Breaking News:
This may be good news for some but not so good news for many others in the First Voice Community
By Kendall Worth!
I have written previously about about trying to restart or rebrand BRAG. I talked about the uncertainty of the future of the Benefits Reform Action Group (BRAG) . This post illustrates what people have said, suggesting things like “Maybe Benefits Reform Action Group has served it’s purpose and maybe it is time for the membership to look at re-Branding the Group”. For more reasons why there has been uncertainty about BRAG's future see my previous blogs: https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2021/12/looking-ahead-to-2022.html and https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2022/01/searching-for-activists-to-protest.html
Since Nov 2021, I have been in conversation with people in my community about this. With the end of April 2022 approaching, I have found that folks are taking two different approaches. I will call them Party A and Party B.
Party A– The original Past Membership of Benefits Reform Action Group themselves through E-mail Exchanges.
Party B – People in the my Community who have never physically been to a BRAG Meeting but who has always been supportive of the BRAG concept, and 100% supported what BRAG advocated for. This is a mixed group of people who are yet “first voice” but never physically been to a BRAG meeting. Also in this group are agencies and organization representatives who has always depended on BRAG’S voice.
For Party A the decision I am reporting on is good news.
For Party B on the other hand this is not good news. In fact, for some in Party B this news has some of them very worried.
The news that is have today is:
The Benefits Reform Action Group (BRAG) has recently made the decision to shut down the group.
Meetings could not take place during COVID because none of the “First Voice” membership had the resources to do things like Zoom or Skype Meetings, like many other organizations were doing during COVID restrictions. However, more than that brought us to the recent decision. For one full year of BRAG meetings - from February 2019 till February 2020 - prior to when the first COVID restrictions and lock downs started, we noticed that attendance at BRAG meetings was going down hill. It did not come as a surprise to me, because there are a lot of first voice people out there who have always have been scared to come forward about their situation. The welfare system in Nova Scotia treats people badly. The second voice (advocates) who were coming to BRAG at the time, were falling away as they could not make the time commitment for BRAG.
When life started “getting back to normal” following COVID restrictions, we decided to not get BRAG back up and running. To explain the reason for this decision, I want to take a moment to go back to this article published in the Nova Scotia Advocate.
The social worker at the North End Community Health Centre and myself, over these past few months, tried contacting the original BRAG membership and only one person was regularly responding. That made it difficult get meetings back up and running. Eventually, we did hear from more of the Original BRAG Membership and they clearly said they were not interested in continuing to come to meetings. They e-mailed the social worker to fill her in on why. Of course, due to privacy and confidentiality she was not allowed to repeat to me what they said in those e-mails about their reasons for not wanting to participate, even post-COVID-restrictions. However, the conclusion the social worker and I came to is: When you look at that article linked above, (the original membership attended meeting after meeting with Government/DCS Officials and our demands fell on deaf ears ) the membership was disheartened. Throughout the life of BRAG we had only seen the Income Assistance Allowances increase twice (Note when the $100 increase happened through IAN Rankin’s Government, BRAG was already shut down.)
One year during BRAG’s existence there was a $20 increase, I think in 2016 or 2017 and in January of 2020 the $40 increase that came with the Standard Household rate that began, at that time.
Anyway, it is likely that all of these meetings hurt the mental health of the original BRAG members. Seeing evidence, over and over, that we were not being listened to by Government, caused a lot of anxiety among the membership of BRAG. For some, it has hurt their mental health to the point where they decided not to continue with the group. For some, from the original membership, it is likely that they were also disheartened by the low attendance from Feb 2019 – Feb 2020. Due to low attendance there always seemed to be items on meeting agendas, that could not be discussed nor action taken due to the low turn out.
However the decision to shut BRAG Down is concerning to Party B mentioned above.
Why?
As mentioned, Party B is a mixture of both first voice who have never actually been to a BRAG meeting but followed the work in social media, and those who work for organizations represented at our meetings. Those organizations depended on BRAG First Voice group decisions, and for that to cease, is concerning to them. This group is worried that if BRAG does not exist, then who will be speaking for them, raising their concerns? Party B Wants to see the BRAG continue on.
In a future BLOG Post I will talk about how we need to get something started to replace what BRAG use to be.
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