-We have
to create; it is the only thing louder than destruction.
-If you
want a rainbow, you have to deal with the rain
-“The highest result of
education is tolerance,” Helen Keller
---------------
When disabilities are accepted as abilities in disguise - 20% of world's population is disabled....
When disabilities are accepted as abilities in disguise - 20% of world's population is disabled....
Purest form of equality #love #kindness #wearecommunity @TheDailyShow #KEANU kitty #Canada150 #BellletsTalk @TheDailySHow
https://www.facebook.com/mostviralweb/videos/2120317631527998/ …
https://www.facebook.com/mostviralweb/videos/2120317631527998/ …
-----
ELDER STORY....
#GayPride Canada #BlackLivesMatter and young millennials - before you shite all
over Canada's policing, firstresponders and our troops.... let me tell you
about Canada and gays and the long haul, pain and gain millions and millions of
us have gone through for our gay brothers and sisters.... who are not gay....
Was just thinking on my momma who died at 82 and WWII
destroyed all of us in Canada.... but she had two great loves #HankWilliams and
#RockHudson....
My old momma born in
late 1920s was of the era of chinks, injuns, niggers, white trash, Catholics
hating Protestants viciously because that's how it was ... and girls didn't
matter.... my father tried to push my stroller down a huge hill because i was
not a firstborn son...
So my one brother could not wait to tell my mother that
#RockHudson was dying of gay #AIDS.... ... she just stared at him.... and
said... so? And he couldn't believe
it.... she replied, I'm never going to date him, see him in person, be part of
his family or friends.... every movie and tv show he makes thrills me.... so
why should #RockHudson being gay matter to me?
This is the same old broad who would NOT get in an elevator with anyone
not white....
It's amazing in the 60s, 70s and 80s how we - who chose
our gay friends and loved them openly and dearly ... were often looked down
upon.... especially by those in the workplace we considered friends.... and
those we thought were so open minded... were actually closed...
The 80s changed the whole world..... for our gay
friends..... and it devasted and destroyed families and much of Canada ... just
like #WestboroBaptistChurch's #JaneFonda and #JohnKerry did to #conscription
#Vietnam troops -
We were ostracized and humiliated and heartbroken... and
not gay but guilt by love and association...... and to top it off President
Clinton and PM Chretien made a deal for blood .... to find out it came from
American prisons of aids prisoners so #RandyConnors died.... and the fury and
pain shook Canada to it's core...
We helped make 1969 happen.... gays in police and
military... gay marriage.... and the celebration for all of Canadians to
rejoice in..... #blacklivesmatter you dirtied ... and will never be the same
for tons of us elders who have 2 many scars ...way 2 many.... policiing has to
change... BUT... so do you..... u frighten Canadians... and it is quite
honestly probably a big reason why millions did NOT vote for Clinton whilst
millions did vote for Trump.
Now two people have helped me understand
#BlackLivesMatter.... namely, #TrevorNoah @TheDailyShow and a young black hero
loved by all Nova Scotians #QuentrelProvo.
Trevor Noah is brilliant utter genius and pulls no
punches with statistics and the in your face statistics on the reality... that
yes ... we have a horrific policing problem.... and way 2 much shite is making
it 2 dangerous these days to be in policing... who would police???
Nova Scotia's hero Quentrel Provo started a whole
movement that brought all of us together in the fight against too many of our
black sons dying horribly.... and all us mommas and grandmas are taking a
stand...
.... AND THE FOLLOWING IS PROOF.... that police
mentality MUST change.... but we all; as grassroots communities, must stand
up..... and be part of the process... IT MUST BE ALL OF US TOGETHER....
Is there a racism problem.... of f**king course there
is.... women aren't even considered equal and #Canada is on of the only
counties on the planet that it's written into our laws... which USA and United
Nations have NOT done....
But Canada Gay Pride.... u broke so many hearts.... and
we made you and all you enjoy in this Canada of today..... the millions and
millions and millions who are not gay... but would die for you and have proven
it on 2 many occasions...
U shame our policing, first responders, our troops and
the basic principle of equality that your supposed to uphold.... SHAME ON U....
imho ... and on this day.... would we still die for you??? of f**king course..... we are always watching.... always...
In Closing we're Canadian celebrating #Canada150... and
you have hollowed out the joy many grannies and grandpas and grandbabies
normally would cheer and celebrate....
... and news media MUST B REGULATED in this era of social
media.... and held stricly accountable.... so intelligent educated folks can
trust again... imho...
#GayPride Canada u must apologize to all Canadians
especially those of us who fought so many battles.... to many to get you where
Canada is today..... #elders and #blacklivesmatter tone it down... this is
#Canada... protest properly... and make sure your Canadian....
KEEP IN MIND... 50 years ago in Canada Protestants hatred
of us Catholics was dripping everywhere and anywhere.... read your history pls... love ya but right
now am disappointed #GayPride Canada....
OH AND BY THE BY .... back in the day.... the cops and
firstresponders were the ONLY ones who helped us during #AIDS and persecution
of gays.... some of them friends right to the end.... whilst the friends we
thought we had... we did not....
--------------
PRIDE
PARADES IN CANADA ENJOYS EVERYBODY'S PARTICIPATIN- AND OVERWHELMING ACCEPTANCE
OF ALL PEOPLES- it's time
Parade offers ‘overwhelming sense of acceptance’
July 27, 2013 - 6:15pm FRANCES WILLICK STAFF REPORTER
A scene from the Halifax pride parade route Saturday in the city's downtown. (ADRIEN VECZAN / Staff)
.
EDITOR'S NOTE: We had this story open for comments earlier today. Unfortunately, we have had to close this story to further commenting, and to hide the comments that were previously approved. Our moderators have the final say on which stories are open to comments, for how long and what is approved. Sometimes, the tone of the comments received forces us to close comments before we normally would. Please take a look at our commenting policy. Thank you.
They came wearing rainbows, beads, baubles, leis, flags, costumes and, in a few cases, next to nothing at all.
Halifax’s 26th annual pride parade wended its way through the downtown on Saturday afternoon, drawing thousands who cheered, clapped, danced and sang along from the sidewalks to the thumping music from the floats.
The red serge of the Mounties was one of the leading contingents, followed by parade participants from non-profits, unions, churches, nightclubs, community organizations, corporations, sports teams and political groups.
Donna Milligan, 28, watched the parade from the sidelines along with her mother, husband and three-year-old daughter. Rainbow-coloured feathers dangled from her ears as she explained what pride means to her.
"It’s an overwhelming sense of acceptance. It’s kind of shifted from, years ago, it was more about tolerance and now it’s about accepting everybody for who they are.
"It just gives me an overwhelming sense of pride in my community," she said as her bottom lip began trembling. "I’m getting all teary-eyed."
VIDEOs
REPLAY: Our live blog of Saturday's parade
IN PHOTOS: Staff photographer Adrien Veczan took in the event
VIDEO: What does pride mean to you?
LOOKING BACK: Pride: The long journey
Ryan LeBlanc, 28, took in the festivities shrouded in a large rainbow flag and wearing a bright red, one-piece spandex suit that covered his entire head, allowing just the whiskers from his beard to poke through.
"Pride means just being able to be whoever I am and whoever I want to be without anyone judging me or looking down on me," he said.
Asked why he was compelled to come out and watch the parade, he said, "just a sense of community, knowing that there are other people who have been through the same things that I have, and just sharing that and being open about who you are — even though I’m in a red unitard."
Joseph Nyemah cradled his five-month-old son, Tweh, in his arms as the parade partied down Barrington Street.
Originally from Liberia, Nyemah came to Canada in 2005 and now lives in Dartmouth. He brought the rest of his family to the parade because he wants them to appreciate the diversity the city has to offer.
"I think Halifax is rapidly changing and I think we need to embrace diversity in many ways and I think this event is great," he said. "It shows that Halifax is truly a cosmopolitan city."
Even though Tweh was a little too young to understand, Nyemah thought it was important for the baby to be present.
"I just want him to see this and he can grow up to understand the whole concept of acceptance, of difference, so that he can know that we are different and we have to accept one another."
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1144717-parade-offers-overwhelming-sense-of-acceptance
Parade offers ‘overwhelming sense of acceptance’
July 27, 2013 - 6:15pm FRANCES WILLICK STAFF REPORTER
A scene from the Halifax pride parade route Saturday in the city's downtown. (ADRIEN VECZAN / Staff)
.
EDITOR'S NOTE: We had this story open for comments earlier today. Unfortunately, we have had to close this story to further commenting, and to hide the comments that were previously approved. Our moderators have the final say on which stories are open to comments, for how long and what is approved. Sometimes, the tone of the comments received forces us to close comments before we normally would. Please take a look at our commenting policy. Thank you.
They came wearing rainbows, beads, baubles, leis, flags, costumes and, in a few cases, next to nothing at all.
Halifax’s 26th annual pride parade wended its way through the downtown on Saturday afternoon, drawing thousands who cheered, clapped, danced and sang along from the sidewalks to the thumping music from the floats.
The red serge of the Mounties was one of the leading contingents, followed by parade participants from non-profits, unions, churches, nightclubs, community organizations, corporations, sports teams and political groups.
Donna Milligan, 28, watched the parade from the sidelines along with her mother, husband and three-year-old daughter. Rainbow-coloured feathers dangled from her ears as she explained what pride means to her.
"It’s an overwhelming sense of acceptance. It’s kind of shifted from, years ago, it was more about tolerance and now it’s about accepting everybody for who they are.
"It just gives me an overwhelming sense of pride in my community," she said as her bottom lip began trembling. "I’m getting all teary-eyed."
VIDEOs
REPLAY: Our live blog of Saturday's parade
IN PHOTOS: Staff photographer Adrien Veczan took in the event
VIDEO: What does pride mean to you?
LOOKING BACK: Pride: The long journey
Ryan LeBlanc, 28, took in the festivities shrouded in a large rainbow flag and wearing a bright red, one-piece spandex suit that covered his entire head, allowing just the whiskers from his beard to poke through.
"Pride means just being able to be whoever I am and whoever I want to be without anyone judging me or looking down on me," he said.
Asked why he was compelled to come out and watch the parade, he said, "just a sense of community, knowing that there are other people who have been through the same things that I have, and just sharing that and being open about who you are — even though I’m in a red unitard."
Joseph Nyemah cradled his five-month-old son, Tweh, in his arms as the parade partied down Barrington Street.
Originally from Liberia, Nyemah came to Canada in 2005 and now lives in Dartmouth. He brought the rest of his family to the parade because he wants them to appreciate the diversity the city has to offer.
"I think Halifax is rapidly changing and I think we need to embrace diversity in many ways and I think this event is great," he said. "It shows that Halifax is truly a cosmopolitan city."
Even though Tweh was a little too young to understand, Nyemah thought it was important for the baby to be present.
"I just want him to see this and he can grow up to understand the whole concept of acceptance, of difference, so that he can know that we are different and we have to accept one another."
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1144717-parade-offers-overwhelming-sense-of-acceptance
--------------
Trevor Noah Breaks Down Why It’s Possible ...
Thus the Black Lives Matter movement is not trying to make
the ... But the only thing that this tragedy proves, ...
----------------------
news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/our-pride-includes-our-police-vancouver-lgbt-activists-rally-against-black-lives-matter-plan-to-shun-cops
Feb 15, 2017 ... In response, an ad-hoc coalition of some of the city's
most seasoned LGBT ... “ Absolutely no banning of the police in Vancouver
Pride,” said Metis trans ... the city's first openly gay columnist and Gordon
Hardy, who co-founded the ... same brush as law enforcement in the United
States or eastern Canada.
---------
Canada's Pride groups
debate police participation in annual festivities
------------
Feb 6, 2017 ... “In our view, stepping away temporarily from the parade
will best support ... believes the Halifax force is the first in Canada to take
such an approach. ... for LGBT people across the province, but vehement
opposition from the ...
--------------
Jan 28, 2017 ... Re: Toronto police should step away from Pride Parade,
Shree Paradkar, Jan. ... That is not how we do things in Canada. ... As a gay
man who grew up in the '50s and '60s in Toronto, when it was ... values of
equality, inclusion and self- recognition of ourselves as human beings first and
a minority second.
---------------------
Jul 3, 2016 ... 'We are not taking any space away from any folks,' said
Alexandra Williams, ... Black Lives Matter interrupts Toronto Pride Parade 7:35
... that Pride Toronto agreed to was that there will not be any police floats
at ... Pride Toronto, in response to the sit-in, said it welcomes the ... I'm
gay," he told...
----------------------
Nova Scotia; Newfoundland ... A
Look Back At Canada’s Tainted Blood Scandal ... follows the
travails of one family dealing with the fallout from the tainted blood
...
Some of the killer blood ended up in Canada where it
contributed to the ... Bill Clinton collected tainted blood from
Arkansas prison ...
nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/.../clintons-tainted...blood-to-canada.html
nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca
Victims of the tainted blood scandal and their ... Victims of tainted
blood scandal urging governments to stop ... keep their blood supply
safe. Health Canada is ...
Commemoration of the Tainted Blood
Tragedy; Home; About the CHS. Events Calendar; ... major reforms were made to Canada’s
blood collection and distribution …
2005-10-30 · Clinton blood scandal
exposed in ... tying Bill Clinton to an Arkansas prison blood
scandal that ... the blood was tainted as they sold it to Canada
and a ...
-----------------
BLOG:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: UPDATED AUG 23- luv u gay bros and sistas-but DO
NOT HIJACK winter olympics/paralympics- we'll NEV'A 4give ya/Nova Scotia
News/AGAHANISTAN UP2DATE NEWS/BULLYCIDE N BULLYS GET LAW NOVA SCOTIA STYLE
--------------
Blog: Canada Military News: Cutting political correctness bullshite- he says freedom, they say hate! A Fake America: Cultural Fragmentation and Polarization ... Democracy requires basic sense of solidarity
------------------
Should Black Lives Matter Focus on 'Black-on-Black' Murders?
Critics who
charge that prioritizing police killings over other, more prevalent forms of
violence misunderstand the purpose and methods of the movement.
Over the
years, John McWhorter, a linguistics scholar at Columbia University, and Glenn
Loury, a Brown University economist, have conducted a series of thoughtful
public conversations about U.S. politics with a focus on race and black
identity. Their latest discussion concerns the Black Lives Matter movement.
Should its activists protest police killings of black people or all
killings of black people? Before I offer a perspective, here’s a slightly
condensed transcript of their exchange:
John
McWhorter: The reason
Black Lives Matter has a lot of eyes rolling is not because people don't care
about black people and don't understand the problem with police. The problem is
that the typical black man in a particular kind of community is at much, much
more risk of being killed by another black man. And you can't argue it away.
There are all these sophisticated feints such as saying that there's a
difference between the state murdering and citizens murdering. But none of it
goes through.
This high
indignation about one white cop doing a terrible thing looks incongruous given
that in these same communities, hundreds of black men are killing each other
every summer. And so I think, in short, Black Lives Matter is very important.
It could make a very important difference in modern black history. But for it
to be a movement that resonates historically, it has to add a new wing where it
firmly says and stands behind the idea that black lives matter when black
people take them too.
There has to
be a second wing that goes into black communities and works in a real way on
the black-on-black murders. That would make Black Lives Matter complete. As it
is now, it's incomplete and it looks shrill. And the idea that Black Lives
Matter when white people try to take them looks recreational, it looks
childish, it looks peevish, and it's just wrong, it's incomplete.
That's my take
on Black Lives Matter.
Glenn
Loury: I don't
personally disagree with the sentiment that you just expressed. But here's what
the rebuttal would be, I think. First people would say, “Yes, there's violence
in black communities in low-income urban black enclaves. Homicide rates are
very high. But this is a consequence of the structural racism that has played
out over history and continues to play out today: that confines people to
racially segregated neighborhoods; that denies people an opportunity to develop
their talents and to live decently with legitimate jobs and so forth; drug
trafficking is flourishing; people are concentrated in public housing; gangs are
proliferating; young men are idle, so there's a structure that accounts for the
behavior, and it's unfair to ask a movement demanding justice from the police
to be responsible for patterns of behavior that are deeply embedded in a system
over which black people don't exercise any control.” Another rebuttal would be,
“These are two different subjects all together. Why are you changing the
subject? We came here to talk about police brutalization of black people. And
you tell me about something else: that young black people brutalize themselves.
I can agree with you and stipulate that the latter is a problem, but it's not
the subject I'm trying to talk about. Why are you trying to change the
subject?” Those are two possible rebuttals to the position that you just
stated.
McWhorter: And they fail utterly. I am never more struck
than I am lately about how certain sentences that you here often enough are
accepted as truth until they become almost a kind of music. You take a group of
people who are all the same color and you put them together in neighborhoods
where job opportunities are not great. And the inevitable result is that the
men are going to start killing each other over trivia?
That is an
equation that I don't think any historian or any anthropologist would think of
as applicable to homo sapiens that we know.
A group of
people who are poor, all put together in one place, without a whole lot of
opportunity will start killing one another. No. If you think about it, it would
be considered racist if a white person said that 75 years ago.
But today
we're somehow encouraged to think about that as an “enlightened” or “humane”
take on what goes on in black America. And as far as changing the subject, all
you have to do is think about the mother who just lost her second son. Now go
up to her with a pad and tell her, “Well, this is really sad, but we're really
more interested in things that the state does. We're really more interested in
things that people who are responsible for the public order do. Now the fact that
this was done by somebody who was from three blocks over, well, we're sorry,
that's regrettable, but we're not concerned with that. We're doing this now.”
It seems almost inhumane yet we're supposed to accept that as wisdom.
Loury: You don't believe it's necessarily the case
that because people are poor and concentrated in this way that they have to be
violent––that in a way, it diminishes the humanity of people to say that
they're just gonna be violent because of some environmental circumstance. They
have the volition and moral will to eschew violence despite their deprivation.
But a person
might say, “Look, the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Agents of the state who abuse that awesome responsibility constitute a real
threat to democratic values. There's a great deal more at stake here than the
personal safety of an individual. This is about an abuse of power. And the lack
of accountability for agents of the state who abuse power in this way creates a
circumstance in which people are basically terrorized. They may fear
victimization by their neighbor, and the fear may be quite real. That's one
thing. But victimization by the people whose salaries you pay with your tax
money and who are supposedly there to serve and protect you, agents of the
state, the fear of victimization by them is quite another thing altogether.
It's a different order of violation. And it's appropriate to prioritize the
response to these things in the way that Black Lives Matter has done.”
McWhorter: I reject that. I think that argument is
hopeless. That is a wordy, beautifully put argument designed to give people an
excuse to focus on racism as the problem as opposed to the more complex issue
of looking at a Rube-Goldberg sequence of socio-historical events that have led
us to an unfortunate situation where racism from whites may not always be the
problem that we need to face. And it's not that the black men shooting each
other are evil. I understand their humanity too.
But the idea
that democracy is threatened by the white cop whereas if the kid from three
blocks over does it, well he's just an ordinary person? No!
And I am
confident that A. Philip Randolph, that Martin Luther King, would not agree
with that fancy way of putting it. The situation that we're in now is as
if—think about Selma. Think about watching people coming over that bridge with
the terrible things that happened, and meanwhile over on the other side of the
bridge, black teenagers were killing each other by the dozens every summer. And
the idea was, “No, we're not really going to think about that, because they
kinda can't help it, and that's not important because they're the keepers of
public order.” Imagine what Selma would've looked like if that's what the
situation was. That's where we are now. And no amount of fancy Latinate words
can disguise that simple fact from me or most of America watching.
Airing those
viewpoints is a service—and there’s a lot to chew on that I won’t address here.
But it seems
to me that the debate about whether to focus on police killings or
“black-on-black” killings presumes that reducing the former will not help to
reduce the latter.
What if the
opposite is true?
Black Lives
Matter calls for 10 specific changes to policing policy, including body cameras,
an end to “policing for profit,” better training, and stricter limits on the
use of force.
If reforms of
that sort were implemented in Baltimore, where local police officers operate in a culture where stunning brutality is commonly meted
out to innocent residents, or Ferguson, Missouri, where residents suffered
through years of misconduct so egregious that most Americans could
scarcely conceive of what was going on, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect
that relations between black residents and police would slowly improve?
Wouldn’t
better behaved, more accountable, less abusive police departments make people
in poor black communities marginally more inclined to involve law enforcement
in disputes before they turn deadly, to cooperate more during homicide
investigations, and to collaborate with the cops in making their blocks safer?
Those sorts of
marginal changes could help to reduce the murder rate.
If the
municipal authorities are known to destroy the lives of poor people over minor
traffic infractions or to use excessive force so often that they pay out
millions in lawsuits—if they abuse and lose the trust of a community over many
years—a case can be made that effective, visible reforms are a prerequisite to
a relationship between police and residents that is conducive to stopping a
murder epidemic.
Black Lives
Matter activists are often silent about black-on-black killings. Perhaps that
is a P.R. mistake. But the reforms they are urging strike me as a more
realistic path to decreasing those killings than publicly haranguing would-be
murderers to be peaceful.
Black Lives
Matter participants are civic activists, not respected high-school teachers or
social workers or reformed gang members who can influence their former
brethren.
Since police
departments are ultimately responsive to political institutions, fighting for
police reforms with civic activism is a relatively straightforward project.
Reformers identify what they regard as prudent changes, persuade policymakers
and the public that they’re needed, and achieve victory if they get the votes.
I think that body cameras could significantly reduce excessive force, so I
write articles urging that they be made mandatory with most footage publicly
obtainable.
Fighting to
stop black-on-black murder is much less straightforward project. And the tools
available to civic activists are a much poorer fit for it: the undesirable
behavior is already against the law; lots of attention has been paid to the
problem for decades, so awareness-raising isn’t all that valuable; and there
are few obvious best-practices to spread. More generally, street marches and
protests have a rich history of sparking political change… but have
they ever persuaded private citizens to kill less? I can imagine Black Lives
Matter scoring political points for talking about black-on-black crime; I grant
that if all black lives mattering really is the mission, movement rhetoric that
ignores the vast majority of black murder victims is discordant; but I don’t
see how the activists could help stop those murders.
Perhaps that
is a failure of imagination on my part. I’d be curious to know what McWhorter
has in mind when he urges Black Lives Matter to add a piece about
black-on-black killings. Putting aside the question of public relations, what
would that achieve and how? What specifically would McWhorter have the
activists say and do? If you’re a reader who feels that Black Lives Matter
activists should broaden their focus to all black murder victims, what exactly
do you want them to do?*
Email
conor@theatlantic.com with your thoughts.
*Some critics of Black Lives Matter think
that policies like Stop and Frisk save scores of black lives. That’s a
legitimate case to press, but Black Lives Matter rejects that logic with
plausible arguments, so it’s not useful for purposes of this conversation.
Suggestions for what they should do cannot be directly at odds with their
existing beliefs.
---------------------------
Here's the thing Standing Rock protesters did differently — and won
By Jack
Smith IV
December 10, 2016
December 10, 2016
CANNON BALL, N.D. — Last Friday, Hawaiian activist Andre Perez
faced a crowd of about a hundred Standing Rock newbies standing halfway to
their knees in snow. Most of those assembled were freshly arrived volunteers at
Oceti Sakowin Camp — the northernmost of the three camps in the area and the
closest to the front lines with police. If volunteers wanted to go to the front
lines, where police were using concussion grenades and tear gas, they had to
get through Perez's training.
"I'm gonna need a couple of rent-a-cops up here," Perez
shouted over the crowd. "This next one is called a snatch-and-grab."
As Perez and 10 volunteers played the part of the cops — with safewords
if things got a little too rough — those in the crowd clasped arms to create a
human barricade, sitting low in their center of gravity to make the formation
stronger. The Indigenous People's Power Project, a group of indigenous
organizers from around the world, ran the training every day at 2 p.m.
The victory at Standing Rock didn't happen haphazardly. It happened
because organizers understood that effective protest is a learned skill. With a
series of daily training sessions, the organizers at Standing Rock taught
excited volunteers a traditional model of activism based on organization,
leadership and discipline. The organizers at Standing Rock say it's time to bring that approach
to sovereignty struggles across the country.
The trainings ran for two hours, beginning with a review of the
principles organizers had adopted listed at the head of the room on a
whiteboard: "We are protectors, not protesters," "we are
peaceful and prayerful" and "no weapons."
Trainers at Oceti Sakowin Camp were adamant about non-violence,
instructing people never to put hands on the police and never bring weapons to
the front lines. There's always the risk that youthful zeal and righteous anger
could cause things to pop off. All the police would need in order to escalate
their use of force would be one good excuse.
"We've got young bucks here who are itching to do something, and
fight for freedom," Jackie, an indigenous woman from Wisconsin, told Mic
at Oceti Sakowin Camp. "But we can't have that at the front lines. We've
got to stay peaceful, or else we're hypocrites."
After learning how to handle an afternoon on the front lines, wash
pepper spray out of another person's eyes and deal with legal matters if you're
arrested, other trainers would lead the group outside to practice protest
formations and how to form human barricades.
"We've
got to stay peaceful, or else we're hypocrites."
The informal course was based on work by the Ruckus Society, an
organization that helps activists with non-violent protest training and tactics
when called upon to help. The Indigenous People's Power Project is an
offshoot of Ruckus, built to visit communities like the Lakota Sioux people of
Standing Rock and offer their services, which includes building custom activist
training based on a community's needs. Ruckus often holds training camps that
go on for up to a week at a time, but the constant influx of new hands at
Standing Rock required something more light and flexible.
"If we keep people tied down for six hours, the actions might get
held up," Sharon Lungo, the executive director of the Ruckus Society, told
Mic. "Nobody's asking for folks to put themselves in harm's way or
get injured. It's not about sending people to jail. It's about how we strategically
intervene."
Those 2 p.m. action trainings weren't the only meetings. Oceti Sakowin
Camp had a robust schedule of
daily programming, updated throughout the day on white boards around
the camp. At 9 a.m. each day was general orientation, where volunteers who just
arrived learned the camp rules: no photographing sacred fires and ceremonies.
And, the camp values: be of service, put indigenous people at the center. And
at 6 p.m. were the meetings about decolonization, a word that's bubbling up
into the mainstream a lot now that indigenous struggles are back in the news.
Before the declaration of victory on Sunday, the camp was receiving hundreds of new
visitors a day, packing each of these sessions to the brim. By the
time December came around, it was clear to the organizers the camp's population
had more volunteers and guests than it did indigenous people.
"When our white folks come in, we ask them to take a look at
themselves, and look at everything they've gained on the backs of our
communities — not to come in with great guilt and apology, but to understand
that their privilege buys them leverage and the legal system and media,"
Lungo said.
The trainers at Standing Rock emphasized that this means putting
indigenous people back at the center, and for white allies to ask themselves
how they can be of service. Barring that, Lungo said that if white allies can't
"come correct," they're free to leave.
"Are you here with the best intentions, or are you here with your
own agenda?" Lungo said. "This isn't about taking selfies and hanging
with Indians. It's our job as outsiders to check ourselves. That's why training
organizations exist."
The day after the Army Corp of Engineers announced the
Dakota Access Pipeline would have to consider alternative routes — a short-term
victory for the water protectors — a blizzard tore through
Standing Rock. There were over 127 cases of hypothermia, and tribal elders
asked the visitors and non-essential protestors to head home, at least for the
harsh North Dakota winter. With brutal winds battering the tents and small
structures at Oceti, hundreds of people evacuated for their own safety.
"This
isn't about taking selfies and hanging with Indians."
But Standing Rock isn't the only fight, and the point of training
people in organizing and tactics is building a network of leaders so that those
who stood at Standing Rock can take the fight home
with them. Even as the protest will likely rage on in North Dakota, activists
at home focused on the banks behind the pipeline project, like Citigroup and
Wells Fargo, protesting at offices and keeping bank employees from
entering their buildings.
"This isn't the only pipeline, this isn't the only dirty energy
project," Lungo said. "Carrying that momentum into your community and
applying it is just as important as having a physical presence out there."
--------------
Canada-
JORDAN PETERSON: HE SAYS FREEDOM,
THEY SAY HATE- THE PRONOUN FIGHT IS BACK
Jordan Peterson at his Toronto home. The U of T
professor has received international attention since releasing controversial
YouTube videos in the fall.
Prof. Jordan Peterson paces in front of 200 students in a packed
lecture hall, back in his psychology class at the University of Toronto this
past week.
A month ago, Peterson wasn't so sure he'd be here.
The 54-year-old has been at the centre of a debate about gender and free speech ever since he posted videos to YouTube last fall in which he said he would not use the preferred, gender-neutral pronouns of some students and faculty.
The videos drew fire from trans activists, faculty and student and labour unions. Critics accused Peterson of helping to foster a climate for hate to thrive. Protests, sometimes violent, broke out on campus, and the controversy attracted international media coverage.
"A lot of trans students, as a result of not only the climate but direct death threats they were receiving, stopped going to class," said Cassandra Williams, a 21-year-old trans student who is the vice-president of university affairs for the U of T students' union.
It was a "chaotic situation," said Peterson who wasn't teaching in the fall because he normally spends first term researching.
"It was particularly stressful for the first two weeks, because ... the controversy was generating a lot of flack. I got two letters from the university," he said of the warnings, one reminding him that free speech had to be made in accordance with human rights legislation and the other noting that his refusal to use personal pronouns upon request could constitute discrimination.
Peterson said he was spurred to make the videos by two events: Bill C-16, introduced last May to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of "gender identity" and "gender expression;" and a new human resources initiative by U of T.
In the wake of reaction to the videos, Peterson has at times portrayed himself as a martyr, risking his job to protect free speech. He thought the letters from the university administration were the start of disciplinary action. But in December, the university assured him he would be teaching in the new year.
"They're permitting him to continue teaching despite his intention to discriminate," said Williams, who argues "the university has a responsibility ... to ensure that they have an environment which is safe."
A month ago, Peterson wasn't so sure he'd be here.
The 54-year-old has been at the centre of a debate about gender and free speech ever since he posted videos to YouTube last fall in which he said he would not use the preferred, gender-neutral pronouns of some students and faculty.
The videos drew fire from trans activists, faculty and student and labour unions. Critics accused Peterson of helping to foster a climate for hate to thrive. Protests, sometimes violent, broke out on campus, and the controversy attracted international media coverage.
"A lot of trans students, as a result of not only the climate but direct death threats they were receiving, stopped going to class," said Cassandra Williams, a 21-year-old trans student who is the vice-president of university affairs for the U of T students' union.
It was a "chaotic situation," said Peterson who wasn't teaching in the fall because he normally spends first term researching.
"It was particularly stressful for the first two weeks, because ... the controversy was generating a lot of flack. I got two letters from the university," he said of the warnings, one reminding him that free speech had to be made in accordance with human rights legislation and the other noting that his refusal to use personal pronouns upon request could constitute discrimination.
Peterson said he was spurred to make the videos by two events: Bill C-16, introduced last May to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of "gender identity" and "gender expression;" and a new human resources initiative by U of T.
In the wake of reaction to the videos, Peterson has at times portrayed himself as a martyr, risking his job to protect free speech. He thought the letters from the university administration were the start of disciplinary action. But in December, the university assured him he would be teaching in the new year.
"They're permitting him to continue teaching despite his intention to discriminate," said Williams, who argues "the university has a responsibility ... to ensure that they have an environment which is safe."
Cassandra Williams, a U of T student union
member, at a Peterson protest in October. Peterson sparked a storm by declaring
he would not use pronouns, such as "they," to recognize non-binary
genders.
Just as class began last Tuesday, a
videographer attached a mike to Peterson's shirt. Peterson, who has previously
posted his lectures to YouTube, has been able to hire a professional production
team as a result of the financial backing he has received from crowd-funding
website Patreon. Peterson has asked Patreon subscribers to support several
initiatives. Since posting the videos, Peterson's account has grown from a
couple of thousand dollars to more than $14,000 a month.
"I tend to roam rather widely in my lectures," he told students at the start of class, "which means you have to attend to the lectures and the readings." His teaching style, he noted, is "not precisely linear" or "predictable."
Liam Duignan was one of the first to find a seat in the lecture hall — even though he's not even enrolled in the course.
The 21-year-old student said he only started to enjoy education after watching a video by Peterson on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Later, when he read about the debate over pronouns, he thought, "Oh my God. That's that guy I was watching on YouTube. I realized I had to go in person to see him.
"You always hear about these controversies happening in the States," said Duignan. "And it was a controversy that had two sides and both were saying things that I thought were necessary."
The university said Peterson, a tenured professor, has long been scheduled to teach this term and his classes are full.
"I can't speculate on what may or may not happen in his class," said U of T spokesperson Althea Blackburn-Evans. "He's talked about what he may do if he's asked to [use a gender-neutral pronoun], but he hasn't actually done that."
U of T has received one formal complaint about Peterson relating to the controversy, which is being handled by the school's human resources department. Blackburn-Evans said the complaint didn't involve a student, but wouldn't elaborate.
"Like with all faculty members at the university, freedom of speech is a core principle," said Blackburn-Evans, "and so we absolutely acknowledge the right for any faculty member to hold their views, to share their views, but we also expect them to foster a learning environment, ultimately, that's free from discrimination."
Peterson has continued to state publicly he won't use non-gendered pronouns — especially ones that have been created like "ze" and "zir" — which he said "compel the use of a particular kind of ideological language."
"For me, personally, that's the sticking point," Peterson told the Star in a December interview in his west-end home. "I think that's dangerous language. I don't trust the people who formulated it. And I'm not going to be their mouthpiece because I know what they're like.
"They're power-mad people who use compassion as a disguise."
When asked who those "people" are, he points the finger at U of T's human resources and equity vice-president.
Prof. Kelly Hannah-Moffat was new to the equity job when the controversy broke out in September. Her office's implementation of mandatory anti-racist and anti-bias training for HR staff — which was created after consultation with many parties including the university's Black Liberation Collective, an activist group — also set Peterson off. The university declined to comment about Peterson's accusations.
"She's taking advice from the Black Liberation Collective, even though they're perfectly willing to push violence as a solution to social problems," said Peterson. "And even though their leader believes that white people are inferior because they don't have enough melanin in their skin."
The melanin reference is to a poem by Yusra Khogali — a U of T student who belongs to the collective — posted to Reddit last summer. The collective couldn't be reached for comment.
Peterson made the first of his three controversial videos, "Professor against political correctness: Part 1," in his home office and uploaded it to YouTube last September.
In it, he blames "radical left" members of the LGBTQ community for Bill C-16, which passed in the House and is now at the Senate. Peterson said the bill will force people to use the pronouns.
In the video, he lashes out against political correctness on campus, bashes "politically correct" human resources training, "pathological" HR departments and the people behind the doctrines as "resentful" and "uninformed." He equates the radical left with Marxists who he says are no better than Nazis and says he won't be the tool of a "murderous ideology."
In an interview, he said he believes political correctness could lead to totalitarianism, which he began studying extensively in his teens during the Cold War when he was looking for answers to the psychology of religion.
The second video, posted about a week later, addressed what he calls the university's "ill-advised" mandatory HR training. In the third, Peterson talked about a "peaceful" game he's devised that will allow people to stand up to "PC extremists."
Peterson's wife, Tammy Peterson, said her husband has been talking about the "trouble" with political correctness for at least a decade and that his views aren't new.
"Jordan writes things all the time. And he never writes anything different. It's just that this time he did a YouTube video," she said. "At the beginning it was disconcerting because he didn't expect to have so much interest."
What surprised them both, they said, was that his comments revealed a "big underbelly" of people who felt the same way about political correctness.
Tammy said he has received "massive support" and she quit working as a massage therapist to deal with interview requests from the press, about 180 since September.
American legal scholars such as Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton and an influential conservative Christian thinker, posted "I stand with Jordan Peterson" on Facebook. Some prominent newspaper columnists applauded him for his battle for free speech and academic freedom.
Meanwhile, messy scenes unfolded on campus. One rally to support Peterson attracted a white supremacist and a man wearing a Hells Angels jacket, according to the Varsity newspaper, and resulted in violence by the left and right. Violent threats were made against transgender students and faculty.
Other professors waded in.
"The people who (Peterson) has somehow burdened with his preoccupation with political correctness and free speech are actual victims," said Ronald de Sousa, a retired prof who still teaches full time, including a course on the philosophy of sexuality.
De Sousa felt compelled to make a video of his own after his daughter, a second-year psychology student at U of T, read a story about Peterson.
Peterson has "had a kind of liberating effect on prejudice," said de Sousa, which he likens to the effect that president-elect Donald Trump, who has also railed against political correctness, has had in the U.S.
"I tend to roam rather widely in my lectures," he told students at the start of class, "which means you have to attend to the lectures and the readings." His teaching style, he noted, is "not precisely linear" or "predictable."
Liam Duignan was one of the first to find a seat in the lecture hall — even though he's not even enrolled in the course.
The 21-year-old student said he only started to enjoy education after watching a video by Peterson on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Later, when he read about the debate over pronouns, he thought, "Oh my God. That's that guy I was watching on YouTube. I realized I had to go in person to see him.
"You always hear about these controversies happening in the States," said Duignan. "And it was a controversy that had two sides and both were saying things that I thought were necessary."
The university said Peterson, a tenured professor, has long been scheduled to teach this term and his classes are full.
"I can't speculate on what may or may not happen in his class," said U of T spokesperson Althea Blackburn-Evans. "He's talked about what he may do if he's asked to [use a gender-neutral pronoun], but he hasn't actually done that."
U of T has received one formal complaint about Peterson relating to the controversy, which is being handled by the school's human resources department. Blackburn-Evans said the complaint didn't involve a student, but wouldn't elaborate.
"Like with all faculty members at the university, freedom of speech is a core principle," said Blackburn-Evans, "and so we absolutely acknowledge the right for any faculty member to hold their views, to share their views, but we also expect them to foster a learning environment, ultimately, that's free from discrimination."
Peterson has continued to state publicly he won't use non-gendered pronouns — especially ones that have been created like "ze" and "zir" — which he said "compel the use of a particular kind of ideological language."
"For me, personally, that's the sticking point," Peterson told the Star in a December interview in his west-end home. "I think that's dangerous language. I don't trust the people who formulated it. And I'm not going to be their mouthpiece because I know what they're like.
"They're power-mad people who use compassion as a disguise."
When asked who those "people" are, he points the finger at U of T's human resources and equity vice-president.
Prof. Kelly Hannah-Moffat was new to the equity job when the controversy broke out in September. Her office's implementation of mandatory anti-racist and anti-bias training for HR staff — which was created after consultation with many parties including the university's Black Liberation Collective, an activist group — also set Peterson off. The university declined to comment about Peterson's accusations.
"She's taking advice from the Black Liberation Collective, even though they're perfectly willing to push violence as a solution to social problems," said Peterson. "And even though their leader believes that white people are inferior because they don't have enough melanin in their skin."
The melanin reference is to a poem by Yusra Khogali — a U of T student who belongs to the collective — posted to Reddit last summer. The collective couldn't be reached for comment.
Peterson made the first of his three controversial videos, "Professor against political correctness: Part 1," in his home office and uploaded it to YouTube last September.
In it, he blames "radical left" members of the LGBTQ community for Bill C-16, which passed in the House and is now at the Senate. Peterson said the bill will force people to use the pronouns.
In the video, he lashes out against political correctness on campus, bashes "politically correct" human resources training, "pathological" HR departments and the people behind the doctrines as "resentful" and "uninformed." He equates the radical left with Marxists who he says are no better than Nazis and says he won't be the tool of a "murderous ideology."
In an interview, he said he believes political correctness could lead to totalitarianism, which he began studying extensively in his teens during the Cold War when he was looking for answers to the psychology of religion.
The second video, posted about a week later, addressed what he calls the university's "ill-advised" mandatory HR training. In the third, Peterson talked about a "peaceful" game he's devised that will allow people to stand up to "PC extremists."
Peterson's wife, Tammy Peterson, said her husband has been talking about the "trouble" with political correctness for at least a decade and that his views aren't new.
"Jordan writes things all the time. And he never writes anything different. It's just that this time he did a YouTube video," she said. "At the beginning it was disconcerting because he didn't expect to have so much interest."
What surprised them both, they said, was that his comments revealed a "big underbelly" of people who felt the same way about political correctness.
Tammy said he has received "massive support" and she quit working as a massage therapist to deal with interview requests from the press, about 180 since September.
American legal scholars such as Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton and an influential conservative Christian thinker, posted "I stand with Jordan Peterson" on Facebook. Some prominent newspaper columnists applauded him for his battle for free speech and academic freedom.
Meanwhile, messy scenes unfolded on campus. One rally to support Peterson attracted a white supremacist and a man wearing a Hells Angels jacket, according to the Varsity newspaper, and resulted in violence by the left and right. Violent threats were made against transgender students and faculty.
Other professors waded in.
"The people who (Peterson) has somehow burdened with his preoccupation with political correctness and free speech are actual victims," said Ronald de Sousa, a retired prof who still teaches full time, including a course on the philosophy of sexuality.
De Sousa felt compelled to make a video of his own after his daughter, a second-year psychology student at U of T, read a story about Peterson.
Peterson has "had a kind of liberating effect on prejudice," said de Sousa, which he likens to the effect that president-elect Donald Trump, who has also railed against political correctness, has had in the U.S.
Jordan Peterson during a lecture this week at
the University of Toronto. He has hired professional videographers -- who gave
him the microphone -- with financing received from Internet supporters.
Last November, when Jordan Peterson called UBC
Prof. Mary Bryson "she" instead of "they" during a debate
organized by U of T, he said he did it by mistake
To keep track of who was who, he kept open a page on his phone with the others' names — Brenda Cossman, a professor of law at U of T, moderator Mayo Moran, also a U of T law professor, and Bryson, who he had been told goes by "they."
When he used the wrong pronoun, the debate room went quiet, he said, but he never intended to be rude.
"You know, it's a funny thing," said Peterson, sitting in a leather chair in an extension he and Tammy had built on the third floor of their Toronto home, a section made to resemble an indigenous longhouse. Totem poles frame the living space, an ode to his love of West Coast art, which he began collecting years ago.
"There's this strong compulsion to be polite," Peterson continued. "And not to purposefully offend someone. And I think that polite compulsion is being hijacked by power-mad leftists.
"In fact I'm certain of it."
It's December, and Peterson and his wife have just returned from Palo Alto, Calif., where they visited his sister Bonnie, a nurse, and her husband, Jim Keller, an engineer who helped develop one of Apple's iPhone chips.
The media frenzy hadn't died down. While there, Peterson did a podcast with Joe Rogan, a U.S. comedian, actor and UFC announcer who has his own history of criticizing political correctness, according to Maxim magazine. Rogan, who used to host the television show Fear Factor, has millions of listeners.
Tammy is a couple of floors below in the kitchen, talking to her son Julian, 23, who returned in the fall after studying philosophy in Halifax for five years. The Petersons also have a daughter, Mikhaila, 25.
The couple first met when they were 8, living on the same street in Fairview, northern Alberta. They played with her science kit and Jordan taught her to play chess.
She said that even as a teenager, Jordan was "very intense." "Most of the time he was reading."
Their lives were intertwined in the town of 2,000. Peterson's father was one of her elementary teachers. They went to the same high school in Fairview, which by then had become a "wild place," said Tammy. Young men would come in from the oil rigs to drink in the bars, and drug deals took place on the tennis courts.
They both loved Sandy Notley, the librarian at their junior high school, who opened their world to books.
She introduced Peterson to 1984, Brave New World and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book about a Soviet labour camp.
He spent a lot of time in the Notley home, getting to know Grant Notley, Sandy's husband and leader of the Alberta NDP. Peterson sometimes joined double dates with their daughter Rachel, now the province's premier.
And he shared the family's politics.
"I was probably attracted by the essential idea of fairness, something like that," he said, "interested in policies that were designed to help ordinary people."
When he was 14, he ran for vice-president of the Alberta NDP. He attended party conventions and met Roy Romanow and Ed Broadbent. He sang the left-wing anthem "The Internationale" with labour leaders.
But around the age of 18, he became disillusioned with the "party functionaries," although he still liked the leaders. "They were resentful, just like the social justice warriors" of today, Peterson said.
And he said he had a crisis of faith.
"I stopped believing that the philosophy that was embodied in socialism was sufficient to redress the problems that I felt were paramount," said Peterson, who was becoming increasingly concerned about social conflict.
"I was obsessed by the Cold War," he said. "I had nightmares about nuclear destruction on a regular basis. And by the time I was 17, that's pretty much all I was ever thinking about."
For years, he said, he focused on why "the world had turned itself into two armed camps that were threatening each other with final destruction."
Peterson went to Grande Prairie College and began looking for answers to his questions, reading everything he could get his hands on and writing a book about the "architecture of belief," called Maps of Meaning, which took him 15 years to complete. He still teaches a course on it today.
He and Tammy, who had gone their separate ways after high school (they were mostly just friends), linked up again in 1987 in Montreal, where Peterson was doing his PhD at McGill. Tammy earned a degree in kinesiology from the University of Ottawa.
The couple married in 1989 and Mikhaila was born a few years later. Peterson got a job as a visiting professor at Harvard and the family moved to the Boston area, where Julian was born.
But Peterson said he started looking for other work around the six-year mark because of the difficulty visiting professors had getting tenure at the Ivy League school. Peterson was offered a job at U of T.
In Toronto he teaches three courses and does some clinical practice, making $161,636 in 2015, according to Ontario's Sunshine List. His support on Patreon will allow him to reduce some clinic hours and devote more time to videos, including a series on Solzhenitsyn and Orwell, among others.
Tammy said that before she married her husband, who she fully supports, she thought he was extremely interesting but "unwieldy.
"I thought, this guy ... who knows which way things are going to go with him? Because his mind is so busy and his thoughts are so broad and controversial."
There was little to indicate that this latest controversy would be so public.
Last summer, De Sousa and Peterson were part of a public panel at the International Network on Personal Meaning in Toronto, when, said de Sousa, an organizer apologized to the audience for not having any women on the panel. At which point, de Sousa said, Peterson "exploded and said 'I completely disagree. I think this is completely ridiculous and I want to say that I completely disagree.'"
De Sousa said he has known Peterson for years and that he has always been "perfectly nice to me." The two have had heated debates as public speakers, sometimes on TV and other times in front of audiences.
And yet, at the panel "I was so startled," said de Sousa. "And of course it was this thing about political correctness that was brewing.
"I only realized later that he thought that saying that one should strive to have some sort of balance of sex on an academic panel is one of these things he regards as political correctness."
In the U.S., political correctness has been blamed for punitive actions against professors, such as the firing of a Louisiana State University professor in 2015 because she "swore and used humour about sex when she was teaching about sexuality, often to capture her students' attention," according to the U.K.'s Telegraph.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has said he was warned not to perform at colleges in the U.S. because they're too PC.
The term has had various meanings, but today it's often used by critics to denote a culture bent on not offending anyone.
There has been some trickle-down effect on Canadian campuses, but "surprisingly little given that our members, our faculty in Canada have enormous free speech, academic freedom rights," said David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which defends academic freedoms. Peterson's case is one of three currently playing out in universities across Canada.
To keep track of who was who, he kept open a page on his phone with the others' names — Brenda Cossman, a professor of law at U of T, moderator Mayo Moran, also a U of T law professor, and Bryson, who he had been told goes by "they."
When he used the wrong pronoun, the debate room went quiet, he said, but he never intended to be rude.
"You know, it's a funny thing," said Peterson, sitting in a leather chair in an extension he and Tammy had built on the third floor of their Toronto home, a section made to resemble an indigenous longhouse. Totem poles frame the living space, an ode to his love of West Coast art, which he began collecting years ago.
"There's this strong compulsion to be polite," Peterson continued. "And not to purposefully offend someone. And I think that polite compulsion is being hijacked by power-mad leftists.
"In fact I'm certain of it."
It's December, and Peterson and his wife have just returned from Palo Alto, Calif., where they visited his sister Bonnie, a nurse, and her husband, Jim Keller, an engineer who helped develop one of Apple's iPhone chips.
The media frenzy hadn't died down. While there, Peterson did a podcast with Joe Rogan, a U.S. comedian, actor and UFC announcer who has his own history of criticizing political correctness, according to Maxim magazine. Rogan, who used to host the television show Fear Factor, has millions of listeners.
Tammy is a couple of floors below in the kitchen, talking to her son Julian, 23, who returned in the fall after studying philosophy in Halifax for five years. The Petersons also have a daughter, Mikhaila, 25.
The couple first met when they were 8, living on the same street in Fairview, northern Alberta. They played with her science kit and Jordan taught her to play chess.
She said that even as a teenager, Jordan was "very intense." "Most of the time he was reading."
Their lives were intertwined in the town of 2,000. Peterson's father was one of her elementary teachers. They went to the same high school in Fairview, which by then had become a "wild place," said Tammy. Young men would come in from the oil rigs to drink in the bars, and drug deals took place on the tennis courts.
They both loved Sandy Notley, the librarian at their junior high school, who opened their world to books.
She introduced Peterson to 1984, Brave New World and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book about a Soviet labour camp.
He spent a lot of time in the Notley home, getting to know Grant Notley, Sandy's husband and leader of the Alberta NDP. Peterson sometimes joined double dates with their daughter Rachel, now the province's premier.
And he shared the family's politics.
"I was probably attracted by the essential idea of fairness, something like that," he said, "interested in policies that were designed to help ordinary people."
When he was 14, he ran for vice-president of the Alberta NDP. He attended party conventions and met Roy Romanow and Ed Broadbent. He sang the left-wing anthem "The Internationale" with labour leaders.
But around the age of 18, he became disillusioned with the "party functionaries," although he still liked the leaders. "They were resentful, just like the social justice warriors" of today, Peterson said.
And he said he had a crisis of faith.
"I stopped believing that the philosophy that was embodied in socialism was sufficient to redress the problems that I felt were paramount," said Peterson, who was becoming increasingly concerned about social conflict.
"I was obsessed by the Cold War," he said. "I had nightmares about nuclear destruction on a regular basis. And by the time I was 17, that's pretty much all I was ever thinking about."
For years, he said, he focused on why "the world had turned itself into two armed camps that were threatening each other with final destruction."
Peterson went to Grande Prairie College and began looking for answers to his questions, reading everything he could get his hands on and writing a book about the "architecture of belief," called Maps of Meaning, which took him 15 years to complete. He still teaches a course on it today.
He and Tammy, who had gone their separate ways after high school (they were mostly just friends), linked up again in 1987 in Montreal, where Peterson was doing his PhD at McGill. Tammy earned a degree in kinesiology from the University of Ottawa.
The couple married in 1989 and Mikhaila was born a few years later. Peterson got a job as a visiting professor at Harvard and the family moved to the Boston area, where Julian was born.
But Peterson said he started looking for other work around the six-year mark because of the difficulty visiting professors had getting tenure at the Ivy League school. Peterson was offered a job at U of T.
In Toronto he teaches three courses and does some clinical practice, making $161,636 in 2015, according to Ontario's Sunshine List. His support on Patreon will allow him to reduce some clinic hours and devote more time to videos, including a series on Solzhenitsyn and Orwell, among others.
Tammy said that before she married her husband, who she fully supports, she thought he was extremely interesting but "unwieldy.
"I thought, this guy ... who knows which way things are going to go with him? Because his mind is so busy and his thoughts are so broad and controversial."
There was little to indicate that this latest controversy would be so public.
Last summer, De Sousa and Peterson were part of a public panel at the International Network on Personal Meaning in Toronto, when, said de Sousa, an organizer apologized to the audience for not having any women on the panel. At which point, de Sousa said, Peterson "exploded and said 'I completely disagree. I think this is completely ridiculous and I want to say that I completely disagree.'"
De Sousa said he has known Peterson for years and that he has always been "perfectly nice to me." The two have had heated debates as public speakers, sometimes on TV and other times in front of audiences.
And yet, at the panel "I was so startled," said de Sousa. "And of course it was this thing about political correctness that was brewing.
"I only realized later that he thought that saying that one should strive to have some sort of balance of sex on an academic panel is one of these things he regards as political correctness."
In the U.S., political correctness has been blamed for punitive actions against professors, such as the firing of a Louisiana State University professor in 2015 because she "swore and used humour about sex when she was teaching about sexuality, often to capture her students' attention," according to the U.K.'s Telegraph.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has said he was warned not to perform at colleges in the U.S. because they're too PC.
The term has had various meanings, but today it's often used by critics to denote a culture bent on not offending anyone.
There has been some trickle-down effect on Canadian campuses, but "surprisingly little given that our members, our faculty in Canada have enormous free speech, academic freedom rights," said David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which defends academic freedoms. Peterson's case is one of three currently playing out in universities across Canada.
Despite Tammy's doubts about Peterson even as a
kid, she now understands "most of his complexities" and shares some
of his ideas, specifically that allowing kids as young as 13 to choose their
own gender will lead to "disaster."
Peterson describes it as "crazy" and said allowing gender fluidity will lead to more "isolated" and "lonesome" kids who question their gender.
He has never come out and specifically said he believes non-gendered people can't exist — but he's hinted strongly.
"I don't know what the options are if you're not a man or a woman," Peterson said in his first video. "It's not obvious to me how you can be both because those are by definition binary categories."
The legislation
Bill C-16 will amend the Canadian Human Rights Act by adding "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. It will also amend the criminal code to protect against hate speech on those grounds.
Peterson argued that those additions to the federal act will compel him to use non-gendered pronouns because the Ontario Human Rights Code says pronouns are a way to express gender.
But "compel" may be too strong a word.
"The code doesn't tell anyone to do anything like that. It's a bit of a mischaracterization," said Toby Young, a lawyer with the Human Rights Legal Support Centre.
"The fact is that you can't use language, or speech, that is discriminatory."
Jail would not be on the immediate horizon. If a complainant wins a case at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, they can be awarded compensation paid by the other party.
Ontario has had the same provisions in its human rights code since 2012 and there has never been a case on pronouns heard by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Hearings have typically been related to complaints where a person is seeking to have their gender reassigned on birth certificates or travel documents.
That isn't to say a complaint couldn't go forward.
A student could allege that a professor who refused to use non-gendered pronouns such as "they," "ze" or "zir" upon request wasn't fulfilling the duty to accommodate their gender expression, said Young.
But "you have to remember this hasn't been tested," he said. "There are no cases I know across Canada where there's been any litigation on this. And certainly no decisions."
Young also said litigation may not be the best route.
Many universities have human rights offices where complaints can be filed internally and dealt with through discussion, mediation or negotiation, he said.
U of T doesn't have a human rights office, but the school has a number of equity offices on campus that work to avoid complaints in the first place, said spokesperson Althea Blackburn-Evans.
Peterson describes it as "crazy" and said allowing gender fluidity will lead to more "isolated" and "lonesome" kids who question their gender.
He has never come out and specifically said he believes non-gendered people can't exist — but he's hinted strongly.
"I don't know what the options are if you're not a man or a woman," Peterson said in his first video. "It's not obvious to me how you can be both because those are by definition binary categories."
The legislation
Bill C-16 will amend the Canadian Human Rights Act by adding "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. It will also amend the criminal code to protect against hate speech on those grounds.
Peterson argued that those additions to the federal act will compel him to use non-gendered pronouns because the Ontario Human Rights Code says pronouns are a way to express gender.
But "compel" may be too strong a word.
"The code doesn't tell anyone to do anything like that. It's a bit of a mischaracterization," said Toby Young, a lawyer with the Human Rights Legal Support Centre.
"The fact is that you can't use language, or speech, that is discriminatory."
Jail would not be on the immediate horizon. If a complainant wins a case at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, they can be awarded compensation paid by the other party.
Ontario has had the same provisions in its human rights code since 2012 and there has never been a case on pronouns heard by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Hearings have typically been related to complaints where a person is seeking to have their gender reassigned on birth certificates or travel documents.
That isn't to say a complaint couldn't go forward.
A student could allege that a professor who refused to use non-gendered pronouns such as "they," "ze" or "zir" upon request wasn't fulfilling the duty to accommodate their gender expression, said Young.
But "you have to remember this hasn't been tested," he said. "There are no cases I know across Canada where there's been any litigation on this. And certainly no decisions."
Young also said litigation may not be the best route.
Many universities have human rights offices where complaints can be filed internally and dealt with through discussion, mediation or negotiation, he said.
U of T doesn't have a human rights office, but the school has a number of equity offices on campus that work to avoid complaints in the first place, said spokesperson Althea Blackburn-Evans.
-----------------
comment:
1. COMMENT:
The cbc, very often,
perpetuates divisive attitudes. What with the stereotyped overly exaggerated
reporting on crimes. Few reports are made of the white collar crimes, the sex
indiscretions of middle class Canada that are silenced.
cbc
is largely responsible for people not knowing about communities of other
ethnicity. Change for the better will come.
Op-ed: North Preston
and CBC’s not so finest
KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Seemingly
forever residents of North Preston have been reminding Nova Scotians that
the historic African Nova Scotian communities aren’t crime infested slums.
Then along comes the CBC and
publishes a story that ignores all these efforts and pulls out every anti-black
stereotype you can imagine.
Photo by ProjectHorizons, Wikipedia
Just
the other day our free daily, Halifax Metro, ran an excellent story on the great work Miranda Cain
is doing in her community.
All
on her own this young woman managed to raise money for 12 summer positions. Her
group helps seniors cutting grass, and performs other ‘random acts of
kindness.”
She
named her group North Preston’s Future, or NPF. That’s also the acronym
for North Preston’s Finest, the gang that at one time originated in the
community.
That’s
on purpose, Cain told Metro.
“We
are a part of Canada’s history as the largest black community, we should be
recognized as such – not as being North Preston’s Finest where the little 2 or
5 per cent is doing whatever,” Cain told Metro.
“You
come here and our community welcomes you with open arms. People are not afraid
to come here, so why are you portraying that in the media?” Cain said.
That’s
a question our national broadcaster should ponder.
CBC’s
recent story, Understanding the North
Preston’s Finest Gang, pulls out all the stops. Really, there’s not a
racist stereotype about Black crime that’s not mentioned somehow. Black men
with $100,000 gold chains and cadillacs luring white women into prostitution,
you get the idea.
“There
are no businesses there, which really means no opportunities. What ends up
happening is many people in the community, sadly, end up getting involved in
gangs,” journalist Angela MacIvor explains.
“Many.”
What does that even mean? It strikes me that Cain with her” 2 or 5
percent” is closer to the mark.
Also
absent is any effort to provide context. No mention of the high unemployment
the community faces. No mention of the shameful racism in Nova Scotia that’s
one of the main reasons for that high unemployment.
No
mention of the recent defunding of the Watershed Association
Development Services (W.A.D.E.), a community organization that offered
employment services to Black residents of East and North Preston, Cherry Brook,
Lake Loon and Dartmouth for many decades.
Most
importantly, no awareness of the real hurt that a story like this is likely to
cause to the many law abiding residents of North Preston.
And
when I say many, I mean 95 to 98 percent.
With
thanks to El Jones, whose post on Facebook alerted me to the CBC
coverage. She asks that people contact the CBC to let them know their article
is unacceptable and racist.
Comment: Here are my opinions on the situation. I agree some
of the comments made by CBC were wrong and were retracted, but you are
forgetting the main issue here. The lives of two innocent people, especially
that innocent five year old baby girl left at the roadside like piece of
garbage. The young men of Preston are killing themselves. As of yesterday there
was another drive by shooting. Thank God nobody was killed. These young men are
profiling themselves. Go to the news and read all the police reports on these
young men. I realize that this society is prejudice and Caucasians tend to
stereotype all races but do our young black men have to walk right in to it and
play the role to the utmost. If this black man did the crime, then he must pay
for it. What kind of a man could do this. I don’t care what color you are you
know right from wrong. Use the race card when required. BLACK LIVES DO MATTER!
I am the mother of two young black men and a young black women and they are in
my prayers everyday
1. COMMENT: The cbc, very often,
perpetuates divisive attitudes. What with the stereotyped overly exaggerated
reporting on crimes. Few reports are made of the white collar crimes, the sex
indiscretions of middle class Canada that are silenced.
cbc is largely responsible for people not knowing
about communities of other ethnicity. Change for the better will come.
---------------------------------------------------
A Look Behind Halifax’s Recent Murders Reveals City’s Ugly Racist History
By Chris Parsons
May 9, 2016
Hundreds of people attended an
anti-violence protest in Halifax last month. Photo via THE CANADIAN
PRESS/Darren Calabrese
Between April 17 and April 23,
three young men were shot and killed in Halifax and the surrounding areas.
Tyler Richards, who I knew, was shot in the city's west end, Naricho Clayton
was shot on the northern edge of Halifax's downtown, and Daverico Downey was
killed outside a home in North Preston, a historically black suburb. There have
been seven murders in
Halifax in 2016, a city of less than 400,000 people that has a disportionately high violent crime rate. Winnipeg, a city roughly twice the size of Halifax, has had 10
murders this year.
Recent violence in Halifax has
disproportionately affected the city's black community. However, to blame this
violence on problems which are internal to that community fundamentally ignores
the deep structural inequality built into Halifax's economy, its politics and
even its geography. If you aren't from Halifax it is hard to understand just
how segregated along lines of class and race this city is. Understanding that
segregation and the limits it places on those born into the wrong
neighbourhoods is necessary for understanding how violence shapes the lives of
many of the people who live here.
Halifax is a city facing an affordable housing crisis. It's a city just a few years removed from a bloody feud between
two families, the Melvins and the Marriotts: two drug dealing, biker gang-connected families from the poor,
mostly white suburb of Spryfield. It's a city where some bosses won't hire employees who have to take public
transit to work. It is also a city in the midst of
huge condo boom and a city where despite widespread opposition, the federal,
provincial and municipal governments have committed a combined $400 million to help build a privately owned convention centre than no one
wants.
The construction of towers downtown
and the expansion of subdivisions in the wealthier suburbs have led some to
claim that recent violence is an anomaly that is overshadowing the positive
impact of urban renewal. But that rhetoric ignores the obvious question: who
does urban renewal serve?
To look at a moment when a young black man was gunned down in North Preston and not connect it to the uneven distribution of
wealth in this city is astounding. North Preston was an area settled by black
loyalists in the 1700s and 1800s and is largely cut off from the rest of the
city due to its distance from the peninsula and a lack of proper public transit
access. Importantly, many of the descendents of those initial loyalists have
never been given proper legal title to land that has been in their families for centuries. The result is
legal instability and the inability to sell land (or even transfer it to family
members) at a time that downtown and suburban property owners are making huge
profits buying, developing, and selling property. We have overwhelming evidence from the United States that the inter-generational wealth gap
between white and black is tied directly to home ownership and government
policy.
Former basketball star Tyler
Richards was killed in April. Photo via The Canadian Press
Blindly praising urban renewal
requires one to ignore a number of facts: While a wealthy developer received
hundreds of millions of dollars to build a hotel and convention centre from all
three levels of government Nova Scotia's ruling Liberal Party have cut funding from a 33 year old African Nova Scotian run
community organization that helps people Preston and
Cherrybrook find jobs. In recent budgets we've seen no new funding for public
housing, no new money from the province to improve public transit to Halifax's
working class and poor suburbs, and no additional support to create jobs in
predominantly black or poor neighbourhoods. The province refused to provide help to Harbour City Homes, a north end Halifax co-op which provides co-op housing for low
income residents. And in a huge battle waged by community groups for access to a closed-down public school—largely organized by
black and Indigenous community members—the developers won.
Halifax at dawn. Photo via Flickr
user InAweofGod'sCreation
Halifax's segregation and uneven
development cannot be divorced from the structural racism woven into the fabric
of the city and the province. This is the city where our newspaper of record published this monstrosity just a few weeks ago, stoking the flames of racist and xenophobic
hate. This is a province where the education system continues to fail black students. A province where an interracial couple had a cross burned on their lawn and where African Nova Scotians face an unemployment rate of 14.5 percent and are less likely to
have a university or college education when compared to the population as a
whole.
Halifax is a city where former
world class boxer Kirk Johnson had to file a human rights complaint against the Halifax Police Department after being pulled over 28
times for the crime of being a black man with a nice car and where
international students still find themselves subject to racist taunts and overcrowded and illegal housing. This is a province where African Nova Scotian and Mi'kmaq
communities are far more likely to suffer the impact of toxic industrial
and government pollution. This is a city where
overwhelmingly white dog owners organized themselves to fight for the right for
their dogs to literally shit all over the land where Africville
once stood. And most obviously, this is a
city where three black men were gunned down in one week. In short, this is a
city that is plagued by white supremacy.
Read More: Africville, Canada's
Secret Racist History
I knew Tyler Richards. I didn't
know him well, but I knew him in the way that you know people in a small city
like Halifax. I've been sickened in the last few week with comments I've heard
and read insinuating that, because the most recent shooting deaths in Halifax
involved people allegedly involved in the sale of illicit drugs, they brought
it upon themselves. I heard it when Jefflin Beals, who I
played basketball with when we were kids, was murdered during Toronto's Nuit
Blanche in 2011. I heard it two years ago when Dan Pellerin, who was
a teammate on my high school soccer team was stabbed to death in North End
Dartmouth. Every time I hear it I know that it's bullshit. We make choices, but
those choices are constrained by the structures we live under. The choices I've
made that make me safe—to go to university (twice), to live in downtown
Halifax, to work for political organizations that pay me a living wage—are
choices that were available to me. Those choices aren't available to everyone.
The politics, economics and
geography of this city put hard constraints on the choices people get to make
and to pretend otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand what violence is and
the way that it intersects with class and race.
I am sick of hearing about a murder
and wondering if it will be someone I know. But more than that I am sick of
hearing about another murder in Halifax at all. This city, a city that I love,
is destroying people and we need to do something to stop it. Until we recognize
that this violence is bigger than the individual choices of its victims and
perpetrators, we will continue to fail to understand it, let alone stop it.
Follow Chris Parsons on Twitter.
-------------------------
Chaos in Halifax courtroom during appearance of accused in fatal shooting case
A large group of people in court on Monday tried to attack the man accused of killing 21-year-old Shakur Jefferies.
------------------
WHERE COPS JUST WON’T GO.....
HALIFAX’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET- where the cops do nothing
Where the sidewalk ends
Walking after midnight near Pizza Corner, a couple is chosen at random and viciously beaten by a group of young people. They are given no warning. They are not robbed.
Giles
Oland and his girlfriend Dawn MacPhee discovered what one expert calls
“Halifax’s dirty little secret” on a Friday night last October. The couple, in
their late twenties, spent a relaxing evening enjoying dinner with friends at a
downtown restaurant. They stopped for a nightcap at a bar on Argyle and then,
at about 1am, started heading toward their homes on Tower Road in the city’s
south end. They walked up Blowers Street to Pizza Corner and turned left on
Grafton. “Right in front of the Black Market, there were five or six
individuals who surrounded us and kicked me in the stomach and then punched me
in the face,” Oland says. “It was a very surreal moment for us because we
didn’t expect it. They gave us a look like, ‘You’re not going to get by here’,”
he adds. “It was more a feeling of disbelief than anything else,” MacPhee says.
“Just total shock that someone would be laying a hand on either one of us when
all we’re doing is walking up the street to go home.”
“We
soon realized that we weren’t getting by without further violence,” Oland says,
“so we turned around and walked across Blowers Street to Pizza Corner and we
were only there maybe five or 10 seconds when I looked down Blowers Street and
saw a marked police Durango slowly driving toward us. When it got to the
corner, we approached it. We told the cop that we’d been assaulted and tried to
get across our sense of,” Oland pauses, searching for the right word, “our
sense of worry about what had just happened and we asked him to do something.”
To
their surprise, the officer told Oland and MacPhee there was nothing he could
do. “We more or less started pleading with him to do something,” Oland says.
“Eventually he asked which group was it and we pointed out the perpetrators to
him and again he said there was nothing he could do. And we said there’s gotta
be something you can do.”
MacPhee
is still angry at the Halifax officer. “He could have put us in the back of his
cruiser and driven us one block up the street and dropped us off on Spring
Garden Road and everything would have been fine,” she says. “I see it as a
failure on his part that he didn’t put any effort into protecting us.” Instead
the officer promised he’d keep an eye on them. But as MacPhee and Oland crossed
Grafton Street, he abandoned them and drove off toward Spring Garden Road.
“Everyone saw us talking to the police, which escalated the situation I think,”
MacPhee adds. As the couple headed toward the Spring Garden Library, they
suddenly faced a much larger group of hostile young people.
Dalhousie
professor Chris Murphy says stories like Oland and MacPhee’s illustrate
Halifax’s “dirty little secret,” the high rate of violent crime in a relatively
small maritime city. “I’ve had at least five or six students over the last two
or three years talk about being seriously beaten up or one of their friends
being seriously beaten up in downtown Halifax,” Murphy says. “We’re talking
about people who were hospitalized, broken jaws, broken arms, not just simple
scares or rough-ups, but quite serious assaults in places like the Commons,
Spring Garden Road and other parts of downtown.”
Murphy,
who’s been studying crime patterns for a quarter of a century, points to a
Statistics Canada study called “Criminal Victimization in Canada, 2004.” The
study, released last fall, is based on a survey of nearly 24,000 Canadian
households. It shows Halifax had the highest violent crime rate among the 17
Canadian cities surveyed, with 229 violent incidents for every 1,000 people
over 15. Edmonton was second with a rate of 191, while Saint John scored 173
and Toronto and Vancouver, 107 each.
Murphy
wishes city politicians and police would make our crime rate less secret by
talking about it more often. “The kind of crime that is increasingly
disturbing,” Murphy adds “is what is euphemistically referred to as street
assaults or swarmings. These are quite a distinctive kind of violent crime
because they occur in public places and they’re unprovoked in the sense that
the victims are innocent and often unconnected with the offenders.”
A
search of newspaper archives and police crime reports quickly turns up dozens
of such assaults—so many that they seem to be part of the city’s daily routine.
Some are more memorable than others. In two separate incidents last spring, for
example, young thugs, each wearing one boxing glove, punched and robbed female
victims in the city’s north end. A Halifax musician ended up unconscious in
hospital with head and back injuries after being beaten, kicked and robbed last
summer on the Halifax Common. A Dalhousie soccer player underwent three
emergency operations last fall for uncontrollable bleeding after being punched
in the face and robbed in the downtown core. Two elderly victims were beaten
and robbed this spring as they returned to their north end apartments. One, an
82-year-old woman, was rushed to hospital with a broken arm as well as shoulder
and facial injuries. Sometimes the incidents aren’t reported to police because
victims are embarrassed or fear further attacks. But news of them spreads by
word of mouth: a young man jumped by kids and punched in the face; a young
woman knocked off her bike with a two-by-four and another assaulted with a
bicycle chain.
The incidents
happen all over the city. A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge called a highly
publicized swarming at Pizza Corner in 2002, a “barbaric…act of senseless
brutality and violence.” Up to 15 assailants kicked and punched a man in a
series of unprovoked attacks. They also pelted him with rocks. The victim
needed 15 stitches to close a gash in his mouth and five staples to repair a
wound in the back of his head. The court heard that he still suffers from
headaches and memory loss. In August, when he sentenced two women to jail time
for the attacks, judge Joseph Kennedy called the assaults “absolutely,
completely, uncontrolled, mindless violence. Gratuitous, stupid, mindless
violence.” He added that crimes such as this are making people afraid to walk
the streets of Halifax.
Professor
Murphy says what makes these violent incidents “both troubling and puzzling” is
that although there are sometimes thefts involved, money isn’t the main
motivation. “There usually is nothing much to gain other than the sheer pleasure
of intimidating victims and causing other people to be hurt,” he adds. “On the
surface, it looks like neither the municipal government nor the police have
figured out a way to respond to this effectively yet.”
Murphy
says the Oland and MacPhee incident illustrates a phenomenon that those who
study crime call FIDO. The acronym stands for “Fuck It and Drive On,” although
during our interview, Murphy refers to it more diplomatically as “Forget It and
Drive On.” He says it reflects the sense that not much can be done about this
kind of crime, so police simply drive away.
“I’m
not saying that the police aren’t concerned, but we haven’t seen any kind of
clear response other than their hands are tied by the Young Offender’s Act,”
Murphy says, referring to the often-repeated argument that young people flout
the law because they know they won’t get punished severely even if they are
caught. Murphy says it’s time that municipal politicians and police sat down
with community leaders and ordinary folk to discuss a range of solutions,
including a greater police presence in potentially dangerous areas, more
recreational alternatives for young people and heightened public awareness of
violent crime.
Giles
Oland and Dawn MacPhee still have trouble coming to terms with what happened
after the Halifax police officer abandoned them at Pizza Corner. The couple
crossed Grafton Street heading in the direction of the Spring Garden Library.
As they passed in front of St. David’s church, they encountered a group of
about 15 young people. “A big fat woman got off the wall and kicked Dawn in the
stomach and Dawn went flying towards the parked cars,” Oland says. He was
surrounded by a half dozen young men who started punching him in the head. “The
next thing I know I’m on the ground, I’m on my side and I’m just holding my
head and I’m just I guess what they call ‘boot fucked,’ getting my head kicked.
You’re lying on the ground and you wonder, could this go on forever?”
“There
was a big commotion of people around me,” MacPhee says, “keeping me away from
what was going on with Giles.” The attackers said nothing as the beating
continued. Then, after about 30 seconds, they fled, fearing perhaps that
someone had called the police. “All of a sudden everyone just kind of
dispersed,” MacPhee remembers. Some of the attackers jumped in cars, others
just seemed to vanish. Oland remembers raising his head and seeing MacPhee
limping toward him. “I realized I was just gushing blood everywhere,” he says.
“The two of us were sort of staggering around,” MacPhee says. “I remember
feeling completely upset and scared and worried about Giles and just in utter
disbelief at how this could happen.”
Frank
Beazley steps from behind his
big
desk and extends his hand in a warm greeting. The chief’s spacious office is
upstairs in the ugly, red-brick fortress on Gottingen Street that serves as
police headquarters. The building may be intimidating, but the silver-haired
Beazley is not. Instead of barricading himself behind his big desk, he sits
down in an office chair and speaks in a quiet, clear voice about his work as
the city’s top cop.
“Speaking
from a chief’s perspective, I lock up about 5,000 to 7,000 people a year,” he
says in his kindly way. Beazley acknowledges he’s disappointed that the latest
StatsCan study ranks Halifax as Canada’s most violent city, but he admits he
isn’t surprised. “Halifax historically has been in the top five or six,” he
says. “But no one wants to be number one, especially for things like this.”
The
StatsCan survey numbers are higher than the department’s own figures because
only about a third of violent assaults are ever reported to police. But Beazley
says the department’s figures do show that the city’s violent crime rate has
risen over the last couple of years. He adds, though, that about 70 percent of
violent crime involves what he terms low-level assaults. “Most of it’s driven
by the very nature of our community. We have universities, we have 30,000 to
40,000 young people move in every fall and leave in the spring. It’s a port
city. It’s a military base. There’s about 200 licensed establishments east of
Robie Street in the downtown core. So with all of that and all the activity and
all the people, that sometimes drives our numbers up.”
Beazley
acknowledges that the StatsCan study points out that young people, and
especially students, are particularly vulnerable to violent crime. StatsCan
reports that’s because young people participate in more evening activities such
as going to bars or visiting friends. Beazley explains it’s the first time away
from home for many university students. “They’ve got a pocketful of money and
they start getting into parties,” he says. “They get into the downtown area and
they get into fights. So that’s what drives your victimization numbers up. As
the study tells you, the profile of people who commit these types of crimes and
the profile of the people who are the victims is almost the same. They’re
people ages 14, 15 to about 23.”
Beazley
has been a Halifax cop for 36 years and he knows the city well. “Back in the
’60s, Halifax was like a lot of other cities,” he says. “The business core was
deteriorating. Businesses moved away. What saved the downtown was really the
entertainment industry. But that brings a different clientele into the downtown
area.”
Lately,
Beazley has been talking more openly about Halifax’s dirty little secret. In
February, he told the Halifax Chamber of Commerce that police are studying the
emergence of six new street gangs that didn’t exist a year-and-half ago. Gang
members are between 12 and 22, he said. “A lot of these young people that are
in these groups come from areas of poverty and public housing,” he tells me.
“They’re people who may be on the social welfare system, from single-parent
families.” Dealing with street gangs and other youth crime, he says, involves
providing better recreation for young people, educating them about crime and
using what’s known as “community-based policing.”
“From
the policing side, we’ve changed our whole patrol strategy in the past year,”
Beazley says. “We’re calling it our community response approach to violence and
crime. We’ve narrowed down the geographic areas of patrol. We’re calling
sectors and we’re putting patrol cars into smaller geographic areas so they get
to know even better.” There are five sectors or zones in the city’s central
area, for example. Much of the downtown from Spring Garden Road to North Street
and from Robie to the Halifax waterfront falls within zone four.
The
chief also acknowledges the importance of getting officers out of their patrol
cars more often so they can talk to people on the street. “That has to enhance
the sense of safety when people get to know officers better. That’s why we have
the new bicycle beat patrol. It’s almost like what was old is new again.”
The
bicycle patrol consists of two officers assigned during daylight hours to
downtown Halifax and Dartmouth. As for beat patrols, the department says
officers are walking beats in the Gottingen Street “uptown” area 24 hours a
day. Another officer has been assigned to patrol a beat on Spring Garden Road
at varying times, five days a week. And a “community response” officer patrols
north-end Dartmouth. Meanwhile, the department’s business plan calls for
another foot patrol in downtown Halifax as well as additional foot and bicycle
patrols in north-end Dartmouth.
Beazley
looks uncomfortable when I ask him about the officer driving away from Pizza
Corner on the night that Giles Oland and Dawn MacPhee were assaulted. Oland says
he has discussed the incident informally with various members of the police
department. He asked to speak to the officer involved so he could find out why
he drove away, but says his request went nowhere. Chief Beazley says it’s hard
for him to comment because he doesn’t know the details of the case.
“The
downtown core is just so busy on most nights of the week and I can remember
myself working it in the mid-’90s and there would be 400 to 500 young people
down in that particular area coming and going,” Beazley says. “You’re kind of
watching out for the bigger group and you’re trying to prevent something like
this from happening as well as investigate complaints when you get a call,” he
adds. “What I would have said to those folks if they weren’t satisfied with the
police approach that night, they should have come in and filed an official
complaint with me so I could have a look and see if we did do something that
wasn’t correct.”
On the
day that I meet Mayor Peter Kelly in his office at City Hall, the Daily News
carries a huge front-page headline in capital letters: “RANDOM ACTS
OF…VIOLENCE.” It’s a direct quote from provincial court judge Jamie Campbell,
who denied bail to two teens, 14 and 15 years old, after hearing about a series
of violent attacks the weekend before in Dartmouth. Two men had been stabbed
and two others badly beaten by what appeared to be a roving band of youths
sporting blue bandanas similar to ones worn by a gang in Los Angeles. Only two
of the victims were robbed. The newspaper quoted the crown attorney as saying
one suspect told police “they just liked hitting people.”
Mayor
Kelly frowns when I ask what goes through his mind when he sees stories like
this. “For me, it’s concern for communities within HRM,” he replies. “Concern
for our residents and concern for the approach that the courts have applied in
the past.” The mayor explains that judges have generally been too lenient with
young offenders, sometimes letting them go free even after they’ve broken the
terms of their probations and committed fresh crimes. Kelly says he’s glad that
in this case, the judge refused bail. “It’s a very positive sign to me,” he
adds. “I now see a desire of the court to be more responsive to these types of
situations.”
Kelly
says the city is responding to violent crime partly by hiring more police
officers. Until now, new officers have simply replaced retiring ones. But in
October, the force will be getting 16 extra cops. Kelly also talks about the
increased emphasis on community policing with more cops walking beats. He says
he’d like to see the federal government bring in stiffer penalties for young
offenders and he wishes the province would provide financial support for
municipal policing. (Kelly may get part of what he wants if premier Rodney
MacDonald’s new government keeps its recent campaign promise to provide
financing for 250 more officers across the province over the next four years.)
In the
meantime, Kelly says the city is developing partnerships with social service
agencies and schools to provide more recreation for young people as well as
arts and after-school programs. The mayor insists the city is taking violent
crime seriously. “Should we be doing more?” he asks. “Yes we should. Are we
going to be doing more?” he asks again. “Yes we are.”
Councillor
Dawn Sloane, the municipal politician who represents downtown Halifax, is also
a big fan of community policing. She supports Chief Beazley’s new patrol
policies. But she also says residents themselves need to do more about crime.
“I see our neighbourhoods around here as almost becoming close-curtained
because society has come to the conclusion that we’ll let the police handle it.
I don’t think that’s how we should be living,” Sloane says. “I think people
need to reclaim their communities and say, ‘I live at Pizza Corner, but I live
upstairs. If I hear something, I’m not just going to ignore it. I’m going to
take a look and see if I can help.’”
Sloane
says the city should consider installing surveillance cameras in areas like
Pizza Corner, an idea the mayor and Chief Beazley also mentioned. “I don’t see
a problem with it, to tell you the truth. Because you know what? If you’re
doing something wrong, then you’d get caught. If you’re not doing anything
wrong, what does it matter?” she asks. “The amount of times that you’re
actually caught on camera in a day, just think about it. You’re going across
the bridge, you’re going to a bank machine, you walk into any mall or any
government-owned building, walk into a hospital. You’re on tape at all these
places. So having one on a corner which is known as a dangerous area, I don’t
have a problem with that at all.” Sloane recognizes there would be opposition
from people concerned about protecting privacy. “I hope people understand that
to make sure an area is safe for everyone, sometimes you have to go to that
extreme,” she says. “I would rather have everybody safe and pissed off. It’s as
simple as that.”
Sarah
MacLaren, who’s been working with troubled teens for more than a decade,
doesn’t mention surveillance cameras as part of her preferred strategy for
dealing with violent crimes. For the last six years, MacLaren has served as
executive director of a Halifax non-profit group called LOVE. The acronym
stands for Leave Out ViolencE. MacLaren argues that kids who take part in
swarmings and assaults have usually been the victims of violence and abuse
themselves and are angry about it. “Our kids are wandering around with tonnes
of pain and anger,” she says. “We try to get at the root causes. We ask kids
‘What were you really mad about when you beat that person with a hockey
stick?’”
One
teen who joined a gang in north end Halifax told MacLaren he had no family
support and no friends but the gang made him feel part of something. “Race
definitely raises its head in our town,” she adds. “We are not a racially
integrated city.” Sometimes that sense of frustration and racial isolation
erupts in violence against innocent bystanders. “We’re not going to do a lot by
taking punitive measures,” MacLaren says. “Kids need support programs,
education programs, et cetera.” They also need more affordable housing and job
opportunities, she says. Most of all, she believes, they need to be consulted.
“I’m in love with teenagers. The kids people cross the street to avoid. They
know what they need, but we rarely ask them. We don’t really consult with the
population we’re supposed to be trying to help.”
Police
and paramedics arrived at Pizza Corner within minutes and drove Giles Oland and
Dawn MacPhee to the hospital, where they spent 15 hours in the emergency
department. MacPhee sustained a few bruises but Oland’s injuries included a
broken nose, two black eyes, severe facial swelling and damaged shoulder
ligaments. Oland, a member of the famous brewing family who runs his own
business called halifaxwireless.ca, was unable to work for a week. He spent the
time in bed popping painkillers and has since undergone physiotherapy for his
shoulder. Still, he feels his injuries could have been much worse. At the
hospital, he saw two men with broken jaws who, he believes, had also been
beaten that night at Pizza Corner. “These people,” he says referring to the
young people aged about 17 to 25 who assaulted him, “weren’t down there eating
pizza. They weren’t out at bars or coming from restaurants. They were there to
hurt people and that was their only goal.”
“I
know I can’t walk around this city at night,” MacPhee says. “I get in a taxi
now.” Oland says the assaults he endured at Pizza Corner took his freedom away.
“I don’t go downtown to eat anymore,” he says. “I’ve only been downtown to eat
once since then, maybe twice.”
Professor
Chris Murphy says that when people stop going downtown because they don’t feel
safe, it makes things worse because the streets are abandoned to troublemakers.
“You should feel comfortable going downtown on Spring Garden or going to the
Jazz Festival or down to the Buskers’ Festival without being worried about
whether you’re going to be jumped by five or six kids,” Murphy says. “I don’t
have all the answers and I’m not sure any one person does. That’s why we need
to bring people together both within government and outside of government to
discuss this problem and develop a strategic response. You can’t guarantee
absolute safety, but surely there’s something we can do to take back those
streets, those spaces and make them public again.”
------------------
FROM OLD MOMMA NOVA IN NOVA SCOTIA 2
AFGHANISTAN- LETTER OF LOVE 2 OUR CANADIAN TROOPS- SUMMER OF 2008- News of the
days - myspace
Langley Students honour Canada troops
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH -SUMMER 08
Well the Olympics were a triumph and so they should be. Congratulations to all who participated and remembered the world's best athletes and held them high and proudly around the world for just a little while and took so much national pride in each and every personal achievement.
They are kind of like you.... our heroes- each and every one. What can we say here on this blessed board in your honor that has not be said- well I guess, it's like the old slate and chalk boards used in schools that had one room for all grades and chores started before school and after. I remember so many wonderful little tiny things that held me in awe of each of you and the empowerment and courage you have given women and children day in and day out in a tiny, little country called Iraq over the years (days... according to those precious souls of Zimbabwe- who know suffering and indignity and cruelty of a despot). The Iraqis love you and hard searching on the net and news outlets globally by millions of us has shown so many beautiful pictures and write-ups as to how you achieved so much success and why you are the global face of human rights around the world. All those years of fighting for rights of children and women.... and you won women the vote in Iraq- you won the war that day in the eyes of most women and children- a historical moment for all.
You simply maintained and maintain your course... you showed a good and decent people that the world does indeed care about the women and their blessed children- and now Iraq is a democracy. So many elderly smile your way on the streets and the comfort zone is so obvious. You have become the heroes in a part of the world that expected better of their own blood of blood kill and run cowards. Each and every time something was taken from what little the Iraqis had.... you somehow replaced... and you did it all without a bit of media glitz and glamour and respect that you; of all people who our the blood of our founding fathers and mothers in our free world.... deserved. Now ... we simply don't care globally what much of the media has to say- integrity and journalism cannot be said in the same sentence and people globally are very quick to say so now. You cut through all the crap and lived in the dirt and the mud and often hungry without clean water in clothes not cleaned for days on end. Because that's how it is. You walked the talk and your boots on the ground have more honor than any politician's words ever will.... in my personal view.
The media has become a joke... and a bad one and bloggers, moms and dads and loyal friends and family and communities and good old country music radio families have created a circle of love so deep and so strong around each and every one you that we just know you feel our gentle touch on your cheek and our smiles over your hearts. There is so much that you must miss; however, there is also so much that you teach us each and every day about ourselves as human beings and our ability to give the most who have the least. Why does this never change. I simply don't know.
You are the face of human courage. Zimbabwe by the by, is coming to terms with the wishes of the people and they have a hard old road to hoe; however, a Quebec newspaper today states that progress is being made and the people's elected Morgan Tsvangirai is prepared to accept the post of Prime Minister and leaving Mugabe the presidency to regulate the political crisis he has caused and to lose a great deal of his power which will pass to the people (wonder how much money is still left in Zimbabwe). Let's see if that happens. God Bless them and I will always remember their cry- if you can get rid of despots in Iraq and Afghanistan... why not Zimbabwe. How they prayed for you to come and help them.... just like you are doing there in Iraq and all the miracles you have given and performed.... interesting it has taken you so many years and cost us great men and women of our families... and to the people of Zimbabwe it's like you did all this overnight... seriously- the news in Zimbabwe and some of the Africas is that you succeeded in hardly any time at all and the pride in how good the citizens are treated and the rebuilding and charity work on your own time. They rejoice for Iraq and simply wish the same... how could we not love these people with all our hearts.
How in the name of all that is Holy... do you do it. What does God bless you with that inspires such courage, intelligence, endurance, watching out for each other... loyalty to God and Country above all. You sign the dotted line recognizing that you are signing your most precious thing... your very life. And we have lost a lot of dearly loved in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet you do it willingly. You are ruled and over ruled and under ruled, mislead, misread and mistreated so often by those who hold office and promise; that we, the people will protect you and your loyalty where ever you are at all costs.... and you get sold out ... for a few pieces of silver. And you forgive ... each and every time. How do you do it. My personal views.
I know this... you are the person I would hire; my first choice for a neighbor and a friend.... you are the one entrusted with all I hold dear and precious in this world... my family, children, Bible, friends, family, pets, junk I love.... and my general way of life. We; of the country music radio family in the millions and millions who adore you... have pennies in our pockets... and we always give and always will. Our families had so darn little - fishing, farming, hunting.... that was how we survived. We ran bare foot for a reason and always had mended clothes on our backs and store bought.... was just not on our family list- we felt ashamed.... and we should have felt proud. Today I do.
During the WWII- we lost everything- 8 miles of land, lakes, prize horses, farmland that was lush and beautiful- all we had... was each other, our Bible and our community reflecting and rejoicing in our won FREEDOM. We just started all over again... right from scratch. Working and schooling and Church as a youngun was a way of life and clean bed, food in our tummies and warm fireplace was everything. I was born with the Bible in one hand and our love our Military in the other- it was just our way of life.
You have restored all my faith in humankind so many times in so many ways. You serve.... our beloved United States of America, Militia, Reservists along with Canada, our U.K. and our Coalitions... people and countries you do not know nor do you understand- you do your job for very little and are treated worse than those who throw out a pet on moving day... in my personal view... by way to many people who are in charge who have forgotten what it is like to truly live with so little and to value the duty that means our ver life our death on any given day.
Rwanda - 100 days of G7 Leaders SILENCE and 100 days of mainstream media SILENCE- 800,000 children, women and men butchered- and you stood hopelessly by as the politicians in their clean and ultra plush surroundings moved paper, attended functions and simply pretended that you were NOT EVEN THERE. It still is so vulgar and makes me so sick to my stomach.... and that is why Zimbabwe hit me so hard- and we watched this disgrace- and not a thing seemed to be done. Sigh. But Zimbabwe will built from the ashes.... I just know it... they are such beautiful people and the world is watching- we are always watching now.
Burma made fools of us while their citizens died in the thousands and the military regime threw body after body in the river so the press would think they were part of the weather death factor.... not one more penny from my pocket... not one. I want guidelines, accountability (by our chosen people we; the people, select who are accountable themselves- quarterly and no political affiliations... ever) for each and every cent. After 45 years of giving and giving darn it I deserve to know where our money goes from our pockets to these places to help these people who are still dying horribly and over populated, underfed, under educated and somehow - made to feel responsible. Why? How can we be color coded AFTER these people have conveniently received our money - yet millions of people are still dying. You know... after all the billions we have raised and donated- I mean we even collected pennies for Heaven's sake- where are those wonderful lifestyles for these precious children and women and men and elderly .... like we were promised with money we sent instead of buying that extra piece of clothing we wanted so badly or better named shoes for our kids. How can they justify hating us people who gave and give so darn much- when our forefathers and mothers built what we have with their bare hands and their Christian Faith. You, sweet men and women serving who are right there ... especially at the beginning of all these hot zones and hate zones.... how do you amass the courage to get up and put your boots on each and every day my darlins.
Lord... how I love you so much. And just look at your brothers and sisters serving on our homelands- with all we have had to live through. Truly where would we be without you who serve abroad and on our homelands. As so many people are saying... it's time we .... in our own free world... had some of the good times. Cutting back? What is that- I mean are we the only living poor in the free world... us country music radio population. 99.9 per cent of us barely make a living- and are loved only on voting day it seems to me. Then the movied people, the stars, the gollywoods take right over and the media ... well who knows with the media. Somehow quality standards for journalism for the people is so long gone. Do we country music radio people have to always feel so along when we speak for the aged? The visible and invisible disabled? The lack of jobs with decent schools and after school for our children, community centres, social youth groups, sports, art, literature, buses, transportation, safety in the workplace, education about our own history and the beautiful world we live in.
What about the fact that children still cannot vote and; therefore, still have no voice. Same gender relationships are not a blip on my radar... just don't care; what media craze is going and coming from the gollywood hollywood and what sad movies to poke fun at times at the little people and the simple dignity and respect of who and what we are blurred in their billion dollar lifestyles of how they see us 99.9 per cent of the rest of the world... and get away with it- no longer care. BUT... abused and used and ignored children I care...bigtime. I want each and every child to have love and education, education, education in our free world- visible and invisible disabilites not one iota of a barrier to their young hearts and souls and what they could be and give to our world and future. You... who serve... help keep this dream alive.
You are always the heroes. Thank you darlins for loving us... and you don't even know our names. My heart goes out to the Canadian, American, British, New Zealand, Polish, French military losses in Afghanistan. I see the Islamic terrorists are now even looking at moving on out of there real fast and other countries.... who were considered their friends are now feeling the effects of those with no country, no state, no soul and just hate. September 11th taught me to hug my Muslim friends a little tighter and to always stay awake and be alert. Never Again. I love you. You know the corn is fresh, blueberries, old fashioned picnics, suppers, bingo, dancing, card playing and so on are still moving us on..... but we miss you and somehow... a little piece of our soul is empty with you not here at home with us... safe and close to our hearts. Candles are lit and prayers of the evening said for each of you and always to those we have lost.
Iraq is free. Iraq is a democracy and women can vote and hold office and never again will the children of Iraq live shackled to poverty and despots. Congratulations to each and every one of you. September 11th ... we remember.... and congratulations to the Military Forces, Militia and Reservists who withstood so much despair and hurt from our own and those men and women serving who died by politicians words and medias action and inaction in my personal view. They will stand before our Maker just like us poor folk.
Afghanistan is changing and congratulations on having a University named in your honor... United States University. Zimbabwe people showed so many like me why you are our life blood during such harsh and cruel times in today's world. I wonder what the new governments of the free world will bring about in military initiatives.... and whether duty of service will be regarded as the highest job in the land... and not the least. I pray so. Maybe we won't need Military at all and there will be a formal way to respect and honor commitments of each country without losing your blood. You know sweethearts.... what a wonderful world that would be for all children- if we do not need Military, Policing or laws that are so often bought and paid for by who has the most money.... but a real and dignifed world that created knowledge and learning and cultural sharing and prosperity. I mean it.
Until then...in our world- you; precious ones, are the first and most important news of the day... and will continue to be so. I love you so much. Your old momma Nova.
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/07/from-nova-scotia-2-afghanistan-letter.html
Langley Students honour Canada troops
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH -SUMMER 08
Well the Olympics were a triumph and so they should be. Congratulations to all who participated and remembered the world's best athletes and held them high and proudly around the world for just a little while and took so much national pride in each and every personal achievement.
They are kind of like you.... our heroes- each and every one. What can we say here on this blessed board in your honor that has not be said- well I guess, it's like the old slate and chalk boards used in schools that had one room for all grades and chores started before school and after. I remember so many wonderful little tiny things that held me in awe of each of you and the empowerment and courage you have given women and children day in and day out in a tiny, little country called Iraq over the years (days... according to those precious souls of Zimbabwe- who know suffering and indignity and cruelty of a despot). The Iraqis love you and hard searching on the net and news outlets globally by millions of us has shown so many beautiful pictures and write-ups as to how you achieved so much success and why you are the global face of human rights around the world. All those years of fighting for rights of children and women.... and you won women the vote in Iraq- you won the war that day in the eyes of most women and children- a historical moment for all.
You simply maintained and maintain your course... you showed a good and decent people that the world does indeed care about the women and their blessed children- and now Iraq is a democracy. So many elderly smile your way on the streets and the comfort zone is so obvious. You have become the heroes in a part of the world that expected better of their own blood of blood kill and run cowards. Each and every time something was taken from what little the Iraqis had.... you somehow replaced... and you did it all without a bit of media glitz and glamour and respect that you; of all people who our the blood of our founding fathers and mothers in our free world.... deserved. Now ... we simply don't care globally what much of the media has to say- integrity and journalism cannot be said in the same sentence and people globally are very quick to say so now. You cut through all the crap and lived in the dirt and the mud and often hungry without clean water in clothes not cleaned for days on end. Because that's how it is. You walked the talk and your boots on the ground have more honor than any politician's words ever will.... in my personal view.
The media has become a joke... and a bad one and bloggers, moms and dads and loyal friends and family and communities and good old country music radio families have created a circle of love so deep and so strong around each and every one you that we just know you feel our gentle touch on your cheek and our smiles over your hearts. There is so much that you must miss; however, there is also so much that you teach us each and every day about ourselves as human beings and our ability to give the most who have the least. Why does this never change. I simply don't know.
You are the face of human courage. Zimbabwe by the by, is coming to terms with the wishes of the people and they have a hard old road to hoe; however, a Quebec newspaper today states that progress is being made and the people's elected Morgan Tsvangirai is prepared to accept the post of Prime Minister and leaving Mugabe the presidency to regulate the political crisis he has caused and to lose a great deal of his power which will pass to the people (wonder how much money is still left in Zimbabwe). Let's see if that happens. God Bless them and I will always remember their cry- if you can get rid of despots in Iraq and Afghanistan... why not Zimbabwe. How they prayed for you to come and help them.... just like you are doing there in Iraq and all the miracles you have given and performed.... interesting it has taken you so many years and cost us great men and women of our families... and to the people of Zimbabwe it's like you did all this overnight... seriously- the news in Zimbabwe and some of the Africas is that you succeeded in hardly any time at all and the pride in how good the citizens are treated and the rebuilding and charity work on your own time. They rejoice for Iraq and simply wish the same... how could we not love these people with all our hearts.
How in the name of all that is Holy... do you do it. What does God bless you with that inspires such courage, intelligence, endurance, watching out for each other... loyalty to God and Country above all. You sign the dotted line recognizing that you are signing your most precious thing... your very life. And we have lost a lot of dearly loved in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet you do it willingly. You are ruled and over ruled and under ruled, mislead, misread and mistreated so often by those who hold office and promise; that we, the people will protect you and your loyalty where ever you are at all costs.... and you get sold out ... for a few pieces of silver. And you forgive ... each and every time. How do you do it. My personal views.
I know this... you are the person I would hire; my first choice for a neighbor and a friend.... you are the one entrusted with all I hold dear and precious in this world... my family, children, Bible, friends, family, pets, junk I love.... and my general way of life. We; of the country music radio family in the millions and millions who adore you... have pennies in our pockets... and we always give and always will. Our families had so darn little - fishing, farming, hunting.... that was how we survived. We ran bare foot for a reason and always had mended clothes on our backs and store bought.... was just not on our family list- we felt ashamed.... and we should have felt proud. Today I do.
During the WWII- we lost everything- 8 miles of land, lakes, prize horses, farmland that was lush and beautiful- all we had... was each other, our Bible and our community reflecting and rejoicing in our won FREEDOM. We just started all over again... right from scratch. Working and schooling and Church as a youngun was a way of life and clean bed, food in our tummies and warm fireplace was everything. I was born with the Bible in one hand and our love our Military in the other- it was just our way of life.
You have restored all my faith in humankind so many times in so many ways. You serve.... our beloved United States of America, Militia, Reservists along with Canada, our U.K. and our Coalitions... people and countries you do not know nor do you understand- you do your job for very little and are treated worse than those who throw out a pet on moving day... in my personal view... by way to many people who are in charge who have forgotten what it is like to truly live with so little and to value the duty that means our ver life our death on any given day.
Rwanda - 100 days of G7 Leaders SILENCE and 100 days of mainstream media SILENCE- 800,000 children, women and men butchered- and you stood hopelessly by as the politicians in their clean and ultra plush surroundings moved paper, attended functions and simply pretended that you were NOT EVEN THERE. It still is so vulgar and makes me so sick to my stomach.... and that is why Zimbabwe hit me so hard- and we watched this disgrace- and not a thing seemed to be done. Sigh. But Zimbabwe will built from the ashes.... I just know it... they are such beautiful people and the world is watching- we are always watching now.
Burma made fools of us while their citizens died in the thousands and the military regime threw body after body in the river so the press would think they were part of the weather death factor.... not one more penny from my pocket... not one. I want guidelines, accountability (by our chosen people we; the people, select who are accountable themselves- quarterly and no political affiliations... ever) for each and every cent. After 45 years of giving and giving darn it I deserve to know where our money goes from our pockets to these places to help these people who are still dying horribly and over populated, underfed, under educated and somehow - made to feel responsible. Why? How can we be color coded AFTER these people have conveniently received our money - yet millions of people are still dying. You know... after all the billions we have raised and donated- I mean we even collected pennies for Heaven's sake- where are those wonderful lifestyles for these precious children and women and men and elderly .... like we were promised with money we sent instead of buying that extra piece of clothing we wanted so badly or better named shoes for our kids. How can they justify hating us people who gave and give so darn much- when our forefathers and mothers built what we have with their bare hands and their Christian Faith. You, sweet men and women serving who are right there ... especially at the beginning of all these hot zones and hate zones.... how do you amass the courage to get up and put your boots on each and every day my darlins.
Lord... how I love you so much. And just look at your brothers and sisters serving on our homelands- with all we have had to live through. Truly where would we be without you who serve abroad and on our homelands. As so many people are saying... it's time we .... in our own free world... had some of the good times. Cutting back? What is that- I mean are we the only living poor in the free world... us country music radio population. 99.9 per cent of us barely make a living- and are loved only on voting day it seems to me. Then the movied people, the stars, the gollywoods take right over and the media ... well who knows with the media. Somehow quality standards for journalism for the people is so long gone. Do we country music radio people have to always feel so along when we speak for the aged? The visible and invisible disabled? The lack of jobs with decent schools and after school for our children, community centres, social youth groups, sports, art, literature, buses, transportation, safety in the workplace, education about our own history and the beautiful world we live in.
What about the fact that children still cannot vote and; therefore, still have no voice. Same gender relationships are not a blip on my radar... just don't care; what media craze is going and coming from the gollywood hollywood and what sad movies to poke fun at times at the little people and the simple dignity and respect of who and what we are blurred in their billion dollar lifestyles of how they see us 99.9 per cent of the rest of the world... and get away with it- no longer care. BUT... abused and used and ignored children I care...bigtime. I want each and every child to have love and education, education, education in our free world- visible and invisible disabilites not one iota of a barrier to their young hearts and souls and what they could be and give to our world and future. You... who serve... help keep this dream alive.
You are always the heroes. Thank you darlins for loving us... and you don't even know our names. My heart goes out to the Canadian, American, British, New Zealand, Polish, French military losses in Afghanistan. I see the Islamic terrorists are now even looking at moving on out of there real fast and other countries.... who were considered their friends are now feeling the effects of those with no country, no state, no soul and just hate. September 11th taught me to hug my Muslim friends a little tighter and to always stay awake and be alert. Never Again. I love you. You know the corn is fresh, blueberries, old fashioned picnics, suppers, bingo, dancing, card playing and so on are still moving us on..... but we miss you and somehow... a little piece of our soul is empty with you not here at home with us... safe and close to our hearts. Candles are lit and prayers of the evening said for each of you and always to those we have lost.
Iraq is free. Iraq is a democracy and women can vote and hold office and never again will the children of Iraq live shackled to poverty and despots. Congratulations to each and every one of you. September 11th ... we remember.... and congratulations to the Military Forces, Militia and Reservists who withstood so much despair and hurt from our own and those men and women serving who died by politicians words and medias action and inaction in my personal view. They will stand before our Maker just like us poor folk.
Afghanistan is changing and congratulations on having a University named in your honor... United States University. Zimbabwe people showed so many like me why you are our life blood during such harsh and cruel times in today's world. I wonder what the new governments of the free world will bring about in military initiatives.... and whether duty of service will be regarded as the highest job in the land... and not the least. I pray so. Maybe we won't need Military at all and there will be a formal way to respect and honor commitments of each country without losing your blood. You know sweethearts.... what a wonderful world that would be for all children- if we do not need Military, Policing or laws that are so often bought and paid for by who has the most money.... but a real and dignifed world that created knowledge and learning and cultural sharing and prosperity. I mean it.
Until then...in our world- you; precious ones, are the first and most important news of the day... and will continue to be so. I love you so much. Your old momma Nova.
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/07/from-nova-scotia-2-afghanistan-letter.html
-----------------
#BlackHistoryMonth
Fact Sheet on Police Violence against the African Community in
Canada (Updated in July 2013)
---------
Look at this beautiful NS
Child-slaughtered and then dumped at his family's Church WTF?? Black on Black
Gang Wars must stop- TODAY WE ARE ALL BLACK- STEP UP NOVA SCOTIA- OUR KIDS
F**KING MATTER- No cowards allowed this time... we have 8 dead kids in black on
black war in Preston Area... TODAY WE ARE ALL PRESTON NS AREA- we oldies
stepped up b4- time to do it again
@TheDailyShow #FeelTheBern
#OneBillionRising #IdleNoMore #Pope
Man found dead in North Preston was trying
to better himself
Parole board
praised Tylor McInnis for clean record since 2013, involvement in community
-------------------
The Permanence of Black
Lives Matter
A new policy platform from a
coalition of activists signals a new stage in the protest movement
-----------
--------------
WE ARE ALL BLACK 2DAY -#TylerMcInnis
murdered dumped at family church-#QuentrelProvo @TheDailyShow #FeelTheBern
#PopeFrancis #StopTheViolence #JustinTrudeauPM - 8 youngbloods slaughtered in
last couple of years by blackonblack gun violence- WE ALL ARE FROM NORTH
PRESTON TODAY- God is Watching - Enough... look at their faces Sweet Jesus,
Mother Mary and Joseph - Let's all b KennyRogers Coward of the County.... it's
f**king time
We must all work together 2 stop gun
violence
---------------
imagine your child murdered
and dumped at your church.....
Activist speaks out after
young Halifax man slain, found in trunk
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8 young blacks
killed in black on black wars WTF.-Activist speaks out after young Halifax man
slain, found in trunk http://herald.ca/8cy#.V8A2xWM7HvM.twitter …
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African Nova Scotia men support youth in light of
violence
Can't
put that 'stigma [of violence] on a whole community,' says Madison Murray
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March protests criminalization of black youth
In
the wake of police action at the Auburn Drive high School, Black Independence
Network Nova Scotia and other groups stage a march through Halifax.
About 50 protesters against the criminalization of black youth
marched from the Halifax Common to George Dixon Centre last Saturday. They were
led by two of the youth involved in altercations with police at Auburn Drive
High School in May. The two held a large banner reading "Education Not
Incarceration."
According to one of the youths, the police intervention was an
overblown response to a minor argument between two students during a fire
drill. "It was worked out by the time the police started swinging bats and
spraying pepper spray," he said. He is awaiting a potential hearing in
July on charges including breaching the peace and assaulting a police officer.
Flyers were also handed out saying that police targeted black
students during the incident, "insulting cultural hairstyles" and
yelling, "Get the fuck back; look at that little bitch with his ugly
braids."
Co-organizer Isaac Saney, a member of the newly formed Black
Independence Network Nova Scotia, stressed unity and inclusion. He said the
march was in solidarity with the youth of Auburn, but also about seeking
"new forms of organizing the community and unifying it." He said all
youth are being criminalized, especially black youth.
Protesters were concerned by the vicious cycle of connections they
see between Nova Scotia's racist social, education, economic and justice
systems. "Fifteen years after the Black Learners Report, the conditions of
black learners are worse than ever," Saney said. The Black Learners
Advisory Committee report was an analytic effort by prominent African Nova
Scotian educators to address systemic racism in education.
Saney said that the racism students are facing is rooted in a long
history. "The so-called democracy of Democracy 250 is built on the
genocide of the Mi'kmaq people," he said. "It is also built on
slavery, which Canada refuses to acknowledge its dirty involvement in."
Participants in the march gave passers-by handouts outlining
violence by police against black youth, and noting that 14 black youth were
arrested at Auburn High, some of them dragged from bathrooms and classrooms.
Four were eventually charged. They argue that "schools are becoming more
like prisons: metal detectors; security guards; enclosing students in during
the day," and that black youth are disproportionately victims of such zero
tolerance policies.
According to BINNS literature, black people are three times more
likely to live in poverty, four times more likely to be murdered, seven times
more likely to experience an unfair stop by police and have disproportionately
high dropout rates. Such racial targeting, organizers say, is shutting black
youth out of economic and social opportunities and driving them into the hands
of the justice system.
The protesters grew in numbers as they marched east across the
Common and Rainnie Drive and turned north onto Gottingen. Before the HRM police
department headquarters, spoken word artist and coorganizer El Jones recited
her poem, "Justice." Some in the crowd responded, "Speak
the truth!"
After her poem, Jones called for support for HRM Police Sergeant
Robin Atwell, a black policewoman who has filed a human rights complaint
against the police department. "Not only are they mistreating youth, they
are mistreating their own staff based on race," Jones said. "We can't
leave Robin Atwell out hanging, and we can't leave these youth out hanging by
themselves."
As the marchers continued up Gottingen, onlookers waved and
cheered. When they encountered a solstice fair in front of the George Dixon
Centre, a cheer and laughter arose as a pagan organizer shouted, "Thank
you for supporting paganism!"
During closing remarks, David Sparks, founder of the Martin Luther
King Project Association of Nova Scotia, implored that the march be the
beginning of a new movement for social change. "The NDP government
provides a new opportunity," he said. "We must challenge Darrell
Dexter to eradicate racism and hold legislature accountable."
Sparks also urged a value shift away from things and toward
people, and direct non-violent action to support those values.
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nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/07/canada-military-news...
·
Willard Bittern and his dog Buster stand
on the edge of a beaver dam pond that has flooded a stand ... COME GET
UR CANADA ON http://
nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca ...
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CELEBRATING GAY PRIDE WEEK blogged July 2013
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CELEBRATING GAY PRIDE WEEK blogged July 2013
CANADA- NOVA SCOTIA- L'Arche Founder-JEAN VANIER (my …
nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/.../canada-nova-scotia-larche-founder.html
A sense of celebration ... FROM NOVA SCOTIA FOLKS Pride ... Freelance writer Hilar y Beaumont explores the origins of Pride Week in Halifax and how the ...-----------------
BLOG:
Canada Military news -4 #KAYLINDIGGS #blacklivesmatter - black on
black youth violence -part of CeaseFireHalifax (CeaseFireChicago Model) - is
bringing pride and impressive skills 2 our youth in need in Nova Scotia- Check
out all the programs on settling violence and turning our youngfolks lives
around- because our kids matter- thank u this is awesome news- August 21- I'm
Asking 4 Help Now-Why won't u help me???? - Homelessness in Canada of Youth- We
must get back 2 basics/Thank u Jesus- Devon Downey turns himself in and
confesses- thank u
