Dangerous Memories, by Charlie Angus
Charlie Angus is a rare politician—he talks about issues without demonizing people who disagree with him. He refuses to spew talking points and will even defend members of opposing parties when they are subjected to ridiculous, American-style personal attacks. He’s been a punk rock musician and grass roots social activist, and member of Canada’s parliament, representing Timmins-James Bay for 20 years.
DANGEROUS MEMORY deals with the founding of Angelus House with his wife Britt, in the 1980s, and their attempt to help homeless and/or addicted people by offering them a safe temporary place to stay.
I like Charlie Angus for a lot of reasons, but I have to qualify what I said earlier, about him being relentlessly civil. CNN recently goaded him into insulting Trump (he’s like “Al Capone in his syphilitic stage”) but Angus is MOSTLY about policy rather than person.
Anyway, a reasonable amount of imperfection is one of the things that is most endearing about Angus. When he writes about touring the sketchy biker-bars of southern Ontario with his punk band L’ Étranger, there is a degree of nostalgia. But he admits he was oblivious to the plight of strippers who were working on adjacent floors in those bars. In fact, he writes that nostalgia is a product of “privilege.” Angus didn’t have much money during the 1980s, but he still came from an intact supportive family; he had dependable friends, and a wonderful wife. He was, relatively speaking, privileged and therefore oblivious to the hardships some others endured. But he was willing to learn and quickly developed empathy for people who’d been steamrolled by circumstance.
One of the reasons I like Angus is that we share a left-leaning view of the world. I remember being horrified by one of the 1980s events he mentions: Conrad Black removing $40,000,000 from the Dominion employees’ pension fund. To me, it was symbolic of how the business class always operated: take as much from the till as possible when times are good, then when times turn bad close stores and lay off workers. Union-management relations have always been adversarial, and unions usually get blamed for the bad blood. But ownership is unreasonable and greedy to the point of being criminal. Eventually, Black was compelled to repay some of the misappropriated pension money, but he didn’t actually go to jail until he stole $6,000,000 from other rich people, American stockholders of the Hollinger corporation.
I wasn’t surprised when Trump pardoned Conrad Black and delivered the good news with a personal phone call. Rich guys stick together.
And that’s the sad history lesson in Angus’s book. Gross economic disparity has been an ongoing cooperative project, and enabled by politicians of all political stripes. You can’t solely blame individuals like Conrad Black, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien or Milton Friedman (the Chicago economist who advocated de-regulation and privatization of government assets).
There’s lots of betrayal to go around.
Charlie Angus modeled Angelus House on exemplars from The Catholic Workers Movement. But the Church wasn’t a reliable ally. The Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals were revealed in the late 1980s. And after Cardinal Carter spent his career destroying the social justice wing of the Canadian Church, he was rewarded with an appointment to the Board of Directors of Conrad Black’s Argus corporation.
The only hope for social improvement comes from the bottom: grass roots social activists who aren’t cowed when they are fired, beaten, ridiculed, arrested or ex-communicated. The “Dangerous Memory” of the title refers to times when social activism in the 1980s actually worked, despite long odds against success. Angus recounts the improvement in gay rights in Toronto, from the days of bath house raids and brutal rides on “the Cherry Beach Express” to today’s Pride celebration. He reminds us that tens of thousands of ordinary Germans dismantled the Berlin Wall. Canadians successfully protested against ICBMs being tested in Canada, and ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons were banned.
The status quo is only maintained by the charade of invincibility: people are told that nothing can be done, so you may as well let the wealthiest one percent do whatever they want. Memories of the 1980s are dangerous to billionaires, because ordinary working-class people are reminded that something can, indeed, be done, that despair is just another weapon used against them.
If you want to criticize Charlie Angus, you could call him a commie, or say he’s drunk the naïve Pete Seeger folksinger’s Kool-Aid.
But at least that Kool-Aid hasn’t been filtered through a billionaire’s kidneys.
DANGEROUS MEMORY deals with the founding of Angelus House with his wife Britt, in the 1980s, and their attempt to help homeless and/or addicted people by offering them a safe temporary place to stay.
I like Charlie Angus for a lot of reasons, but I have to qualify what I said earlier, about him being relentlessly civil. CNN recently goaded him into insulting Trump (he’s like “Al Capone in his syphilitic stage”) but Angus is MOSTLY about policy rather than person.
Anyway, a reasonable amount of imperfection is one of the things that is most endearing about Angus. When he writes about touring the sketchy biker-bars of southern Ontario with his punk band L’ Étranger, there is a degree of nostalgia. But he admits he was oblivious to the plight of strippers who were working on adjacent floors in those bars. In fact, he writes that nostalgia is a product of “privilege.” Angus didn’t have much money during the 1980s, but he still came from an intact supportive family; he had dependable friends, and a wonderful wife. He was, relatively speaking, privileged and therefore oblivious to the hardships some others endured. But he was willing to learn and quickly developed empathy for people who’d been steamrolled by circumstance.
One of the reasons I like Angus is that we share a left-leaning view of the world. I remember being horrified by one of the 1980s events he mentions: Conrad Black removing $40,000,000 from the Dominion employees’ pension fund. To me, it was symbolic of how the business class always operated: take as much from the till as possible when times are good, then when times turn bad close stores and lay off workers. Union-management relations have always been adversarial, and unions usually get blamed for the bad blood. But ownership is unreasonable and greedy to the point of being criminal. Eventually, Black was compelled to repay some of the misappropriated pension money, but he didn’t actually go to jail until he stole $6,000,000 from other rich people, American stockholders of the Hollinger corporation.
I wasn’t surprised when Trump pardoned Conrad Black and delivered the good news with a personal phone call. Rich guys stick together.
And that’s the sad history lesson in Angus’s book. Gross economic disparity has been an ongoing cooperative project, and enabled by politicians of all political stripes. You can’t solely blame individuals like Conrad Black, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien or Milton Friedman (the Chicago economist who advocated de-regulation and privatization of government assets).
There’s lots of betrayal to go around.
Charlie Angus modeled Angelus House on exemplars from The Catholic Workers Movement. But the Church wasn’t a reliable ally. The Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals were revealed in the late 1980s. And after Cardinal Carter spent his career destroying the social justice wing of the Canadian Church, he was rewarded with an appointment to the Board of Directors of Conrad Black’s Argus corporation.
The only hope for social improvement comes from the bottom: grass roots social activists who aren’t cowed when they are fired, beaten, ridiculed, arrested or ex-communicated. The “Dangerous Memory” of the title refers to times when social activism in the 1980s actually worked, despite long odds against success. Angus recounts the improvement in gay rights in Toronto, from the days of bath house raids and brutal rides on “the Cherry Beach Express” to today’s Pride celebration. He reminds us that tens of thousands of ordinary Germans dismantled the Berlin Wall. Canadians successfully protested against ICBMs being tested in Canada, and ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons were banned.
The status quo is only maintained by the charade of invincibility: people are told that nothing can be done, so you may as well let the wealthiest one percent do whatever they want. Memories of the 1980s are dangerous to billionaires, because ordinary working-class people are reminded that something can, indeed, be done, that despair is just another weapon used against them.
If you want to criticize Charlie Angus, you could call him a commie, or say he’s drunk the naïve Pete Seeger folksinger’s Kool-Aid.
But at least that Kool-Aid hasn’t been filtered through a billionaire’s kidneys.
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