marginalized community).  I want you to focus on one group of marginalized peoples in your community and how your community has responded (or not) to keep them safe during CoVid.  After you have done your assessment, I want you to look at what organizations, leaders, have become allies to support the marginalized group you have chosen to study.  Have members of this marginalized group protested or resisted in any way the manner in which they have been treated during CoVid?  Have community members supported this marginalized group in new ways to try to ensure the health of this marginalized group?  Have some people in your community opposed the care of this marginalized group?  Have they accepted and supported and even promoted “the myths of separation and scarcity” as Oliva Mater, author of Starborn video says? Also, I want you to think about how Basic Income would have helped (or not) the particular marginalized group you have chosen.  Would Basic Income have helped move us toward a “collective dream”, a way that we could “take a breath together,” in the words of Mater. And finally, I want you to think about how you will disseminate your photo essay in your community so you can help to improve how your community responds to marginalized peoples during CoVid.   
You are expected to use the course readings including all readings in the required texts as well as the supplemental CoVid readings listed below. Also, feel free to use any local reports by agencies, organizations, city or county councils and local news stories.  For example, look to see what the local United Way, the local Public Health unit, the local food bank, the shelters, local city or county council, the local anti-poverty organization, the local or nearby Indigenous community organization, the local agencies that supports immigrants, refugees, homeless, queer peoples, and other marginalized communities within your community.  Make certain that you explore not just agencies who speak for marginalized communities but organizations who speak with marginalized communities where the majority of its members are marginalized peoples and speak with them, as one of them.  
 Given that we generally believe a picture is worth a thousand words this assignment is short, so you need to make sure that the photographs really highlight the story you want to tell.  These photos must attempt to show how your local community has responded to CoVid and how they have cared for marginalized communities within your community.  Where possible these photos should show the strength and the limitations of your community’s response to CoVid.   
Note: Please be cautious and do not take photos of people as we do not have ethics clearance to do so.  
 For undergraduate students this assignment should include a minimum of 10 photos and five pages of text, double spaced.  The photos should be interspersed throughout the text to make your assessment as powerful as possible.  Proper academic citations are expected so anyone reading your assignment knows how you came to your assessment. 
In concluding the assignment, I would like you to write a short paragraph on how you will disseminate this assignment to your community.   To whom will you give this assignment and why?  City council?  The newspaper? The foodbank?  The shelter? A local advocacy group?  Be specific about your details to disseminate your assignment.  Have you informed this person or people or organization that they can expect to receive this assignment?  What do you hope to accomplish by sharing this assignment with them?  (See Rubric for Photo Essay)
 The Photo Essay is due Monday December 7th at 5 pm, EST.  Submit onQ.  Also, please sign, date and upload your Photo Essay Signed Agreement onQ.  
 For example, if I were doing this assignment, I would show you a photo of the sign on the door of my neighbourhood shelter that shows that the shelter has moved to a very different area of town.  I would show you a screenshot of the bus route the homeless have to take from my neighbourhood and transfer downtown before they get to the new CoVid homeless shelter.  I would also show you a photo of the tent city that has emerged in my neighbourhood because some of the homeless have not made the trek, for a multitude of reasons, to the newly-located spacious temporary shelter in a very different area of town.  I would do a race, class, gender analysis of who are the homeless in my community and who are living in the tent city.  I would include a photo of this tent city.  I would also take a photo of the totem pole that is at the entrance to this tent city.  There is a sign that says that the totem was carved by Indigenous inmates at Kingston Penitentiary.  I do not know why this totem was created, why it stands on this particular land, but I would investigate this.  And I would show you another photo of a poster of a local community group attempting to support the tent city.  I would also show you news stories of city councillors debating whether to offer water and sanitation services to the tent city, the city council offering these services with a deadline for closure, the news story that the city has turned off water and removed the porta potties from the neighbourhood, letters to the editor supporting and rejecting the tent city.  I have read blogs and news stories by members of one of the community groups that has been supporting people who live in the tent city and they say that there are a number of Indigenous peoples, people with mental health challenges, racialized peoples who live in the tent city.  I have also learned that there is a new emergency shelter that has opened up about 10 blocks from the shelter that was relocated.  The emergency shelter is in a recreation centre in the downtown core (25 beds in one big room).  This emergency shelter is also a one-stop shop so the homeless can receive health care, help with finding secure housing and other supports.  I have read that the beds are full, and they are turning people away almost every night.  So, I would include a photo of this emergency one-stop shelter.  I would investigate who uses this shelter, who does not (the staff person I talked to said it is mainly men who stay there).  I have studied the Sick of the System book and the Basic Income readings and I can explain who would benefit from Basic Income and how that might have changed the homeless issue in my community during CoVid.  These photos, news stories, letters to the editor, city council debates, blogs and Facebook discussions by advocacy groups and course readings help me to understand who are most affected when we move a homeless shelter to protect our community from CoVid.  It raises important questions about whose lives are most valued.  I would share my assignment with the local group that supported the tent city, the two city councillors who defended the tent city the most, the director of the shelter that moved to a new location and my local Basic Income advocacy group.  I would name the specific people I will send my assignment to and the organizations they represent.  In the assignment I would say that I was proud of my city council for initially providing water and sanitation to the tent city.  I would also show my concerns about moving the shelter from the community the homeless know and live in.  I would ensure that anyone reading my assignment would view the issue through an intersectional lens – understanding that racialized, Indigenous, women, people with disabilities, people with mental and physical health challenges are disproportionately affected by CoVid.
Reading
Week 8
Ackerman, Nancy, Teresa MacInnes, and Ariella Pahlke. 2019. Conviction. Sea to Sea Production and National Film Board of Canada.
 Herring, Chris, 2019. “Complaint Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space.” American Sociological Review, 84(5):769-800. DOI: 10.1177/0003122419872671 
Mirchandani, Kiran and Wendy Chan. 2008. “The Racialized Impact of Welfare Fraud Control in British Columbia and Ontario.” Chapter 11 in Daily struggles: The Deepending Racialization and Feminization of Poverty in Canada, edited by Maria Wallis and Siu-ming Kwok. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
Week 9
Armstrong, Pat, Hugh Armstrong, Jacqueline Choiniere, Ruth Lowndes, and James Struthers. 2020. “Re-Imagining Long Term Residential Care in the COVID-19 Crisis.” Policy Alternatives. Retrieved August 14th 2020 (https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2020/04/Reimagining%20residential%20care%20COVID%20crisis.pdf)
 
Blaum, Katherine Blaze and Tavia Grant. 2020. “Essential But Expendable: How Canada failed migrant farm workers.” Globe and Mail, June 16th. Retrieved August 14th 2020 (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-essential-but-expendable-how-canada-failed-migrant-farm-workers/)
 Bowden, Olivia and Patrick Cain. 2020. “Black Neighbourhoods in Toronto are hit by COVID-19 the hardest, and it’s ‘anchored in racism’; experts say.” Global News, June 2nd 2020. Retrieved August 2nd 2020 (https://globalnews.ca/news/7015522/black-neighbourhoods-toronto-coronavirus-racism/)
 Estes, Nick. 2020. “The Empire of all Maladies.” The Baffler. Retrieved August 2nd 2020 (https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-empire-of-all-maladies-estes)
 Oxfam. 2020. “Close to half of women are feeling more anxious, depressed, isolated, overworked or ill because of increased unpaid care work caused by the pandemic – Oxfam survey.” Relief Web, June 18th. Retrieved August 14th 2020 (https://reliefweb.int/report/canada/close-half-women-are-feeling-more-anxious-depressed-isolated-overworked-or-ill-because)
Week 10
Lewis, Sophie. 2020. “Coronavirus Crisis shows its time to Abolish the Family.” Open Democracy, March 24th. Retrieved July 23, 2020 (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/coronavirus-crisis-shows-its-time-abolish-family/)
 Maffea, Carmin. 2020. “The Fight to Abolish the Police is to Fight to Abolish Capitalism.” LeftVoice, June 10th. Retrieved July 23rd 2020 (https://www.leftvoice.org/the-fight-to-abolish-the-police-is-the-fight-to-abolish-capitalism?fbclid=IwAR0AggU_283PNtHoQD9mdpI8tgnZAG9dIp9e_AEaE-vPN0t5YF3-bZdFOnA)
Roberts, Dorothy. 2020. “Abolishing Policing also means Abolishing Family Regulation.” Chronicles of Social Change, June 16th. Retrieved July 23, 2020 (https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/abolishing-policing-also-means-abolishing-family-regulation/44480)
 TTC Riders. 2020. “End Anti-Black Racism, on the TTC and everywhere.” TTC Riders. Retrieved August 20th 2020 (https://www.ttcriders.ca/end-anti-black-racism-on-the-ttc-and-everywhere/)