Issues? We got issues! See what Hamilton is thinking about!

At our recent outing to Art Crawl, we collected some feedback from folks who stopped by our table at 294 James Street North.

We asked people to write down any social justice or environmental issue they were concerned about, and place it on a quadrant - the spectrum went along two axis: easy to difficult (vertical), and low to high concern (which part way through the night we changed to low to high impact)(horizontal).

Not surprisingly most of the issues made it to the high concern end, with a fair distribution between difficult and easy. (We mostly used blue notes for environment issues, and yellow for social justice issues)

The topics provide an insight into what people are thinking about, and may provide ideas for possible links between the community and OPIRG McMaster. Where is there common ground? Are student concerns that much different than community concerns?

In the high concern/impact quadrants: 

• More gardens in the city
• The smell of Bunge (factory)
• Sustainable Living and Health
• Gentrification
• Fair Treatment for IWs
• Global Access the water
• HPV Vaccine for gay men
• Turtles of Cootes Paradise
• Listening and Not Judging
• End (Police) carding
• P&H grain facility DUST
• Housing
• Climate Change
• ODSP Claw-backs for working
• Living Wage
• Gender Equity
• End Deforestation Now
• Save mature trees

In the low-concern/impact quadrants

• Protect remnant inlets along Burlington Street

And the joke sticky note for low impact/low concern goes to 

• Burning Billboards 

(don't think we don't know who put this one there....ahem, R.O.)

So an interesting mix: what do you make of it? are these issues for you? What would you include?

OPIRG volunteer Anna listening to Hamiltonians share their concerns