You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2005.
The new site is up and running, thanks to the hard work and creativity of Ilona Babiyets and Anne Price, and to the help of John at The Green Webhost. This here is the news weblog portion of our site, where we’ll be posting articles and announcements of interest to readers of Briarpatch. As always, we welcome your feedback on what you see.
In(dy) solidarity,
Dave
table of (dis)contents
Sympathy for the Soldier
War resisters Brandi and Joshua Key speak
with Tyler McCreary
The Vancouver Bus Riders Union
by Kirat Kaur
Social Movement Unionism gets on the bus
“Oh, we hate to see them play…”
Stacy Chappel navigates the toy arms race
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| Yuli Chan, a member of the OTB crew, organizing on the bus |
It’s a typically dreary and rainy fall day in Vancouver. You’ve just shuttled your kids to daycare, made a trip to the grocery store, and are counting your blessings for having found a seat on the bus for the ride back home. As you sit there swaying to the rhythm of the rickety old bus, your mind is racing to think of creative ways to finish all the housework and cook dinner before heading off to work the night shift at the hospital tonight. Suddenly, your thoughts are interrupted by a flurry of activity on the bus. You look, and there are three people in bright orange t-shirts saying “Hello everyone. We’re from the Bus Riders Union and we’re here to talk to you about poor transit and fighting for transit for all.” “Hell yeah,” you think. “Sign me up for that.”
Tags: transportation
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| Image courtesy of the war resisters support campaign |
War Resisters Brandi and Josh Keys speak with Tyler McCreary about life and death in the US army, the war in Iraq, and the War Resisters Support Campaign
Can history repeat itself? In 1969, when Canada opened its border to deserters and draft dodgers from the US war on Vietnam, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared that “those who make the conscientious judgment that they must not participate in this war… have my complete sympathy, and indeed our political approach has been to give them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism.”
It’s difficult to imagine the accommodationist Paul Martin making such a declaration today, but substantial pressure is building for precisely that. More and more US soldiers are going AWOL, and many have fled north seeking refuge from the same militarism that sent their parents’ generation off to Vietnam. And with the looming spectre of another military draft, a brave few resisters and deserters are seeking a provision for themselves and those who follow to live in peace.
Tyler McCreary: What does it mean to be a war resister?
Brandi Key: We are resisting participation in the Iraq war. My husband went and served for eight months, and based on what he saw, he decided he could no longer participate in the war.
Josh Key: Actually, I guess you’d consider me an American deserter, because I deserted. I went to war, and then I left.
Tyler: So why did you originally join the US military?
Josh: I was working as a welder in 2002. We had two kids at the time; I was making about $7.25 an hour, and it wasn’t paying the bills. So I did what the billboards and commercials say: go join something bigger than yourself and make a good life.
Tyler: So did you join with the intent of going to Iraq?
Josh: No. They told me that because I was the head of a family, I’d be assigned to a regiment that would never be sent overseas.
Tags: activism, anti-war, Iraq, refugees, war resisters
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The recent uproar over the possible inclusion of Sharia law in Ontario arbitration has raised a number of important questions concerning religious freedom and the place of religious law in a secular society. While superficially, the issue might be seen as a straightforward conflict between religious and secular practices, the fact that the religion in question just happens to be Islam has brought to the surface, in an atmosphere of increasing Islamaphobia around the world, racist and damaging stereotypes of Islam and of Canadian Muslims. We could see many of these stereotypes in evidence during this debate, but to me, the most uncomfortable was the emergence of a particular feminist response that relied largely on the serious misunderstanding and constant “othering” of Canadian-Muslim women.
Tags: anti-racism, feminism, Islam
“Everywhere I turn - past, present, and future - I am inside imperialism, and not just positioned somewhere in it, but slipped like a little plastic dustcover over the barrel of its gun. Former instrument of it, enemy of it, parent of one of its fresh tools - unable to rejoice at either its advances or setbacks in this new Vietnam.”
- Stan Goff
On a greyhound bus from Texas to Saskatchewan in April 2004, I met an ex-soldier named Mike. Mike had just retired from the military after 16 years of service, much of it overseas. His wife, who was recovering from breast cancer, had recently convinced him to retire from the military. He was going out of his head trying to figure out what to do with his newfound freedom. “What do you do with your spare time?” was a question he asked everyone he met, as if he were compiling a list he could refer to later.
Mike could inflict seven lethal wounds (he told me) with a set of keys in under three seconds, and was struggling with the fact that there was no place for his skills in civilian life. He wanted nothing more than to feel useful, productive. He was staunchly right-wing, and deeply indoctrinated, but smart, too - smart enough that the deteriorating situation in Iraq was forcing him to finally confront some uncomfortable questions about US motives, and the way the military was being used by the Bush administration. Mike still had close friends fighting in Iraq, and the downward spiral of the occupation was hitting him pretty hard.
Tags: Add new tag, anti-imperialism, anti-war, review
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| jon schledewitz/global aware |
Earlier this year, Indigenous rights activist and scholar Ward Churchill spoke in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Churchill titled his talk A Little Matter of Genocide: Linking US Aggression Abroad to the Domestic Oppression of Indigenous Peoples. At the time, Churchill was at the centre of an enormous controversy back in the US - and enduring vicious daily attacks from right-wing pundits - over his long-published essay “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” written in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
In that essay, Churchill said of the attackers that “the most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people.” (He made that point in the context of the horrible crimes perpetrated by the US against the Iraqi people during the Gulf War and the sanctions that followed.) Churchill argued provocatively that many of those who died in the attacks constituted “a technocratic corps at the heart of America’s global financial empire,” and therefore could not be considered “innocent” victims. The specific and much-misunderstood phrase that the right wing seized on in their attacks was Churchill’s reference to those at the top of the towers as “little Eichmanns.”
After concluding his formal remarks in North Battleford, Churchill opened up the discussion to those in attendance, prompting the following exchange with members of the audience.
What does it mean to be transgendered? If you are born in a body that fits your internal idea of who you are and what your gender is, you have probably never thought about it. But more people than you might imagine face this issue. Someone you know and care about may be struggling with it today. Alternating between the journalistic and the personal, drawing on the experiences of a female to male transgendered person, we hope this article will facilitate greater understanding of the struggles that transgendered people face.
Tags: gender, sexuality, transgender
