💔 Refusing a System That Watches You

🧓 Aging & Refusing

Now I’m 63. People ask: “Why don’t you just go back on social assistance?”

Because I remember:
- how my mother was treated
- how I was treated
- how my child could have been taken

Because poverty should not be a punishment. Because survival should not cost your dignity. Because I have already paid too much.

⚠️ The System Isn’t Broken — It Works Exactly As Designed

It is designed to:

🟥 Keep people terrified
🟥 Keep families in chaos
🟥 Keep women desperate
🟥 Keep elders powerless
🟥 Keep trauma inherited

And then society wonders why:

⛺ Tent cities everywhere
🧊 Overdoses at bus stops
👶 Children taken into abusive care
👵 Seniors dying on sidewalks

❓ Reflective Questions

What would you do if you lost a parent at 11 and the government threatened to take the rest of your family?
What if you worked 11 years until your body broke down — and then no one cared?
How would you feel if you had $22,000 in debt after 4 years of school, only not to be employed because of pregnancy, the dot‑com crash, or 9/11?
What if parenthood meant risking losing your child to the system?
Why are women punished for pregnancy but blamed for not working?
Why are seniors discarded when they’re no longer “profitable”?
Why are the most personal details demanded online when every major system has been hacked?
Why does “help” feel like surveillance, not support?
Why do we criminalize people trying to survive?
What if this happened to your child? Your mother? You?

🎥 The New Surveillance: Job Interviews as Evidence

Today, almost every job interview is a video interview. And that means:

👀 They capture your face
📍 Your home
🔊 Your voice
📂 Your emotional reactions
🧠 Your trauma responses

What happens to that recording? Who is storing it? Who can access it? How long does it follow you?

The same government that demands deeply personal data online, now pairs it with your visual identity — forever.

If you are:
- disabled
- older
- racialized or Indigenous
- visibly poor
- traumatized
- desperate

…that video becomes evidence against you, not your worth.

This is another reason I refuse. Not because I don’t want help — but because help has become surveillance.

Some of us understand the system too well — and that terrifies them. People like us don’t fall into line. We question. We expose. We survive. Systems built on control don’t know what to do with survivors. So they hope we: 🕳️ disappear, 🧍‍♀️ give up, ⚰️ or die quietly. But we are still here. And we are not silent.

🔥 We Must Demand Change

💥 Raise social assistance rates to meet real costs of living

Monday, October 27, 2025