The coronavirus pandemic increased the visibility of women in the media, but it's not all good news

We’ve repeatedly seen the ways in which COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women. However, the pandemic has been a boon for some women, who have received increased attention in the news because of their expertise.

Maite Taboada SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang 

The coronavirus pandemic has increased the prominence of women's voices in the media. Minister of Agriculture Marie-Claude Bibeau and Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Dr. Theresa Tam take part in a videoconference on July 31, 2020.

COVID-19 has meant daily press briefings from Canada’s public health officers, many of whom are women. Facts and figures from those briefings have resulted in an increase in the number of quotes by women in news articles.

We know of that increase through data from the Gender Gap Tracker, a public awareness tool that measures the proportion of men and women quoted in Canadian media. The Gender Gap Tracker is a collaboration between the Discourse Processing Lab (my lab), the Big Data Initiative at Simon Fraser University, and Informed Opinions, a non-profit dedicated to amplifying the voices of women in the media.

Good news, bad news

The tracker has shown a three percentage point increase in quotes by women since March this year, compared to the same period in 2019 (to 31 per cent from 28 per cent). This increased visibility of public health officers is certainly a boon for women, and an indication of the prominence of women in health care and public health.

In the media, we also hear more from women on certain pandemic-related topics: in April 2020, the majority of those quoted on health care, care homes, schools, or jobs and worker benefits were women.

This isn’t all due to professional expertise, though. Women are quoted more frequently because they undertake the majority of home schooling and childcare. They are quoted about jobs and worker benefits because they are more likely to lose them. And they are quoted more often on the impact of COVID-19 in caring for the elderly because they do the vast majority of that care, whether as family caregivers or as professional caregivers.

In other words, although women are more frequently quoted because they are health professionals, they are also more frequently quoted because they have been disproportionately affected by the consequences of COVID-19.

Men still say more

It is good news that we have created spaces for women to voice their concerns on those important issues (childcare, schools, jobs, health care). It is also a welcome development that many of the experts in those fields are women and they are being quoted because of their expertise, not just because they are affected.

Men, however, are still dominant in politics, business, finance, and sports. And they are quoted, overall and regardless of topic, about three times as often as women.  

© (Maite Taboada) Monthly topic dominance breakdown by gender between October 2018 and September 2020 (red squares = female-prominent topics; blue squares = male-prominent topics).

Beyond COVID-19, the Gender Gap Tracker shows the unequal role and representation of women in society. Over the past two years, we have monitored how often women are quoted and in which topics. We found women are quoted on three recurring topics more often than men: health care, entertainment and lifestyle

Another area where women are frequently quoted is legal and court cases. That is because women are much more likely to be victims of violence. In an analysis of the top people quoted each month for the past two years, out of the almost 2,000 individuals (politicians, business leaders, athletes, experts, celebrities, victims), 10 victims or witnesses were men, while 95 were women.

More than representation

This lack of equal representation in the news is even more pronounced in politics. In that analysis of the top 2,000 individuals quoted over the past two years, we found that 294 of those people were male politicians, while 268 were female politicians.

That may sound like we are close to parity. It certainly helps that we have a gender-balanced federal cabinet, as many of the politicians quoted are federal or provincial ministers. However, when we look at the actual number of quotes, that is, the number of times somebody was quoted, the difference is astounding: over 100,000 quotes by the 294 male politicians compared to 28,000 by the 268 female politicians.

It looks like women are given a presence, but then men get the majority of the space.

A recent report commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation analyzing news coverage in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States finds remarkably similar proportions to those in the Gender Gap Tracker: “A woman’s voice is drowned out by the voices of at least three men.”

These are two complex problems, of gender bias in society and gender representation in media. First, we see the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, and, second, how women are represented in the news and how often.

Ours is by no means a solution to such problems. We offer a public awareness tool, because we believe that it is only by quantifying the current situation that we can accurately measure whether we are making progress.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Maite Taboada receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. This research is supported by Informed Opinions, by Simon Fraser University's Big Data Initiative, and by Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Opinion: It is time for proper paid sick leave for all workers

Lori Johb 

Lori Johb is president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour.

It’s a message we’ve been hearing for months: Stay at home if you are sick.

January 21, 2020 -- Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Lori Johb speaks during a Unifor rally being held outside the Co-op Refinery Complex on Fleet Street in Regina, Saskatchewan on Jan 21, 2020.

 BRANDON HARDER/ Regina Leader-Post

As cases of COVID-19 across the province continue to skyrocket , the ability for workers to stay at home if they are feeling ill is vital toward stopping the spread of the virus. Unfortunately for many workers in Saskatchewan, making the decision to stay home comes with significant financial consequences.

Fewer than half of workers in Canada have access to paid sick leave. Many of those workers are front line heroes — working every day to provide essentials in our grocery stores, gas stations and other retail jobs that often pay at or just above minimum wage. If they get sick, staying home means not being able to pay rent, put food on the table, or fill their car with gas. Faced with no other options, a worker without access to paid sick leave might decide that they simply can’t afford to miss work. This creates an occupational health and safety hazard for workers and puts everyone, including the public, at a greater risk of exposure to the virus.

Workers also find themselves with few options if they end up contracting COVID-19 or are exposed to the virus and ordered to self-isolate. The provincial government has passed legislation allowing for two weeks of unpaid sick time, and there are some federal benefits that workers can access, but both are inadequate. A lengthy illness or isolation order would be financially devastating for workers who are unable to access paid sick time through their employer.

Premier Scott Moe has said that his government will do everything it can to avoid another lockdown . Growing case numbers have put that into question, and nurses and health care professionals are calling for a short “circuit breaker” lockdown to stop the spread of the virus. However, even if a second lock down does occur, COVID-19 is still not going away. Having access to paid sick leave now will help to stop the spread of the virus in the future as we wait for a vaccine to come available.

The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour has been calling for paid sick leave since March. Unfortunately, the call has gone ignored by the Sask. Party government. Workers deserve better. They shouldn’t be forced to have to make the choice to either go to work sick or miss their paycheque. It’s time for our government to step up and guarantee paid sick leave for all workers. Our health and safety depends on it.

Mexico’s Gender Violence Crisis Is Far From Over — & Women Are Demanding Action

Nidia Melissa Bautista 3 days ago

On September 2, Marcela Alemán, the mother of a four-year-old girl who was sexually abused in San Luis Potosí, tied herself to a chair for more than 12 hours inside Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission building. Alemán occupied the offices after a meeting with the human rights ombudsman, where her demand for the detention of her daughter’s abusers yielded no real support. Alemán isn’t alone in her struggle; her daughter is among the one in four girls and one in five women who face sexual violence in a country where 10 women are murdered every day.

Erika Martinez arrived at Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission the following day along with local activists to support Alemán, carrying photos of her young daughter, who at seven-years-old was sexually abused by a family member. For three years, Martinez has advocated for her daughter, demanding the detention of the perpetrator, but has only been met with institutional indifference and violence. A year after filing the criminal complaint, and still not detained by authorities, the alleged abuser attacked Martinez, fracturing her nose and continuing to harass her. Alemán ended the sit-in and eventually left the building after reaching an agreement with authorities on her demands but on September 4, Martinez, along with a handful of activists from feminist collectives including Mexico’s Ni Una Menos and the Bloque Negro (or Black Block), decided to seize control of the human rights commission office. Having read their list of demands, they entered peacefully asking workers to vacate the building and the occupation grew to include several dozen activists and families. For Martinez, occupying the human rights commission would apply pressure to a government reluctant to confront a country in the throes of a gender violence crisis.

“I was sick of waiting for answers from institutions that never came,” Martinez told Refinery29. It’s been nearly three months since activists first occupied the building, and although only a few dozen women and children remain, Martinez said she plans to stay until all demands are met, including a commitment by the federal government to eradicate gender violence in the country. “We need authorities to meaningfully enforce laws already put in place against gender violence,” she added.

Mexico has struggled with a femicide epidemic for decades, and every year an interminable series of vicious murders of young girls and women shakes the country. In February, the murder of 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla in Mexico City shocked the country after pictures of her skinned body appeared on the front page of a local paper and on social media. A week after Escamilla’s murder, Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett Antón, a 7-year-old girl, was found dead inside a plastic bag after she was kidnapped outside of her school and sexually assaulted. These are just two stories from ongoing horrific murders that have sparked protests across the country and fueled discontent among women exasperated by the femicide crisis that makes every day a struggle for survival.

Among the women that joined the occupation was Yesenia Zamudio, mother of 19-year-old María de Jesús “Marichuy” Jaimes Zamudio, a Mexico City university student who died after falling from a fifth floor window in 2016. Her death was classified as a femicide, and Zamudio says Marichuy was murdered.

“What I know now, from the experts’ analyses and investigations, is that Mary was a victim of gender-based violence. She was assaulted,” Zamudio said in an interview earlier this year. “She fell. No one helped her. Then, they left her to bleed out.” Mexican authorities haven’t made arrests in connection with Jaimes Zaumudio’s death, while Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission found that the case was poorly investigated. Zamudio, leader of the Ni Una Menos group, has since left the occupation after disagreements with Bloque Negro about the administration of donations and leadership of the action.

© Provided by Refinery29 

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – 2020/02/14: Several feminist demonstrators take part in a protest against gender-based violence against women after the murder of Ingrid Escamilla, 25, stabbed to death and then skinned by her partner in the north of Mexico City at Reforma Avenue in Mexico City, Mexico. 

(Photo by Carlos Tischler/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Femicides in Mexico have increased by 145% in the last five years, and only about 8 percent of cases get prosecuted. Under a sweeping gender law passed in 2007, every murder of a woman must be investigated as a femicide and officials must investigate for circumstances that include sexual violence, domestic violence, and whether the victim’s body was exposed or displayed in public. Femicide is a crime in Mexico that carries a 45- to 65- year prison sentence. The federal penal code also says any public servant that delays or hinders the prosecution or administration of justice will be sentenced to three to eight years in prison. This law also extends protections to women and girls that experience sexual violence. But in practice, more than 90 percent of all crimes and about half of femicides last year were unsolved, according to a study released this month.

“Many women have suffered violence, they have followed the legal channels, but they also get tired. They are not listened to. They are not attended to. Their demands are ignored,” says María Salguero, creator of the National Map of Femicides in Mexico database.

Using news alerts and local news sources for reports of femicides, Salguero started the database four years ago, and it has since become an important source for understanding the scale of femicide in the country. From her findings, Salguero says gender violence has only gotten worse. “When I started, between six to seven women a day were murdered according to official figures and now it’s almost 11. 

"The violence has grown.”

Though Mexico has passed laws against gender violence, Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has downplayed the severity of the crisis in recent months as women and relatives of victims grow impatient with the country’s failure to adequately address gender violence. As violence against women has surged, Obrador has slashed the budgets of agencies charged with addressing gender violence. The government administered a 75% budget cut this year for the National Institute for Women, which is responsible for promoting gender equality in the country. Lopez Obrador has also repeatedly minimized the issue of gender-based violence. In a press conference earlier this year, he said that 90% of calls to the emergency services over domestic violence were “false.” In a press conference in July, when asked about the budget cuts in light of the femicides, Lopez Obrador has said that “women in Mexico have never been so protected.” When asked about the brutal murder of seven-year-old Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett Antón, Lopez Obrador blamed femicides on what he called “neoliberal policies,” a response that garnered frustration from feminists who consider the administration insensitive and condescending in the face of femicide.

Martinez echoes other activists who have said government inaction is an open invitation for more violence. “It’s easy for them to ignore us, to silence us, to say victims of gender violence don’t exist, but this leads to more violence,” she said. “Because abusers see the president himself opening a door, by ignoring the severity of femicide statistics and of the violence, who’s to say the government will do anything to stop it?”

Mexico’s inadequate response to rising femicides has led to a surge in protests against gender violence this year. On March 8, for International Women’s Day, at least 80,000 women in Mexico City joined together to demand an end to gender violence. Feminist collective Brujas del Mar called for a national strike on March 9, and hundreds of thousands of women across sectors stayed home to protest violence against women. Protests, including a march for the legalization of abortion in September and the occupation of the human rights commission building, have continued during the coronavirus pandemic. For Dia de Muertos (or Day of the Dead) protestors, including many relatives, mounted altars calling attention to femicide throughout the country — adding an entirely new conversation to the traditional holiday.

This surge of protests have been met with police repression in various Mexican cities. The occupation inspired activists in other cities to take similar actions, but in nearby Ecatepec in Mexico State, activists were violently evicted and harassed by police. Earlier this month, police opened fire on protesters at Cancún’s City Hall during a demonstration against the murder of 20-year-old Bianca “Alexis” Lorenzana. Two journalists suffered gun wounds and some protesters were beaten by the police. Silvia C., a member of various feminist organizations in Cancún, was at the protest and recalls the terror of having to flee when shooting ensued. “We went to ask for justice and they welcomed us with bullets,” said Silvia.

“The repressions of the demonstrations and protests of women have been increasing in their brutality and forms of repression,” she adds. “It’s not by chance that this is just another form of institutional violence against women.”

In Mexico City, Salguero said the occupation of the human rights commission is a condemnation against institutional inaction in the face of intensified gender violence. “The takeover of the CNDH is historic because who should be protecting women has failed to do so,” said Salguero.

Having emerged spontaneously thanks to the action of a small group of relatives of gender violence victims, the occupation has since dwindled in numbers because of rifts and internal disputes among groups. In October, Bloque Negro said they no longer welcomed transgender women, and LGBTQ+ organizations publicly withdrew their support. Representatives from the human rights commission have met with Martinez and other activists to negotiate an end of the occupation, promising to turn the building into an institute for women, but weeks have passed since they’ve last communicated with officials. While officials seem to cater empty promises, and rifts emerged among protestors, the occupation reflected the frustration of living in a country where gender violence is perpetuated with impunity.

Relatives of gender violence victims and feminists continue to demand action from a government that so far has fallen short to provide any justice through the legal system. “The violence is unstoppable,” says Salguero. “I can’t go one day without receiving news about a femicide. The government says it’s protecting women while femicide numbers spike. We are simply demanding that the law be followed. We’re not asking for special treatment.”

Martinez said she doesn’t plan to rest until there’s justice for victims of gender violence. “Justice for me previously meant seeing the person who harmed my daughter, who stole her childhood, imprisoned. But today, after three years of fighting, the meaning of justice has changed for me,” she said on her 77th day in the occupation. “Justice is seeing all women have lives free from violence.”

Fresh air can combat COVID-19.

 For Italy's most polluted town, in the shadow of a steel mill, opening the windows is not an option.

insider@insider.com (Ian Johnston and Raffaele Ippolito) 1 day ago

© Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images 

An aerial view of Taranto's steelworks in April 2013.

Taranto, a southern Italian city, has long stood in the shadow of a vast, polluting steel mill.

The factory routinely blows pollutants over the city, forcing residents to seal themselves in their homes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a new irony, bringing instructions to keep windows open.

Residents feel their fight against the virus is compromised by their struggle with pollution.

Campaigners hope that increased awareness of health risks nationwide may hasten a solution to their problems.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought painful changes all over the world — and in one Italian city, it has brought a dire situation into even sharper focus.

Taranto, on the Ionian coast of Italy's picturesque Puglia region, is home to Europe's largest steel factory, which spews pollutants and has been associated with heightened rates of sickness in the area.

The pandemic has brought a new and painful irony to Taranto — pitting the coronavirus carried by humans inside with the pollutants often blown in from outside.

On so-called "wind days," Taranto residents are urged to shut the windows to block pollutants blown over from the Taranto steelworks, known widely as the Ex-Ilva plant after its old owners.

At the same time, schools and offices are told to keep their windows open whenever possible to promote air circulation and reduce the risk of virus transmission. Both problems at once make for a lose-lose situation.
In the shadow of the steel mill

Dr Mina Valentino has worked as a pediatrician in Taranto for 25 years and described to Business Insider a "silent epidemic" of health issues among children there.

"I see respiratory problems, coughs that are difficult to treat, melanoma in babies, children that have brain development issues because they don't spend enough time outdoors, problems with skin," Valentino said via video-link.

The steelworks opened in 1964 and is one of Italy's most important sites of heavy industry. It employs 11,000 people, more than any other local employer, and accounts for 75% of the region's GDP.

For more than 30 years, it was run by the state, before being bought in 1995 by the private Gruppo Riva. An environmental scandal drove it to failure in 2012, when the state took over. Since 2017, the steel giant ArcelorMittal has operated the works.

No representatives of the factory, past or present, would respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

The steel plant brought wealth but also pollution. In 2006, Taranto produced 92% of Italy's dioxins, a type of chemical produced as a byproduct in manufacturing.

Cancer levels are around 30% higher than elsewhere in Italy, and cancers in children are 54% higher than elsewhere in Puglia, a 2012 investigation found.

A dual threat

The first wave of Italy's coronavirus hit the north of the country far harder than places like Taranto. As recently as September, fewer than 1 in 1,500 residents had been infected — as of late November, the figure was closer to 1 in 110.

And as the disease resurges, the population is on alert again.

From time to time, local authorities declare "wind days." They occur when a strong, north-westerly wind blows, carrying steel particles from the vast factory to the city center. The frequency varies, but they can come several times a month.

Residents are strongly advised to stay indoors, and schools and offices close their windows.

But national regulations require schools to keep their windows open to reduce coronavirus transmission.

High schools have closed in Italy but elementary and middle schools remain open, including in the Tamburi district nearest the factory.

© Google Maps/Business Insider 

A map showing the location of the steelworks in Taranto, Italy, and three schools within one kilometer of its perimeter. 

Teachers are in a difficult position. One, who did not wish to be named, said school leaders worry they will be blamed if people get sick while studying.

The enclosing wall of the factory is 135 meters from houses in the deprived Tamburi district, home to some 18,000 people.

Valentino, the doctor, argues that the open or closed window policy is "completely stupid for protecting children."

"It's not sufficient for the health of kids because when children are not in school, they are outdoors, and they're even more exposed."

"The issue is not whether or not windows should be closed or open. The issue is that schools are where they shouldn't be. If you see where schools are on a map, they are four streets from the factory. These kids are exposed to pollution on a daily basis, no matter where the wind blows."

Time to close?

Alessandro Marescotti, a Taranto teacher, has been campaigning for change for almost two decades. He and his organization, Peacelink, helped publicize data that proved the extent to which the steel plant was polluting the region.

He said he got a significant backlash for his activism, including death threats. "It's like asking a heavy smoker to stop," Marescotti says. "You're not going to get their approval immediately."

Action by the authorities to address the pollution has been faltering.

© aleria Ferraro/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images 

Protesters in Taranto, Italy, at a demonstration in May 2019. The banner says "Time is up. Let's change Taranto." 

In 2012, Taranto's public prosecutor ordered the seizure of the plant from then-owners Gruppo Riva.

The plant's managers were indicted, accused of doing too little to keep the levels of pollution in check. After a series of appeals, the process is ongoing, with some members of the Riva family acquitted.

A closure of the plant did not last long after Italy's central government intervened. It used a series of extraordinary laws, often known as Save Ilva decrees, to enable production to continue. The laws circumvented the judicial system and allowed the plant's managers to keep working while ignoring environmental targets.

There have been 10 decrees to date, according to a report by the International Federation for Human Rights.

In 2017 ArcelorMittal took over. It covered the factory's mineral parks, great piles of coal and iron, which blew dust into the city.

But the factory continues to pollute and ArcelorMittal has been in talks with the Italian government to pull out of the factory for more than a year.

'The whole of Italy is Taranto now'

Frustrated at the lack of action, Taranto residents voted by 48% for the populist 5 Star movement (M5S) in 2018. It promised to close the plant but has yet to deliver.

Some hope the experience of the coronavirus will encourage national action on Taranto's pollution. "The whole of Italy is Taranto now," said Antonio Marinaro, the Taranto president of industry association Confindustria.

"The relationship between work and health is now an issue for Italy. But we have had this issue in Taranto for over fifty years."

Marinaro's favored solution is less extreme than closure.

"We should work with the industry through technology to solve environmental issues," he said, pointing to advances in electric-powered steel production and the potential use of hydrogen as a fuel source.

"We have to remember that ex-Ilva represents 0.2% of Italian GDP. It would be a great loss for the Italian economy to lose this asset."

"Turning off an industry turns off political interests. When you turn off the factory, there is no interest in reclaiming the environment of the area."

Dr Annamaria Moschetti, another pediatrician and campaigner, says: "In Taranto, we already had a public health crisis. COVID-19 simply highlighted how severe this crisis is… public opinion empathizes more with Taranto's case [now] and pays more attention."

Decades of industrial pollution have transformed the city's social and economic tissue as well as its environment.

Moschetti, along with Valentino and Marescotti, hope that the public's empathy leads to action that can improve Taranto's health.

"It took us decades to get sick and we can't expect to fix this in the blink of an eye," Valentino said. "But we have to start somewhere."
Read the original article on Business Insider

SEE 

Ecologism - MURDER OF THE DEAD - Amadeo Bordiga

www.geocities.ws/tensbook/murder_of_the_dead.html

Murder of the Dead ("Murdering the dead": Amadeo Bordiga on capitalism and other disasters) by Amadeo Bordiga. In Italy, we have long experience of “catastrophes that strike the country” and we also have a certain specialisation in “staging” them. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, rainstorms, epidemics...

Green Syndicalism | Jeff Shantz

jeffshantz.ca/greensyndicalism

In Green Syndicalism, Shantz issues a call to action to the environmental movement and labor activists, particularly rank and file workers, to join forces in a common struggle to protect the environment from capitalism, corporate greed, and the extraction of resources.

What is Social Ecology? By Murray Bookchin Social Ecology ...

www.psichenatura.it/fileadmin/img/M._Bookchin_What_is_Social_Eco… · PDF file

What is Social Ecology? By Murray Bookchin From Social Ecology and Communalism, AK Press, first printing, 2007. Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that these ecological problems cannot be understood, let

Mining push continues despite water crisis in Neskantaga First Nation and Ontario’s Ring of Fire

Dayna Nadine Scott, York Research Chair in Environmental Law & Justice in the Green Economy, York University, Canada 

and Deborah Cowen, Professor, Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 

.

© (Dayna Nadine Scott) The Neskantaga First Nation has had a boil-water advisory in place for 26 years.

The infrastructure crises that have plagued Neskantaga First Nation for decades have reached a terrifying breaking point. On Oct. 21, the northern Anishinaabe community’s ailing water systems once again failed completely, and this time in the context of the global coronavirus pandemic

With no running water flowing to homes, most of those living in the remote fly-in community were again forced to evacuate. Now a contractor working on repairing the water system has tested positive for COVID-19. Residents are waiting in hotel rooms in Thunder Bay, worried about the rising number of positive cases around them.

But this was the second such mass emergency exodus in 12 months. Life-threatening public health crises underpinned by infrastructure failure has become painfully routine in Neskantaga. In fact, this is just one in a long series of community emergencies, including a 26-year-long boil-water advisory — the longest in the country.

While life for residents of Neskantaga has ground to a halt, the priorities of the mining industry appear to be gaining ground on their territory.
Ground-zero in the fight for clean water

Neskantaga First Nation is in the heart of Treaty 9 Territory, 450 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, at the headwaters of the Attawapiskat River, and within the much-hyped Ring of Fire mineral region. As researchers in socio-legal studies and critical geography, we have been working in partnership with the leadership in Neskantaga for many years in support of their inherent jurisdiction to govern their homelands in accordance with their own Indigenous legal order.

The population of Neskantaga is about 460 people, of whom more than 300 live on reserve. A severe housing shortage and a deficit of community infrastructure pushes many members of the community to leave — usually settling in cities like Thunder Bay to the south. Those who remain continue to deal with the everyday repercussions of the recurring crises.

If a lack of space to live and a lack of water to drink are regular features of the “infrastructural injustice” of reserve life, so too are skin infections, mouldy walls, sewage backups and wide-ranging mental health impacts. Leaders in the community declared a state of emergency in 2013 due to a high rate of suicides, which they connect to these adverse conditions.

Around 350 kilometres downstream, at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River, stands another First Nation that has endured repeated states of emergency spurred by water and other infrastructure failures. Like Neskantaga, Attawapiskat First Nation has also become a symbol of the systemic neglect of treaty obligations that characterizes conditions in Canada’s northern Indigenous communities.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette 

The lack of safe drinking water in remote Indigenous communities, such as Attawapiskat, is not just a technical challenge, but a matter of political priorities of whose lives matter.

In fact, there is only one settlement along the Attawapiskat River in this whole region that has enjoyed continuous access to safe clean drinking water — the De Beers Victor Diamond Mine. In the fall of 2020, the mine entered its “closure phase,” but not once during its 12 years of operation did the Victor mine experience this kind of crisis of essential infrastructure. This suggests that the problems with the water in Neskantaga and other northern First Nations are not matters of technical capacity, but of political will.

Infrastructural violence

This sharp contrast between the state of infrastructure that sustains Indigenous life on one hand, and that which sustains the extraction industry on the other, exposes the slow yet lethal colonial violence that continues to strangle hope and opportunity across the Far North.

The latest frontier of colonial extraction in Treaty 9 is the Ring of Fire, a proposed mining hub that is backed by Ontario and the private company, Noront Resources, which owns a majority of the mineral stakes.

A proposed network of new all-season roads to support extraction in the Ring of Fire are now going through environmental assessment, despite resistance from Neskantaga First Nation and other Indigenous Peoples of Treaty 9 — the very same people who have been deprived of the most basic infrastructures to sustain life.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette 

The Ontario government signed deals in March with the Webequie First Nation and Marten Falls First Nation towards building access roads to the communities and the Ring of Fire mining region.

In the last federal election campaign, there was a moment in which NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh demanded full and immediate repair of First Nation water infrastructure. In quick response to the media’s question of whether he would write a “blank cheque” for the purpose, Singh countered, “Would that question even be asked if the boil-water advisories were in Toronto or Vancouver?”

How colonialism thrives

The reframing engages not just differences in geography, of course, but also the spectre of environmental racism. The lack of safe drinking water in remote Indigenous communities is not just a technical challenge, but a matter of political priorities of whose lives matter.

The cold political calculation that puts the value of Indigenous life far down on the priority list — and makes road infrastructure for mining companies an urgent issue in the context of decades-long waits for safe drinking water — is exactly the foundation that Canada is built on. It is one of the ways that colonialism not only survives, but thrives.

But the people of Neskantaga continue to reject Ontario’s cynicism about the Far North. They are demanding that they should be entitled to both basic community infrastructure for essential needs, like safe drinking water and the right to determine their own futures on their homelands. Stand with Neskantaga.

David Peerla, advisor to the Neskantaga First Nation, co-authored this article.

Dayna Nadine Scott has received funding from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and SSHRC for research related to the Regional Assessment in the Ring of Fire.

Deborah Cowen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Scientists urge permanent protection of Last Ice Area in Canada's High Arctic


Derek Mueller, a senior researcher at Carleton University, cut his scientific teeth studying mats of microbes on some of Canada's oldest, thickest and most remote sea ice.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

"They have some very interesting pigments in their cells to fend off harmful UV radiation," Mueller said in an interview.

"It's kind of a tricky thing to do, physiologically. You never know. It could very well be that someday we discover something useful out of that life."

That's one reason why he, along with colleagues and Inuit groups, are calling for stronger protections for Canada's northernmost waters as the so-called Last Ice Area rapidly lives up to its name.

"It's so poorly understood," said Mueller, co-author of an article in the journal Science that urges the federal government to expand and make permanent the conservation of Tuvaijuittuq, 320,000 square kilometres of frozen ocean off the northern coast of Ellesmere Island.

Tuvaijuittuq, which means "the place where ice never melts" in Inuktut, has the thickest and oldest ice in the Arctic. Because of how ice moves in ocean currents, Tuvaijuittuq is likely to be the last place it remains.

The region is provisionally protected until 2024. But Mueller said the pace of Arctic warming argues for permanent status as a Marine Protected Area connected to Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere's north coast.

Just last July, 40 per cent of the area's Milne Ice Shelf collapsed within two days -- 80 square kilometres of ice that had been stable for millennia now adrift. It happened so quickly an uninhabited research camp was lost.

"(The area's) under threat and we're hoping for conservation measures to mitigate that," Mueller said.

The Qikiqtani Inuit Association is working with the federal and Nunavut governments to determine if Tuvaijuittuuq should be permanently protected and, if so, how.

"QIA is leading an Inuit knowledge study which will really try to tackle what is current and historical Inuit use of the area," said Andrew Randall, the association's director of marine and wildlife stewardship.

"(We're) looking at cultural sites, some of the impacts associated with climate change."

Inuit want to understand what resources might lie in the area, Randall said. They also want to ensure Inuit play a role in managing and studying it, he added.

"(Research) doesn't only mean bringing in more western scientists," he said.

The Arctic sea ice ecosystem may seem desolate, but it's anything but, said Mueller. The ice supports a whole range of life important to humans and animals a long way away.

As the rest of the circumpolar world shifts under climate change, ensuring that a piece of the frozen Arctic remains free of human disturbance is key to understanding both how things used to be and what they are becoming, said Mueller.

Just this year, scientists discovered a whole ecosystem of shellfish, anemones, starfish and brittle stars living on shelves in pockets within the ice.

"What a wonderful surprise!" said Mueller. "We are now just beginning to understand this environment."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 28, 2020.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

For His Final Act, Trump Plans To Have 5 Federal Prisoners Executed


Fifty-six days out from the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice announced that it will do something unprecedented: execute people on federal death row during the transition period. There are five executions scheduled before the January 20 inauguration, including one just five days before Biden is sworn in. 

The DOJ, under General Attorney William Barr, ended a 17-year pause on federal executions when they resumed them last summer. In a statement released Friday, the DOJ described the upcoming executions as being for people who committed “staggeringly brutal murders.” Barr’s DOJ has already executed eight people this year, despite many states pausing due to the coronavirus pandemic. But, if these five go forward, it would mean the DOJ under Trump and Barr will have executed 13 people in just six months, which is a huge shift for federal executions that had been quite rare until last year.

The decision to continue executions during the presidential transition period is unprecedented; you’d have to go back over a century, to Grover Cleveland in 1889, to find a president who went forward with executions between an electoral defeat and the swearing-in of their successor. “What is clear is that this administration wants these prisoners dead before Joe Biden takes office,” Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center Robert Dunham told CNN.

It’s possible that the rush to execute people on death row before Biden’s inauguration may be because Biden his against the death penalty and hopes to end it at the federal level when he takes office. “The president-elect opposes the death penalty, now and in the future, and as president will work to end its use,” transition spokesman, T.J. Ducklo, told NPR.

Among the five people scheduled to be executed before January 20 is Brandon Bernard, who will be the youngest person in nearly 70 years to be executed by the United States for a crime committed when he was a teenager. He was 18 when he and a friend were convicted of murdering two youth ministers; his accomplice, Christoper Vialva, was executed in September after he exhausted all of his appeals.

Lisa Montgomery, the only woman currently on federal death row and the first woman to be executed by the U.S. in almost 70 years, is scheduled to be executed on January 12 for killing a pregnant woman, cutting out her baby, and passing the baby off as her own.

Dustin Higgs, a Black man, was convicted of ordering a triple homicide and his execution is scheduled for Martin Luther King Day; Higgs did not actually pull the trigger in the case and the person who did received life in prison.

A Black man named Corey Johnson is also scheduled for execution on January 14. He was convicted of killing seven people as a part of a drug trade and his attorneys are arguing that Johnson has an intellectual disability that should prevent him from being eligible for execution but that no jury has heard evidence to rule on it.

Lastly, Alfred Bourgeois will be executed December 11 for the abuse and 2002 murder of his daughter. His attorney is also seeking to have his case re-tried to take an intellectual disability into account.

Despite the nature of the crimes of all five awaiting execution, advocates continue to push back on the death penalty as an inhumane form of retributivist punishment. The fact that Trump is carrying this out in his final days in office only speaks to the nature of his presidency, and where his priorities lie.

“The federal government has already presided over the executions of eight people so far this year,” Hannah Riley, a spokeswoman at the Southern Center for Human Rights, told NPR. “The death penalty is always unconscionable, but it is especially egregious to carry out executions as hundreds of people are dying of COVID-19 in this country every day.”

GOOD NEWS
Trump administration denies planned mine near Alaska fishery
3 days ago

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Trump administration on Wednesday effectively killed a contentious proposed mine in Alaska, a gold and copper prospect once envisioned to be nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon and could produce enough waste to fill an NFL stadium nearly 3,900 times — all near the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Army Corps of Engineers “concluded that the proposed project is contrary to the public interest” and denied a permit to build the Pebble Mine under both the Clean Water Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act, the agency said in a statement.

The rejection was a surprise. It's at odds with President Donald Trump’s efforts to encourage energy development in Alaska, including opening up part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and other moves nationwide to roll back environmental protections that would benefit oil and gas and other industries.

The Corps of Engineers also seemed to signal just a few months ago that after almost two decades of political wrangling, Pebble Mine was on a fast track to approval, a reversal from what many had expected under the Obama administration.

But unlike drilling elsewhere in Alaska, the mine proposed for the southwestern Bristol Bay region could have negatively affected the state's billion-dollar fishing industry. Conservationists and even Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., sounded the alarm on the project before the administration changed course again.

The CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, the mine’s developers, said he was dismayed by the decision, especially after the corps had indicated in an environmental impact statement in July that the mine and fishery could coexist.

“One of the real tragedies of this decision is the loss of economic opportunities for people living in the area,” CEO John Shively said in a statement. The environmental review “clearly describes those benefits, and now a politically driven decision has taken away the hope that many had for a better life. This is also a lost opportunity for the state’s future economy.”

He said they are considering their next steps, which could include an appeal of the corps’ decision.

“Today Bristol Bay’s residents and fishermen celebrate the news that Pebble’s permit has been denied; tomorrow we get back to work,” said Katherine Carscallen, executive director of the group Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay.

The group wants Congress to pass laws protecting the region. “We’ve learned the hard way over the last decade that Pebble is not truly dead until protections are finalized,” Carscallen said.

In July, the Corps of Engineers released an environmental review that the mine developer saw as laying the groundwork for key federal approvals. The review said that under normal operations, Pebble Mine “would not be expected to have a measurable effect on fish numbers and result in long-term changes to the health of the commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay.”

However, in August, the corps said it had determined that discharges at the mine site would cause “unavoidable adverse impacts to aquatic resources” and laid out required steps to reduce those effects.

Canada-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., which owns Pebble Limited Partnership, said it had submitted a mitigation plan on Nov. 16.

Even if the corps had approved the project, there was still no guarantee it would have been built. It would have needed state approval, and President-elect Joe Biden has expressed opposition to the project.

Critics saw Pebble Mine as getting a lifeline under the Trump administration. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency withdrew restrictions on development that were proposed — but never finalized — under the Obama administration and said it planned to work with the corps to address concerns.

However, Trump’s eldest son was among those who voiced opposition earlier this year. After senior Trump campaign adviser Nick Ayers tweeted in August that he hoped the president would direct the EPA to block Pebble Mine, Trump Jr. responded: “As a sportsman who has spent plenty of time in the area I agree 100%. The headwaters of Bristol Bay and the surrounding fishery are too unique and fragile to take any chances with.”

The president later said he would “listen to both sides.”

“The credit for this victory belongs not to any politician but to Alaskans and Bristol Bay’s Indigenous peoples, as well as to hunters, anglers and wildlife enthusiasts from all across the country who spoke out in opposition to this dangerous and ill-conceived project," said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League.

Alaska’s two Republican U.S. senators, who support oil and gas development and mining, hailed the rejection of the Pebble Mine permit. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the decision affirmed her position that it’s the wrong mine in the wrong place.

“It will help ensure the continued protection of an irreplaceable resource — Bristol Bay’s world-class salmon fishery,” she said.

Sen. Dan Sullivan said he would remain an advocate for good-paying jobs derived from resource development.

“However, given the special nature of the Bristol Bay watershed and the fisheries and subsistence resources downstream, Pebble had to meet a high bar so that we do not trade one resource for another,” he said. “Pebble did not meet that bar.”

___

Associated Press journalist Becky Bohrer in Juneau contributed to this report.

Mark Thiessen, The Associated Press

Chopin gay? The awkward question in one of the EU's worst countries for LGBTQ rights

By Rob Picheta, CNN 29/11/20

Each year, millions of visitors to Poland are introduced to the country's favorite son before they even set foot on its soil. 

© Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Composer Frederic Francois Chopin, two to three years before his death in 1849.

Warsaw's Chopin Airport, the nation's largest transport hub, greets more than 1 million people every month. And it's far from the only landmark dedicated to the Romantic-era composer, born in a tiny hamlet west of the capital 210 years ago; his name is everywhere, his works and image ubiquitous across the central European country.


Chopin's residences bear unmissable plaques. Busts and statues of his likeness are dotted across most major cities. His name adorns parks, streets, benches and buildings. Even his heart, preserved in alcohol after his death in 1849 at the age of 39, is sealed into a wall of Warsaw's Holy Cross Church.

But new suggestions about Frederic Chopin's private life collide awkwardly with Poland's staunchly conservative traditions and its right-wing leadership -- and have caused some to question whether the story of Chopin that Poles are told from a young age is true.

According to a Swiss radio documentary that has been discussed at length in Poland in recent days, the composer had relationships with men, and those relationships were left out of history by successive historians and biographers; a potentially thorny charge in one of Europe's worst countries for LGBTQ rights.

Music journalist Moritz Weber, whose program aired on Swiss network SRF, said he reviewed letters from Chopin, sent to male friends, that feature explicit and romantic passages.

Weber also found that subsequent biographies and re-tellings of some letters swap male pronouns to female ones and downplay, whether intentionally or not, any evidence of Chopin's relationships with men.

"He's talking about love so directly with men," Weber told CNN. "Why wasn't that questioned by all these scholars and famous biographers?"

The most traditional story of Chopin's love life is that he had romantic relationships with women -- most notably the writer Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who was known by her pen name, George Sand. (BISEXUAL)

But the archive of letters that Weber trawled told a different story, he found. "He didn't write letters to them at all. And he doesn't write about them in a way that you could conclude there was love," Weber said.

"What is obvious in his letters that there is love written to his male friends -- most passionately to Titus Woyciechowski," Weber said, referring to the Polish activist and longtime friend of Chopin's. Later, he wrote in such a way to "many other" men, he added.

Suggestions that Chopin had male lovers are not new, and the sexuality of a Romantic-era artist would be of little importance in many parts of the world.

In Poland, however -- where Chopin's music is omnipresent, and where the artist commands a reverence rivaled only by compatriots Pope John Paul II and Marie Curie -- Weber's documentary has attracted notice.

"Was Chopin gay?" several Polish newspapers have asked in recent days, debating the merits of the suggestion. "Chopin kisses his friend. Does that mean he was gay?" another publication questioned. "The West is excited that Chopin was gay," a columnist for the Gazeta Wyborcza summarized, noting that the rumor has long been a source of speculation.

"He's like a holy person (in Poland)," Weber notes. "He's admired, his music is so important there."

While Poland loves Chopin, its relationship with the LGBTQ community is a painful one. The country's populist government frequently uses harshly homophobic rhetoric, with its Prime Minister complaining of a "homosexual agenda" threatening the homeland.

A third of the nation has declared itself "LGBT-free," a legally meaningless stunt that has LGBTQ people living in fear. And in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, where the church maintains a staggering influence, religious leaders have resisted moves to expand LGBTQ rights.

Polish President Andrzej Duda has denounced LGBTQ people, winning re-election earlier this year after putting the issue front and center in his campaign.

The governing party's powerful leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has claimed LGBT people "threaten the Polish state."

Its new Education Minister said last year that "these people are not equal to normal people." And last year, Krakow's archbishop bemoaned that the country was under siege from a "rainbow plague."

These trends have led to Poland being named the EU's worst country for LGBTQ rights by the monitoring charity ILGA-Europe.

Activists in the country are hoping that the renewed interest in Chopin's relationships will cause a reflection on those attitudes. "Let's say it openly. Yes, Chopin was at least bisexual," Bart Staszewski, the nation's foremost LGBTQ campaigner, wrote on Wednesday.


'An awful lot of things are suppressed'

Chopin's love life has long been considered enigmatic, and admirers of the composer have debated in recent days whether his relationships warrant discussion at all.

"Chopin himself was so very secretive that one could imagine all kinds of things," said Rose Cholmondeley, the president of the UK's Chopin Society. "I would hesitate to say Chopin was any (sexuality) really. I think he was a man of feeling," she told CNN.

"Because Chopin was rather discreet about revealing his intimate life even to his closest friends, the most trusted among them being Tytus Woyciechowski, it is difficult to build theories about this aspect of his life," a spokesperson for Poland's Fryderyk Chopin Institute said..

"The claims that there were attempts to airbrush something from history are simply absurd," the spokesperson told CNN. "Moritz Weber of SRF has actually 'discovered' something that every second-year student of musicology in Poland knows about."

But Weber insists that Chopin's male relationships, and his efforts to hide them from public view, influenced both his personality and his works. He suggested that the findings shine a new light on Chopin's music, nearly two centuries after the artist's death.

"As he writes in his letters, an issue in his life was that he ... wasn't showing his inner self to the public," he said. "We hear these extreme holes in his music -- for example the Scherzo in E major, where the surrounding of the A part is very sunny, and in the middle there's one of the most depressing, and melancholic and sad passages."

But experts agree that the suggestion that Chopin had homosexual relationships would not be welcomed in much of Poland.

"He is a symbol of Poland, but you've got a government now which is absolutely anti-gay -- and were he to be gay, God knows what they would make of it," Cholmondeley said. "When somebody's an icon, an awful lot of things are suppressed."

That attitude may already have colored the way Chopin's life is retold in Poland, she added.

Some uncovered letters apparently describing Chopin's relationships with women have turned out to be forgeries, she noted. And other Polish histories have "turned him into a Catholic icon, when actually he didn't go to church," Cholmondeley said.

"(People) don't want to do anything which would 'damage' his reputation in his country, it's such an important thing to them," she concluded.

Chopin is celebrated as vehemently as ever by Poland's current leaders. On one of his first foreign trips as President, Duda donated a bust of the composer to the Beijing Concert Hall.

It was a gesture that encapsulated the stance of his populist Law and Justice party: It unabashedly touts Poland's heritage and traditional culture, of which Chopin represents a weighty part.

The nation's admiration was returned by the artist himself. "They have a very rich national music in Poland. There's always been (one), amongst peasants, amongst aristocrats. Poland is thought of as the home of the dance," Cholmondeley said. "And Chopin put all of that into his music; he (captured) the whole feel of it. So it's very, very Polish."

The extent of Poland's national conversation over Chopin's life remains to be seen, but it will be closely watched by his admirers and LGBTQ campaigners alike.

Experts agree, however, that any attempts to evolve the legacy of the man whose name adorns so much of the country will not be made easy.

"We use Shakespeare in all our conversations. Chopin is as big (in Poland) as Shakespeare is to us," Cholmondeley said, referring to her British compatriots.

"(And) we can accept that Shakespeare had male friends as well as female," she added, alluding to the longstanding debate over Shakespeare's sexuality.

"As people we are getting more frank about various things," she said. "But in some places, they're not."

 

A statue of Chopin in the Royal Baths Park, Warsaw.

 

A drawing of Polish-born composer and pianist 

Frederic Chopin on his deathbed in 1849.

Chopin's heart is buried in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.

Poland's 'revolution that we cannot stop'
AFP 29/11/20


For Klementyna Suchanow, one of the leaders of Poland's protest movement, mass demonstrations against a tightening of abortion laws have turned into "a real revolution" against the current government.

  

© Wojtek RADWANSKI

 Klementyna Suchanow (R) says pro-abortion demonstrations have 'already changed Poland'

Suchanow, an author and editor and one of the organisers of the Women's Strike collective, told AFP in an interview that what had started out as pro-choice protests had grown into something far bigger.  

© Wojtek RADWANSKI 

Suchanow says Polish demonstrators 'really want a separation between Church and State' on all kinds of issues

It all started with a Constitutional Court ruling last month that abortions due to birth defects are unconstitutional -- a decision that would impose a near-total ban on terminations.

"It provoked an eruption of anger," said Suchanow, 46, a constant presence at the many demonstrations in the capital alongside fellow co-ordinator Marta Lempart.
Suchanow said that the protests have also been fuelled by a perception of the government's poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as a second wave of the virus with a record-high death rate sweeps the country.

© Wojtek RADWANSKI

Suchanow sees the current protest movement as a 'revolution' to bring Poland into the 21st century

"People see that those who govern do not think about our lives, our health, our security but they exploit everything for political gain," she said.

Suchanow said the objectives of the protest movement have widened to issues such as employment, education, culture and the role of Poland's powerful Catholic Church in society.

"People really want a separation between Church and State. They've had enough of the Church getting involved in every aspect of their lives," she said.

A series of sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups involving senior Polish clergymen have added to the sense of frustration and a notion that the Church "operates in a way outside of the legal system".

- 'We are everywhere' -

Suchanow sees the protests as a "revolution of women and young people who are fighting for a country worthy of the 21st century in which they could live normally".

"They want to stop being told how to live. They are re-discovering the meaning of the word freedom," she said.

The demonstrations have brought hundreds of thousands of Poles into the streets, including in towns and rural areas where these kinds of protests are unprecedented.

Although attendance has dwindled, in part due to coronavirus concerns, Suchanow is in no doubt as to the historic impact of the protests.

"It's a revolution that we cannot stop. It's a revolution that has already won because it has already changed Poland and it will bear fruit through the engagement of young people for years to come."

She said it was highly significant that the demonstrations have extended even into traditional bastions for the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

"Women are carrying out a real revolution there... The fact that we are everywhere is the real strength of this revolution," she said.

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