Still Raising Hell: Poverty, Activism and Other True Stories

Rebecca Murdock is a lawyer with the Toronto firm Ryder Wright Blair &
Doyle.

“I’m an activist and nobody owns me,” declares Sheila Baxter in
her stellar new book. With the fierce heart of a revolutionary and the
forthrightness of a woman who has never short-shrifted her principles,
Baxter speaks the truth on poverty, homelessness, aging, the oppression
of fat people, and what it means to be a community activist in
Vancouver’s downtown Eastside.

In Still Raising Hell, Baxter points out that social programs are in
rapid decline and poverty on the rise, at a time when a small elite
enjoy breath taking riches. She also notes that a 1996 study by the
Canadian Council on Social Development “found that employment income
for the poorest 20 percent of Canadians dropped by one-third between
1984 and 1994.”

A self-taught activist and writer (and winner of the VanCity Book Prize
for her first book, Under the Viaduct), Baxter’s voice is bold and
unencumbered by jargon. She is neither resentful of her early life in
the crossfire of an abusive father and alcoholic mother, nor sentimental
about her adult life on the streets as a demonstrator, a social misfit,
and a poet-at-large.

Whether she’s describing the joy of sidewalk chalking outside her
beloved Carnegie Com-munity Centre or the griping loneliness experienced
by so many seniors, Baxter offers disarming insights into the human
condition.