Disaster through Dirty Windshields Law, Order and Toronto's Squeegee Kids

Abstract

Abstract: Over the past decade, anti-panhandling bylaws have been adopted in several Canadian cities including Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Montreal. This article examines the rhetorical processes used to construct kids--homeless youths who clean car windshields for money--as a social problem requiting a and resolution in Toronto. Using materials gathered from newspapers, magazines, government documents, and official reports, it is argued that the implementation of the Safe Streets Act depended on anti-squeegee claimants' use of rhetoric and the rhetorical disassociation of squeegee from the larger homeless population. These processes are further discussed in relation to emerging trends in neo-liberal forms of governance. Resume: Pendant la derniere decennie, des lois contre la mendicite ont ete adoptes dans plusieurs villes canadiennes y compris Vancouver, Winnipeg et Montreal. Cet article examine la rhetorique qui categorise les kids (enfants de la rue qui nettoient des pare-brise pour l'argent) comme probleme social exigeant une loi sous pretexte d'ordre social. A travers l'information recueillie dans des quotidiens, des revues et des rapports gouvernementaux, cet article constate que The Safe Streets Act (la loi sur la securite de la rue) resulte de la rhetorique des partisans anti-squeegee kid- une rhetorique d'ordre desastreuse qui vise ces enfants de la rue en des excluant du reste de la population sans abris. Ces procedes rhetoriques seront d'ailleurs discutes par rapport aux tendances recentes de politique neo-liberale. Introduction Between 1995 and 2000, on some of the busiest street corners in Toronto Ontario, kids waited in small groups for traffic lights to turn red. With squeegees in hand, the youths would skillfully weave through the lines of stopped vehicles and wash windshields. Their technique was simple: use as few strokes as possible; keep an eye on the traffic lights; and always finish the job on the side of the vehicle closest to the curb so as to avoid being hit by impatient drivers. In one minute or less, some could wash two windshields and, if they were fortunate, receive some money in return. Indeed, squeegeeing had become essential to their socio-economic survival (O'Grady et. al., 1998; Boston, 1998; Gaetz et. al., 1999). By the summer of 1997, however, the squeegee-kid phenomenon had become a major source of social and political contention. According to many drivers, pedestrians, and merchants, squeegee were much more than a nuisance. They were symbolic of an overall decline in urban habitability. Despite considerable opposition on the part of those who argued that squeegeeing resulted from youth poverty, the Ontario provincial government passed The Safe Streets Act in December of 1999. Squeegeeing and other forms of aggressive panhandling were made illegal within the province of Ontario. How did Toronto's homeless youth population eventually find itself unable to squeegee for money? Through an extensive use of disaster rhetoric (Cohen, 1972:144 158; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 29) anti-squeegee claimants were able to construct the condition as a social problem requiring a law and order resolution. (2) Squeegee kids' willful and deliberate participation in deviant conduct, they argued, was to be addressed primarily through punitive measures of social control backed by consonant legislation. Essential to the anti-squeegee position, however, was the rhetorical differentiation of squeegee from the larger homeless population. These dividing practices (Foucault 1982:210), helped render anti-poverty rhetoric less applicable to the squeegee kid phenomenon, thereby minimizing a cross-fertilization of the two social problems' discourses and further legitimating the need for the youths' differential treatment through measures of social control. Following a review of the relevant literature, I will provide a brief outline of the squeegee kid problem, tracing its progression toward social problem status. …