It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, June 22, 2020
The Funkees - Now i'm a man (full album) 1976 Zayo Rom 01 - Now i'm a man 00:00 02 - Korfisa 06:58 03 - Dance with me 12:20 04 - Mimbo 16:24 05 - Patience 21:52 06 - Salam 26:33 07 - Time 32:05 08 - 303 35:58 09 - Too lay 40:19 10 - Cool it down 44:50 11 - Dancing time 48:15
Systemic Racism Exists In Canada. It’s A Fact, Not An Opinion
There are two crises in front of us: COVID-19 and the emergence of systemic racism deniers. By Zi-Ann Lum MERT ALPER DERVIS/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES
Thousands attend a protest against racism at the Olympic Cauldron at Jack Poole Plaza on June 5, 2020 in Vancouver.
It felt like there was a wild glitch in the universe this week when Quebec Premier François Legault, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and now-former CBC commentator Stockwell Day either sidestepped questions or denied that systemic racism exists in Canada.
Ford and Blanchet both responded to the subject this week with initial vague comments that were later clarified. “Of course there’s systemic racism in Ontario, there’s systemic racism across this country,” Ford said. Blanchet, in turn, referenced the government’s treatment of First Nations people as an example that “it does exist.”
Legault expressed solidarity with thousands of protesters in Montreal who marched against police brutality last weekend following the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis last week after a white officer knelt on his neck during an arrest. Looking at our country, the Quebec premier downplayed the problem of racism. There’s “some discrimination,” he said. “There’s no systemic discrimination.”
Systemic racism and discrimination exists. It’s a fact, not an opinion. And it’s certainly not up to white men in positions of power to arbitrate whether or not it does. CARLOS OSORIO / REUTERS
Friends and family of Regis Korchinski-Paquet lead protesters as they march on May 30, 2020 to protest the deaths in the U.S. of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and of Toronto's Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who died after falling from an apartment building while police officers were present.
It’s everywhere. Systemic racism is entrenched in our health-care and immigration systems. It manifests in practices and policies that exclude or promote members of a particular group. And it’s been well-documented: Countless reports have been released documenting unique barriers Black and Indigenous people face in accessing health care.
Coronavirus outbreaks have torn through long-term care homes in this country partly due to interconnected problems flagged years earlier. At the time of writing, COVID-19 has been linked to 7,700 deaths in Canada; 64 per cent in Quebec. The pandemic has exposed significant gaps in existing practices and policies that have put Black communities at increased risk of COVID-19 infections.
Denying racism exists won’t give you the full picture of what’s behind these tragedies.
A mourner touches a photo at a memorial of Hiep Bui Nguyen, a Cargill worker who died from COVID-19, in Calgary, Alta. on May 4, 2020. When someone denies racism exists in Canada, it signals that this person has, at most, a very partial understanding of how systemic barriers are embedded in our everyday lives. It’s alarming when these words come from the mouths of political party leaders.
Systemic racism is baked into the foundations of our justice and media systems. Is recognizing systemic racism a politically volatile subject? Maybe if you exclusively read the white-dominated opinion pages of the country’s broadsheets. We can all certainly do better in diversifying our newsrooms, particularly in leadership roles.
This week, the National Post ran a column by Rex Murphy giving him free rein to make the backward suggestion it’s only senior members of the Liberal party “who have a clear view of all this racism and discrimination.” His colleague, journalist Vanmala Subramaniam, took him to task the next day for his blind diatribe. She shouldn’t have had to do that. As Subramaniam put it: “Someone who has absolutely no lived experience of racism ... most certainly should not be allowed to declare that racism is over nor be given a national platform to do so.”
We can all certainly do better in diversifying our newsrooms, particularly in leadership roles.
While Murphy was allowed to write his pointless polemic, journalist Desmond Cole has been fighting for years for police to end racial profiling, which has not been unheard of on Parliament Hill. But his byline disappeared from the Toronto Star a few years ago because the newspaper found his advocacy, which he’s described to be in the service of Black liberation, unsavoury. But other reporters were given space to write stories about their own activism.
For Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, it takes an enormous amount of emotional labour to explain the invisible barriers they face. Look at poverty and incarceration rates. The suicide rate among Indigenous people is three times higher than among non-Indigenous groups.
“No one should have to make the case for why their humanity matters,” wrote TVO journalist Nam Kiwanuka recently. “If this conversation makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself why.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that Canadians continue to watch the police brutality at anti-police brutality protests in the United States with “horror and consternation.” He said Canada has to look inward and “make sure that the millions of Canadians who face discrimination and intolerance every single day in their lived reality get better support.” He did not elaborate on what help would be offered.
Though their hearts may be in the right place, politicians who reaffirm that racism exists aren’t helping by stating what’s been obvious for people’s entire lifetimes.
Trudeau joined a solidarity march in honour of Floyd on Parliament Hill in Ottawa Friday and took a knee.
This week, federal leaders stood in the House of Commons to express their support for the Black community and to denounce racism. “Diversity is the result of our strength and our strength is and always has been our freedom,” said Conservative Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer. But these were not original words written for an unprecedented time. The message has been repeated word-for-word for a year, most recently in a statement about Holi.
These kinds of vague statements fetishize multiculturalism by focusing on optics. They can perpetuate systemic racism by failing to move a national dialogue beyond well-used truisms.
“Non-controversial aspects of culture such as food, clothing, dance and music” are promoted and monetized in tourism campaigns, according to Canadian author Kogila Moodley. The message of multiculturalism isn’t focused on equity or affirmative action. Though their hearts may be in the right place, politicians who reaffirm that racism exists aren’t helping by stating what’s been obvious for people’s entire lifetimes.
The pandemic and protests have together drawn a big, red circle around the perverse, disproportionate impact systemic racism has on racialized groups. It’s also revealed a dearth of race-based, socioeconomic data that could be compiled to improve access to employment, housing and other essential services. But there are sensitivities to work through, too. Historically, racial data hasn’t always been analyzed with good intentions.
When systemic racism deniers reveal themselves, during a pandemic, it’s insensitive, upsetting and enraging. But addressing blind spots in health care, immigration, justice, media, and political systems isn’t for the faint of heart. There’s a new generation of leaders — Black, Indigenous, and people of colour — growing, learning, and waiting in the wings.
Legault’s approval ratings may be soaring right now, but that oomph doesn’t give him licence to amplify his opinion that systemic racism doesn’t exist. It does. If denying climate change is unacceptable, why is denying systemic racism OK?
There was a moment in April where the Quebec premier confessed the province entered the pandemic “ill equipped.” “I assume full responsibility,” he said. If he were able to redo one thing to better prepare his province for the arrival of the novel coronavirus, Legault said: “I would have increased the wages of orderlies faster, even without the accord of the unions.”
So, he’s watching and listening. And others are, too.
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CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this column stated Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet denied systemic racism exists in Canada, in reference to vague comments made in a press conference on June 2, 2020. The next day, he offered a clearer response saying “it does exist.” This version has been updated.
Anti-Racism Organizers Talk Educating Rural Communities In Alberta's Heartland
Black lives matter on the Prairies just as much as in the big cities. By Melanie Woods JESSICA KAITLYN PHOTOGRAPHY
Hundreds attended a Black Lives Matter event in Innisfail, Alta. on June 13, 2020.
On a windy June day, George Floyd’s name echoed across the No Frills parking lot in Innisfail, Alta., just off Highway 2 that connects Calgary and Edmonton.
In a municipality of 8,000 where an organizer with United We Roll sits on town council and less than five per cent of the population identifies as a visible minority, nearly 1,000 people came together to talk about racism and police brutality.
While crowds have protested and marched in cities around the world following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other Black people at the hands of police, a growing number are demonstrating in less expected. The Innisfail Black Lives Matter rally was initially cancelled because of online racism. But a reconfigured rally went ahead, featuring homemade signs with slogans like “Rednecks against racism.”
Similar events, rallies and discussion groups are popping up in communities across rural and central Alberta, from Red Deer to Cremona to Caroline. In many of these mostly white communities, words like “micro-aggressions,” “systemic racism” and “white privilege” are being talked about seriously for the first time by residents and local politicians.
Much of the organizing has been guided by a series of Facebook pages and groups connecting people from villages like Cremona, population 444, to larger cities like Red Deer and Calgary. Facebook groups and pages, including Rural Alberta Against Racism, Central Alberta Against Racism, Red Deer Against Racism, UBUNTU Central Alberta, have become sounding boards for people across the province. Users share educational resources, messages of encouragement and memes as well as information on anti-racism rallies and discussions across Alberta. While many of the groups popped up in response to anti-Black racism, they’ve also become spaces to talk about injustice against Indigenous people or simply to educate white people on the basics of privilege. Taylor McNallie is one of the founders of Rural Alberta Against Racism, a Facebook page and loose collective that supports anti-racism events and organizers in rural Alberta. She said her own experience growing up Black in an Alberta village has informed how she thinks about racism on the Prairies.
McNallie was born in Saskatoon, but her family moved to Cremona when she was young. She’s lived in several other small Alberta communities over the years, including Didsbury and Black Diamond before settling in Calgary, where she lives now with her partner and daughter.
As the only Black person in her community growing up, McNallie says she faced challenges.
“The moment I got into Cremona, that was the first time I experienced racism,” she told HuffPost Canada. “And I’m not gonna say that was the first time it’s ever happened. It’s probably just the first time I’ve noticed, because I grew up with a single mom who was white and she had me when she was very young, so I’m sure there were a lot of things that I just didn’t know were going on.”
The moment I got into Cremona, that was the first time I experienced racism.Taylor McNallie
McNallie is not alone in her experience as a Black woman in central Alberta. Dieulita Datus has lived in central Alberta since 2007 and said she’s experienced everything from micro-aggressions to a confrontation involving a group of young men who waved a Confederate flag at her workplace.
“There are so many instances of racist attacks, micro-aggressive attacks that have been geared towards me,” she told HuffPost. Central Alberta has a particularly dark past when it comes to racism. Eckville, about a 20-minute drive outside of Red Deer, is where high school teacher Jim Keegstra was charged and convicted of hate speech in 1984 for teaching his students anti-Semitic material denying the Holocaust. Central Alberta was also once home to strong chapters of hate groups like the Aryan Nation, one of the last outlets of the KKK and was a hotbed of eugenics-based forced sterilization operations. Even now, the area is predominantly white. In the 2016 census, less than one per cent of Cremona’s population identified as a visible minority. Eckville didn’t register a single person of a visible minority. And Red Deer, a city of over 100,000 people, had 15 per cent identifying as a visible minority, compared to 24 per cent for the whole of Alberta.
Central Alberta is very, very white. But that doesn’t mean people there can’t be anti-racist, McNallie says.
“Racism doesn’t stop at the border, it doesn’t stop at city limits either and I think it’s really important to have those conversations in rural areas,” she said. TEACH IN'S WORK FOR EDUCATING AND AGITATING
But having those discussions in rural Alberta looks a lot different than the mass Black Lives Matter movements in major cities. McNallie said many people in small-town Alberta are wary of outsiders coming in for large demonstrations, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis. As a result, many events — including the one in Innisfail — have been structured more as discussions or learning sessions to elevate the voices of people of colour from these communities. JESSICA KAITLYN PHOTOGRAPHY
Hundreds gathered for a Black Live Matters event in Innisfail, Alta. on June 13, 2020.
Rather than targeting more radical goals like defunding the police, for example, many of the organizers McNallie has worked with are simply focused on convincing people racism happens in their own communities in the first place.
“I think just awareness and having more people understand and be willing to learn is huge,” McNallie said. “We just want to have these conversations so that if it comes up again people know what to look for and what’s not OK, and maybe somebody can speak out and be an ally for somebody when they’re in that situation.” It’s a strategy employed by other anti-racist organizers in the area too. Datus has worked with Sadia Khan to form a non-profit called UBUNTU - Mobilizing Central Alberta, a non-profit. The pair have travelled to many of the small-town, anti-racism rallies in recent weeks to speak to their own experiences as women of colour as a way to educate others.
Datus said it’s been inspiring to see the reception at these events. JESSICA KAITLYN PHOTOGRAPHY
Hundreds attended a Black Lives Matter event in Innisfail on June 13, 2020. “When I’m speaking and I look out into the crowd and see people of various ages, various backgrounds, various communities who show up, day in and day out, and say, ‘Hey, we support you,’ ‘Hey, we’re listening to you,’ ‘Hey, how can we help’ — those people give me my voice,” she said.
Khan said it’s important that people in central Alberta know that there are Black, Indigenous and other people of colour in their communities who experience racism.
She said UBUNTU is working to organize longer term anti-racism efforts through training workshops and unconscious bias training in municipalities, church groups and businesses. We just want to have these conversations so that if it comes up again people know what to look for and what’s not OK.Taylor McNallie
Many people are welcoming the chance to learn. Innisfail Mayor Jim Romane initially drew fire for comments to the Calgary Herald where he said that he didn’t notice racism in his community and that he believed “all lives matter,” a controversial phrase often used by critics of Black Lives Matter movements. But the 74-year-old mayor quickly apologized, and acknowledged there’s a lot more for him to learn. “We want to learn, we want to learn about this racism that’s supposed to be in our community,” he said in an early June interview with HuffPost Canada. “We want to start a dialogue with the community and get to the bottom of this because we want nothing to do with racism in our community.”
Romane dutifully attended the June 13 rally. JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Innisfail mayor Jim Romane is seen in Innisfail, Alta. on June 9, 2020.
“I am going to keep this short and sweet because quite frankly I am here to listen,” he said at the Innisfail event, after acknowledging that he and the council will work to “do better.”
McNallie said that’s the goal of anti-racism efforts in places like central Alberta — giving space for people to learn and grow.
“We’re going to make the resources available to them,” she said. “And that it’s just really about — keeping that conversation going and holding space for people to ask questions.”
McNallie says having all of the different groups like Rural Alberta Against Racism and UBUNTU working together in central and rural Alberta has created a sense of community not just in these locations, but also between the organizers.
Events are planned in the coming weeks for Sylvan Lake, Blackfalds, Carstairs, Olds, Sundre and Caroline. McNallie said she’ll be there, helping support local organizers.
“We’re going to keep going back and creating conversation sessions and different educational sessions so that the conversation is constantly going and we’re building relationships with the community members,” McNallie said.
“It can be just a very casual sit down — I’ll bring donuts and coffee — we’re going to hang out, we’re just going to talk. We’ll bring in and take away with new information.”
'BodyBreak''s Hal Johnson: Racist Encounters Lead To Iconic Series' Creation The health and fitness PSAs are well-loved by Canadians, but almost didn't happen.
To this day, the words, “Stay fit and have fun!” accompanied by a catchy tune can induce instant Canadian nostalgia for those who watched BodyBreak, the beloved ’90s fitness PSAs starring national treasures Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod.
While the show’s signature light-hearted approach to healthy living scored big with viewers, Johnson recently opened up on the couple’s YouTube channel about its more sombre origins: it turns out combating racism was the fitness show’s main goal when the couple created it in 1988.
Before the decade that gave us his iconic show (as well as Dunkaroos and Degrassi reruns), Johnson scored a dream job, as a sports reporter at TSN. However, he was fired hours after getting the good news.
“The higher-ups said that because I’m Black and ... because they already have a Black reporter, they don’t want to have two Black reporters,” he recalled.
Johnson and McLeod decided to challenge racist attitudes and perceptions about couples of different races, by building in acceptance from the show’s early planning stages.
They were turned down by 42 companies, before TSN once again got involved. The outlet expressed interest is airing the series. However, there was a catch; they wanted a white man to star instead of Johnson.
“We don’t think the Canadian public is ready for a Black and white couple together,” a TSN executive told Johnson.
That stung the pair, who have previously spoken out about racism on their website.
“The rejections that hurt Hal and I the most were those in which people expressed a concern about the image of a Black-Irish man and Italian-German woman interacting as equal partners,” McLeod wrote. “They said Canadians would not accept interracial hosts.”
The rejection inspired the couple to reach out to the government-funded organization, ParticpACTION. It signed them on for six successful episodes, which eventually spawned the full syndicated series.
“It turns out that Canadians have been far more accepting when it comes to matters of race than those early doubters gave them credit for,” McLeod stated.
The couple continue to enjoy successful careers as fitness experts and event speakers, with the show living on as online vlogs. Their latest videos partner with the Canadian Frailty Network to help older Canadians regain muscle strength.
“Without TSN [leading] me to go that route, without the racism they displayed, without the racism of that client ... all those little things created ‘BodyBreak,’” he said.
A day after Johnson’s video was posted, TSN released a public apology to the media personality and shared that they would be part of a diversity task force with Bell Media in order to address the outlet’s lack of diversity.
“We apologize to Hal Johnson for the racism he experienced at TSN, beginning in 1988, a shameful part of our past,” the statement read, going on to thank him for sharing his experiences “as a reminder of the impact of racism in Canadian media that continues today.”
Black people in Canadian media continue to face barriers
The uphill struggle Johnson faced is something Black Canadians in the media industry continue to face every day.
Journalists have shared their anti-Black experiences on Twitter, including TSN anchor Kayla Grey, one of the few Black women who are on-air talent in Canada. Last week, many stood by her after keynote speaker Tim McClure tried to make her apologize for not allowing a white colleague’s use of the N-word in a blog post slide. She made a statement of solidarity with Johnson in a series of tweets.
Racism has robbed so many Black people in media of their dreams.— Kayla Grey (@Kayla_Grey) June 16, 2020
My spirit aches for The Hal Johnson that we know and the countless of Hal Johnsons that we don’t.. the ones who had no choice but to walk away— Kayla Grey (@Kayla_Grey) June 16, 2020
Even emerging journalists have encountered early roadblocks: Journalism schools from around the country, notably Ryerson University and Carleton University, have been taken to task by their students for incidents of anti-Black racism, as well as the lack of support available for Black students and faculty. (Full disclosure: the author is a Ryerson journalism school graduate.)
There’s plenty of work to be done to prevent anyone from going through what Johnson and other Black Canadians have. Public accountability — such as Johnson’s candid video — has been proven to be a tool for change.
For example, writer Desmond Cole and other Canadian journalists are behind an open letter calling CBC’s Wendy Mesley to take responsibility after making a remark using an anti-Black term. Younger generations are also taking part in actions that will pave the way for inclusive futures. After a petition by Ryerson students Tiffany Mongu, Breanna Xavier-Carter, Rosemary Akpan and Sara Jabakhanji garnered over 3,000 signatures, the university announced they would start a new course: “Reporting on Race: The Black community in the Media.”
PETITION FOLLOW UP: As a result of my wonderful friends & I’s petition, Ryerson School of Journalism will now offer “Reporting on Race: The Black Community in the Media” — in the Fall to 3rd/4th year undergraduate students + MJ2 graduate students. https://t.co/mJYLn3voyD— Tiffany Mongu (@mongumnews) June 15, 2020
Alberta's Bill 1 Is 'Racially Targeted': First Nations Leaders
The Critical Infrastructure Defence Act bans protests at pipelines, oilsands sites, and railways. By Brandi Morin, On Assignment For HuffPost Canada
JASON FRANSON/CANADIAN PRESS
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, left, sits with Grand Chief Wilton Littlechild, centre, Grand Chief Arthur Noskey, right, during a meeting in Edmonton with First Nations leaders about increasing Indigenous participation in the economy on June 10, 2019.
First Nations leaders are outraged the Alberta government is rushing to pass Bill 1, which would outlaw protests and other disruptions to “critical infrastructure.”
Arthur Noskey, Grand Chief of the Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta, said the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act violates Indigenous and treaty rights, calling it a “racialized bill,” and one that will aggravate tensions between police and Indigenous people.
“We knew this bill was enacted because of Wet’suwet’en protests,” said Noskey, referring to the First Nations-led demonstrations that lasted several weeks this year across Canada. The protests drew thousands of supporters, with some blocking highways and railway infrastructure in opposition to Coastal GasLink’s LNG pipeline slated to run through traditional Wet’suwet’en territory in B.C.
“The intent of this bill is racially targeted towards First Nation treaty partners in this country. With all of the racial tension happening today, the [United Conservative Party] government should realize this bill is not going to work,” said Noskey. “Under treaty, we have collective, inherent rights. When people come together to protest, it’s because of their collective rights.”
RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGE Hundreds of protesters occupy the Macmillan Yard in Vaughan, Ont. on Feb. 15, 2020 in solidarity with traditional Wet'suwet'en leaders opposed to an LNG pipeline through their territory.
The bill bans demonstrations at “critical infrastructure” areas, described as pipelines, oilsands sites, mining sites as well as utilities, streets, highways, railways, and telecom towers and equipment. Violators who protest, trespass, interfere with operations, or cause damage around that kind of infrastructure will face fines as high as $10,000 or six months in jail or both. Further offences will garner fines of up to $25,000 and jail time.
Bill 1 passed its third reading on May 28 and now awaits royal assent from the lieutenant-governor that would make it a law.
This is a desperate move by Premier Jason Kenney to save a “completely failing economy and energy system,” said Eriel Deranger, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta and executive director of Indigenous Climate Action.
“Bill 1 seems like it’s out of the same playbook as [U.S. President Donald] Trump. It’s fascist, anti-democratic, anti-civil rights and completely annihilates the rights of Indigenous communities,” she said.
“I think people will protest this bill given where we are in the world with the Black Lives Matter movement, and this bill has impacts across the nation. I hope the federal government intervenes and sees the true colours of this unconstitutional move by Alberta.”
Federal government says it remains committed to UNDRIP
The office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General said in a statement to HuffPost Canada that it wouldn’t be “appropriate to speak to provincial legislation.”
“We remain fully committed to introducing legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) by the end of 2020,” it said. One of UNDRIP’s authors, Cree lawyer, Indigenous rights expert, and former Alberta MP Wilton Littlechild said the declaration plays a crucial role in protecting and upholding Indigenous rights when it comes to Bill 1. He says the bill is wide in scope and wonders if the Critical Infrastructure Act also applies on reserve and in traditional Indigenous territories.
“Utility lines, roads, railways, pipelines all go through reserves and nothing mentions this in the bill,” said Littlechild. “There’s no mention of us at all. It’s a complicated matter and we weren’t at the table for free, prior and informed consent on these serious issues.” AFTER THE FACT VIOLATION OF SCC RULING ON CONSTITUTIONAL MEANING OF CONSULTATION Jonah Mozeson, senior press secretary to the Alberta Justice Minister and Solicitor General, said the province ”will work collaboratively to ensure that input from Indigenous and Metis Albertans are heard and are scheduling additional outreach to receive additional feedback and discuss the concerns being raised.”
ASSEMBLY OF FIRST NATIONS ALBERTA Alberta Regional Chief Marlene Poitras, left, stands with activist Greta Thunberg, centre, at a climate rally in Montreal in 2019.
But Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief of Alberta, Marlene Poitras, who has participated in countless demonstrations for Indigenous rights in Canada and around the world, said the discriminatory elements in government law-making has to stop.
“We have a human right to voice our concerns. In our case, we have a treaty right and that’s not being respected,” explained Poitras, who marched alongside Greta Thunberg in Montreal last fall to bring awareness to climate change.
“Our people are concerned about the environment. Alberta is deregulating everything and doing whatever it can to open it up for oil and gas development without consulting our people — but our people will respond.”
There’s no chance of reconciliation with the UCP government with this. Arthur Noskey, Grand Chief of the Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta
Noskey said he thinks Bill 1 further strains the relationship between police and Indigenous Peoples, mirroring an international narrative that’s dominating headlines. Protests have swelled in the U.S. and around the world against anti-Black racism and police brutality.
“Now, Alberta will be asking the peacekeeping police officers to arrest us. This is anti-racial law. So the racially motivated police in the force will say ‘I can do this’ (arrest and brutalize).”
Last week, his friend and colleague Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation told a news conference that he was beaten and his wife “manhandled” during an arrest by RCMP in Fort McMurray. Alberta’s independent police watchdog is investigating the allegations.
Prime Minister Trudeau said he was “deeply alarmed” by the incident and vowed to “do more” to address systemic racism in policing.
As for reconciliation in Alberta, Noskey believes the move by Kenney to implement Bill 1 abolishes reconciliation.
“You’re going to criminalize the First Peoples of this land who agreed to share the lands with foreigners that came in. This impacts our way of life. There’s no chance of reconciliation with the UCP government with this.”
As Columbus, Davis Statues Topple, Debate Over Memorializing Historical Figures Rages
In Canada, heated debates are underway over memorials to people like John A. Macdonald and Henry Dundas. REPLACE MACDONALD WITH DIEFENBAKER A CONSERVATIVE PM WHO GAVE US HUMAN RIGHTS
LEGISLATION
REPLACE DUNDAS, WITH WILLIAM MACKENZIE A LEADER OF THE REBELLION OF 1837James McCarten Canadian Press
WASHINGTON — Public anger over the police killing of George Floyd is unearthing difficult questions in the United States, Canada and around the world about statues, monuments and other permanent tributes to historical figures whose legacies include oppression, racism and cruelty.
For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, there’s only one answer: the time to do away with them is now, she said Thursday — putting her on another collision course with President Donald Trump.
“Public sentiment is everything,” Pelosi told her weekly briefing on Capitol Hill, where the stately Statuary Hall showcases 100 statues of U.S. historical figures commissioned and contributed by state governments, many of them Confederate leaders. YUI MOK/PA VIA AP
Workers prepare to take down a statue of slave owner Robert Milligan in London on Tuesday after a protest saw anti-racism campaigners tear down a statue of a slave trader in Bristol. Pelosi wrote a letter this week urging the bipartisan committee responsible for the statues to do away with 11 of them, singling out in particular Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens — the president and vice-president of the Confederate States of America, both of whom were slave-owners who were charged with treason after the Civil War.
“This is a perfect time for us to move those statues,” Pelosi said. “Other times, people may think, ’Oh, who cares, I never go there anyway, they all look alike to me, they’re all these white men .... the timing might be just right.”
Pelosi also supports rechristening several U.S. military bases named after Confederate generals, a measure that appears to have the support of some Republican senators even though Trump has promised to veto it.
Protesters, lashing out across America following Floyd’s death on May 25, have made their feelings crystal clear.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
People gathered at the Jefferson Davis monument in Richmond, VA. on Thursday morning after the statue was pulled down the night before. On Wednesday night in the Virginia capital of Richmond, where Confederate monuments have been bathed in graffiti since the protests erupted last month, protesters toppled a statue of Davis, whose name and image remain a familiar sight throughout the state. They also hauled down Christopher Columbus and tossed him in a lake.
Similar tributes to Columbus in Boston, Miami and St. Paul, Minn., have been defaced, upended or beheaded, a reflection of the famous explorer’s status as a symbol of a colonialism that perpetrated genocide, abuse and marginalization of Indigenous Peoples across North America.
The current groundswell of broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement isn’t just in response to Floyd’s death, but also other recent jarring inflection points in America’s shared racial history, said Jeremy Mayer, a public policy professor at Virginia’s George Mason University.
Those include the shooting deaths of nine Black members of a Bible study group at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 and the infamous gathering of torch-wielding white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., two years later.
Even NASCAR, the stock-car racing association that long gave safe harbour to wavers of the Confederate battle flag, has announced a ban on a controversial symbol it says “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry.”
“Once we lose the emotional reverence for symbols, powerful institutions can turn on a dime and go, ‘You know what, no more. That’s it,’” Mayer said. “I mean, NASCAR gave up the Confederate flag.”
YUI MOK/PA VIA AP
A worker rests after the statue of slave owner Robert Milligan was taken down in London. In Canada, the historical treatment of Indigenous communities has fuelled a fearsome backlash against some of the country’s most storied historical figures, including Sir John A. Macdonald, the country’s first prime minister — and an architect of an oppressive and cruel residential-school system designed to commit what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.”
Statues of Macdonald in Kingston, Ont., and Montreal are frequent targets for vandals. In B.C., the city of Victoria removed one in 2018. And Halifax has done away with a bronze tribute to founder Edward Cornwallis, a notorious enemy of the region’s Mi’kmaq, that became a flashpoint for racial tensions between Indigenous activists and white supremacists in 2017. MARTIN OUELLET-DIOTTE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Protesters climb a statue of John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, during a march against police brutality and racism in Montreal on June 7. That same year, Langevin Block in Ottawa — the longtime home of the Prime Minister’s Office, named for Hector-Louis Langevin, another notorious residential-school champion — was unceremoniously stripped of that moniker. Calls are also growing for Toronto to rename Dundas Street, named for Henry Dundas, a British politician who delayed abolishing the Atlantic slave trade.
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, whose downtown Montreal riding is home to a Macdonald statue, said as the son of a history professor at McGill University, he’s often thought about the thorny issue of memorializing figures with controversial pasts. James McGill himself, the university’s namesake, was a slave-owner, Miller noted.“I believe in educating. I believe in examining our history, criticizing it, re-examining it,” he said, recalling the time his father expressed a desire to go back and teach a more modern version of Canadian history. To eradicate such symbols of history entirely would risk losing the opportunity to learn from it, he suggested.
“We always have to re-examine our history, educate ourselves. If we’re blind to the past, we’re blind to the future.”
But public tributes that offend large portions of the population aren’t essential to remembering the past, at least when it comes to Confederate leaders in the U.S., Mayer said.
“What we’re talking about is not what do we remember, but what do we revere — and reverence and remembrance are very, very different things,” he said.
“There are no statues of Nazis in Germany by law. So it’s not that the Nazi history is forgotten; in fact, it’s taught very well in Germany. But reverence is denied. And that is what is happening with the Confederacy.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2020.
He acknowledged recent scrutiny over his wife Jessica Mulroney, who bullied a Black woman on social media earlier this month, and highlighted a “national conversation” on CTV about how to take action against systemic racism.
Jun 12, 2020 - Cityline host Tracy Moore, who is black and a friend of the style maven, took to Instagram. She wrote: “Let's unlearn lashing out at Black women as a legitimate response to feeling called out. Unlearn privilege as a shield for your white fragility and use it instead to protect those who need it.”
Jun 12, 2020 - TV; United Kingdom UK ... Cityline host Tracy Moore is urging fans to trust Black women and "unlearn privilege as a shield" after the show cut ties with Jessica Mulroney. In a video posted to ... Unlearn privilege as a shield for your white fragility and use it instead to protect those who need it. Jess has sat on ...
Racism Is Wreaking Havoc On Our Mental Health, Says Policy Expert Uppala Chandrasekera
"You need to start from a place of, 'Racism exists, and what are we going to do about it?"
By Lisa Yeung 12/10/2017 11:38am EST | Updated January 31, 2018 ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Uppala Chandrasekera attends a Toronto Police Services Board meeting on Oct. 26, 2017.
Uppala Chandraesekera had just arrived in Canada as a refugee from Sri Lanka when she got her first taste of racism in this country. It was decades ago, when she was just a kid.
"I must have been a little over eight, and two teenagers in a car drove by and called me a 'Paki,'' she says.
Chandrasekera was confused. She wasn't Pakistani, she was Sri Lankan. Then her friend apologized. "We were eight, and she got what that meant, that it was a derogatory term."
That was just the beginning of her experience with racism in Canada.
Today, Chandrasekera is the director of public policy at the Canadian Mental Health Association Ontario and more recently, the first mental health expert appointed to the Toronto Police Services Board. Her work focuses on anti-racism, anti-oppression, and how inequality affects health and mental health.
The gist of her message: we need to start from the assumption that racism exists — because it can damage the mental health of racialized people in insidious ways.
HuffPost Canada spoke to Chandrasekera in advance of the United Nations' annual Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.
Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen in your work and the ways that racism prevents access to human rights?
There are lots of myths around that race is a biological construct. It's not. It's a social construct. And because it's a social construct, it actually impacts every social aspect of our lives. So there are layers of how racism is enacted.
A few years ago, [the Wellesley Institute, a policy think tank in Toronto] did this study that looked at how are racialized people excluded from the labour market. What they found is that ... for every dollar earned by a white man, a racialized woman makes only 66.5 cents. And a racialized man only makes 75.6 cents. We know that there's an actual barrier in terms of the labour market, and we know that access to income and jobs and the labour market has a direct impact on health.
Another piece could be environmental exposure. So, if you live in a community that is over-policed, or has a higher level of scrutiny — or for example, you live in northern communities in Canada, where there are very little resources, and very little access to health care — that has an impact on your health.
The piece around racism that is so insidious is that it's constant.
Uppala Chandrasekera
So the effects on mental health result in an increase in chronic stress levels, and so it might exacerbate some conditions that you already have.
Because of these chronic stressors, you might actually resort to unhealthy coping mechanism and coping behaviours. You might turn to drugs or alcohol as a way of coping with this. And then, that's still your health, and then there's another layer, which is racism might actually be a barrier in accessing health-care services.
For example, you might try to access services where your health-care provider says, "Oh, no, you're just imagining it." Because they're making assumptions about you. These are implicit assumptions that we all carry about people. We don't live on an island, we live in this society, we're all taught racism. And so, they might actually have a total barrier to health care.
And on the flip side, there's lots of research that talks about the over-diagnosis of racialized people with certain conditions ... research that looks at, for example, black men tend to be over-diagnosed with more severe mental health and addictions issues like schizophrenia. That, again, is grounded in these implicit assumptions. So the piece around race and racism being a social construct is really important. NICOLAS MCCOMBER VIA GETTY IMAGES
How do people who are in the dominant community go about unlearning, and how do we address internalized racism?
A lot of people think that "slavery, colonialism happened hundreds of years ago. It has nothing to do with me; I'm not directly responsible for them." And the piece to understand is that in today's society, we perhaps didn't engage in those horrible acts hundreds of years ago; however, there is an inter-generational impact from those actions.
We need to kind of actively learn to understand what happened in our history, so that we can see what the impact of that is. And a really great example is residential schools in Canada.
I didn't come to Canada until I was eight. I did not grow up learning about that in the school system, and only as an adult and as a health-care professional have I really learned what the impact of the residential schools has been on Indigenous people in this country. THE CANADIAN PRESS
Residential school survivor Lorna Standingready is comforted by a fellow survivor in the audience during the closing ceremony of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on June 3, 2015. And that's why it's so important to remember that in moments of racism, those are traumatic moments and ... either we're not willing to or we don't have the capacity to deal with that. When an incident happens today, you might not process it ... some people are so fast to say, "Oh, there goes that angry coloured girl again."
And so they say that was a disproportionate response to that small thing that happened on the subway or on the bus. But actually, when you think about it, [she] might not just be reacting to what happened today, but the incident that happened 10 days ago, or 10 months ago, or 10 years ago, or the very first moment, and it's compounding impact, because you're re-living it.
The piece around racism that is so insidious is that it's constant, and the piece around unlearning these things and supporting people in those moments is that validating someone's experience of racism is so important. Because oftentimes, racialized people walk around thinking, "Oh, that probably was just in my head. Did that really happen, did that person actually say that to me? Or that subtle insult, was it actually directed at me?"
I think one of the things is, sometimes you don't even know you hold all of these internalized beliefs. What's the right place for people to start?
I think a couple of things. We all should be striving to educate ourselves about the impact of injustices, and especially when thinking about racism. An activity I've done in the past that's been super helpful is — I think it's Harvard Medical School — they did an implicit assumption test, and actually Malcolm Gladwell writes about it in his book, Blink. It's an online test you can take and it's called The Implicit Association Test.
It gives you pictures and images and words and gives you a few seconds to click. It will show you a picture of a gun and a racialized person, or a picture of a flower and a white person, and it tests how you associate positive things and negative things. And then what it spits out is how, what your implicit assumptions about people are. And I think doing a test like that is really eye-opening.
Anti-racism is an action or an engagement. It's not enough to write about it, it's not enough to talk about it, you actually have to do it.
Uppala Chandrasekera
So reaching out to these tools that can help you see what it is that we're doing is really important. So that's kind of a personal self-reflection piece.
The next piece is in moments when racism happens. It's so important ... anti-racism is an action or an engagement. It's not enough to write about it, it's not enough to talk about it, you actually have to do it.
Can you talk about some of the implicit assumptions [about mental health]?
When we think about people with mental health and addictions issues, the social perception immediately goes to the link between violence and mental health issues. A lot of people believe that people with mental health issues are violent. So about five, six years ago, we actually looked at this, and we looked at the research around violence and mental health and what we actually found was that people with mental health issues, they're no more likely to be violent than the general population. There's no causal link between violence and mental health.
But what we actually found was that people with mental health issues are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. And the assumptions that people with mental health issues may be violent are at the core of the stigma around mental health issues. That's why so many people don't share their experiences, or don't come out and talk about it. When you combine that with fear or assumptions about racialized people, added, it compounds that impact.
How do you think institutions should be responding?
I would say any organization, whether policing, or health care, or any sector really, you need to start from a place of, 'Racism exists, and what are we going to do about it?' Because we've spent far too many years trying to build a case that racism exists, and we need to start with that it does exist, because we see the differential impact in the justice system, where racialized people are overpopulating our correctional [facilities]. And we see that in the health-care system, in huge health disparities among racialized populations.
So, if we start from a place of, this exists and how are we going to change it, it's a far easier conversation, but it's also in a way that is not blaming, or shaming, or guilting people.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
OPINION Defunding The Police Will Save Black And Indigenous Lives In Canada If we truly want to effect change that could stop police killings of Black people, we need to have this conversation.
Police push back protesters during a demonstration on May 31, 2020 calling for justice in the death of George Floyd and victims of police brutality in Montreal.
Demonstrators are calling for justice for Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto, who fell to her death while police were in her apartment, D’Andre Campbell in Brampton, Ont., George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and countless others who have faced anti-Black police brutality.
If we truly want to effect change that could stop police killings of Black people, we must have a conversation about defunding the police. THE CANADIAN PRESS/DARRYL DYCK
Thousands of people gather for a peaceful demonstration in support of George Floyd and Regis Korchinski-Paquet and protest against racism, injustice and police brutality, in Vancouver on May 31, 2020. Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “What about violent crime?”
I hear you. And I want you to consider this simple fact: police do not prevent violence. What we need in the event of violent crime is a service that will effectively respond to it, stop it from happening if it is ongoing, and investigate the circumstances surrounding it.
This is a conversation about safety, and the mechanism through which we as a society will provide safety for one another.
Policing is ill-equipped to suit these needs.
When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed. When the queer community in Toronto told police there was a serial killer targeting racialized queer men in the Church Street village, the police openly deniedthere was a serial killer and did not take the threat seriously. This allowed serial killer Bruce MacArthur to get away with murdering at least eight men over at least seven years.
In British Columbia, police failed to apprehend serial killer Robert Pickton for over 20 years, and this failure meant that Pickton was able to murder 49 women. The majority of these women were Indigenous, and police routinely refuse to take the disappearance of Indigenous women seriously. When Toronto police attended to the suspicious death of Black trans woman Sumaya Dalmarin 2015, they closed the investigation without ruling it a homicide or releasing a cause of death after social media outcry. Defunding the police can free up funding that we can reinvest in services that provide real safety.
There are other communities who do not interact with police regularly. Wealthier, non-Black, non-Indigenous, privileged communities tend to feel safe because they have a rarely used option to call the police when they feel their safety is threatened. But, they are generally not interacting with police; their communities are not policed in the same way, and they are not targeted for criminalization. Alternatives to policing
Instead of relying on police, we could rely on well-trained social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, researchers and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place. In the event that intervention is required while a violent crime is ongoing, a service that provides expert specialized rapid response does not need to be connected to an institution of policing that fails in every other respect. Such a specific tactical service does not require the billions of dollars we waste in ineffective policing from year to year.
Defunding the police can free up funding that we can reinvest in services that provide real safety for both kinds of communities. The communities that are constantly exposed to police violence should not be deprived of effective safety and security services simply because more privileged communities feel safer when calling the police is an option.
We can rethink the way that we create safety in our communities by creating alternative services that truly create safety and security for everyone. Black Lives Matter - Toronto has been advocating for this since our inception, alongside our global counterparts and other Black justice organizations.
Right now, the only emergency option available for most people who are experiencing mental distress is to call 911. Both D’Andre Campbell and Regis Korchinski-Paquet died while the police were attending to calls about their mental distress.
Couldn’t we create a new emergency service that connects us with unarmed, mental health emergency service workers specifically trained to provide the health and social care required in crisis situations? It’s happening already, with front-line programs active and working in conjunction with police in parts of the U.K. and in states such as Oregon, where the CAHOOTS program has been active since 1989. STEVE RUSSELL VIA GETTY IMAGES
Activists and protesters rally in front of Toronto police headquarters on May 30, 2020 after the death of 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet. We can also decriminalize activities that are currently against the law, and reinvest the money we save on unnecessary policing and put it into programs supporting the security of communities who need it. The decriminalization of cannabis and our response to the opioid crisis show how a public-health approach to drug use is more effective than policing to support people who need help.
As another example, some public transportation systems use police to ensure that each passenger pays their fare. If we defund the police, we could reinvest our savings to help make public transit free. Fare evasion could no longer be a crime, and the policing of passengers would be unnecessary.
The minor services police provide — adherence to bylaw infractions, traffic services, attending to noise complaints — can be enforced by civilian services. In Ontario in 2015, Marc Ekamba-Boekwa was shot at 19 times and killed by Peel police after a noise complaint was made in his Mississauga, Ont. public-housing complex. Do we really need police attending to noise complaints with lethal force? The very purpose of the police has always been antithetical to the safety of Black and Indigenous people.
In several large cities across Canada, policing accounts for some of the largest municipal budget expenditures. Let’s defund the police and create budgets that truly reflect our priorities. Perhaps then we could fund guaranteed access to housing, increased adult support for children in schools, and other services that create true safety and security.
Each year, police budgets generally increase. But rather than increased safety, all we see is increased militarization and criminalization. Police have been caught infringing on our privacy rights by implementing surveillance techniquesthat can access our smartphones. They have used the funding they receive to purchase stealth emergency vehicles, and to purchase increasingly militarized devices to harm civilians, including assault-style weaponry and sound cannonsin the case of the Toronto Police Service.
Why do we need these services? The police have utterly failed to deliver on their evergreen promise to create safety by being “tough on crime.”
But they have continued their original purpose of harming us. The institution of modern policing was created in France as a mechanism to protect the property of wealthy men — including enslaved people. The police acted as slave catchers to kidnap Black people who had liberated themselves from slaveowners.
In Canada, this mandate was expanded when the RCMP was created in 1873 to “free up land” of Indigenous people to make way for white settlement.
The very purpose of the police has always been antithetical to the safety of Black and Indigenous people. Why continue to try to reform this irredeemable institution?
Let’s not be constrained by an inability to imagine a system beyond the one that currently exists. We can do far better than the institution of policing to create safety for all of us. It’s high time we did so.
Sandy HudsonCo-founder, Black Lives Matter - Toronto. Political strategist, communications powerhouse, writer
