Category Archives: Morality

Fixing the Cleveland I*****s Racist Team Name

Congratulations, Toronto Blue Jays on another exciting season!

Let’s hope that before the Atlanta B****s or Cleveland I*****s come back to Toronto they will have changed their name. And as I’ve argued in the past, the process of fixing racist team names can itself be a reconciliation moment.

A moment that you can help bring on by sharing the image below with those of your people who still don’t understand why cultural groups are not other people’s mascots!

National Congress of Indians (via the Good Men Project)

A recent poster from the National Congress of Indians (via the Good Men Project) sheds greater light on this issue. Simply put, they argue that having a Cleveland Indians logo is like having a “New York Jews” or “San Francisco Chinamen,” mascots that would be blatantly offensive. I shudder to think what the equivalencies for gays or black people would be.

You can take a look at the image [above] for yourself, a stark reminder that racism is alive and well. We often say that it lives in the cracks, but sometimes it’s right in front of our face, the racism we accept every day.

A Glimpse of Last Week in White, Male Supremacy

People, especially people who are white and male: we need to drastically up our game if we are going to move towards equity and away from the increasingly brutal white male backlash that’s been growing.

Last week a number of things happened that reinforce the supremacy of white men, but also the rise in those who challenge it. We need to join the challenge:

  1. Racists are selling t-shirts with an image of Colin Kaepernick in rifle crosshairs.
  2. Ben Carson, while speaking positively about Donald Trump [I know, right?], couldn’t handle a challenging MSNBC female reporter and demanded that her own network cut off her mic.
  3. Lou Dobbs, despite not being a clear supporter of Anonymous, used one of their tactics of distributing and amplifying a phone number and address on the internet. He did it, however, to a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. Dobbs later apologized, but it was unclear why he felt he needed to apologize.
  4. The Nova Scotia premier dug deep to pull out dripping sarcasm, condescension and mansplaining when a female TV reporter questioned him on environmental policy.

White men have basked in entitlements for centuries. We need to call them on this nonsense: all of us, especially perhaps, other white men.

Let’s make this a more enlightened week!

How Far Will Men Go to Keep Their Entitlements?

How can you tell that America is suffering from a vast, intense, rageful male backlash against feminism?

How can you tell men are struggling brutally hard to hold onto their entitlements?

[And don’t be too complacent Canadian men; are we really different?]

Well, while this electoral analysis can’t actually manifest next month, when we look at what would happen if only men  or only women voted for president next month, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Read, soak this in, close your gaping jaw and get busy seeking social peace and  reconciliation!

menvote

womenvote

One Million Vaginas Helps Us With Trump

grabhim

 

The wise, inspiring folks at One Million Vaginas have done it again, helping reframe Trump’s attempt to disempower women into an empowerment meme.

Feel free to sprinkle these hashtags as well!

#GrabHimByTheBallot #NeverTrump #RapeCulture #SexualAssault

So please, all my American friends/readers, and all YOUR American friends, help the world out by grabbing November 8th by the ballot:

  1. Don’t vote for Trump.
  2. Don’t vote for Republicans, who have brutally disrespected women for far too long.
  3. If you’re living where a Democracy for America [Bernie Sanders] endorsed candidate is running, support them.

Because it’s 2016…and we still have lots of work to do to fuck the patriarchy.

Lean in! 🙂

 

 

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

I so hope you had a wonderful Indigenous Peoples’ Day yesterday!

In “America” there is a movement to replace the systemically racist Columbus Day. It’s spreading briskly; soon it may reach the 100th Monkey and spread across Turtle Island.

In Canada, we had Thanksgiving Day, for all the cornucopia reasons you can think of.

But as thinking citizens and all around justice-seeking individuals, we all have a role to play in leading our leaders into the pristine pastures of a richer community with greater reconciliation and cultural peace.

And please, let’s not let “America” beat us to the closer-to-utopia place of eradicating systemic racism. Let’s put on our toques, re-tape our hockey sticks and fix Thanksgiving.

And while we’re at it, let’s help Edmonton change their football Eskimos name. Here are some simple tactics to get that done!

And on the way, check out all the “American” places that are ahead of most of “Canada” with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

 

Columbus Day is Institutionalized Racism

 

Columbus Day is Institutionalized Racism

Columbus memeIn Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving Day today, a slight improvement on Columbus day, which institutionalizes systemic racism.

Columbus Day celebrates white supremacy. It’s time to stop that now. If you need some elaboration, read this.

Seattle did it 2 years ago. Now Vermont has figured out a first step in a solution: turning Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The rest of it involves human engagement, some truth, some reconciliation and building a new future with dignity and respect.... 25 Cities Abolish Columbus Day and Adopt Indigenous People Day Instead

So go out there and learn the maps of pre-colonial “Canada,” “USA,” and Mexico.

End Our Slow Motion Genocide!

Genocide can take place in slow motion, just like weapons of mass destruction.

When I learned that people were calling land mines “weapons of mass destruction, in slow motion,” it became obvious that we can practice social/cultural/human genocide in slow motion too.

Understanding racism and genocide is no simpler than this,
from Zianna Oliphant:

Considering the people we have colonized, enslaved and oppressed in North America the last 500 years, there have been times when the genocide was more rapid, urgent and hurried.

There have also been times when it has been slow. Like entropy.

First Nations in Canada, American Indians and African Americans are among the groups that white supremacists have been trying to eradicate.

And by white supremacists, I’m not talking about the Klan and Skinheads. I’m talking about the Canadian and American settler governments who have overt, covert, active and passive policies to eradicate those they deem inferior.

For, if we white settlers actually felt these oppressed groups were equal to us, we would actually stop the policies and practices that eliminate them from our world.

We would address homicides and summary executions by police, missing and murdered indigenous women, the reserve/reservation townships, the prison industrial complex, and all other policies and practices that have been clearly demonstrated to pursue our slow motion genocide agenda.

There aren’t enough hashtags to encompass all who have been recently or historically slaughtered in this slow motion genocide.

Here’s just the latest, this week: #AlfredOlango, executed by police in the slow motion genocide charge of “Having A Seizure While Black”:

http://fusion.net/story/351795/alfred-olango-shooting-el-cajon/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fusion&utm_content=link

But I have a solution for you, my fellow white people governed by white supremacist North American governments. Scroll back up and watch, again, the wise and stunning statement from Zianna Oliphant in Charlotte who can so clearly see what kind of racist culture we are perpetuating. Honestly, if it is that clear to a child, but not Mike Ditka [an ignorant racist], you need to decide if you side with the wise child, or the racist former football coach.

“Part of white privilege has been the ability to not know that your privilege exists. If you benefit from racism, do you really want to know that?” Do you? Then read this, and act accordingly:

When Misogynists Are So Bold, They Skip Anonymity

The state of backlash against feminism has become newly bold. Likely because feminists are gaining traction in society, so men are doubling down on their fight to keep their sick entitlements.

The fact that most of the guys hurling the abuse used their real names, showing a passion and conviction in their argument that’s not there with anonymous comments, is unsettling and shows the depth of their misogyny. I don’t think they even realize it’s there.

Click the Tara Bradbury quote above, read the article, and boldly declare your feminism! In any way you like. In person, at coffee shops, at work, in social media, on patios. Whatever. Be the change!

No, BC Actually Mentored Saskatchewan’s Poor-Bashing

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Foxfamblogs.org%2Ffp2p%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F10%2FClass_War-2_250px.jpg&f=1Despite being Metro News, Emily Jackson’s great piece yesterday [below] about how brutally cruel the Saskatchewan government is should make us mindful of a number of issues.

Not the least of which is that the neoliberal Saskatchewan Party has been photocopying many of the worst of BC’s regressive and anti-social policies.

That makes the BC Liberal government Saskatchewan’s poor-bashing mentor.

Let’s re-spin this piece and explore some key context, then work up some solutions!

  1. In Saskatchewan there’s a lot of racism and classism and discrimination against the poor and those with mental health issues. BC too.
  2. 1 in 7 people in Saskatchewan is aboriginal.
  3. In Saskatchewan, the police have been known to drive aboriginals out of town to dump them on the outskirts of town. In the winter. There are even jovial nicknames for that little jaunt.
  4. Saskatchewan has cut funding to shelters. So has BC. It’s called poorbashing. People, after all, should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Because, after all, we are all born with equal opportunity to succeed in life! [Myth, as you know.]
  5. The BC premier is an opportunistic liar when it comes to the 2 men the Saskatchewan Party put on a bus with a one-way ticket to BC: “Wherever they are in Canada, we should be supporting them… if they decide to come to British Columbia, we’re going to support them in that.” There are hundreds of thousands of stories of people in BC who are being degraded, de-funded, insulted and left to dangle in the wind from almost 15 years of cuts to social programs. Perhaps she thinks these men from the bus can work in LNG because that’s mythical as the BC Liberal Party social conscience.
  6. A Vancouver city councillor is deluded if he really believes his own words, that he “hopes Saskatchewan will look to British Columbia and Vancouver for how to properly treat people who need low barrier shelters.” Vancouver has a dismal record of actually contending with homelessness and inadequate housing. And if he really believes that anyone should look to the BC government for how to deal with the poor, he’s at best disingenuous. But then he shows his weakening credibility: “We’re a humane and just society here in Vancouver, and certainly our province is as well,” Jang said. “You just don’t treat people that way.” BC treats its vulnerable populations hideously. Our province is a train wreck.

Solutions Time!

  1. The same Vancouver councillor is right in calling for a national homelessness strategy, and far far more robust than this insult.
  2. We also need a poverty reduction plan in BC.
  3. We also need living wage legislation in BC.
  4. We need a housing authority in Vancouver, like Whistler has.
  5. We also need a national poverty strategy.
  6. And a national housing strategy.
  7. This isn’t really all that difficult. #1-6 indicate some intentional planning, based on sincerity and integrity and actual concern to ensure that people in a rich country like Canada don’t have to live in squalor.
  8. Which brings us to #8. Welcome, #8! Canadians are ignorant or oblivious or criminally indifferent to the squalor we have created over generations on reserves and for off-reserve first peoples. We are content with their inadequate housing, untreated mental health disorders and addictions, pathetic healthcare and education, insufficient physical and social infrastructure, and a myriad of other socio-economic problems reminiscent of 21st century failed states. And you won’t see any comments on this piece about how they just need to pull themselves up by their…bootstraps. I’ll just delete them upon submission. So there’s that.
  9. Oh, and we also need the post-carbon energy infrastructure transition to ramp up to 11 now because delaying will create climate chaos that will exacerbate all the socio-economic problems above, and many more.

Ultimately, we can simply coordinate our ample brain power, increasing tax base and will to create a just and equitable Canada for everyone.

And if that isn’t compelling enough for you because it’s the right thing to do, imagine if you weren’t born who you were. Imagine you were born lacking the socio-economic entitlements you have and you lived in communities like I mentioned in #8. Bad luck, eh.

If you have the neurons to even just imagine that, then ask yourself, shouldn’t you be advocating for public policy that would provide people with the best shot at a good life on the off chance that you would have been born into a vulnerable community? After all, all humans deserve an equal chance to have a good life, and not be born into deprivation, right?

And if the answer is no, it’s probably because you weren’t and you’re ok enjoying your entitlements while others born into vulnerability can just rot.

There’s a word for that kind of person. Many words, even.

B.C. will help two homeless men sent west by Saskatchewan government: Premier Christy Clark

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark said the province should and will help the two homeless men en route to the west coast after the Saskatchewan government bought them one-way bus tickets to B.C., where neither had social services lined up.

Saskatchewan’s ministry of social services spent $500 on B.C.-bound bus tickets for the two First Nations men instead of helping them at home, where their local shelter recently faced funding cuts, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix reported Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, one man has family in Victoria and one, a 21-year-old who struggles with mental health problems, doesn’t know a soul in Vancouver, his final destination. The men embarked from North Battleford, Sask. Tuesday night, but it’s not clear whether they arrived in B.C.

Regardless, Clark said the province stands ready to help, adding that B.C.’s strong economy is attracting a variety of people.

“I think everybody in British Columbia would say we want to support people with serious mental illness and we want to make sure they get the care that they need,” Clark told reporters. “Wherever they are in Canada, we should be supporting them… if they decide to come to British Columbia, we’re going to support them in that.”

Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang, who is also a psychiatry professor at UBC who researches mental illness, said this story shows homelessness is a problem across Canada, not just in major centres, and called for a national homelessness strategy. Meanwhile, he hopes Saskatchewan will look to British Columbia and Vancouver for how to properly treat people who need low barrier shelters.

“To treat two human beings that way, slapping them on the bus, one reportedly with mental health issues, to send them off into the night, is absolutely disgusting,” Jang said.

“I hope Saskatchewan learns from this and says we’ve got to invest in our social services and get people the best care to get them on their feet again, not push it off and hope fate will take care of them.”

The Star Phoenix reported that Saskatchewan social workers have the discretion to buy people bus tickets, usually to join family, but it is not typical. The government announced Wednesday it will review the case.

Vancouver’s annual homeless count takes place Wednesday night to Thursday morning. If volunteers meet either man, they will offer help.

“We’re a humane and just society here in Vancouver, and certainly our province is as well,” Jang said. “You just don’t treat people that way.”