Description: When journeying alongside those who are forcibly deprived of housing and shelter, it is rare to find a frontline worker who has been in their position for more than a few years. There is so much exploitation, trauma, and moral injury in this sector that the average rate of "burn-out" is two years. Thanks to the good company around me, I have been able to sustain myself in this work for more than twenty-five years. Along the way, I have paid special attention to those who are most excluded, abandoned, and oppressed by the very systems that claim to care for them. I have critically and collaboratively reflected on my praxis over these years and, in this book, I draw together much of what I have learned so that others can start further ahead than I started.
Brief description: Daniel Oudshoorn is a father, fighter, lover, friend, and failure. He has spent more than twenty-five years actively pursuing life and mutually-liberating solidarity in the company of the oppressed, abandoned, dispossessed, colonized, and left-for-dead.
Review Quotes: "The self-congratulation about the neo-liberal societies we have created--with its mantras of progress and the common good--lies shattered in these pages. And not only are we blind to the human flotsam that we have spawned, but we are equally blind to the ineffectiveness of our 'helping' strategies. Daniel drags the reader into the world of the abandoned and offers us a wisdom and humanity from below that could well become a 'bible' for everyone who seeks to serve the marginalized and dispossessed."
--Charles Ringma, founder of Teen Challenge, Australia
"Hold a mirror to yourself, your systems, your power, and your community, as we humbly reflect on how we have perpetuated harms on our neighbors, ourselves, and with grace and honesty, set in motion the repair work. We all have a unique opportunity and responsibility to revisit how we see, greet, honor, love, celebrate, mourn, play with, and care for each other. Dan carefully lays out the foundations of this work in his book that we all so desperately need to learn from."
--Leticia Mizon, founder, The Nameless Harm Reduction Outreach Services
"A profoundly moving, incisive, and welcoming reflection on what it means to work with people cast out, disappeared, and rejected in our current society. With great generosity, Oudshoorn models possibilities for building genuine companionship toward worlds in which all of us can give and receive care. On the long and unfinished journey away from constructed scarcity and vast immiseration towards thriving ecosystems of existential abundance, Daniel Oudshoorn helps us become good company."
--Alexis Shotwell, professor of sociology and anthropology, Carleton University
"Oudshoorn's Manifesto is fueled by equal parts rage and scholarship, generating a thought-provoking and contemplative collection of meditations on not just how we routinely fail those around us but how we can tangibly be better company to those in our community."
--Jeff Preston, associate professor, King's University College at Western University