Once in a while, something crosses my desk that makes me cross my eyes and pound my head against the desk in frustration.
This is not one of those things.
This is one of those things that makes me crinkle up my face and exclaim “What the hell?”
If you haven’t been rubbing up against radicals in the Facebook/Twitter forums that manufacture and ooze dissidents, let me bring you up to speed.
Last night, Kim from Sister Sage’s Musings posted a snippet of political incest that is so odd and fascinating, that just begs for further investigation.
“CHOOSE TONY”
Fourteen members of the former Canadian Alliance National Council released a statement today, declaring their support for Tony Clement’s campaign for Conservative Leader. “Tony Clement will bring to the position of Leader of the Conservative Party a wealth of party organization, Parliament and government experience,” the statement read.
The statement was drafted by former Alliance leaders like Don Morgan (National Councillor from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) Bill McGill (VP and Party Secretary, from British Columbia), Rod Farrell (Party Secretary and Councillor from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) and Nancy Jahn (1st Vice-President, from Pakenham, Ontario).
“I’m proud to have these men and women on board,” Clement said. “Their support proves our campaign is the only one that can truly unite the grassroots of our Party and fight the Paul Martin/Jean Chretien legacy as one team,” Clement said.
Clement “has wide appeal with both former Reform/Alliance members and provincial and federal Progressive Conservatives and is well positioned to take the Conservative Party of Canada from its post-merger transition to a unified, cohesive and articulate player in Canadian politics,” the statement reads. “Now is the time to build bridges. By his track record, Tony has shown that he is the man to build them…” the statement concludes. Tony Clement Campaign PO Box 1047, 31 Adelaide St. East Toronto, ON M5C 2K4 Toll Free 1-866-257-4499 Direct 416-848-8180
Fast forward to the Enbridge debate and the commentary put forward from the “grassroots” website, registered by Ezra Levant to pimp his book, EthicalOil.org. with the help of the blonde puppet…
Google the above address and you get Ezra’s EthicalHogwash.
Still expect the HarperGovernment to respect the will of the people and the rule of law?
Neither do I…
We have now entered…
The Twilight Zone
Huh. How about that, eh?
Would the visual learners amongst us like some proof? Doubting Thomases? Conspiracy Theorists?
Excellent, because I’ve got some.
Gazebos:
Click to embiggen.
Oil:
Click to embiggen.
Thank you to askian@gmail.com for sharing his screen shots before the information in cyberspace vanishes for good.
And just for the sake of brevity, just who owns the EthicalOil.org domain name?
Huh. I vaguely recall that on December 30, Mr. Levant was telling the Twitterverse that he was a “volunteer at EthicalOil and have no other interests.”
Click to embiggen.
So.
Does anyone else smell oily pork barrels here?
I’d like to know how this manages to occur.
on December 8, 2011, LSS updated the fact sheet by amending the definition of sexual abuse, removing the reference to feeling “embarrassed,” and making other minor changes. Thus, some of the most troubling aspects of the document have been removed, namely, a definition of sexual abuse that reinforces a male entitlement to sex and incorrectly implies that women are not free to refuse sex in any circumstance and for any reason, a view that is contrary to law and which deeply trivializes the experiences of survivors of sexual abuse. LSS also advised that a separate publication for gay men is forthcoming.
However:
Despite the amendments LSS has made, the document, especially within an otherwise gender- and sexual orientation-neutral framework, remains problematic. The issue of men’s social and economic power in relation to women is rendered invisible, as is an analysis of who is most often the primary aggressor in an abusive relationship. There also remains the question of how this publication, including the problematic and legally unsupportable definition of sexual abuse, was able to make its way into circulation in the first place. The concerns raised by this publication are particularly important given LSS’s role in administering public legal aid.
It appears the work is not done. Just as there is tremendous pressure being put on the Province of BC by lawyers to properly fund Legal Aid, which the Legal Services Society administers, there needs to be additional pressure put on the LSS to ensure it’s giving proper and not gender-biased advice.
And there’s more. Including a complete destruction of how “Men’s Rights Activists use the language of equivalency to undermine women’s anti-violence work and delegitimize women as the primary victims of abuse, claiming that domestic violence is a gender-neutral phenomenon and that men’s experiences of “husband battering” are being suppressed.”
I have a great deal of respect for Canadian Forces personnel. I have generally disagreed with virtually every one of their foreign deployments in my lifetime, but that is a criticism I make of our political leaders who order our forces to go here and there.
I support our troops by encouraging the government not to continue slashing their pensions and healthcare, and to actually treat soldiers with respect and dignity by providing the kind of care they need: vocationally, psychologically, emotionally, etc.
I do not, however, like the militarization of Canadian culture because it is priming us for a warfare mentality and drifting us into a soft fascist state. And I do not at all respect war re-enactments during Canada Day celebrations.
My Canada does not include militarizing Canada Day.
My Canada does not include the government getting kids to make war posters for Canada Day.
The Harper government has hired a consultant to inject a little war into this year’s Canada Day bash on Parliament Hill.
A Toronto theatre expert has been asked to find ways to insert a War of 1812 commemoration into the July 1st festivities that typically include pop music, dance and pyrotechnics.
“I do big-ass special events all the time, so they asked me to do that,” artistic producer Paul Shaw said in an interview. “It’s sort of tricky to do a War of 1812 theme when you’ve got so many modern things in and around it.”
Like all dangerous radicals, I got up this morning and walked my kids to school, spent thirty minutes on the rowing machine, walked the dog, cooked dinner, and wrote a paper about…acurate accounting ledgers as they pertain to trust accounts. (Clearly, this is a confession of my treacherous and treasonous plot to take over the accounting for the mysterious foreign entities that are paying me to be a turn coat. Muahahaha! All your balance sheets belong to me!)
Now that it’s clear that I’m a regular Ethel Rosenberg in a toque and red 2010 Olympic mittens, we can get on with it.
*Ahem*
Joe? Ezra? Harpy? I hate to disappoint guys, but I’m sequestered in the gulag of Winnipeg for the winter, and am unable to fly home to Kitimat to join in on the Northern Gateway hearings. This makes me sad, since the Joint Review Panel kicks off mere hours from now.
Everyone else – if YOU are in the Skeena region tomorrow (10 January, 2011), and have the time and ability to attend these important hearings, please do. The JRP review will take place in the beautiful Kitamaat Village (getting there is certainly one of the most picturesque drives in Northern BC) at the recreation centre, located at 1538 Jassee, starting at 0900h.
Your presence and support (if nothing but to be present and witness what goes on) WILL make a difference. All levels of government need to know that British Columbians do not need/want this future epic disaster. They want NIMBY? Give them the most NIMBY show of opposition they’ve ever imagined!
If you, like me, are unable to physically attend (my seditious activity will be limited by geography, but I will be there in spirit), you will be able to listen in to a broadcast of the hearings on the web. There will also be media (likely mainstream) present, and they will be recording the event for publication (providing the panel does not elect to change the current media provisions that are in place). I have been unable to ascertain if there will be any live streaming video of the proceedings as of 2200h CST. Should I find out more about this aspect, I will update with links.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some whackaloon activist things to get going on tonight, like washing the dishes and paying the cable bill.
It’s really very simple. A front group for tarsands polluters is accusing opponents of being puppets of foreign interests. EthicalOil.org thinks only Canadians should be permitted to take part in the tarsands climate debate, which would exclude anyone or any group involving foreign resources or money.
An organization called EthicalOil.org has attacked “foreigners and their puppets” who oppose the Northern Gateway pipeline, and may have found a sympathetic ear in Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The website, based in Toronto, features a number of articles criticizing the presence of “foreigners” and “rich Americans” at the impending hearings into the pipeline.
Such blatant hypocrisy comes from how the global corporations that are trying to develop the tarsands have a cornucopia of foreign ownership.
If there were an actually wholly-owned Canadian oil development company working on tarsands development, please let me know.
On the flipside, the tarsands development, the largest development project currently on planet Earth, will miserably affect the global climate. That means all 7 billion people deserve to have a voice in the debate about whether we should leave it all in the ground.
Hypocrisy is a sign of desperation.
We need to recognize that even though the global corporations have their comprador government in Ottawa, they are not feeling good about winning this one.
We need to step up our truth-telling about the environmental, social, economic and political destruction of the tarsands.
We need to talk about investing money and jobs into post-carbon energy development.
We need to find allies in groups already fighting the destructive policies and build the movement.
Radical Squares: Reflections on the Global Indignant Moment
Nefertiti Altán, George Caffentzis
Nefertiti Altán
Crisis in the economy:
Greed leads to assaults on living wages, off-shoring, migrant workers, slashing pensions.
US unemployment is 9.7% or 14.9 million people, 16% for African-Americans and 42% for African American youth.
The number is higher when we include those who stopped looking for work, the definition of which ignores even more people.
The unemployment rate is 16.8%, or 25 million people when you include the underemployed.
6.6 million homes are empty from foreclosure.
25% of Americans have mortgages higher than their home values.
Crisis in ecology:
Profit motive has lead to consumable commodity crisis, with resulting stresses on disempowered communities around the world.
Economic and military empire are required to ensure access to resources.
Crisis in empire:
The Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement are a response to empire.
The growth of Occupy was surprising because it wasn’t initially fanned by groups representing the oppressed and marginalized groups.
But there was a unifying demand and vision, which allowed various groups to align their actions.
Now, where and how do we continue to converge across sectors, identities, issues?
We need to be committed to working it all out together.
There is still a lack of race-consciousness in America, so that’s an ongoing element of expanding the movement through collaboration.
Each section of the 99% has a role to push it all forward.
Occupy Oakland today:
There are four General Assemblies/week.
Working groups are meeting, including foreclosure support: including occupying empty homes, deeming them to be part of the Commons.
They are supporting families facing eviction, helping prevent auctions/evictions.
Oakland police have been harassing the occupation since the beginning. Now the focus is on those who live-stream and record police activity and African-American men, hoping to catch people for their third strike in California’s three strike context.
Participatory budgeting in Oakland is a movement to empower citizens to have more direct control over civic operations.
George Caffentzis
We need to think about why Occupy has affected us politically and emotionally.
Critics of Occupy suggested that people get a job. Many occupiers had jobs. But also, any working people relied on the occupiers to fight on their behalf because they don’t have the freedom to fight. So the occupiers are defending the jobs of others.
Millions are rejecting representational politics. Representatives require us to be absent for them to lead. People are engaging for themselves when they realize they aren’t actually being represented.
We need to put a lot of energy into healing the cleavages in the different groups of the 99%.
The Media Commons
Dorothy Kidd, Riel Manywounds, Claudia Medina & Isaac Komalathukizhakkathil Oommen
Equally distributing media/expression tools to people is empowering, and undermines the power of corporate media.
Filmmaking is a powerful way of telling stories of marginalized people. People with media skills should mentor others in being able to tell their stories.
Our institutional upbringing is often the main thing that’s holding us back to our own expressive freedom.
There is no Commons without community and collective decision-making.
The Commons is about sharing culture and relationship.
We know more about enclosures than about the Commons that was enclosed.
The Commons is not homogenous, so we shouldn’t expect a homogenous 99%.
The old labour and social contracts are dead. So is the old media contract. We now make our own news, hearts, feelings and stories.
Some smart 1%ers are now trying to appropriate all these decentralized media/cultural experiments, perhaps like the Huffington Post model.
The corporate media is not the mainstream. They’re the radicals. We’re the mainstream.
Plunder of the Planet: the Ecological Crisis
Claudia Medina, Cease Wyss and Steve Collis.
Stephen Collis
There are two ways of looking at the Commons: Metabolic Commons and Future Commons.
The Metabolic Commons
The economic imperative always trumps the ecological impact. We worship GDP growth.
Social metabolism is examining the full consequences of events and activities, so there’s more to economic activities than GDP.
How do we inject the Commons into our contemporary economic understanding, in order to reframe it?
If the economy began and ended with the Commons, we’d be obligated to preserve the Commons for the future, and we’d have a healthy social metabolism.
The social and the natural are inseparable, despite centuries of propaganda otherwise.
Our historical collective existences have created this Commons. The market has perverted our capacity to maintain a healthy relationship with the Commons.
How we make our living needs to be in balance with where we make our living.
The Future Commons
Capital wants to enclose the future before it arrives.
We need trans-generational thought and planning.
The Occupy movement is asserting a right to the future.
The Occupy movement is about opening possibilities for change and resistance, and a commitment to the potential of the future.
The Occupy movement has suffered from an inability so far to work with other struggles, particularly indigenous movements. This may be helped by an idea to fix the name to De-Colonize Vancouver.
Harsha Walia: De-colonization is a process and a goal.
De-colonizing is an unlearning of a world view. And embracing respectful co-existence and engagement with the land.
A future Commons must release the land from colonization, privatization and resource extraction.
Claudia Medina
The Occupy movement has many messages. Essentially it is an anti-war movement: against the war against the Commons.
We must oppose this war on life.
There is no relationship to reality in pursuing unlimited GDP growth.
People are baffled with the idea of replacement for GDP or growth itself.
We can only talk about sustainability by moving past the current system and how we measure it, in GDP.
There doesn’t have to be one thing to replace our system, as in one object to replace GDP. We need many alternatives so that different communities can choose a model that can work for them. We have to stop thinking in a monolithic way.
There is now an intensification of interest in replacing this broken system by putting ecology in the centre.
Cease Wyss
We need to consider simplicity more.
We need to recognize the need for movements to work together in peaceful, sustainable activism.
We need to fight for our rights, but also recognize ceremony, which acknowledges our relationship with our world: ecology.
If humans are the children of creation, why are we destroying creation?
“In this day and age, all of us are colonized.”
Being here today may be more energizing for many of us than our jobs. There’s room for improvement.
We each need to grow at least one thing every year, even if we live in an apartment. We need to stay connected to the earth, even in small ways.
“If you don’t know where you are or where you’re from, then learn it.”
A small cob of corn will feed a community.
Defending Land, Water & Future Generations Panel
Arthur Manuel
When looking to protect the land, we need to take direction from the people of the land
The premier says BC needs to sign non-treaty agreements with first nations before the new mines can go ahead because she recognizes the land is unceded.
Recognizing aboriginal title really means adding a constitutional level of authority that can defend the land. This is why Delgamuukw hasn’t been implemented, despite the Supreme Court ruling.
To protect the land and water by working with first nations’ constitutional authority to intervene, indigenous groups need to do expensive research on traditional land use.
The province does not currently have the legislative permission to integrate provincial and indigenous planning bureaucracies. This needs to change.
Indigenous groups are not against development, they’re for informed development.
The UN asserts prior, informed consent from indigenous people for development, but Canada hasn’t signed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Billie Pierre
Oka and Gustafson Lake really woke up a lot of people to issues of independence.
The government uses their power to apprehend the children of first nations activists.
Rita Wong
The more we take the chances to strategize together, the more chance we have of stopping bad policies.
Eric Doherty, Stop the Pave
Capitalism is a cancerous growth-dependent economy.
We have to say no to TINA [there is no alternative – Margaret Thatcher]
Opening Panel
A Global Tradition: History of the Commons
Silvia Federici
Rebuilding our Commons will allow us to live in a free and self-determined way.
When we talk about the Commons, we are not talking about small-scale experiments like communes, but whole social formations.
The Commons involves sharing our resources because nature is not for sale. The principle of common use/sharing prevails. There is also no Commons without community.
We have to reject the notion of global Commons as proposed by the World Bank because we don’t have a global community.
The Commons has a very democratic character.
The “public” is regulated and controlled from above. The Commons is controlled, managed and shaped from below.
So it is obvious that capitalism had to destroy the Commons. And now dispossession is a feature of capitalism, and now neoliberalism is commited to the total marketization and commercialization of all of life.
Not only Commons in space, but Commons of knowledge is being privatized.
So in our political and everyday lives, we need to overcome the ideas that capitalism has conditioned in us: the opposition to common interest.
Glen Coulthard
There can be two ways of looking at self-determination: place-based and relational as well as sovereigntist and exclusionary.
Mutual obligation means that as people honour our obligations to the land, the land will provide for us.
Capitalist accumulation has been an affront to people’s relationship with our environment.
Farah Shroff
An injury to one is an injury to all.
In many languages we use family words to speak to strangers: brother, sister, uncle, auntie.
Unity and oneness are founding platforms for creating a commons.
We also have to remember how we can see the whole in the one.
Reclaiming Knowledge Panel:
Silvia Federici, David Chariandy, Pat Howard, Heather Morrison
The panellists presented a general overview of neoliberal motivations to privatize public services like education, the corporatization of academic journal production and the challenge of creating a commons within the education system while think past the commons within a context of a mode of production.
Competitiveness in academia undermines sharing and communal knowledge. Competitiveness is a tactic of enclosure of the Commons.
How do we work towards keeping knowledge in the Commons?
the open textbook movement
restoring First Nations languages
attending school for knowledge instead of just or a degree
bridge the gap between academia and the rest of society
resist patenting genes
develop alternatives to universities that support the search for knowledge, not producing “university graduates”
build a commons in the classroom [without getting fired]
be the media, but outside of Facebook [blogs, Twitter, etc.]
Autonomous Labour Organizing
Dave Bleakney, Susan Lee, Jeff Shantz & Sara Sahulka
A review of temporary foreign and migrant worker programs, policies and ideologies. In 2008/9 there were 280k temporary visas outnumbered immigrants seeking permanent resident status leads to a permanent class of precarious workers.
The Vancouver Compassion Club has been run as a collective fro 14 years with democratized leadership and decision-making.
BC’s labour laws were used to force an employer to actually pay undocumented workers who had been unpaid for 5 months.
Labour unions are sometimes happy to support activists groups without actually encouraging members to show up to physically support activist actions.
Unions are the strongest when locals are talking to each other, not following directions from above.
We need to build more meaningful relationships between unions and activist groups making a difference on the ground.
Unions used to be more present in our daily lives, contributing to working class culture and community building like bowling leagues and dances.
Unions need to build structures that allow members to support each other on the ground.
Union resources can be used to support organizing with anti-poverty groups and equity/justice groups.
Unions can organize flying squads to support actions from activist groups.
What models of organizing will help unions do more progressive action beyond just bargaining for wages, benefits and working conditions?
Workers need more decision-making at work and in their unions.
Workers need ways of supporting all social justice actions in the community.
We need to build connections between worker movements and cooperative movements.
Creating Spaces for Our Movements
Purple Thistle
The Purple Thistle is a community space collective that provides space for groups to work on projects and be involved in activist events.
Kirpa Kaur
From the Sikh tradition, communal meals were illegal centuries ago because of caste laws, but now the value of that joined space is enriching spiritual/political space.
Sikh spaces today are generally depoliticized without strong bridges built to marginalized communities.
Lisa Moore
Rhizome is a shared living space of diverse communities that can support social justice work and grassroots organizing.
The space is autonomous and directed by those using it.
While it is legally structured as a business, it is anti-profit, so it sells food, but it also collects donations.
The space is for meetings, events, planning meetings, socializing, celebrations, and free stores, with about 250 events/year.
With concurrent meetings, there is also some unpredictable cross-polination among participants.
Any space can be a model to the capitalist norm: they look like a restaurant.
They are challenging the norms of the market, beyond the pay for food or beg for food model, beyond individual consumption, with pay what you can/feel.
Shared space builds community because we learn each other’s name and empower their presence in society.
Decision-making is participatory, and since they’re a business, any space/organization can do this.
Discussion:
Space issues became in public conversation because of the Occupy movement, particularly when it comes to who has/controls/needs space.
Media space is important, particularly in contrast with corporate media.
The basic premise is not so much that capitalism is broken, and we just need to fix it, but that neoliberal market fundamentalism is inherently broken when we’re thinking about sustainability, equity and building a healthy future, largely because capitalism is diametrically opposed to the commons and rich community.
Instead of asking people to only bring a quirky 45rpm record to my party next month, I’d rather give people an opportunity to donate money to the Canadian Red Cross for Haitian earthquake relief.
As many of you know, the case study in my master’s thesis was on how Haiti is the poster child for Canada pursuing, then undermining, the Human Security Agenda, with our economic exploitation of the country culminating in helping the USA kidnap Aristide on February 29, 2004 and flying him to the Central African Republic.
And many of you also know that I got my start in political awareness and international development work from Red Cross Youth seminars like this one over 25 years ago.
So, I’m fundraising in support of the Canadian Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti. It’s estimated that three million people have been affected by the disaster, and 200,000 have been left homeless. Thanks to hundreds of local volunteers with the Haitian Red Cross—many of whom lost loved ones, the Red Cross was able to respond immediately. Please donate and help the Red Cross. Haiti needs your help.And they need your help more then I need presents!
Whether you’re close to Hazelton, or on the other side of the country, you can help show your support through a number of simple gestures.
According to the folks on the Facebook group, Gitxsans Against Enbridge, here is how you can help: (Thanks to Jacob Beaton & Cheryl McNevin Baron for this list.)
Time; if you’re in the North, they have the need for your time and hands there is a lot for you to do! If you’re away, you can write letters to papers, send letter of support, put up posts on Facebook and Twitter.
In kind or cash donations for items like gas, printing, sending updates, other hard costs – and legal fees.
Blankets for the fire.
Firewood for the fire.
Big first aid kit for the site.
Shelf or someone to build shelving unit for the fire.
Volunteer foremen at fire.
Communication volunteers – meeting earlier today at 3pm at the Gitanmaax Hall.
Come down to the fire, fill in survey, sign petition.
Take charge and organize – put your Gitxsan Unity ideas into action.
Items can be sent c/o any of the Spokespeople [ i.e. Larry Patsey ] via Greyhound , which runs several times daily through Northern B.C. or via Canada Post to:
Guardians at GTS Fire
Hazelton, BC
V0J 1Y0
Short on time but able to spare some funds? You can make a donation online here:
“I think Hannah Arendt did say somewhere in The Origins of Totalitarianism that the thesis of the modern state is: ‘Everyone should die.’” –Suffled How it Gush (pg. 74)
I have joked with my partner that I have a certain amount of angst regarding my future as any sort of “real” academic (read: employed). Mostly it stems from the fact that I often don’t feel my ideas sufficiently “sophisticated.” Since I have begun earnestly researching Balkan and Bosnian politics, in particular, the general tenor of my analysis has been “assholes are ruining it for everyone.” I’m not sure how many journals or publishers consider this an “appropriate” thesis.
My second trip to Cyprus has, in most ways, only confirmed these views, though. The Turkish military still has their daily artillery drills which rattle one’s teeth—a bored, vicarious, perpetual war with an imagined enemy of undetermined identity. The trafficking of women is still a public “secret” in the internationally unrecognized “North”, though it is an issue across the island. And, of course, the elites (the aforementioned assholes) of all the “relevant” parties still go to great lengths to assure one another that reconciliation or even constructive dialogue is impossible, if not in rhetoric then certainly in practice.
Available from AK Press.
Yet an ongoing occupation of the main pedestrian crossing between the two “halves” in the joint-capital of Nicosia (in the UN-administered “buffer zone”) would suggest otherwise. Everyday acts of resistance, of co-operation by average people as a contrast to the official, chauvinist line. History as a repository of gifts for those interested in genuine, organic expressions of “people(s) power” and not history as a holding tank of real and imagined injustices, mobilized to justify, to excuse, to promote murder and robbery. What the established literature calls “state building.”
Tucked under my arm for most of this trip has been a copy of the second edition of Shon Meckfessel’s Suffled How it Gush: A North American Anarchist in the Balkans. It is an enlightening, inspiring, frustrating, hilarious and tragic memoir of a California punker tracing his way through the former Yugoslavia, and several adjoining Balkan states (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania). The somewhat puzzling title itself derives from a bizarre description on a bottle of Albanian mineral water the author comes across: “Suffled how it gush from the source of the woods of Tepelena.” Amongst the piles of tedious, “definitive” “social porn” (pg. vii) which has marked the majority of the literature on the Balkans (frequently invoking ghosts, wars, ancient, hatred and other quasi-mystified jargon in their titles alone) Gush is self-consciously a different book. Read more
Clearly, the people living in Attawapiskat are existing in a crisis that represents Canada’s dysfunctional relationship with the first peoples.
How can we truly “fix” Attawapiskat? By fixing the underlying broken relationship.
Occupying #Attawapiskat in Twitter two weeks ago was a great start to engaging in serious improvements.
Phase two begins now with a call for a national dialogue to address the past and create a healthy future. This means looking at cultural genocide, racism, the Indian Act as obsolete in the 21st century, residential schools, language and potlatch prohibitions, treaty neglect and so much more.
Read more about this month’s Twitter action down below, but first join the call by emailing these MPs.
Your email will go to the following email addresses: John.Duncan@parl.gc.ca, Stephen.Harper@parl.gc.ca, Nycole.Turmel@parl.gc.ca, Bob.Rae@parl.gc.ca, Louis.Plamondon@parl.gc.ca, Elizabeth.May@parl.gc.ca, Linda.Duncan@parl.gc.ca, Carolyn.Bennett@parl.gc.ca, Charlie.Angus@parl.gc.ca.
The occupation also drew a small but annoying group of racists, with predictable bigoted and stereotypical comments. It also featured government apologists whose main message box ideas was to focus on solutions and steer away from blaming anyone for anything. The king of apologists was Conservative Senator Don Meredith, who, in but one tweet, managed to offend people in three different ways!
The events in #Attawapiskat are troubling. We need to focus on the solution & not on the problem. Children & families are at stake. #cdnpoli
There are no “events” happening there. There are current manifestations of generations of systemic bureaucratic neglect and abuse.
Nothing is troubling. That word captures but 1% of the extent of the crisis there and throughout the country.
While focusing on a solution is great, the advice to not focus on the problem is extraordinarily dismissive and also symbolic of Canada’s broken relationship with first peoples.
So now we have an opportunity to channel our demands to our leaders with a call to act. Scroll back up if you didn’t send in your letter to the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, the prime minister, leaders of all four federal parties, the Aboriginal Affairs critics and the Attawapiskat MP.Truly fixing Attawapiskat means fixing our national shame: looking back to address our past and looking forward to build a new future together.
I attended today, along with Alex, a discussion panel to remember the Montreal Massacre where Marc Lepine murdered fourteen women at the École Polytechnique simply because they were women and he thought that they had prevented him from attending the school.
A lot of people – including many Conservatives who claim to fully support the equality of women (in the eyes of the law) – will argue that since the days of the Montreal Massacre society has advanced by leaps and bounds.
And sure, we’ve gone some distance since we established in law that women were merely the chattel property of their husbands or that forced sex in marriage was not rape because the woman were expected to provide sex to their husbands.
Or have we?
One of the courageous and amazingly strong women presenting at the panel today pointed out that in a time where the Family Law Act was being revised to erase gendered definitions (partially, perhaps, as an attempt to treat everyone equally in the law, and partially, perhaps, to fix legal issues once same sex marriage was legalized) that not everything has changed, and perhaps some areas have been changing back, in a scary way.
criticising a man’s sexual performance and/or withholding sex as punishment.
This is in context of replacing gendered terms in the Family Law Act and updating the ‘legal information for battered women’ with more gender neutral language.
So much for that. Here’s what the definitions on this fact sheet look like:
Imagine that – here, we’re going to the odd length of defining “partners” who abuse men as exclusively women, in a time where we’re de-gendering the system, completely ignorant that the vast majority of partner-abuse cases are perpetrated by men against women.
And here’s their terrifying description of what sex abuse is:
This astounds me. In an age where we should be stressing what consent is to men, making sure that we’re holding rapists to account and not blaming their victims, we’re defining withholding sex as sex abuse committed by women against men?
Some intrepid reporter should ask our Families First (TM) Premier if she thinks saying “no” to a violent man and refusing to have sex with him is abuse.
In short, however, the message to me is clear: we might think we’ve come a long way in gender equality since the Montreal Massacre, but the truth is that we haven’t.
The police who respond to a domestic abuse call are likely to classify it as a “dispute” and not help women in need. The justice system, with an eye to formal equality, doesn’t always understand that legalistic equality does not always mean substantive equality. A system that has for hundreds and thousands of years merely regarded women as the property of their men is not fundamentally changed by removing gendered nouns in the law. More must be done.
I most definitely do not consider a a woman who says “no” to sex with a man after he hits her or degrades her to be abusing him, and I think it is preposterous for a government funded organisation that is supposed to provide educative materials to the public to suggest that it might be.
Consent is consent. Denying consent is not abusive. Suggesting, however, the denying consent is abusive is the most perverse enabling of abuse that I have ever seen.
We spend too much time as a society blaming women for being raped, allegedly through what they wear or where they walk. We shouldn’t be saying that taking control of their own bodies is somehow abusive.
Not just the case in those communities, but how it’s representative of Canada’s largely racist relationship with first nations and, frankly, all “disposable” people.
Some of us have been working up an idea to draw and focus attention on the need to not only address Attawapiskat, but the overall systemic problem.
Let’s occupy the #Attawapiskat hashtag in Twitter for most of the day on Wednesday, December 7. Hashtag occupation is an activist technique in Twitter to push a message around a new or existing hashtag. If the hashtag ends up trending in a city/province/country, all the better.
And if you aren’t around/available on the 7th, you can use Hootsuite or some similar Twitter interface to write some scheduled tweets to go out on the 7th.
And I’m thinking that around mid afternoon in each of our time zones, we can start focusing tweets directly at John Duncan’s email/phone number. Clever fellow doesn’t have a Twitter id.
And remember, you tweeps are often the sources of information an insight in your social networks outside the echo chamber of Twitter. Make sure you encourage your people in Facebook, Diaspora and other social circles to take part by sharing their hopes and wishes for a national dialogue on our dysfunctional relationship with first peoples.
If you aren’t in Twitter, but know someone who is, but cares about healing this core failure of Canada as a whole, please ask them to take part. Here’s what I’m thinking:
On December 7, from 8am EST to 5pm PST, each participant makes 3-6 tweets about this topic.
Hashtags to use: #Attawapiskat for sure, plus any of these that fit your individual tweets: #NativeSpring #AFN, #indigenous, #aboriginal, #cdnpoli, #onpoli, #racism, etc. Use your province’s hashtag for your tweets, like #bcpoli #onpoli #skpoli, etc. because hashtag cross-polination is a powerful thing and our nation’s systemic problem exists in your province too!
People to include in tweets:
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan [john.duncan@parl.gc.ca, 613-992-2503, 250-338-9381]
Stephen Harper [stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca, @pmharper in Twitter, 613-992-4211, 403-253-7990]
Remember, the current event is Attawapiskat, but the systemic problem is nation-wide. And if you’re inspired to be thinking on systems-wide level, enjoy this piece.
Content suggestions for your tweets:
Comment on healing our relationship with first peoples.
Why do Canadians allow such poverty among first peoples?
Why are so many first peoples living in abject poverty?
What needs to be healed in our relationship with first peoples?
Is Attawapiskat symbolic of larger issues in Canada?
Your vision on healthy relationships with first peoples.
What poverty means to you.
Why you want our governments to begin a sincere national dialogue on healing our racist, imperialist, dysfunctional relationship with first peoples: acknowledging the problems of the past and present, and expanding solutions and best practices around the country into the future. To move forward we need to heal the past and build a respectful future.
See the piece and comments here for more inspiration for your tweets, as well as the âpihtawikosisân piece above.
So if you could spare a couple minutes, 3-6 times during the above time range on December 7, to stimulate a healthier nation, thanks! And again, if you know of any Twitter folks who care about this issue, please consider asking them to take part.
And if you have any new ideas for hashtags, event logistics or content suggestions, please toss them into the comments below and I’ll incorporate them into this post.
Canadians’ racist neglect of our first people’s seems unshakable.
We had Davis Inlet, and we didn’t wake up to any systemic problems. That was just a one off?
And now Attawapiskat? Perhaps it was just a tragedy of homelessness that happened in the last few weeks, so we couldn’t expect the government to be on top of it all. It turns out no. There have been systemic funding problems going back years.
- 2,000 people live there and the federal government has committed $500,000 to renovate five vacant homes. Five.
- The chief said the federal government has committed $2 million more but Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan [john.duncan@parl.gc.ca, 613-992-2503, 250-338-9381] denies that decision has been made. Maybe that would be another 20 homes renovated?
- This community has “a litany of problems,” so “officials would travel to the area this week to ensure that recent aid is being used effectively,” which for most of us trained in the code of Canada means that they can’t take care of themselves because they’re drunks, addicts, politically corrupt or incompetent, or just not educated enough to manage. This in itself, beyond being one of Canada’s biggest racist black eyes, is sufficient evidence that there are systemic problems throughout our country with respect to how we even think about “the other.”
- But everything’s ok now because the federal government will, “send our people in to make some, help make some, decisions with the chief and council” [emphasis mine]. While there are undoubtedly a series of problems, “Canada” prefers to deal with problems like this by equating first peoples’ communities as sad, unfortunate dorm rooms that our suburban children inhabit–rooms that are riddled with a litany of problems that stem from them living alone for the first time. Like children.
- And of course there is a chance to make the prime minister look good by saying his economic action plan had completed another 44 homes. Remember there are 2,000 people living there. Doing a little bit is good enough, eh? 44 homes. Plus 5. Plus maybe 20 more.
While I had Attawapiskat on my mind for days last week, I was stuck on how to figure out what I wanted to say about the situation beyond just phoning the prime minister [stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca, 613-992-4211, 403-253-7990] and screaming.
But the best thing I can do is to help change the dialogue in this country that allows us all to sleep soundly at night as hundreds of thousands of families in our country live in varying degrees of abject poverty, all preventable in a rich nation like Canada.
Exhaust? Really?
This post started out as one of flabbergast at how police tried to disperse protesters with motorcycle exhaust at Science World in Vancouver on Friday when the prime minister showed up for his photo op with the premier. Gassing protesters seemed unbelievable until I saw the picture [film at 11].
But in a country where we can justify or explain that tactic away, Attawapiskat came into clarity for me.
Certain people are disposable. Protesters, first peoples, anyone who makes us uncomfortable. If there are mass Occupy Christmas actions that “threaten” the brinkmanship inherent in capitalism’s suicidal retail model, those funky guerilla theatre protesters dressed as elves or whatever will become non-persons to mainstream Canadians who are continually molded by corporate media.
Perhaps we only have binary switches: people are like us because we are told we can relate to them, but if they are “other”, we can ignore them, like the hundreds of thousands of Canadian children still living in poverty today, 20 years after the House of Commons unanimously pledged to end child poverty 11 years ago.
So if you are still agnostic on the Occupy movement, it seems pretty easy to get behind fixing the systemic problems in our first nations communities. They need help. They need resources. They need the rest of Canada to start thinking about dignity and screaming at our politicians, embarrassing them if need be to realize that it’s not just about handouts and auditors, but about community, inclusion, healing, justice, respect, cordial international relations, and an authentic willingness to fix a problem that is centuries old. And let’s face it, largely/completely our [non-first peoples'] fault.
This is a solution we can all be a part of…because we all are actually a part of the solution. The politicians work for us. We constantly forget that because they constantly behave as if they don’t. We’re in charge of them. Make them get moving on starting a national healing. As long as we let them sleep at night while others live in Home Depot lawn sheds, we’re not getting the job done.
Loading ....jpg){kind=link}