Escape from Tent City

Exam time. It's like I have multiple personality disorder - one of my personalities is an insomniac and the other is a narcaleptic. Unfortunately the former only surfaces when I'm unproductive and the latter kicks in when I'm finally getting my study on.

I really should not be even writing blogs this week so here is one from the vaults. I wrote this as an article in The Gargoyle - a really liberal U of T paper that was so bawdy and uncensored that they got in huge trouble last year when one of the editors made a misconstrued Anti-semitic comment. He was trying to be ironic. Hillel went apeshit on his ass and the administration shut down the paper for the first time since it's inception.

This paper was largely a rag where losers would rant about how bad residence food is or how they couldn't get laid. The usual crap - every university had an equivilent I'm sure. It was also the main forum for pseudo-artistic stuff with controversial messages that the other papers wouldn't print. I wrote this article right after Home Depot kicked all the homeless people off of the parcel of land they owned that had become a little shanty town known at Tent City. I spun the whole thing into a satire on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I was P.R. person for Hillel at the time so I wrote it under a pseudonym - Richard Nixon. That doesn't really have any significance at all - I just couldn't think of anything wittier than that. Anyway here it is:

Escape from Tent City

It has only been two months since the Municipal/Home Depot sponsored Tent City Eviction and the face of Toronto has been forever changed. Oh to return to those innocent days before the conflict, when life still made sense. A time when we could clearly distinguish the heroes from the villains and when we felt safe letting our loved ones go shopping at major outlet stores. But the peaceful streets of Toronto the Good have been transformed into an urban battleground by the grim spectre and aftermath of September 24^th.

These are confusing times, with so many different voices trying to make sense out of the madness, so here is a brief history of the conflict for the uninformed and the perplexed. The trigger event in most opinions is the eviction of the community of homeless people inhabiting the region known as Tent City. This land, near the city’s port, is owned by Home Depot Canada, a large chain of hardware superstores. The company allowed the burgeoning commune to grow for the last few years and even supplied building materials for the shanties within. But all that changed on that fateful morning of September 24^th when the board of Home Depot decided that the living conditions within were deplorable. They deployed an army of bulldozers and HD’s private security forces, leveling many of the shelters and forcing the residents out. The story made the front pages of most city papers but little was made of it beyond the pictures of disheveled and dirty-looking Tent Citians being led off by uniformed officials. Disturbing images.

Ironically enough, all the materials this former Tent City resident used to create his witty sign were from Home Depot.

But no one could have foreseen the carnage that was unleashed less than two weeks later. It was on the otherwise peaceful afternoon of October 10^th, at 4:20 PM, that the proverbial shit hit the industrial ceiling fan. At that time in five store locations, a coordinated attack utterly destroyed the house paint displays of the respective stores. “I’ve never seen so much good paint wasted… just for nothing,” an emotional HD employee recalled. “There were rollers and brushes everywhere. These people are barbarians.” Soon after, a controversial group known as the Tentcity Liberation Corps (TLC) claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Home Depot responded swiftly the next day by destroying more shanties, and cutting off the supply of canned meat many of the residents depend on for survival. In the ensuing weeks the tit-for-tat violence reached a fevered pitch: Several other organizations joined TLC in their onslaught against the HD empire, badgering shoppers for change outside the stores, stealing shopping carts and defecating in parked delivery trucks. The Home Depot board responded with an aggressive building campaign, developing the western region of Tent City for a new store location. “They can’t just build on our land,” declares Bob, a native of Tent City, as he patriotically points out significant landmarks. “That’s the place where Dougie’s tuque caught on fire while he was trying to spark a joint! I’ll never forget that.” Clearly with such strong cultural ties to their little piece of the world the Tent Citians will not soon surrender to the forces of the Home Depot Territorial Vacators (HDTV.) However Home Depot officials cite their own claims to the land. “Well we kinda own it, you see,” Home Depot spokesman Robert Hammersmith remonstrates. “We offered them 95% of the disputed area and 30% off their next yard tool purchase, but some people just don’t know a good bargain when they see it.”

This deal, the Mama’s Pizza Accords, (one of a series of proposed partition plans,) took place in early November as HD President “Handy” Harry Kapp met with the flamboyant Tent City Council Chairman, “King” Jimbo to discuss a possible resolution. The Mama’s Pizza proposal improved greatly on the earlier Country Style Agreement, with Home Depot making greater land concessions, more substantial savings on useful tools and several cases of vodka into the bargain as a gesture of good will. Negotiations fell through when one of the cases was prematurely opened and an inebriated Jimbo suggested that the Home Depot representatives could “take [their] deal and shove it up [their] pissholes.” Renewed violence followed in the wake of the Mama’s Pizza failure as experts scramble to draft a new mutually acceptable agreement to get the two sides back to the negotiation table. In the meantime Home Depot has installed retinal scanning security devices in all its locations and “King” Jimbo has used Home Depot relief funds and a bunch of refrigerator boxes to build himself a lavish cardboard palace in the heart of Tent City.

The most recent picture of TLC leader "King" Jimbo... Wait a minute! Isn't that...

The effects of the conflict are even beginning to be felt outside of the region as activists are adopting the opposing causes. At a recent rally at York University organized by the Socialist Club, students and homeless Tent City refugees came together to protest against the Home Depot invasion. Holding signs with such slogans as: “Home Depot? More like Home Despot!” and burning Home Depot and American flags. When asked why American flags were set alight York Socialist Comrade Mike “Trotsky” Lowenstein responded: “The Home Depot aggression is clearly due to the manipulation of the corporation worshipping, capitalist government of the United States. Are you to blind to the way they’ve made the Tent Citians into pawns of their sick little power game? Or have they gotten to you too?!?” After a few rousing rounds of “George Dubya is a terrorist!” the socialist students headed for their parent's SUVs, abandoning the garbage cans still full of burning flags which the remaining Tent Citians crowded around for warmth. Meanwhile at University of Toronto, the Ayn Rand inspired Objectivist’s Club has adopted the pro-Home Depot cause with a series of speeches entitled: “Home Depot, the Rightful Owners of Tent City: Worthless Bums as an Obstacle to Growth.”

With no end in sight to the conflict many are hoping that perhaps the third party intervention of City Hall could bring about a resolution. At the ribbon cutting for a new Home Depot location Mayor Mel Lastman acknowledged the company’s undeniable legal claim to the land and then smiled for the cameras. Several hours later at an address to the homeless in Queen’s Park, Lastman called the Home Depot expansion policy an immoral and imperialist business plan. He then smiled for the cameras.

"Who was a more embarrasing mayor than Mel Lastman?" NOOBODY! (Little known fact: I once served Mel Lastman when I worked at Starbucks after he was replaced by David Miller. He ordered a decaf and was really short. I said: "Hey Mel. Keeping busy?" He just muttered something under his breath and didn't tip. Bastard.

The most recent development in the story has had ailing HD President Kapp, leaving the stressful and violent environment of Toronto on the advice of his doctors. Apparently the taxing circumstances of the conflict were taking their physical and mental toll on the aging CEO and he is now seeking a new home where he can find serenity and a comparatively civil social climate where, as he put it: “people know how to share and you don’t need to worry when the next attack will come.” Sources report that the Kapp family is adjusting well to their new life in Ramallah.