Memo to blogTO and Toronto: There is nothing "hilarious" about humiliating workers

As the TTC and the politicians who run it do all they can to turn off riders with higher fares and the hiring of more and more wanna-be cops to harass the public it is understandable and right that many Torontonians are angry and pushing back.  Politicians are using the highly overblown issue of fare evasion to cover up their own failings. I looked at this on The Left Chapter in: The "fare evasion" narrative on the TTC is a total fraud. Here's why.

As part of the campaign to fight "fare evasion" the TTC has released a number of ads that are rightly being attacked and ridiculed as condescending. This being the internet era, people have designed some memes to counter the TTC ads.

Yesterday, the popular local website blogTO published a piece People are making spoofs of the TTC fare evasion ads and they're hilarious. It leads with a photo of a sleeping TTC fare booth worker.

Further into the piece they share a meme from reddit  that shows four workers in similar situations.

Whatever the merits of other memes in a justifiable reaction against the TTC, this one is simply shameful and wrongheaded. I will not being sharing the whole meme here as NONE of the workers pictured deserve this.

First, TTC workers are not in anyway responsible for the fares or the new enforcement policies so why target them? Why not post pictures of our civic politicians doing fuck all which is what they do most of the time.

George Robitaille was ill and died shortly after this was taken

More specifically, though, using the image of George Robitaille in one of the frames of the meme is a total disgrace. Shameful.

Robitaille was humiliated and mocked even though he was deeply ill and was on medication when the photo of him "sleeping" was taken in 2010.

He had saved a man's life while on duty in 1995 and was made to feel small in his final days. Shortly after the photo was taken and he was ridiculed and attacked by an entire city, he died of a stroke.

It is utterly, totally, egregiously awful that blogTO and others would post this image in this way and it is truly messed up how people want to always blame workers instead of the politicians and management actually in control.

Sorry George that this is happening to you again.

People need to focus their anger on those responsible and that is not TTC workers, it is our politicians. By making workers the focus those with the actual power get off the hook, again.