LIFE*SPIN - Building Foundations - The early years of LIFESPIN

"Building Foundations: The Early Years of L.I.F.E.S.P.I.N."
by Tara McDonald

"It is in the shelter of each other that the people live."
- old Celtic proverb

Introduction

     I came to LIFE SPIN in London, Ontario, in February of 1995 to write an article on this small anti-poverty and low-income peoples' empowerment agency for a street newspaper I was helping to co-ordinate. Now, after nearly five years, that article is finally getting written. What happened in between was, for me, the greatest education and opportunity to create, give and grow, that I have ever known. As a LIFE SPIN volunteer and a staff member over the last five, I have had the privilege of occupying a seat at "the kitchen table", sharing in the late night discussions, the planning and community visioning sessions, the protests, the conferences and workshops, the pain and the laughter that comes with being part of an ever-growing group of people committed to creating a freer, more just system.
     What has always amazed me about LIFE SPIN is the incredible feeling that everyone seems to experience the moment they walk through the door of the organization. Almost indescribable, it is a feeling of sheer difference that pervades the office. When folks come to LIFE SPIN in need of advocacy, they are offered a coffee and are treated like human beings, rather than "clients" of "file numbers", for this is not another social service agency. When people come to change how they and their neighbours live, they create projects and ventures that are locally relevant, economically, socially and environmentally responsible solutions to poverty, not just band-aids or government-funded short-term programs.
     There is a difference in how broad LIFE SPIN's understanding and analysis is of systemic poverty and injustice, and in how all-encompassing and truly humane LIFE SPIN's solutions to poverty need to be. And there is a difference in how LIFE SPIN's staff and over a hundred low-income volunteer-citizens work together to plan, launch and maintain projects that help all low-income people become independent. Difference, too, in how people come to learn about themselves by sharing their skills and knowledge with others, spreading their talents and resources around so that all may benefit.
     Most importantly, I think, there is a distinct difference in the founding values and the kind of spirit that has underwritten the actions, dreams and quality of human relations of LIFE SPIN, since the earliest days of its existence. I know that the creation of this very different space has not been an accident. In this article, I'd like to piece together a story of the early years of LIFE SPIN. But more than just a chronological history of people and events, I'm hoping to bring to light the soul or spirit contained in the initial dreams, experiences and work of those who gathered around the first kitchen table so many years ago.
     LIFE SPIN has been, and always will be, formed of an incredibly unique group of people who have the drive and determination to find their way creatively around any obstacle and barrier. "No" is never accepted as an answer. The idea that something can't be done is completely absent from the hearts and minds of the people who work at LIFE SPIN. Rather, if something doesn't work, another route will be taken until the desired result is achieved. That seems to apply to everything from disability appeals to creating new housing and caring for women with psychiatric support needs. To those who carry LIFE SPIN's values and spirit forward today, thank you. I cannot imagine London without you.
     Finally, I hope that this article will be only the beginning of a long line of stories that capture and record development and growth of this tremendous organization. Perhaps someone will write it all down in a book ... someday.

Many, many thanks to original "S.P.I.N.'ers" Lori, Donna and Jacquie for making this article possible by sharing their stories and memories with me.

We are poised here, in this moment of time and a transaction, with 10 years of change and growth on which to reflect and bring forward ...

It is the beginning of spring, 1999, and a few weeks before the "Grande Re-Opening of LIFE SPIN" in its new home, a 90 year-old firehall that the low-income people's organization now owns on the edge of east London, Ontario.

I had a dream a while ago about potatoes trying to grow in a field. And while most of the plants were growing well, one was sick, and it needed extra attention. I remember feeling that this one plant was at a turning point and that it was time for me to act. Perhaps it needed more nutrients and energy to restore it to health within its community, or if it was time for it to die, then it needed to be supported there too...

     This is how Jaqueline Thompson, one of the original founders and now Executive Director of LIFE SPIN, talks about community development -- in terms of a field of plants, nutrients, restoring health, life and death cycles, plants that have specific, basic needs, but can't always express exactly what those needs are. Community development is about the uniquely human ability to be able to observe carefully and to understand and help others meet their needs, whatever they might be.
     There is also the recognition that when things come, they come at the right time. Incorporated formally as a non-profit, charitable organization in 1991, LIFE SPIN has been following a path of development since 1987, continuously absorbing the stories and experiences of thousands of families and individuals of all ages struggling with low-incomes - seniors with pensions, students with OSAP, mothers supporting small children on inhumanely low Social Assistance benefits, workers on Employment Insurance, folks living on the streets. LIFE SPIN operates on a city-wide level providing low-income people free access to information, advocacy and expertise with a tremendous amount of creativity, compassion, humanity. The organization's citizen-volunteers and staff, most of whom were, or are, low-income themselves, interpret these thousands of stories into "data", policy recommendations, lobbying initiatives, and community-based projects that meet the needs of low-income people and help build a more meaningful, stable, and humanly accountable local economy for the future.

Beginning Stories

     LIFE SPIN started as "S.P.I.N." (Sole-Support Parent's Information Network" in the late 80's. Jacquie tells of some of the group of moms who came together out of a need to share information and support to each other, to care for each other and each other's children. Friends and people who had just met gathered often outside the city, at Jacquie's place, a converted goat barn on the farm of friends Carl and Annie Grindstaff. "It didn't matter what you had, you shared it" Jacquie recalls. "The kids played while we worked, so they were exposed to this kind of caring environment. Now these kids have a sense of caring, they know they can call on each other, so this value has been passed on the the next generation -- this is critical. At that time there was not a philosophical basis for this, there was no "theory", it was just real. My place on the farm was a gift that was given to me and I invited people to share it. Then people would come and things would happen from there."
     Among the ever-changing make-up of this group were people like Lori Gardie, who was a female base-player, and old friend Peyton who would share her house and child care with Jacquie, Nansea, an actor, and Donna Creighton who was in the process of cultivating her creative abilities, going to university, and raising two children who are about the same age as Jacquie's two sons. Later Jeff Johnson came looking for ideas about child-rearing and had questions about being defined by Family Benefits as the "spouse" of his partner who was on Family Benefits. Jeff brought with him the concerns of a low-income family looking to purchase a home, but being hampered by the regulations about Family Benefits recipients holding assets. Those involved with S.P.I.N. realized that even though they were sole-support mothers, they had common concerns with two-parent families struggling to live with decency and self-respect on the Social Assistance system.
     As the network of people who helped each other got larger, members of the group realized that if these sharing experiences had been so empowering to them, then it must be useful for others, too. "L.I.F.E." (Low-Income Family Empowerment) was then added to "S.P.I.N.", and the group came to see itself reflected in the entire population of low-income people in the city of London.
     Donna speaks about the kinds of support provided for one another so that everyone could move forward together - talking and working through problems together, writing resumes together, sharing ideas and experiences on how to raise children, finding clothes to wear to interviews, gardening and sharing meals, sharing child care, group trips to the beach, researching what resources were available for people on Family Benefits and General Welfare, how those resources worked, and how to use them. And, Donna remembers, there was always the constant affirmation that you were strong enough and smart enough to persevere. "It was also fun. We dug a garden, we created our own fun. We laughed at the absurdity of our situations. I got a sense of humour then. The pain is so much that it starts to look absurd and then it starts to be funny ... we started to realize that we weren't the only ones facing situations. If this was as bad as it gets, we thought, there must be alternatives, and maybe those could be shared with other low-income folks in London. Out of that realization came How To Get From There To Here" [LIFE SPIN's plain-language resource and self-help guide which is available for free to low-income people].
     Londoners often describe LIFE SPIN as the last resort when no other agency or group in the city can help. Yet, it is perhaps better referred to as a safety net -- not last resort, but a place to start, a foundation on which to re-connect with others surviving on Social Assistance and to rebuild personally and collectively. "For me, in the beginning", Donna recalls, "it was absolute survival ... and fear. Fear of not being able to finish my degree, feed my kids and take care of my house, and yet an absolute desire to do those things." She says that "LIFE SPIN started as a group of women who were there to support each other while we made life-altering decisions, made changes in our lives, like going to university, getting of Family Benefits". There has always been a kind of collective commitment to share fully both the burden of failure and the benefits of success. "We supported each other," she says, "because it's scary to get off the system. The first time I ever bounced a cheque was when I started working. It's a big transition... You get stuck in a cycle that takes support to get out of, and you need people who will catch you when you fall, to say to you if you do the work, 'we'll be here to catch you'". Over the years Donna has found great comfort in knowing that what LIFE SPIN has always provided is a fundamental respect for people's desire to act on their own behalf, to "do the work", as she puts it, and, if things don't go right, she has known that LIFE SPIN will be there. "You know you won't drown."
     Lori Bardawill was also a student at the University of Western Ontario and a sole-support parent when she became involved with LIFE SPIN. She speaks about her involvement with LIFE SPIN in the wider context of her own family's history of social justice activism:

We lived in the Cheyenne neighborhood when it was considered a "white ghetto". My mother was on Mother's Allowance. Those were the days when people on Assistance were subject to "midnight house raids". Social workers would come without notice to search your house for evidence of a male living there. They would, for example, look through your medicine cabinet, and if they found something like aftershave, they would immediately cut you and your family off benefits. A mother could be charged with "welfare fraud" because a friend took her to California, fixed her car, or because she had saved enough money to buy a washing machine. My own mother was always very socially active in the face of this totalitarianism. She challenged these policies in the Supreme Court and was involved in Womanpower and the Women's Credit Union.

     Life was not any easier when Lori moved out on her own. She tells of the difficult times she and her daughter went through as they struggled to make it by themselves: "I was out of the house at 17 years of age, but somehow I knew I could make it on my own. I remember once when Ashley was 2 1/2 years old and we were living on $500 a month. Money was so tight that all I had to eat were apples for an entire month. I ended up in the hospital."
     Lori met Jacquie in a "Philosophy of Feminism" course at the University of Western Ontario. Lori describes a sense of relief at their first meeting, for she no longer felt like an "oddity" at a University where policies and programs catered to single, young students: "issues like "the ivory tower syndrome" and "who" gets to write feminist theory kept coming up in class. I learned a lot about myself -- everything we talked about was so relevant to me -- and I gained a framework with which to analyze."
     At this time, in the late 80's, LIFE SPIN was a fledgling organization located in a small downtown London office, close to city hall, the Family Benefits and Welfare offices and other non-profit support centres for women, like Womanpower, the London Sexual Assault Centre and the Battered Women's Advocacy Centre, which was also just forming. Lori describes what LIFE SPIN was like in those early years: "I remember first walking into LIFE SPIN. It was overwhelming. There was a lot of nervous energy, a kind of seductive chaos in that office. I always knew that people there did not sleep. There were papers everywhere. Nobody, it seemed, had desks -- you couldn't see them under the mountains of reports, documents and papers. And it felt like home, a place I knew I ought to be. I instinctively knew that I was part of something big."
     As LIFE SPIN underwent changes to gain non-profit status, there were many discussions going long into the night about organizational structure, decision-making process, and the formation of a Board of Directors. As a founding Board member, Lori was an important part of these meetings and conversations, "The meetings were like brainstorming sessions. Everyone was hell-bent on consensus and an egalitarian, flat hierarchy structure. There was a lot of laughing during those meetings. People may not have know it at the time but we were building the flesh and bones of LIFE SPIN."
     In 1991, LIFE SPIN incorporated as a non-profit organization with charitable status and it had to have a Board to be accountable for its non-profit status and to meet the requirements of founders. But, this was not to be an ordinary non-profit Board. They would be at least 60% low-income, so that LIFE SPIN would always be owned by and accountable to London's low-income citizens. And the Board members, as citizens, would be very much involved in the issues, policies and strength for its members. "LIFE SPIN's Board was a refuge," Lori says, "a place to regroup, reconnect and heal."
     Knowledge is power and raising public awareness of poverty through education and activism, has always been at the core of LIFE SPIN's role in London. While other organizations are often thankful that LIFE SPIN is out spoken about current issues affected those who struggle in poverty in London, it is low-income people themselves who, through LIFE SPIN, have empowered themselves to speak about their experiences, and who have put issues into plain language and into public light. "LIFE SPIN made it O.K. to be angry", Lori recalls. "I remember Alice [Kendall, a former LIFE SPIN advocate]. I knew she was 'one of us' ... her mouth was connected to her anger, which was connected to her brain, which was connected to her sense of social justice." Events like "Tsubouchi's Tuna-Free Deli", the "Chain-Workfare Protest" at gang City Hall and the "London Well-Fair" brought low-income people together in ways that creatively channeled their feelings of anger and outrage into positive, empowering, and educational actions. Lori recalls song-writing workshops with Arlene Mantle where the song "Turning Point Blues" was created and sung to protest the Ontario NDP government's "Turning Point" document which sought to overhaul the welfare system with no regard for how families on Welfare were already struggling:

If you knew our struggle
And how we have to fight
Simply to retain
Our basic human rights
We know we're the experts
Because we've made it through
And instead of tellin' us
We're here tellin' you...

And, we'd like to believe you
Believe the things you say
But your contradictions
Keep getting in the way
Well we got news, news for you
We ain't going to sing no Turning Point Blues!

Getting Beyond the Social "Service" Agency: A Deeper Level Of Care

     When you walk into LIFE SPIN, when you get to know the people there, when you create something with and through LIFE SPIN, you come to realize that you are in a very unique place. The philosophy that guides LIFE SPIN initiative can't be described by the old 20th century system of socialism, capitalism, or communism. And LIFE SPIN is not in the habit of duplicating good ideas from around the world, simply because they work elsewhere. LIFE SPIN understands the importance of creative, customized responses to what are very unique situations faced by impoverished people in London. The organization's responses to poverty are as unique as the city it is located in, and are as creative as people's long-term needs for healthier life-styles are.
     In compiling this story, I was interested to uncover what it is that makes LIFE SPIN different from other social justice and non-profit organizations in the city of London and even across Canada. I wanted to know what the value system is -- the underlying foundation of ideals that guides decisions and fertilizes new ides, and gives the organization a way of developing projects and solutions to poverty that are truly unique.
     When I asked about what kind of spiritual value system operated LIFE SPIN, it was suggested to me that everything comes down to care. Donna suggested that it was more than "care" the way most people conceive of it: "At LIFE SPIN care has always been about a deep sense of responsibility for your community and a deep sense of self-respect." Lori feels that the genuine manner of caring at LIFE SPIN reveals "a spiritual maturity. It's side-by-each, a kind of tapestry approach, so that it's not about one person making it, and improving their quality of life, it's about everyone improving together."
     Here, then, is a profound sort of caring that goes beyond charity, beyond figuring our what people's immediate needs are and just meeting those needs. It's more holistic than that. Eliminating poverty requires a larger understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things, such as the ill-health of one indicates the ill-health of all. Similarly, the prevention of sickness for one is a benefit for all.
     It's one thing to say that you care, and quite another to do something about it. For the citizens involved with LIFE SPIN, the "spirit" or principle of care comes across in action. Although it could be classified as a "social service" agency because that is the need it fills in London right now, LIFE SPIN staff and volunteers spend an immense amount of personal time and energy doing so much more. In fact, LIFE SPIN's past (and present) is filled with the work of life-saving. There are many people, women especially, who have been pulled, literally, from the brink of death, including suicide, by LIFE SPIN staff and volunteers whose accountability for their community goes beyond the social service 9-5 workday. "How many social service workers do you know that will haul someone off a bridge in the middle of the night, and then sit with her for hours after that because that's the only way you can be sure that she'll be okay?" Jacquie asks. "How many social service organizations do you now that will gather people together to help clean a sole-support mom's house because she just can't cope, and needed some support to stabilize her life? We have done this for each other because we've all been there, and we know what it's like." Recently, because of it's rapid rate of growth and expanding projects, LIFE SPIN found itself going far beyond the call of "duty" that it was turned down by a major municipal funder for, apparently, "doing too much"!
     Jacquie is very clear that LIFE SPIN's relevance to low-income Londoners over the past ten years is also related to its staff and volunteers' special ability to observe and listen. LIFE SPIN advocates listen with experience. It has always been critical for peers to be working through problems together, for folks in need of support to know that they would not be judged because the advocate had walked in their shoes. This has been the case since the first time one sole-support parent "advocated" for another, and it is this style of advocacy that is the hallmark of the "LIFE SPIN way of doing things" today. Jacquie explains it this way:

We make sure that we are responsible to the low-income person's whole situation. If a women calls crying, saying she's in need of emergency food, it would be irresponsible of us to just give her a referral to a food bank near her, and send her on her way. It's very likely that she'll end up back in the same situation that forced her to the food bank again. That's not solving anything, and it will simply perpetuate the problem. But, if we take time to ask questions based on our own knowledge of the system and its current policies, and when we listen with "experienced ears", we can figure out with the client why she had to use a food bank, what the problem is, what her special needs are. Maybe her cheque was late and her power was cut off, she had to spend her monthly food money to have the power turned back on. You know, when you're in a crisis you can't always say, identify, or explain what you need, you just know that there is a series of problems. So what we do is listen between-the-lines to get to the bottom of the problem and, as people with similar and even the same experiences, it is important for them to be paired with others who have experience as advocates for strength and empowerment.

LIFE SPIN believes that poverty is caused by a combination of conflicting and disabled government policies, lack of focused sustainable planning that truly involves people in the planning and implementation process, and an under-use of local human skills and physical resources. "The current welfare system and its policies forces people to make ugly, inhuman choices." Jacquie says about a recent policy that was passed in Ontario which forces a parent to tell her teenage child that he/she cannot work, for if they do, the family will take a cut in income. "A mother's pain is here, in the decision that she is now forced to make, because of a government policy. People's freedom to raise their families on their own, to provide for themselves without bureaucratic interference, is completely eliminated".
If poverty is a human creation, then only humans will bring it to an end. And an end to poverty will come when government policy decisions are actually accountable to low-income people, that eliminate red-tape and bureaucratic barriers which prevent people from making choices and meeting their own needs. t the local level, poverty will end when all citizens agree to be pro-active, to have a plan that undertakes to eliminate poverty systematically, not just, as Jacquie says, to install a few programs that isolate people's needs:

Very often, through conversation that can only happen in a non-judgmental, safe environment, we will learn about other aspects of a person's life, what their dreams, skills and hopes for their children are. Too many professional service providers and advocates this informal knowledge is useless because there is no way to collect and analyze it as "raw data". But for us this informal knowledge is very useful because with so many similar stories we begin to develop a kind of critical mass of what people are going through, how policies devised behind closed doors in government chambers drastically affect real people every single day of their lives. And we also develop a very broad picture of where people's skills and talents are going to waste as a result of the overlapping laws and policies. So, with all this information, we can begin to act together. Suddenly a waste of skills and talents becomes an opportunity to create a new project or venture that will permanently benefit other low-income folks in similar situations.

As the citizens involved with LIFE SPIN see it, the end of localized poverty will be in sit when entire communities and neighbourhoods make it a priority to educate each other, to share, design and control their own local resources - when each person's skills, talents, resources and knowledge can be shared to increased the dignity and freedom of everyone without value judgments and monitoring who "deserves" to participate in this sharing and who does not. As Jacquie puts it, it is important to lead by example, not always by telling but by showing others what the possibilities are: "we believe that what we do, not just what we say, will change things. We can change the stereotypes others have about low-income people by changing our physical reality".
As a community of thousands of low-income people, young and old, from different backgrounds, with a huge array of skills and ideas, working but poor, we're trying to build our own house with our own tools. "We're not going to dismantle the master's house with the master's tools", Jacquie believes, "when low-income folks teach people by what they create together, then they have an opportunity to be an example for others looking to change their opportunities too. This is our challenge ... to change the system, not just our place in it."

This story is dedicated to the memory of Gail Carlisle, and all those past, present, and future, who know that there can be an end to poverty, who want to change the system, not just their place in it, and who know that only together can we restore dignity, health and freedom to our lives.