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The Department of Social Studies of Medicine presents

DR. MARTIN A. ENTIN LECTURE IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Anne Harrington Harvard University, Department of the History of Science

FREE PIZZA, POPCORN AND DRINKS

Notes on a Scandal Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 2:30 p.m.

a film exploring life meaning and truth

Join us for some thoughtful film watching in the Chaplaincy Services lounge, located on the 4th floor of the Brown Building (3600 McTavish, suite 4400). for more information: jeffrey.barlow@mcgill.ca / 514.398.4101 Ecumenical Chaplain on Facebook “Chaplaincy Services” on the McGill website

The McGill Ecumenical Chaplaincy is supported by the Anglican and United Churches of Canada and serves the spiritual needs of all students.

To place an ad, via email: ads@dailypublications.org phone: 514-398-6790 fax: 514-398-8318 Cost: McGill Students & Staff: $6,70/day; $6.20/ day for 3 or more days. General public: $8.10/ day; $6.95/day for 3 or more days.

“The Neurological Case History and its Discontents: A History” Mon., March 01, 2010 at 6:00 PM – Meakins Amphiteatre

Housing 4 1/2 - MTL North, renovated, large rooms, very quiet and clean, close to buses, metro and all services, 15 mins. away from downtown (Pie-IX metro station), available immediately. $545. Call (450) 661-6110

Employment MASTER SCHOOL OF BARTENDING Bartending and table service courses Student rebate Job reference service • 514-849-2828 www.Bartend.ca (online registration possible) Have you had a

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since childhood? McGill Vision Research is looking for study participants. Please call Dr. Simon Clavagnier at 514-934-1934 ext.

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Part-time, in Old Montreal, approx. 3 hrs+/ wk. VERY flexible schedule. Knowledge of networks and web design important. Also to train employees on Word, Excel, etc. Call 514-844-2661

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Miscellaneous Psychology professors and grad/ undergrad students. Can you help a psychology student, senior citizen, who was assaulted and robbed. All psychology texts were stolen. Donations of used/old undergrad and grad psychology books urgently needed. An old copy of DSM III will be deeply appreciated. Please call: 514-2772029. Thank you.

McIntyre Medical Sciences Building – 3655 Promenade Sir William Osler The public is cordially invited. For further information call the Department of Social Studies of Medicine: 514-398-6033 or visit www.mcgill.ca/ssom/seminars

PGSS Society Elec�ons 2010-2011

What you need to know:

Campaign Period: Starts March 1, 2010 at 9:00 am Ends March 16, 2010 at 11:59 pm

Hus�ngs (Debates):

Thursday March 4 Mac Campus, Faculty Lounge of Macdonald-Stewart - 10:00 am Wednesday March 10 Thomson House Restaurant - 4 pm Tuesday March 16 Thomson House Ballroom - 5:15 pm Plus AGM

Vo�ng Period: Starts Wednesday March 17 at 9:00 am Ends Friday March 26 at 4:00 pm Ques�ons? pgss.mcgill.ca/ELECTIONS or elec�ons.pgss@mail.mcgill.ca Vote online at ovs.pgss.mcgill.ca

Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, will take place on

Tuesday, March 16 in Leacock 232 at 6pm.

Members of the DPS are cordially invited. The presence of candidates to the Board of Directors is mandatory.

For more information, please contact the Chief Returning Officer, at: cro@dailypublications.org

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

3

Minister may increase tuition A handful of students respond at TaCEQ protest Eric Andrew-Gee The McGill Daily

F

ledgling student organization Table de concentration étudiante du Quebec (TaCEQ) has responded angrily to intimations from minister of education Michelle Courchesne last week that the province may raise tuition costs again.

The Roddick Gates were flanked by 10 or 12 protesters yesterday handing out flyers and carrying signs, warning passersby, “Tuition hikes are coming.” The demonstration was organized in part by SSMU VP (External) Sebastian RonderosMorgan, who has been instrumental in creating TaCEQ. Ronderos-Morgan expressed concern about the intentions of the education ministry, which has set 2012 as the final year in which provincial tuition costs would go up.

“They could fast-track something,” he said, adding later that he would be “shocked if anything was done before 2012.”

SSMU Arts representative Joël Pedneault said he feared the tuition increases could come “as early as March,” when the Charest government releases its annual budget.

Tamara Davis, the press attaché for Minister Courchesne, denied that substantive plans for a tuition hike were in the works. Referring to the current regime of tuition increases, which has yearly hikes pegged at $100, Davis said, “We

have an electoral agreement to increase [tuition fees] up until 2012…and we are maintaining our promise.”

TaCEQ was not the only organization to respond in opposition to the announcement. Similar demonstrations were held the same day at other Montreal schools, including Concordia and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

At a TaCEQ conference last Friday, however, the student group decried Courchesne, saying they were “scandalized” by some of her suggestions. This included one assertion that there was a “consensus” among all Quebeckers, except students, that tuition increases were important.

TaCEQ, which counts SSMU and the student associations of the universities of Laval and Sherbrooke as members, sees a significant role for itself in the debate over tuition.

It represents 65,000 students and “two out of the three biggest schools in Quebec,” McGill and Laval, according to RonderosMorgan. He indicated that simply by its sheer size, TaCEQ was bound to have some influence.

At its general assembly last December in Quebec City, TaCEQ laid out many of its policies, including those regarding tuition.

Ronderos-Morgan says the organization is opposed to any further increase in fees.

Ronderos-Morgan thought

Stephen Davis | The McGill Daily

A small group of dedicated students handed out flyers on tuition increases yesterday.

TaCEQ will be able to wield significant influence in the student movement though it is a young organization. He pointed to a conference last August, when TaCEQ was only four months old, concerning Quebec’s governance laws – the regulations that dictate how CEGEPs and universities are run. “TaCEQ wrote a briefing on the governance laws,” said Ronderos-Morgan. “[The minister of education] appreciated our

contribution,” he added.

SSMU’s VP (External) also indicated that protests were an effective way for student groups to exercise clout. Addressing the relatively small size of yesterday’s demonstration at the Roddick Gates, and the scarcity of information available to students beforehand, RonderosMorgan maintained that it had been a success. “I wasn’t looking to have a big turnout,” he said. “We got rid

of 300 flyers. We did what we wanted to do.”

Ronderos-Morgan did concede that students could have been given more notice, but said that a SSMU listserv email had been sent out before the event was planned. A QPIRG email circulated to its members concerning the protests was sent out Tuesday evening, less than 24 hours before the demonstration was held.

City stonewalls inquiries into racial profiling Quebec Human Rights Commission tribunals blocked by SPVM Stephanie Law The McGill Daily

T

he City of Montreal and the Montreal police force (SPVM) continue to block a provincial inquiry into racial profiling conducted by the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Commission.

Of over 100 cases brought before the Human Rights Tribunal since it began in 2005, none have been resolved.

François Larsen, the commision’s director for research, education and communications, said the investigations have been mired in bureaucratic and jurisdictional disputes. Lawyers representing the police have challenged the Human Rights Commission by defending the right of police to refuse to testify, and by accusing the commission of bias.

“Right now, there are 10 cases before the tribunal, and no definitive rulings. The legalese must stop if we are going to get to the important issue, racial profiling,” said Larsen.

Lawyers have resisted subpoe-

nas, invoking the Police Act and arguing that interrogations cannot take place if the case is also before the police ethics commission. But the Human Rights Commission maintains that the Police Act should not interfere with outside inquiries.

Dan Philip, president of the Black Coalition of Quebec, has been actively working with the commission’s project and spoke frankly on the City’s position as “systematic.”

“In every case brought before the tribunal, the City is always in cahoots with the police brotherhood and department and protected them against the inquiry. They have not done anything to recognize and minimize the question of racial profiling,” he said.

On January 25, Vision Montreal submitted a motion demanding that the City of Montreal ask the SPVM to collaborate with the Human Rights Commission at all levels, particularly at the tribunal level. The motion failed.

Brenda Paris, senior advisor to the cabinet of the head of the official opposition, noted that Vision Montreal will continue to pressure

the City to let the Commission do its work.

“The commission has a mandate to evaluate cases relating to racial profiling, and this must proceed without hindrance. This is not a 2010 issue. It’s been going on for five years,” she said. The opposition will present a new motion this Monday, [February 22], in concert with Projet Montreal.

Racial profiling by police in Montreal has attracted attention beyond the provincial level. Last October, a delegation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights investigated in Montreal in response to the police shooting death of Fredy Villanueva in 2008.

Villanueva, then 18 years old, was fatally shot in a Montreal Nord Park during a confrontation when police were arresting his older brother, Dany Villanueva.

Although Dany Villanueva was to testify in the coroner’s ongoing inquest into his brother’s death, Villanueva is being threatened with deportation following a request initiated by Canada’s Border Services Agency.

The request is based on an

incident in 2005, in which Dany pled guilty to gun possession and robbery, subsequently serving an 11-month jail term for his crimes.

The question of his deportation will be adjudicated at a March 11 hearing before the Immigration and Refugee board.

In addition to the Fredy Villanueva case, Philip cited Mohammed Bennis, who was shot by police in 2005 in front of a mosque, and Quillem Registre, who died after police tasered him six times in less than a minute. Both of the cases were investigated by nonSPVM police forces and resulted in no charges.

Philip expressed cynicism in regards to the results. “There cannot be proper investigations when police are investigating police,” he said.

Larsen stated that court rulings will not change systematic prejudice, and that the commission recommendations go beyond policy or police training, emphasizing the importance of dialogue.

“People in authority are knowingly or not knowingly using prejudices to assume somebody is

guilty. It is not a matter of policy, and it not always conscious. The first step in overcoming prejudice is to acknowledge it, and this step is always the most difficult. In a way, we are stuck at this first step.

People do not want to be perceived as racist,” he said.

The Human Rights Commission is also spearheading a non-judicial inquiry which collected testimonials from youths aged 14-25 for a report that will be published in March. Larsen hopes that it will be used by communities in advocacybuilding to combat “the spiral of profiling.”

He added that profiling has influenced youth’s perception of the justice system and societal institutions as a whole, mentioning the correlation between profiling and drop-out rates.

In an email to The Daily, City spokesperson Gonzalo Nunez affirmed that “the police department is training its members in order to adjust to the changing reality of the population of Montreal, which is increasingly more diversified,” but declined comment on the investigations.

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

criticizing southern U.S. states for failing to uphold a Supreme Court decision to integrate schools. Author Henry Golden discusses the harm segregation has caused to both black and white Southerners, and argues that segregation has degraded Southern culture.

February 1961 After a McGill fraternity is accused of discrimation against a Jamaican student, The Daily publishes a feature titled “Segregation at McGill - Yes or No?” that “is not presented with the intention of taking sides, which our readers will do for themselves.” A few weeks later, an opinion piece in the paper claims that fraternities have the right to refuse a student membership on the basis of race, religion, and nationality. The author equates such a right to the NAACP’s right to bar a white supremacist from joining the organization.

—compiled by Emilio Comay del Junco and Stephen Davis

October 1962 Daily writer Jerald M. Cohen visits the southern U.S., and unpacks the mindset and hypocrisy of segregation. He writes: “The older man spoke highly of the abilities of Negro students to enter the best universities. He seemed a reasonable, moderate man.

But one of the last things he said to us was: ‘If the federal government tried to integrate the schools in this town, I’d be the first to go out and burn down a church.’”

October 1962 Daily news coverage of demonstrations against the desegregation of the University of Mississippi is accompanied by a text encouraging support for American civil rights: “It is essential that students across the continent clearly express their stand. It is a responsibility which attaches to us as students.”

October 1965 Coverage of a talk on Rhodesia questions the possibility of human rights while the right to vote is limited to whites, despite the election of a more moderate government. “Where, from the new Labour administration is the long awaited ‘firm stand’ against the continuation of racism and robbery in this oppressed land?”

NEWS BRIEFS

A half-century of black issues at McGill, in Montreal, and in Canada

October 1958 The Daily prints a feature from the magazine Justice

5

Vancouver demonstrators demand public housing Over 1,000 protesters marched in Vancouver Friday, demanding that indigenous land claims be respected, and that the government put an end to homelessness. Subsequent protests have resulted in vandalized cars and broken windows.

—CBC Ivorians protest suspension of elections Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo moved to dissolve the country’s government and suspend upcoming elections recently, sparking widespread protests and rioting. Opposition parties in Ivory Coast have called the development a step toward dictatorship.

— Al-Jazeera

February 1969 Concordia students claim a professor is failing black students without just cause. Police intervene and things turn violent when protesters occupy the university’s computer centre. Student records are destroyed and computers are thrown from the building’s windows.

September 1970 McGill students organized a Black Students’ Association for the University, in response to lack of accessibility and administrative indifference. The organization’s chair, Sally Cools, summed up the feelings shared by many black students: “We’re being fucked around left, right, and centre at McGill.”

October 1969 The Daily reports on disruptions of an African Studies program conference by 10 students calling themselves the Black Caucus, claiming that the conference should discuss racism in Montreal. After various letters in The Daily, two writers publish a page-long response entitled “Disruption as a means of self-determination for black people.”

December 1971 A noted supporter of trade with South Africa is slated to appear on the TV program Under Attack. One hundred students disrupt the taping and stop the program from going forward. William Kunstler, a U.S. lawyer who has defended Angela Davis, comes out in favour of the students. “Everyone has the right to speak, but others have the right to prevent him if they find his views intolerable,” he says.

January 1972 Len Bently, president of the Sir George Williams

draw their accounts from the Bank of Montreal (BMO) because of its involvement with the South African apartheid government, while McGill and SSMU continue to deal bank with BMO. McGill does not divest from South African investments until 1985.

September 1986 Ten months after voting to divest, McGill is discovered to have acquired stocks in companies tied to the South African regime. The Daily reports that the University’s South African investments have only decreased by 20 per cent.

February 1987 The Daily polls black students’ attitudes towards apartheid, revealing that while 84 per cent believe “divestment should be a dominant issue in the West,” only 22.5 per cent describe their participation in anti-apartheid activities as “significant.” The poll comes a week following prime minister Brian Mulroney’s visit to white-ruled South Africa.

February 2000 To solicit Valentine’s classifieds, the McGill Tribune runs a cartoon of white male birds trying to impress nearby females, who are distracted by an attractive black crow. The white males remark, “[Females are] easily impressed by spades,” a derogatory term for black people. The BSN’s political coordinator says “Clearly there is nobody with any racial sensitivity working at the Tribune.”

November 2000 SSMU rejects the Black Student Network’s (BSN) proposed constitution, calling it “inflammatory” and “exclusionary.”

The preamble to the constitution refers to James McGill as a slaveowner and describes the socioeconomic disadvantages facing blacks today. The BSN calls for SSMU to receive racial sensitivity training, though the Society maintains that the rejection was based on policy, and not politics.

Human rights disappearing in Honduras Reports of widespread human rights abuses continue to emerge from Honduras, following last summer’s coup there. Anticoup activists have been shot, abducted, and beaten, while overthrown former president Manuel Zelaya remains in exile.

— Democracy Now!

January 1984 SSMU president Bruce Hicks emerges as a leader for divestment, delivering a 95-point motion to the Board of Governors on South African human rights violations. He is later criticized for not consulting the South Africa Committee, a student group pushing for divestment. Hicks forms his own organization, the South Africa Advisory Group, but admits that some members do not know who Nelson Mandela is.

January 1987 In a comment piece, social worker Alix Jean tells the Daily about racial profiling by Montreal police officers. “You meet any black person you see on the street and three out of five would be able to tell you of at least one incident where they had been harassed by the police.”

November 1999 Stickers appear on campus claiming that blacks and bisexuals are more likely than other groups to be infected with AIDS. The stickers are produced by a white supremacy organization and refer to white people as an “endangered species.” The BSN calls for a comprehensive, campus-wide response, but McGill’s director of security claims, “The fact is we can’t really do anything.”

Illustrations by Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

November 1978 Dawson College’s board of governors votes to with-

University Students’ Association, accuses the administration of racism after the board of governors dissolves the union. “Today, the principal views a black student as a potential threat to the welfare and good name of this university,” he says.

Twelve civilians dead in Afghanistan NATO forces admitted that they erroneously bombed a civilian target Sunday, killing 12 people.

The bombing took place as part of NATO’s ramped-up efforts to dislodge Taliban forces from the city of Marjah in Helmand province.

— The Globe and Mail

UK politician experienced close encounter Britain’s ministry of defence released a report Wednesday stating that the Royal Air Force investigated claims from six members of the public that UFOs visited former Tory opposition leader Michael Howard’s home in 1997. Witnesses saw the craft hover in the sky for several minutes before shooting off in a flash of light, according to the report.

— The Guardian Texas prisoners launch hunger strike Inmates at Los Fresnos, an immigrant detention centre in Texas, have commenced a hunger strike to protest the prison’s “inhumane conditions.” Earlier reports have stated that the prisoners have demanded medical attention for months, and do not believe that due process is being followed in their cases.

— Democracy Now!

6 News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

Haven Books a financial failure WHAT’S THE HAPS

Films that transform: In dialogue with others on the journey Tuesday, February 23, 7:00 p.m. 9:00 p.m.

Moyse Hall, Arts Building Join the McGill medical faculty in a viewing of Baraqa, a film without words that explores the meaning of healing and wellness around the world. The screening will be followed by a panel with Tom Hutchinson, director, programs in whole person care, McGill University; Balfour Mount, emeritus professor of palliative medicine; and Charles Taylor, professor emeritus, philosophy department, McGill University. Tickets are $10 each ($5 for students & seniors). Contact angelica.todireanu@ mcgill.ca for reservations.

Impressions from the Field: Sudan and Gaza Monday, March 1, 3:45 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Peel 3465, ICAMES seminar room (3rd floor) Marie-Joelle Zahar (Université de Montréal) and Rex Brynen (McGill University) will share their recent fieldwork in the Sudan and Gaza, respectively. Space is limited: students, staff, and faculty members only.

Youth Engagement in the 21st century: A talk by Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada Thursday, February 18, 12 p.m.

McGill students are invited to attend an address by the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada. Jean will discuss youth engagement in an era of globalization. A panel discussion will follow, and audience members will have an opportunity to raise questions.

Students will be asked to show McGill ID prior to entering. Please RSVP to: rsvp@jeannesauve.org.

Space is limited.

GA Follow-Up and Planning Discussion Thursday, February 18, 4:30 p.m.

- 5:30 p.m.

Shatner Building, Rm. B-30 Want to see changes to the way General Assemblies are run? Join students in discussing what SSMU should change about the GA, what type of motions should be discussed at the GA, and how SSMU can ensure this happens. Constructive comments and suggestions welcome.

Advertising restrictions lead to rising deficits, store due for closure Stephen Davis The McGill Daily

S

SMU announced that it will close Haven Books this spring, due to the $196, 000 deficit the bookstore racked up in its first two years under the society’s ownership.

Since SSMU acquired the bookstore in 2007, it has suffered from low visibility, restrictions on campus advertising, and general indifference from students.

SSMU VP (Finance and Operations) Jose Diaz and Haven manager Ben Paris have scrambled to bring the struggling store out of the red since last summer.

The two have had little success.

While the final numbers are not in yet, Haven is on track to run a deficit once again this year, adding to the $196,000 figure.

McGill’s memorandum of agreement with SSMU prevents Haven from advertising on university property. Paris believes this ban prevented the store from being successful.

“If I can’t advertise to my general student population, then it’s sort of like Tim Horton’s not being able to advertise in Canada,” Paris said.

Diaz agreed, pointing to the successful Haven franchise in Ottawa, which advertises on the Carleton campus.“They are sanctioned by the university and it’s well-known among the student population…. It’s not a big place, but they go through a lot of books basically because they have the visibility that we do not have,” Diaz said.

But Paris is not convinced any amount of advertising would have helped the store to tran-

NEWS BULLETIN

PGSS surveys student parents

McGill’s Post-Graduate Student sSociety (PGSS) is currently surveying graduate and postgraduate students to assess their feelings about possible financial support for students on maternity or paternity leave.

“We really want to encourage people to take the survey. So far in 10 days we have 800 responses, but I think it would be great if we have 3,000 or 4,000 responses, to have a diverse idea of what our graduate students think,” said Dahlia ElShafie, PGSS VP (University and Academic Affairs).

The information gathered will be used to generate a proposal to the McGill administration in April or May. The project will have two phases. Phase One will involve scholarships for those on maternity or paternity leave, provided in equal part by PGSS and McGill.

ElShafie has heard positive things from the dean of graduate

Miranda Whist | The McGill Daily

Ottawa’s Haven franchise was successful, unlike McGill’s. scend its less-than-ideal location on Aylmer, just south of Sherbrooke.

“People know about the McGill Bookstore. People see it all the time; it’s the one that the tours show,” Paris said. “This location sucks. The only way you know about it is if you are told about it.”

Diaz searched for solutions to Haven’s financial woes, including advertising during Frosh and researching ways for the store to make money after the peak buying periods of September and January. In the end, Diaz explained, the efforts did little to improve the store’s financial status.

But Paris believes SSMU made

the decision to close the store in order to placate the administration during negotiations concerning the Society’s lease of the Shatner building.

“SSMU is negotiating for the building [and] McGill has never liked the existence of Haven….

Rather than continue an operation that is potentially detrimental to operations with McGill… they decided just to close it,” Paris said.

Diaz acknowledged that before taking office, he read a number of memos from the administration to his successors, which explained that classroom announcements and advertising were prohibited.

But while Diaz said the admin-

istration has always been stringent in its enforcement of the memorandum of agreement, Haven has not been a major subject of their concern this year.

“Our discussions with the University have centred around different things this year….

Haven hasn’t gotten much attention” Diaz said.

Diaz plans to implement a book swap this coming fall as a way to provide students with affordable used textbooks. He hopes that if a student is unable to swap their books, they will allow SSMU to donate them to charity. He believes the University will appreciate a focus on something other than profit.

and post-doctoral studies and the McGill administration regarding the idea, but McGill is waiting for the written proposal before making any commitments.

Phase Two of the plan involves the PGSS University Affairs Committee, which will work with other universities and the Federation des etudiants universitaires de Québec (FEUQ) to lobby the Quebec government for uniform maternity and paternity leave at the provincial level.

Apart from relieving the financial burden of having children during one’s studies, ElShafie also hoped the support of the student community and McGill for this initiative could help change the culture around maternity and paternity leave. “[According to the survey], 30 per cent of students would hesitate to tell their supervisors they want to go on maternity, or that they are pregnant, and 15 per cent would be afraid to tell their supervisors,” said ElShafie.

“This is childbearing age for grad students. This is a time that some of them may be thinking of

[taking advantage of this program], so we should be more understanding and more accepting of this, and I hope that the initiative will help us achieve this goal,” she added.

— Sam Neylon

just like the rest of the population, and that it is sometimes difficult for them to provide effective care.

Peppiatt pointed out that this crisis has brought about a huge logistical challenge for government ministers; “the government buildings are completely decimated and ministers are meeting in tents and in the police station.”

As there has not been an earthquake in Haiti in nearly 200 years, Sauvé noted that the current situation will require the Red Cross to extend the emergency response phase and to keep their team on the ground longer than the usual three to four months.

Gédéon emphasized that people must realize that the Red Cross will not be able to respond to everyone’s needs. Their primary target is to provide shelter for the most desperate, those who previously had inadequate or no shelter.

More specifically, Peppiatt, who was recently on site, said, “There are problems of shelter in the area as there are 1.2 million without shelter…. We are providing transitional shelters as long-term settlements.”

—Meriem Boudjarane

Red Cross hosts Haiti conference The Haiti Response Summit was held in Montreal last week, bringing together 27 national societies of the Red Cross Red Crescent to discuss the international humanitarian effort. The speakers were Michaële Amédée Gédéon, president of Haitian Red Cross, Conrad Sauvé, secretary general and CEO of the Canadian Red Cross, and David Peppiatt, international director of the British Red Cross.

At a press conference Wednesday, a journalist in the audience demanded to know when the coordination problems between Haitian authorities would be resolved.

Gédéon admitted that there has been a lack of coordination, as well as disputes between the NGOs, the Haitian government, and the United Nations organizations. But she reminded the journalist that these organizations have been affected by the crisis

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

7

Gaza photo exhibit almost shut down Event continues at Cinéma du Parc after 2,500 letters sent in protest Stephanie Law The McGill Daily

T

he company that owns the Galleries du Parc threatened to shut down a photo exhibit held at Cinéma du Parc this week called “Human Drama in Gaza,” before retracting its request.

On Monday, Cinéma du Parc received an email from its landlord, Gestion Redbourne PDP Inc., instructing the theatre to immediately remove all photos, documents, and bulletins related to the exhibit.

Lieba Shell, the legal representative for Redbourne, claimed in the email that the exhibition was in violation of the terms in their lease and threatened to take legal action against Cinéma du Parc if it did not comply with the request. She added

that Redbourne would send security to the cinema in the evening to ensure the orders were obeyed.

Shell sent out another email Wednesday morning retracting their requests, stating that the exhibit is allowed to continue until February 28, as scheduled.

According to Jean-François Lamarche, program coordinator at Cinéma du Parc, between Tuesday morning and Wednesday afternoon, over 2,500 letters were sent out from community members asking Redbourne to let the exhibition continue.

“Human Drama in Gaza” is an exhibition featuring 44 photos that document the events in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, the threeweek assault launched by the Israeli military last winter. The assault resulted in approximately 1,400 Palestinian deaths, most of which

were civilians.

The exhibition is organized by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and will be travelling to various cities across Canada.

According to Lamarche, this was the first instance in which the mall’s owner has tried to interfere with Cinéma du Parc’s exhibitions and programs.

“In the past, we’ve had other expositions of this kind. The Gaza Strip has not been the subject of these other expositions, but human rights was. So we’ve had other pictures of war like this one and we think that everybody has the right to express their point of view,” said Lamarche.

Grace Batchoun, VP (public relations) at CJPME, felt that Redbourne’s legal threat was inappropriate and offensive.

“This exhibition is costing us over $25,000…. People love it and we have had excellent feedback.

[Redbourne’s action] is illegal.

The move on their part is clearly political. The owner at Cinéma du Parc has held over 40 exhibitions in the past few years and has had no complaints or issues,” said Batchoun.

Batchoun stated that Redbourne wanted to shut down the exhibit to stifle discussion of IsraeliPalestinian politics.

“They’re just trying to intimidate Cinéma du Parc and CJPME,” said Batchoun. “They don’t want the truth of Gaza to be exposed, and they don’t want any discussion of Gaza. There are about 1.5 million people suffering in [the Gaza Strip], and it’s an important issue.”

CPJME’s lawyer, Mark Arnold, agreed.

“Everything is political in this society. There was a war in Gaza, but in this country – Quebec included – we certainly have the right to freedom and free speech,” said Arnold.

CPJME and Cinéma du Parc are content that Redbourne has retracted its request but remain wary of Redbourne’s threats.

“We’re very happy, but at the same time….the intimidation hurts. We wasted so much time and effort,” said Batchoun. “We’re a sizeable well-structured NGO, and we were able to reach out to the lawyer, we were able to react…. but what about smaller NGOs? This injustice should not go unnoticed – many other people are living through it, but they don’t often get to be heard.”

Shell declined The Daily’s request to comment on the incident.

West Bank village to appeal against MTL developer Residents argue that the development promotes Israeli policies Stephanie Law The McGill Daily

T

he Quebec Court of Appeal announced Wednesday that on June 3 they will hear the appeal submitted by the West Bank village of Bil’in against a Superior court decision from last September.

The Bil’in Village Council brought the lawsuit in 2008 against two Quebec-registered companies based in Montreal: Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc. The plaintiffs claimed that the companies and their sole director, Annette Laroche, are involved in constructing settle-

ments for Israelis on occupied land within the territory of Bil’in.

“Bil’in brought the lawsuit against [the Montreal-based companies]…under international humanitarian law. Specifically, under the fourth Geneva convention, which says that an occupying power cannot replace the indigenous population with its own population,” said Mark Arnold, the Canadian lawyer representing Bil’in. “The lawsuit alleges that Green Park is, by doing this, in a way aiding, abetting, and assisting the state of Israel in carrying out its settlement policies.”

Superior Court judge Louis-Paul Cullen dismissed the case on the grounds that the Quebec court is

not the correct forum to have the case heard, and ruled that the case should go to the Israeli High Court of Justice. The plaintiffs filed an appeal after the decision was made in September.

“The Quebec Superior Court has jurisdiction over Quebec companies and directors who are residing in Quebec,” said Arnold.

“The problem is that [Cullen] is fundamentally wrong. The Israeli High Court of Justice will not hear this case, so he has sent this case into oblivion.”

In Bil’in, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a school teacher and the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and the Settlements, was arrested

in his home by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank on December 10, 2009. Amnesty International criticized his arrest, claiming on its web site that Abu Rahmah is “being detained solely on account of legitimately exercising his right to freedom of expression in opposing the Israeli fence/wall.”

Abu Rahmah was in Montreal last summer for the court proceedings and spoke at Concordia University.

According to Stefan Christoff, local activist and Tadamon! member, those from Bil’in who came to Montreal for the proceedings last year were severely harassed upon returning to Bil’in.

“They only faced that after they spoke in Canada. Their case was

highly covered in the media,” said Christoff.

Since June 2009, over 30 nonviolent protesters from Bil’in have been arrested by the Israeli military.

Amnesty International declared in January that Abu Rahmah can be considered as a prisoner of conscience and called for his immediate and unconditional release.

Abu Rahmah displayed hope in a letter written behind bars at the Ofer Military Detention Camp in January. “The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down. What Israel’s leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment,” he wrote.

Call For Nominations!

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Get your CKUT Board Representatives, SSMU Executive and/or Student Senator Nomination Kits online at :

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student positions on its Board of Directors.

The position must be filled by McGill students belonging to any faculty other than the Faculty of Arts, duly registered during the upcoming Fall term, and able to sit until April 30, 2011. Board members gather at least once a month to discuss the management of the newspapers, and make important administrative decisions.

Candidates should send a 500-word letter of intention to chair@dailypublications.org by March 15th.

Contact us for more information.

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

Repoliticizing the Games Radically reread Lisa Miatello

T

en days before the start of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, the first Third World country to host the games was christened when the government brutally killed hundreds of protesters. Acting as the bulwark for an anti-state movement, 10,000 students took to the streets to demonstrate peacefully against the Mexican government, hoping to draw attention to the magnitude of social and political injustice that it sustained.

Among the chants rippling throughout the demo in Tlatelolco was the movingly succinct, “We don’t want Olympic games. We want revolution!” By sunset, 200 tanks, 5,000 soldiers and the Olympic Battalion (a special peacekeeping force) had begun their massacre of more than 300 unarmed protestors and the imprisonment of 1,000 others.

Nonetheless, Avery Brundage, then International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, called for the peaceful entrance of the Olympic flame and was assured a smooth start to the Games by the Mexican government.

Fourteen days after the massacre, upon winning gold and bronze in the men’s 200-metre race, two black Americans found themselves approaching the victory podium.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos made a statement on the situation of black people in America that would chill audiences around

the world. With all on eyes them, they courageously undermined Brundage’s wish for sport without politics. Each thrusting a clenched fist sheathed in a black glove into the air, the black power salute met head on with the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The black glove symbolized black America; the arc between the athletes’ arms, black American unity; their shoeless feet, black poverty; the beads around Carlos’ neck, prayers for lynched blacks; and Carlos’s unzipped jacket was a tribute to black and white blue-collar workers across the States. Within two days, Brundage had Smith and Carlos kicked out of the Olympic Village and suspended from the U.S. Olympic team.

With these events in mind, it is an act of gross appropriation that the IOC has the gall to tout itself as a “movement.” Apart from the complete depoliticization and neutralization of a term that has been used to label the work of people forwarding progressive ideas for centuries (and as shown, against the Olympics), it works to mask the violence, destruction, and corporatization that the Olympics ushers in.

The Olympic Games does not just represent itself as your run-ofthe-mill movement. It is one that reaches for the stars. By so graciously placing sport at the service of humanity, it aims to promote a better and more peaceful world.

Hell, according to its Charter, it even allies with organizations working in the “field of peace!”

Make no mistake, though, there is no room for those silly political understandings of oppression on the Olympic stage. After all, peace and politics do not mix. If anything, politics detract from and bastardize the message of peace. Everyone knows struggling against inequality and injustice can only be done first by ignoring their existence, and second by smacking brands on the backs of athletes and throwing nations into competition.

Through the three values of excellence, friendship, and respect, the Olympic propaganda machine weaves together a story about global encounters and mutual understanding. Some of the fundamental principles of the Olympic movement include the preservation of human dignity and the nurturing of global solidarity. With an eye to the past and one to the present, I can’t help but scoff at the invocation of words like understanding, human dignity, and solidarity in association with a profit-mongering, corporaterun, colonial, imperial body like the Olympic Games.

Anti-2010 resistance and organization have crested in the past few days. Organizers point to the increased criminalization of the poor and “undesirables,” the demolition of low-income housing, the continued appropriation of and construction on unceded indigenous territory, the channeling of $1 billion toward the creation of a police state, international market expansion, and environmental destruction.

On many levels, the Tlatelolco

Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

Olympic resistance: going strong since 1968. massacre, the black power salute, and anti-2010 resistance are one and the same. They speak to the collusion of federal governments with the Olympic Games in oppressing people around the world. They expose the diversion of money and resources away from the mass of citizens and toward corporations and the elite. They reveal how governments subdue and repress dissent.

They puncture thinly veiled appeals

to peace with unapologetic and politicized stances. They work as movements demanding the valuing of life over profit. And finally, taken together, they stand as a true story about humanity and the potential for global solidarity.

Lisa Miatello radically rereads this space every other week. Send her a fist-pump: radicallyreread@ mcgilldaily.com.

LI’L HYDE PARKS

Inequity in student politics: males v. females, emotion v. reason Gender inequity in the SSMU executive As the SSMU executive prepares to see its successors elected in March, we’ve been reflecting on the people who run for these positions. Ideally, SSMU executive positions should be filled by a diverse group of students. Since the executive is elected by a popular vote, any student who garners enough support can occupy this leadership role.

However, over the past 10 years, trends of gender bias have emerged quite blatantly. Three positions requiring external representation to other officials and astute financial analysis have clearly been dubbed as positions better suited to men: eight out of the past 10 presidents have been men; eight of the past 10 vicepresidents (external) have been men; nine out of the past 10 vicepresidents (finance and operations) have been men. Meanwhile, the internal, administrative, student-heavy positions have been

set aside for women. Seven of the last eight vice-presidents (clubs and services) have been women.

Six out of the past seven vicepresidents (internal) have been women. It is disappointing to see these predictable trends emerge in student leadership positions, which should be prime examples of accessibility. While we don’t mean to claim that a black SSMU president would usher in the end of racism, we do understand how the composition of our political representative bodies reflects the unspoken biases still rampant in society.

We hope that during the nomination period (February 1 – March 1), students will take the time to reflect critically upon these statistics and how gender norms affect who we think would be a good president, which position candidates decide to run for, and our political behaviour at large.

—Sarah Olle, SSMU VP (Clubs and Services)

The motion re: critical thought has been voted down Riva Gold’s column in the most recent Daily (“Zionism is not racism,” Commentary, February 15) discussed the history of Zionism, its treatment at the UN, and selfdetermination – and in many ways, echoed other assertions that the preamble of the Winter 2010 General Assembly resolution, put forward by McGill’s chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. These comments, made by a few individuals in the campus press, suggested that the clauses condemning the occupation of the Palestinian territories translate to a blanket condemnation of Israel’s existence, a critique of Judaism, or the denial of Jewish self-determination.

But this analysis is wrong and misses the point SPHR was trying to make.

Critiquing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is a critique of the state apparatus,

the bureaucrats, and the militaryindustrial complex of Israel, not of the nation of people that compose it (Jewish, Arab, or otherwise).

Similarly, nowhere in the motion did SPHR say that Israel has no right to exist, or that the Jewish people have no right to self-determination.

Distinguishing between a state’s actions and its people in order to evaluate the state itself is the sort of thing political science students – among others – engage in all the time at McGill, and no one finds that problematic.

Kneejerk reactions saying that this motion was anti-Semitic or anti-Israel – or conversely, that all the motion’s critics were somehow all anti-Palestinian – polarized an already controversial discussion.

There’s a lot of emotion behind the founding of Israel and its role in the displacement of Palestinians, so I can empathize with both sides. But ultimately the General Assembly ended up with a losing score card for everyone. Emotional response: one. Critical thought: zero.

—Erin Hale

Just can’t get enough opinion?

Go to our web site for special, online-only content: Eric Andrew-Gee on Olympic celebrations during prorogation; Adam Winer on acrimony at the G.A.; and Urooj Nizami & Zayaan Schock on Palestine’s inflammatory nature. mcgilldaily.com/commentary

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

9

HYDE PARK

The Daily’s silence on Iran Ricky Kreitner

T

Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

In the U.K., the Pope is seeking to protect bigotry from anti-discrimination laws.

HYDE PARK

The Pope’s offensive An open letter to Benedict XVI, re: anti-discrimination laws Eric Wen

D

ear Pope Benedict XVI, Hi. This is Eric. I was reading the news and I saw that you recently wrote an open letter saying some controversial things, so I figured I’d write an open letter back. Recently in England, many Catholic adoption agencies closed because of new laws that prevented them from discriminating against same-sex couples. In response to this development, you said that “the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal [of equality] has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects, it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded.”

I just wanted to address a flaw that I saw in your logic. Basically, what you’re trying to say is that these new laws are denying your organization, the Catholic Church, the right to discriminate, and are therefore discriminatory.

The request I ask of you is to mind your own business. I know that you’re the Pope and all – arguably the most prestigious and respected title in the world – and that you may think it’s your prerogative to spread the word of God (and have no reason to listen to the advice of a 20-year-old university student), but when you decry laws that prevent

bigotry and claim discrimination against your own religious group, that’s hypocritical. Granted, it’s a little hypocritical of me to tell you to mind your own business when I am neither British, Catholic, homosexual, nor a prospective adopter, but as a humanitarian, I have a problem with what you are saying.

In addition, you went on to say, “Fidelity to the Gospel in no way restricts the freedom of others – on the contrary, it serves their freedom by offering them the truth,” suggesting that people who believe in real equality are wayward souls who haven’t seen the light. You demand that people follow your views. After all, this anti-discrimination law – which would be forced upon your religion – is a violation of “natural law.”

The problem isn’t religion or the Catholic Church. I’ve never been one to condemn religious groups – my atheist friends can attest to that.

However, the problem is that you’re using your platform as the Pope to attack legislation that denies you the right to discriminate. That is, you’re fighting for your right to be intolerant by upholding an antiquated belief that is inherently prejudiced. Though you say that “fidelity to the Gospel” doesn’t “restrict the freedom of others,” you do restrict the freedom of others. What I found a little funny was that when these adoption agencies closed because of the new law, it was as if they were saying, “The law won’t let us discriminate anymore. I guess we

should close up shop rather than adjust our policies.” The new law doesn’t stop you from practicing your religion and spreading your teachings; it only stops you from discriminating in secular society.

In the light of contemporary social issues, it seems that many people have trouble minding their own business. What does it matter to opponents of equal marriage in Maine and New Jersey if people of the same sex get married? The hypocrisy is especially obvious in the United States where right-wingers – ever-wary of the government infringing on individual rights – fervently petition the government to limit other people’s rights. Why are these people so vehemently opposed to something that ultimately has no impact on their lives?

I don’t mean to imply that only those who subscribe to a certain religious morality, or all religious people, oppose equal rights. I also don’t believe that people should ignore the plight of others. But there are humanitarian efforts, and then there are intolerant acts of bigotry. Complaining about the laws that deny you the right to discriminate is closer to the latter. It’s time you realized that.

Sincerely, Eric Eric Wen is a U2 English Literature student. Write him a closed letter at eric.wen@mail.mcgill.ca. Open ones go to letters@mcgilldaily. com.

he Daily’s Statement of Principles says: “We recognize that at present power is unevenly distributed, especially (but not solely) on the basis of gender, age, social class, race, sexuality, religion, disability, and cultural identity. We also recognize that keeping silent about this situation helps to perpetuate inequality.”

Queer, is it not, how The McGill Daily – supposed defender of the disenfranchised since 1911 – has so far neglected to mention the recent popular uprising in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Not a word.

Queerer still, wouldn’t you agree, how freely space is donated to anyone willing to ooze a few words regarding Gaza, anarchist soccer, or anything transgender-related?

I have no interest in recounting for the reader what’s happened these past eight months in the Iranian streets. In the admittedly unlikely event that your news diet consists solely of twice-weekly Daily consumption – in which case I would recommend either a doctor or the immediate stimulation of your gag reflex – you should do a little research.

If I may say so, I just raised a very interesting point. If I left it at that, a little joke about your news diet and how if you read The Daily you have no idea what’s going on in the world, I can imagine the letter published after reading week: “Nobody only reads The Daily.

Kreitner neglected to quote from section 2.1 of the Statement of Principles: ‘The fundamental goal of The McGill Daily shall be to serve as a critical and constructive forum for the exchange of ideas and information about McGill University and related communities.’ Why would a Canadian student newspaper write about some civilians being killed at the hands of a government halfway around the world?”

I mention this predictable objection here, rather than wait for the inevitable letter, only to save this hapless hypothetical correspondent the unnecessary effort and embarrassment. My response begs itself: last Monday’s cover article was titled “The crippling of Gaza’s health care.” The article inside, an interview with a doctor who was in Gaza during the conflict last January and recently spoke at McGill (“Emergency in Gaza,” News, February 7), doesn’t mention McGill or Canada, and Montreal only in passing to represent a place with better water quality than Gaza.

Its 1,500-plus words included this gem directed at Israel, with which the interviewer cleverly chose to conclude her article: “You have to come to the negotiation table, we have to find a solution, you can not kill all these civilians – period.” It’s that simple.

Point being, of course, that The Daily has no interest in limiting itself to “ideas and information about McGill University and related communities.” Anything that fits the agreed-upon narrative is more than welcome in its pages.

Take Afghanistan. Its August elections were patently fraudulent – an observation The Daily devoted a 600word editorial to confirming. That particular post-election mayhem fit the narrative. Characteristic Western diplomatic obfuscation? Check.

Military plans gone awry? Check.

Rather weak but sufficiently plausible insinuation that Afghanistan is no better with a flawed, struggling democracy than it was a decade ago under the dominion of a sadistic crime syndicate? Check!

But Iran? The Iranian elections, after which dozens of people died, after which thousands upon thousands took to the streets pleading for democracy, after which this writer couldn’t look at videos of those protests without being affected on a fundamental, emotional, human level?

Iran was Bush’s next target. Iran isn’t a bad place. That’s what the military-Zionist-industrial complex wants you to think! Anyone desiring the “exportation” of supposedly Western institutions to other nations – neo-cons, all! White Man’s Burden!

Imperialists, Islamophobes!

So when the Iranian people exhibited to their leaders and to the world their willingness to die in the name of democracy, of course The Daily wasn’t going to find an Iranian professor to interview, wasn’t going to write an editorial decrying the unfairness of elections halfway around the world. Young Muslims clamouring for democracy don’t fit the narrative. Iranians wanting regime change don’t fit the narrative. The West having something non-Westerners want doesn’t fit the narrative.

Again and again, The Daily proves itself far more interesting for those notes it doesn’t play than for those it actually does.

Hey Ricky you so fine you so fine you blow my mind hey Ricky. Write this former Daily columnist at rkreitner@mcgilltribune.com. Kreitner is a U2 Philosophy student and somehow a Tribune columnist.

letters@mcgilldaily.com

10Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

Rights & Democracy undermined by feds Ideology should not motivate funding allocations Alexandra Dodger & Safia Lakhani

R

ights and democracy aren’t supposed to be controversial things in Canada.

In theory, they have widespread support, which is why an agency called Rights & Democracy was supported by all Canadian political parties when it was founded in 1988 by the Conservative government under Brian Mulroney. From the start, the agency was political but nonpartisan, seeking to promote human rights and democratic institution-building through grants to NGOs around the world.

The agency has funded human rights groups in Burma, Congo, Haiti, Colombia, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories, to name just a few places.

But in recent weeks, Rights & Democracy has been in turmoil.

Since the Harper government appointed a slew of ideological supporters, this government’s alltoo-frequent habit of cutting funds from any group that challenges the current political orthodoxy has made Rights & Democracy its latest victim. Harper’s Conservatives received less than 38 per cent of the popular vote in the last election, yet they have essentially taken carte blanche to reshape spending to mirror their own divisive agenda, taking particular aim at any agency that dares to promote Palestinian human rights or critique Israel.

David Matas, legal counsel for Israel advocacy group B’nai Brith, was one of Harper’s appointees to the Rights & Democracy board, and it was he who pounced on three small donations made in 2009, out of a budget of $10 million. They went to reputable agencies working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to fund investigative work into human rights violations during the Gaza invasion. B’Tselem (an Israeli group), as well as Al-Haq and Al Mezan (Palestinian organizations), each received $10,000. These grants set off the storm surrounding Rights & Democracy. The new Harper-appointed board clashed with Rights & Democracy’s staff,

accusing them of funding terrorists and anti-Semites.

In reports sent to the Canadian Council of Refugee listserv, Matas repeatedly cited NGO Monitor, a blog that tracks NGOs, as the basis for his criticism of these organizations. The mandate of NGO Monitor is “to end the practice used by certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs’ of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas.” (Emphasis ours.) Few other sources were cited in Matas’s document – the apparent grounds on which funding to B’Tselem and the others was repudiated. This should be a point of concern to all those troubled about the way foreign aid is distributed under the cur-

president Rémy Beauregard died from an unexpected heart attack.

During his funeral, someone broke into Rights & Democracy’s office and stole the laptops of certain long-time staff, leaving the petty cash.

McGill has had an ongoing relationship with Rights & Democracy.

The organization has worked with professors and students in the law and education faculties.

The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism has sent dozens of students to Rights & Democracy for summer internships. These partnerships have fundamentally enhanced and illuminated the study of fields like international law, by grounding the theory that law students learn in the classroom with practical applications in the work of NGOs that receive fund-

When citizens have no legal recourse, it’s unsurprising they seek mortar shells and rocks rent government.

In personal correspondence with the authors of this piece, Matas further argued that B’Tselem and Al-Haq were dangerous because they engaged in “lawfare” – critiquing housing destructions, illegal settlements, and other human rights violations through the courts. That Matas would find this objectionable is also worrying, given that human rights advocacy is based on a system of seeking legal recourse. “Lawfare,” as conceived by Matas and co., is in no way akin to “warfare.” It is legal advocacy, plain and simple. We think human rights groups should use the courtroom, rather than violence, to advance their cause, and we are concerned about characterizing peaceful advocacy as something Canadian aid dollars should not fund.

Explosive meetings over these grants led other board members at Rights & Democracy to resign, including McGill law professor Payam Akhavan. After the raucous board meeting where Akhavan and others walked out, agency

ing. Anna Shea, a law student and former Rights & Democracy intern, described [her] work as “one of the highlights of her legal education.”

The current situation at Rights & Democracy is about much more than three grants. It is about the implications of cutting funding to human rights organizations in zones of conflict and political dissonance and, more broadly, about Canada’s role in such regions. Where there is no legal recourse for citizens, it is not surprising that mortar shells and rocks are the only alternatives sought. And as recent history has shown, these cycles of violence and terrorism should be a point of concern not only for those directly affected, but for the global community at large, as they often extend beyond their zones of containment.

Alexandra Dodger (Law III) & Safia Lakhani (Law II) are students in the Faculty of Law, focusing on international and human rights law. Write them at alexandra.dodger@mail. mcgill.ca.

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

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Letters

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

11

Re: “Zionism is not racism” | Commentary | February 15

By the way, anti-Zionism cannot be racism, because Zionism is not a race.

Majd Al Khaldi U2 Economics and Political Science

More binaries, por favor!

I got your non-violent response right here....

A moment of silence, please, so I can explain

Another letter from another planet about Cornett

Zionism is not racism, but Zionists can be racist

Could anyone elucidate the origins of the SSMU “male/nonmale” policy, whereas all General Assembly debate must alternate between male and non-male speakers? It’s equally laudable and ludicrous. Laudable, as it’s vital that we hear from those on both (rather, all) sides of the issues. Ludicrous, as only in a limited range of cases is gender the most pertinent variable.

The motion re: discriminatory (pro-life) groups? Sure. But what about the protracted debate over whether to specify the occupied Palestinian territories in the motion re: human rights? No connection with gender, but a solid connection, potentially, with ethnicity. So let’s go with “Arabs/ non-Arabs.” (And/or “Jews/goyim.”)

And consider the motion re: selffunded tuition model, discussion of which centred upon the inability of certain individuals to afford university. Again, sex ain’t got nothing to do with it. But income brackets certainly do. How about “rich/non-rich?”

Oh, and what about the argument over whether to reinstall $5 ATMs? (Yes, this was actually debated.) Try “assholes/non-assholes.” Granted, none of these categories are super politically correct. Some might even take offense. But all offense would be taken in the name of justice!

“Male/non-male” is a solid start, but next time, let’s give it up for the non-Arab assholes in high tax brackets. All or nothing, amigos.

Re: “Fight oppression with oppression!” | Letters | February 11

Re: “A moment of silence” | Commentary | January 27

Re: “Paging Doctor Cornett” | Commentary | October 8

Re: “Zionism is not racism” | Commentary | February 15

Maybe if you hadn’t been so blinded by your own pacifism, you would’ve been able to catch the deeper philosophical and political point that does, in fact, speak directly to my opinions on violence. And, since it seems you were unable to give me enough credit to seriously take up the challenges that my article represented, I guess I’ll spell it out for you: the violence of an oppressive system is not the same in kind as the violent response to that oppressive system.

While the violence of that system aims to deny me my humanity, my violent reaction to that system aims to assert my humanity.

How do you dare to simplify the world into such a naïve dichotomy as violence=inherently bad and non-violence=inherently good? It not only spits on the struggles for liberation that people engage in daily, but it degrades most of the historical and current insurgent movements of oppressed peoples around the world. Worst of all though, that binary is a convention that works to keep us complacent.

When it comes to resistance, violence is definitely not the only tool – in this context or in any others. It is a tool though. And a pretty damn effective one at that.

To me, it says, “I refuse to take that shit lying down.” If that’s not powerful, I don’t know what is.

So: you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

I was in the same class mentioned by Riva Gold in her article, and it’s apparent to me that she’s missed the very point the professor tried to address. So here we go again.

Calling into question the moment of silence wasn’t about applying obscure philosophical concepts to a “natural disaster.” Rather, it was to draw attention to the history that undermines the “naturalness” of this so-called “natural disaster.” Haiti underwent centuries of colonization, and most of the population today descends from Africans shipped to slave colonies in the 16th century. Twenty years after Haiti won independence, thousands of French troops were sent to the country. As a result, President Jean-Pierre Boyer signed a treaty to pay 150 million francs to France, to make up for profits lost from the slave trade. The restitution was paid off more than 100 years later, in 1947. From 1915 to 1934, the United States occupied Haiti.

The widespread poverty in Haiti is the legacy of centuries of continued colonization. Insufficient infrastructure resulting from this poverty contributed to the effects of the 2010 earthquake. Although the 1989 Bay Area earthquake was of the same magnitude, 63 people were killed, not 230,000. Gestures in the name of “natural disaster,” including the moment of silence, erase the violent histories behind the catastrophe.

Further, we see the tradition of colonization in response to the 2010 earthquake. More than 10,000 U.S. soldiers have been sent to Haiti. The UN “peacekeepers” function more like a military intervention. So the question isn’t a self-absorbed “how are we portraying ourselves in light of our colonial past?” but rather: “How do we direct our responses in a way that interrupts the ongoing, albeit less visible, colonization?”

Although my number-one law is: “never ruffle the feathers of the innocent in order to punish the corrupt,” I proceed out of a love for truth and a disgust for secrets.

Being a student in the Faculty of Religious Studies, I am privy to certain information that is withheld from the wider McGill community, and the withheld information is this: Norman Cornett landed on our planet in the spring of 1992. All sightings and encounters with a person claiming to be “Norman Cornett” before that point were of an avatar placed on Earth in order to give the real Norman Cornett a typically “human” life-story which he could use to gain access to the teaching facilities of McGill University.

Between that date and the date of his dismissal, he used his teaching position to introduce the teaching methodology that he had brought from his native Jupiter. Although the teaching style was much more advanced, and resulted in the unintended emergence of ESP abilities in all graduates, his Jupiterian origin was a liability to the credibility of the institution of McGill University and so he was let go under the shadiest of circumstances.

In order to accept someone with superior, extra-human abilities such as Cornett, we must first examine our own prejudices. If we can accept the limitations of human educational methods and allow an exception to the otherwise bland status quo at this institution, perhaps that great wall of extraterrestrial prejudice can be torn down (and maybe the Rolling Stones can play at the ceremony!).

Cornett MUST be brought back, at the very least so he can teach us the complexities of intergalactic space travel.

With these and innumerable other concerns, Zoog

Zionism is not racism. You are absolutely right. Self-determination is a right. Of course it is.

However, some Zionist POLICIES in Israel are, to a very large degree, discriminatory (and on more personal levels, racist sometimes), whether you agree or not. As you mentioned, there are many moderates in Israel who understand this. But whether it is “security” walls, border checkpoints, or Israeli-only highways, discrimination based on identity widely exists. And it exists beyond governmental structures, legislative bodies, and what-have-you.

I always find it very annoying when at the end or the beginning of any article defending Israel and/ or Zionism, writers conjure up images of a people rejected by everyone. The Holocaust, in my opinion, is the single most terrible event in modern history. No people should ever go through such horrors. However, the mere fact that, as you say, those people have “faced unprecedented persecution and discrimination on the grounds of religion alone” doesn’t automatically place Zionists above racism. Many Zionists, it just so happens, are in fact racists. And, of course, many anti-Zionists are themselves racists.

By the way, anti-Zionism cannot be racism because Zionism is not a race.

Kristin Li U3 Philosophy

Devon Welsh U3 Religious Studies, Drama & Theatre

Jay Alexander Brown U3 World Religions

Lisa Miatello U4 Women’s Studies Daily columnist

Errata In the article “Crude planning” (Features, February 15), there was no credit for the illustration. The illustration was drawn by Sally Lin. In the article “Resisting the winds of change” (News, February 15), it was incorrectly stated that “high and relatively consistent airflow makes it attractive.” The sentence should read: “consistent wind speed makes it attractive.” In the same story, it was stated that “wind energy grew at a rate of up to 40 per cent.” Wind energy really grew 40 per cent, not at a rate of 40 per cent.

The Daily regrets the errors.

Majd Al Khaldi U2 Economics and Political Science

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12Features

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olicing overty

Sara Traore | The McGill Daily

Filmmaker and ex-squeegee kid portrays the criminalization of Montreal’s homeless

Eric “Roach” Denis’s films cover issues from the ticketing of Montreal’s homeless to punks migrating across the country – more at roachcam.ca/fr/projets.htm.

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

Laurin Liu The McGill Daily

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ric Denis, better known as Roach, used to earn a living cleaning windshields. Now he’s in the process of creating the documentary Les Tickets, which will reveal many of the realities of Montreal’s streets and the effects of harsh punishments for minor infractions.

Denis, who began living on the streets at 14 years old, was recruited by documentary filmmaker Daniel Cross to depict his life as a squeegee person. Shooting footage for S.P.I.T. (Squeegee Punks in Traffic), Denis explains he “traded his syringe for his camera” and pinpoints this as his redeeming moment. Since S.P.I.T., which depicted the City’s zero-tolerance stance against squeegee kids, he’s completed two additional films, also charged with a rebellious spirit: Roachtrip and Punk the Vote.

Living on the street comes with a whole host of dangers – health issues, violence, exposure. The police pose an additional threat to this already disenfranchised population.

Officers ticket the homeless for minor offenses, and these offenses often accumulate. Because many can’t pay the fines, they can end up in jail.

The lack of adequate housing has meant that homelessness has become increasingly visible in Canadian cities. In turn, a desire to keep poverty out of sight means efforts that indirectly criminalize it. Public poverty has always been heavily subject to the rule of law, and the Quebec Human Rights Commission has pointed to visible signs of poverty and marginalization as a basis for social profiling.

“W

e justify the criminalization of the homeless people on the basis that they constitute a disruptive presence in the city,” says Celine Bellot, a professor at the Université de Montréal and a member of the Collectif de recherche sur l’itinérance, la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale, a research collective focused on issues related to homelessness. “The presence of marginalized people disturbs other users of public spaces, and so it’s believed that action must be taken to eject these people from public spaces.”

The Montreal police’s tough stance against incivilities has had direct negative consequences on the homeless.

Last November, the Quebec Human Rights Commission, in a report entitled “La judiciarisation des personnes itinérantes à Montréal: un profilage social,” called for the district of Ville-Marie to repeal two municipal regulations that unfairly target homeless people. The first municipal bylaw, which closed 15 parks and public spaces at night, has meant that homeless people have had to choose between leaving downtown or defying the law in order to find a place to sleep. The report also called for the repeal of the bylaw that forbids the entry of dogs into Émile-Gamelin Park and Viger Square. These bylaws have had direct consequences on homeless persons’ ability to access essential services: Viger Square is just blocks away from two shelters.

Homeless women tend to be targeted for fines particularly on the basis of infractions related to solicitation. When it comes to policing the disruptive behaviour of homeless women, the focus is largely on sex work, and on issues that are particular to sex workers. “We use their strategy for survival as a means to repress the presence of women in public spaces,” says Bellot.

Bellot found that between 1994 and 2005, ticketing increased at a rate of 696 per cent for public transit infractions and 320 per cent for municipal infractions. Today in Montreal, ticketing is no longer increasing at the rate it once

was, notes Bellot. However, she adds, Montreal still tickets more than other Canadian cities.

Denis illustrates the pettiness of common infractions: “Sleeping on a bench is grounds for a $140 ticket, because you’re taking up more than two spaces on a bench.” The homeless have a different relationship with public space.

Denis explains that treating these spaces as their home leads directly to criminalization. “When you want to drink a beer, you go into your living room and have a beer – their living room is the park, where it’s illegal to drink.”

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he commission found that uneven policing that targets the homeless resulted in the excessive use of courts to deal with the marginalized population. Although the rationale behind a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to minor infractions is that it will reduce the number of serious criminal acts, studies conclude that there is no relationship between the number of incivilities and the level of crime within a neighbourhood. The commission drew statistics from studies conducted by Bellot.

Piper Huggins, borough councillor for the district of Plateau-Mont-Royal, states that “it’s almost easier, possibly, for a government to invest in coercive measures, because you see results immediately – because you’re basically chasing people off the territory – than investing in the more complicated aspects, which is actually confronting the issue itself and making sure that people on the street have an alternative.”

Bellot explains that Montreal criminalizes the homeless in more implicit ways than other Canadian cities, which adopt legislation that targets certain behaviours. “In Montreal, we often use existing regulations, but interpret these regulations in a more restrictive way, and enforce them more severely,” she says. “The Quebec Commission for Human Rights has shown [that] we use legislation that applies to everybody and apply it disproportionately to homeless people.”

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ellot’s studies demonstrate that homeless people who get arrested are unable to enter into a dialogue with the justice system, and are engaged in an administrative process that they do not understand. The Clinique Droits Devant, a mobile judicial accompaniment clinic that serves Montreal’s marginalized communities, reports cases in which homeless people have fallen asleep at the doors of homeless shelters, only to wake up with a notice of infraction in their pockets for public drunkenness, never having had contact with the police officer involved.

While some measures are taken to better equip homeless persons who enter the justice system – such as designated prosecutors and community resources – Bellot says these efforts are disproportionate to the number of individuals who are ticketed. She estimates these efforts aid 50 to 100 homeless people while 4,000 to 5,000 fines are given out each year.

“There are people who are homeless, who live in public spaces, and there are others who are in the process of leaving the streets but are trapped by fines that they receive while homeless. When these people leave prison, there are no resources available to help them find housing. That means they find themselves, once again, in the streets,” says Bellot. “It’s a vicious circle.”

Roach agrees that crime enforcement is countwwwerproductive and notes additional dangers of incarcerating homeless individuals. “Ticketing [the homeless] and putting them in jail [is] putting them in the hands of real criminals,” he explains. “I’m talking from experience. I was in jail for tick-

13

ets, and I was solicited to sell cocaine by the Hell’s Angels.”

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n December, the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the right for homeless people to set up temporary shelters in public parks. In B.C., the legal question of the right to squat in public spaces came to the fore in October 2005, when the Supreme Court of British Columbia struck down the City of Victoria’s bylaw against setting up tents or other structures in parks.

Many believe that the ruling in Victoria has set a precedent for the use of public space in municipalities across Canada. David Johnston, who has lived in the streets of Victoria and who was a defendant in the case, says that the case provoked many Canadians, because it legally affirmed that people have the right to live in public spaces without paying.

Despite this legal victory, Chris Aung-Thwin, coordinator of Homeless Nation, points out the City’s resistant attitude toward the ruling. “[Municipalities] have no desire to work toward a solution,” says Aung-Thwin.

“Municipalities will have to take into account the demand for the existence of temporary shelters,” says Huggins. “It’s a question of bylaws attacking a symptom that is not part of the underlying problem.”

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ellot explains that the problems associated with people in public places can be met with solutions that work toward cohabitation. “We can offer private spaces to these people, like respite centres, social housing, places where they can be present without having their presence contested,” she says.

The amount of money allotted to social housing is absurdly low, according to Huggins. The total annual budget for social issues in the borough is $64,000 while 3,000 families are on the waiting list for housing. The redistribution formula for funds set aside to combat poverty and social exclusion penalizes the Plateau, because it is calculated partly on the basis of concentration of poverty. Even though poverty is a big problem in the Plateau, it is not concentrated in a particular region, says Huggins.

“It’s a complex problem, because it involves so many levels of government and it needs the backing of society,” says Huggins. “If people have homeless people staying in the park across the street from where they live, they’re going to ask the government to evict these people from the park. They’re not going to ask for a raise in taxes so that the government can reinvest these funds in social housing.”

Denis registers the frustrations of trying to elicit change through the municipal government. “We’ve been trying for years. We were almost there with the Politique en itinérance,” he says, citing a report undertaken in 2008 and 2009, interested in respecting the rights and improving the living conditions of the homeless population. “Unfortunately, Charest won’t listen to us.”

“We need to bring [the issue] to film festivals and to the general population,” says Denis. “The next step is to bring this film to the community and tell them, look, we need to talk to our politicians. We need change now.”

The eighth annual Homelessness Marathon will broadcast live from the streets of Montreal, and several other locations across Canada, on Tuesday, February 23, starting at sunset and running all night long until sunrise on Wednesday, February 24. Campus and community radio CKUT 90.3 FM will host the hours between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. Topics will include HIV on the streets, policing poverty, and literacy.

Health&Education

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

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Get yourself an education Community programs supplement traditional schooling

Braden Goyette The McGill Daily

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ducation is key to advancement in society – but there’s often things the public school system has a hard time providing to young people, particularly minority youth.

Estimates reported by the CBC in 2008 placed the rate of high school drop-outs among black youth in Montreal around 48 per cent, though the education ministry doesn’t compile these statistics according to race.

There are a number of possible reasons why public schools have a hard time keeping them. “There are pedagogical shortcomings, a lack of understanding of students, cultural insensitivity to students who are not white, particularly about black students,” said David Austin, founder of the Alfie Roberts Institute, an organization that does community education work in Montreal’s black community (see extended interview, facing page). “[There’s a prevalence of] worn and outmoded narratives that completely alienate students who are not francophone or anglophone, that kind of eliminate them from the outset,” Austin added. “And there’s issues with financing and funding, with the conditions under which teachers work. It’s a complex web of issues, in that sense.”

Even though many take McGill to task for not having substantive enough community engagement, we were able to track down a few McGill students, professors, and alumni involved with youth empowerment initiatives past and present.

The South Shore to South Africa On Tuesday, elementary and high school students from around Montreal and the South Shore filled the Shatner Ballroom for McGill’s Black Students’ Network (BSN)’s annual children’s day.

“We’re trying to allow these kids to see that they have so much going on,” said Christiana Collison, BSN social coordinator and first year liason. “People are already conditioned to think a certain way about these kids. We want them to feel as though they can be themselves, but they can be themselves doing great things.”

During the morning sessions, elementary school students were

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Putting student experiences at the centre of analysis encouraged to draw people who inspire them.

In the afternoon, ninth and tenth graders rotated between workshops on being a minority in North America, youth empowerment in Africa, and the world of science, run by the BSN, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and McGill’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) respectively.

Interactive scenarios and games got the students talking about the issues among themselves.

A group of students from different high schools met the question, “Is this different from what you all do in school?” with a chorus of emphatic “yeah”s.

“I got to see how people see each other throughout the community and how I can get my side and they can get their side,” said Kwami Johnson from Howard S. Billings High School, who appreciated learning about different HIV awareness campaigns. “We get to

talk among the youth and see what they’re really saying about the community.”

“I definitely liked discussing stereotypes because everyone got their opinions out there,” said Kyristal Andrews from Westmount High.

“Here it’s more peaceful, because in school it turns into a debate. Here it’s a civil understanding of what everybody else says.”

“We learned how to cooperate, discuss our problems, put it on one table and separate them, basically,” said Kadeem Jacobs, also from Westmount.

Collison hoped to send the message that it’s possible to pursue all kinds of goals without giving up their identity or fitting into a particular mold. “I want them to leave here thinking that, you know what, I can possibly come to McGill, or I can possibly just help that person on the playground. I can possibly do things out of my comfort zone but still be me, helping the world.”

YEA! in the U.S. McGill professor Adrienne Hurley was involved in an initiative called the Youth Empowerment Academy (YEA!) in 2006 when she worked at the University of Iowa (U of I). Hurley described Iowa as one of the most difficult places in the U.S. to be black, with one of the highest disproportionate imprisonment rates in the U.S. A 2007 report by Traci Burch of The Sentencing Project estimates that in the U.S., 41 per cent of all federal and state prisons inmates are black.

“The expulsion rate of people of colour [in Iowa], particularly black and native kids, is astronomical,” Hurley said. “When I walked around town, there were a lot of black kids, but none of them were in my classes.”

YEA! brought together teachers, professors, and community activists – most of them also people of

colour – and recruited high school students from the surrounding cities by reaching out to guidance counselors, looking for students who would be of age to enter U of I in the 2009-2010 school year.

The program was free of charge and consisted of sessions on African Americans in the media, writing and performing autobiographies, and the prison system.

Kids were bussed to the university on the weekends. Participation was voluntary, and meals were provided. Though they came from different backgrounds, the instructors all agreed on a central message for the program, for kids who were consistantly profiled as “problem students”: there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s something wrong with society.

“We did not experience in YEA! any of the ‘classroom management’ issues that I was told by many to anticipate,” Hurley said.

“I think what I took away from that experience was the importance of being actively involved in knowledge production and having one’s experiences at the center of analyses.”

Vanessa Shelton, a professor of journalism at U of I, came up with a question to get students talking about the problems affecting them in their daily lives: if you could change one thing about the world, what would it be, and how would that affect your life? The students responded with answers ranging from “I would go back in time and save Malcolm X,” to “I would change the way people live so people could eat every night.”

YEA! lost its funding after the initial Year of Public Engagement grant from U of I ran out. Hurley said that, in retrospect, it’s always a precarious situation to get funding from outside institutions like universities.

“I think the slow and steady self-funded approach that the Alfie Roberts Institute here in Montreal is taking is so promising,” Hurley said. “It allows for greater autonomy and also avoids the kind of dynamics that can develop when you have to start working to meet the expectations or demands of funders or potential funders, instead of developing programming that meets the needs of the folks involved.”

For more on the Alfie Roberts Institute’s educational programs, see the facing page.

Health&Education

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

15

The University has to be pressured Community organizer and McGill alum speaks on equity, education, and the need to mobilize

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avid Austin is a founder and trustee of the Alfie Roberts Institute, an independent community organization devoted to advocating for positive social change from within Montreal’s black community. He is involved in community education initiatives throughout Montreal and a teacher at a CEGEP. He recently edited a volume of C. L. R. James’s unpublished speeches, entitled You Don’t Play With the Revolution. Austin was also a member of Black Students’ Network and a Daily editor during his time at McGill in the early nineties.

The McGill Daily: What kind of work do you do with the Alfie Roberts Institute?

David Austin: Most of our work has been around community and political public education – organizing forums, guest speakers, book launches for books that we think are important to be out there in the public for members of the black community. We’re invited at times to do workshops, individual classes in CEGEPs and universities – this month is generally kind of busy for that reason.

Part of our mission is to provide and promote a sense of historical continuities.… Much of what we do represents the kind of activities that have been done in this city by...black people for a long time,

going back to the twenties.

MD: Why is this kind of work important?

DA: The sixties were considered a turning point for the black community in Montreal.... That was considered a kind of heyday where there were all kinds of possibilities. Today you have high drop-out rates in the schools, and when it comes to employment, education, all-around general life chances, the chance to live and exist in another place in society – all these things come into question in this society for black folks in general.… These are contemporary questions that have social roots.

When we organize forums – around the Sir George Williams affair, for instance – it’s a reflection on where we’ve come from, it’s an intergenerational event.

We’re looking at how this community has evolved, and it’s an opportunity for raising questions...and not giving the sense that we just arrived here yesterday – the sense that the black community is new and has no roots in this society.

There’s a lot of mythology around that that comes from the dominant narratives of what it means to be Canadian in the broad national sense….

In addition to ignoring the history of indigenous people in this society, it also excludes the fact that this society had slaves in the 18th and 17th century. If you’re talking about the presence

of people of African descent in this country, there’s politicians becoming accustomed to talking about Mathieu de Costa, a black explorer who accompanied Samuel de Champlain. He spoke Micmac, and could translate for Champlain. Black History Month is a City-sponsored event, and most local politicians can say they know about Mathieu de Costa, but it doesn’t change our narrative in terms of understanding black people here. If he could translate for Champlain, it’s strongly suggested he was here before Champlain.

But that’s never asked as a question. It has a real bearing on the dominant narrative in this country. Everyone else is reduced to visitors.

Just look at the black population in Nova Scotia, for example, the first-wave descendents of loyalists stemming from the American war for independence over 200 years ago. How is it that this narrative still persists, and what bearing does this narrative have on the present? If we’re all perceived as immigrants it has implications for citizenship – who is entitled to live and exist in a society among equals. So I’m making that a long way of saying that history’s important – it has bearing on how people perceive us in the present.

MD: What kind of courses do you offer for young people?

DA: We recently started offering two sessions – one is an art and identity course. It’s geared towards black youth, kids of African and Caribbean descent, to provide them an opportunity to explore their own identity through art, to develop a sense of self and who they are and their place in the world through art. It’s a creative process.

We also do things like workshops in schools…around the same kinds of themes: art identity, popular culture, how people of African descent are depicted in the media, in and through popular culture, and what that means for how they’re perceived in real life. These are questions that are not just about identity but about how people are perceived, understood, and related to in society MD: How is the institute funded?

DA: We’re not funded, is the short answer. We have several trustees that contribute to our expenses including our rent every month; we have some dedicated donors who

give to the institution relatively often…. It’s grown at its own pace, and it’s been very deliberate that we’re not running around chasing funds or tailoring our programming.

MD: Would you say that minorities are under-represented at McGill?

DA: Statistics would probably bear that out – if you look at the composition of society and representation of the schools, for sure.

Most black people who attend an institution like McGill – in the past it was always the case that a vast majority were not actually from Montreal. McGill has never lived up to its responsibility to the community – look at the institution and how many professors of colour there are. Even the University of Toronto has a transition year program where they reach out to the community, and kids who have dropped out can enter the institution….

Basically, McGill gets away with murder. Any sense of employment equity – I’m not just talking about seeing black faces or Asian faces.

There are lots of qualified people around the world, and they’re not at McGill. Which would be part of what attracts students, right – an openness to other ways of teaching and learning, in terms of who teaches, that attracts other students…. But that pressure has to come from the outside. It has to come from an organized community, from students. The University has to be pressured.

Basically there’s no will to bring about change. The canon holds.

The past holds, in terms of what’s traditionally been taught. That change comes with pressure and mobilization. That hasn’t been sustained over the years.

In a society as multicultural and interesting as Montreal, there’s no real courses on the Caribbean.

There’s nothing on AfricanCanadian history, [which is a shame] given the long history. It basically reinforces the thought that the histories and cultures of those people don’t really count.

—compiled by Braden Goyette

Illustrations: Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Sports

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

17

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Modest ambitions What the Olympics show us about the Canadian personality crisis Ian Beattie The McGill Daily

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n the week before the Olympic opening ceremonies, the cultural realities of the Vancouver Games were neatly captured for me, as a Canadian, by two pieces of exceptionally bad writing. The first – and by far the more enjoyable – appeared in the Guardian, one of the U.K.’s most progressive and prestigious newspapers.

In an altruistic act of pedagogy, the British journalists had taken it upon to themselves to explain to their readers what, exactly, the winter Olympics are. The concise, comprehensive guidebook they produced managed to blow apart any straggling illusions I had about Canada’s international visibility.

The vast majority of winter sports, it turns out, the ones I’ve played or watched all my life, are stupidly dangerous and best avoided – as, in the majority of cases, the British athletic world has wisely done. Others just didn’t appeal to the quaint sensibilities of British cricket fans, and were left to the lumpen masses – “uber-sized Dutch men and women.” My favourite, though, was the scandalized three sentences derived from the British experience of watching hockey, and I provide them here in full: “Quite possibly the most point-

less sport ever to be televised as it is impossible to follow the puck unless the action is shown in slow motion. Possibly worth watching for the frequent fights but you’ll have to take the score on trust. Not that you will care because Great Britain hasn’t entered a team in either the men’s or women’s competitions.”

And that’s that.

The second article ran in another prestigious publication, the New York Times. It was written by an old staffer who happens to be the leader of the opposition in Canadian Parliament right now – Michael Ignatieff.

Ignatieff’s vision of the Vancouver Olympics made the Games seem like a church bake sale. Nice, but nothing too fancy. “We Canadians are immensely proud of our country,” Ignatieff wrote, “but we try to be soft-spoken about it, so we aren’t looking for the Vancouver Games to be a grandiose exercise in self-promotion.” Apparently, the goal of the Games is to send the bizarre message that “we’re a people the world can count on…. Ask us to do a job, and we get it done right.”

Behind all the obsequious stereotypes of Canadian modesty, however, Ignatieff’s article was haunted by the enormous apathy, exemplified by the Guardian’s coverage, with which most of the world treats the Winter Olympic Games. Only 82 countries are competing this year, compared to the

204 entered in the Beijing Summer Games, and though we blew the budget, a Winter Olympics is only worth $6 billion, $34 billion less than Beijing.

Nobody likes to mention it, but this is a real source of anxiety here.

The Winter Olympics hold a particular resonance in Canada, in that they exhibit Canada’s sole uniting cultural characteristic – our nordicity. No matter where you were born or how long you’ve lived here, every Canadian experiences winter. Even if you’re from the rainforest coasts of B.C., you’re surrounded by snowcapped mountains. So it makes sense that we care.

But it makes equal sense that they’re not a big deal in most places. A lot of countries simply don’t have snow and ice. The fact that the Summer Games are viewed as the “real” Olympics by most shouldn’t matter to us. Nordicity remains a fact of our existence, and winter sports will always be popular here.

And yet even during this so very Canadian event, we seem to find ourselves, as always, turning southward, begging for American validation. Our politicians write op-eds no one will read in American papers.

We launch the fascistic “Own the Podium” campaign, and it backfires – Canada has half the medal count of the front runners, and the sparse international media attention being paid to the Games is now solely focused on the program’s unfair-

ness and fatal disregard for safety.

And then there are the opening ceremonies, which were, well, weird. Ask Canada to define itself, and we freak out. Satan charges fiddling across the stage in a canoe. k.d. lang weeps as she butchers “Hallelujah” to bits. And a country confronts the fact that after more than a century of trying, all we have for a self-image is a confusing caricature.

In a way Ignatieff would never have intended, the Vancouver Games have really been the perfect mirror to hold up to Canadian society. Canada’s unique nordicity is present, yes, but so is our usually-hidden desire to be American, to make the world notice us. Our media has been all over our alleged modesty, but the less cute parts of Canada’s culture – our bigotry toward the First Nations, our hatred of the homeless, and our lack of investment in real, progressive urban planning – have also been drawn out and magnified for all to see.

The Olympics have turned into a battle between the way we would like to sell ourselves and the way we are. On February 13, the Times ran an article praising Canada for being a place where everybody goes home at midnight after the opening ceremonies. That morning, a black bloc of more than 200 protesters marched into downtown Vancouver and smashed

store windows displaying Olympic clothing before engaging in a violent battle with the police. No one told them anger isn’t Canadian, I guess.

The image of Canada as modest and self-aware seems like a nice idea. But if that national image really matched our identity, maybe we would have invested in solving the problems of the homeless in Vancouver, rather than pushing them out and spending a billion dollars on security. Instead of just using native imagery to brand the Games, we could have taken a good, hard look at the fact that the entire province where all the hubbub is happening lies on Native land that was never ceded. And we could wonder what happened that made a country with such an enormous population of visible minorities send a team to the Games that is almost exclusively white.

As a Canadian, I’m fine with the fact that the Winter Olympics will never truly catch the world’s attention – with years of experience, I’ve developed the marvellous ability to follow a hockey puck, and I enjoy doing it. Northern countries like Canada will always be somewhat alone in our northernness, and perhaps that’s part of the appeal. But at some point, we have to stop worrying how much the world knows about us, and begin to question what we think we know about ourselves.

18Sports

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

MASS discusses South Africa’s World Cup prospects Accessibility, home demolition, and foreign investment among the themes addressed

Lena Camara The McGill Daily

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ince the 2004 announcement that South Africa would host the World Cup ok 2010, there has been much debate surrounding the country’s readiness. With June fast approaching and the recent events at the African Cup of Nations, football authorities are looking toward South Africa with a critical eye.

Last Thursday, the McGill African Students’ Society (MASS) hosted a discussion about the upcoming sporting event. Moderated by two of the club’s executives, the talk addressed concerns about the tournament and whether South Africa, and Africa as a whole, is ready to host such a monumental event.

Inevitably, the issue of security was one of the major topics discussed.

South Africa’s crime statistics are note-worthy: with 18,000 murders each year, the per capita rate is second only to Colombia’s. But among the discussion’s participants – many of whom had recently visited South Africa – the consensus was that fears about security, while understandable, are being blown out of proportion. The areas affected by violent crimes are not the areas where the matches will be held, they argued.

Sporting events in January of this year lent credibility to these fears when, during the African Cup of Nations, the Togolese soccer team was attacked at the Angola border. Togo withdrew from the tournament and, according to the African Football Confederation’s rules, has been suspended from the next two cups. Many commentators were quick to point out that South Africa is more stable than Angola.

However, the memory of the vio-

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lent xenophobic attacks and riots that swept through South Africa in 2008 was still relatively fresh.

The riots were due in part to widespread fears among poorer South Africans about job stability, with the influx of refugees from neighbouring countries.

Another issue under discussion was the disconnect between South Africa and the rest of the continent. Some were concerned that the country chosen to host the first World Cup in Africa was the one with the greatest Western influence and the largest white population. Adwoa Oduro-Frempong, a U3 Economics student, argued that South Africa “is not very representative of Africa, or of its culture.” The only other African nations in the final stages of bidding for the tournament were from North Africa. It would seem South Africa embodies the broader African culture more than its northern competitors.

Hosting the World Cup is a prestigious enterprise for any country, but it is also an opportunity to attract foreign investment. In 2006, the BBC quoted FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, who said that the contracts signed for the South African Cup were already 25 per cent larger than Germany’s in 2006. At the time of Germany’s World Cup in 2006, total investment in South Africa had already reached $821 million – $100 million more than had been poured into Germany.

Accusations have been levelled that these investments are being used unwisely in South Africa.

There have been reports that jobs created by investment are being outsourced to foreign companies and funds are being redirected from social programs to beautification schemes. Zuwa Matondo, a McGill law student, criticized the South African government for com-

ing up with a plan that “lacks long term validity.”

The bulldozing of shanty settlements and their subsequent replacement with tourist housing sparked protests from local communities, as well as the participants of last week’s discussion. Tanya Mulamula, MASS president, saw the soon to be demolished houses on a recent trip to Cape Town. She spoke out against the event’s marginalization of lower income South Africans. “They should stop covering things up and change them instead,” she said.

Poor South Africans may also lose out when it comes to just being able to watch the games. The tickets, which will be available at subsidized prices for residents and citizens, are still too expensive for the average South African. “It’s like history is being made in your backyard and you’re not invited,” OduroFrempong said. Management student Michaella

Munyuzangabo said it was irrational to believe that FIFA could lower their prices any more because “at that point they would make a loss overall.” Matondo noted that South Africa has the largest black middle class of any African nation.

Whether South Africa is ready to host the tournament is a difficult judgement to make, one that will only be answered in time. In light of these concerns, the media has diverted its attention from the actual soccer of the World Cup to focus instead on its social implications. Dwight Best, a Concordia student who attended the discussion, was quick to note, however, that “football is politics, too.”

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

“Nodar Kumaritashvili’s blood is on the hands of VANOC.” Weigh in.

Write for Sports. sports@mcgilldaily.com

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

19

Hearing from home A look at Montreal’s only Haitian radio station Eric Andrew-Gee The McGill Daily

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or many Montrealers, CPAM 1610 felt like ground zero in the days and weeks following the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.

People crowded into the Frenchlanguage Haitian radio station’s small office, weeping and trying to contact relatives and friends back home. Journalist and producer Pierre Michel Bolivard recalls, “All we could do was comfort them.”

CPAM’s offices are situated in the far reaches of northeastern Montreal, at the grey, industrialized intersection of Jarry E. and 19th Avenue. The station rents second floor space in a complex shared with a Cambodian grocery store, a Szechuan restaurant, and a consultant’s office for immigrants.

Bolivard described the station as “a bridgehead” between those in Haiti, Haitians in Montreal, and the Canadian media, amid the community’s grief and panic following the earthquake. In the station’s empty boardroom, he described the helplessness he and his listeners felt as images of the earthquake’s destruction came in. The only way to reach Haiti in the chaos following the earthquake was via satellite phone, but Bolivard and his staff had none – images kept coming in, but communication was impossible.

CPAM was one of the first media outlets in Montreal to report the news of the earthquake. “I was doing my show,” said Bolivard, “and people started calling in, saying something serious had happened.”

The station responded with intensive coverage of the disaster relief efforts, going into what they called “earthquake mode.” Everything from news coverage to call-in shows was changed in response to the gravity of the moment.

More than a month after the earthquake, Serge César’s eight p.m. news show Regard still dedicates about the first half an hour of its programming to news from Haiti, mostly regarding the aftereffects of the earthquake. The show has featured news wire material about visits from world leaders, like Stephen Harper and Nicolas Sarkozy, but also small-scale local news about life in Haiti. Much of it was grim, disturbing.

On February 15, six bandits had

been arrested for possession of illegal weapons, armed robbery, and rape; Later, a story came on about an 11-year-old girl who had been murdered while playing with a young boy in the makeshift tents in which many Haitians are living.

“All a tragedy,” César said. Matterof-fact, even buoyant for much of the broadcast, his voice changed noticeably while reporting on the murdered girl.

The station’s web site, cpam1610. com, has a rotating bulletin of missing persons, with contact information for people and news of their whereabouts. The Haitian names – Maico Mandley Ledoux, Judel Wige Cherry, Francoise Francois, a whole family of Gastons – flash a little too quickly. There is a cast of around a dozen at the moment. Another heading, “Mobilisation sur le Web,” has links to online charities.

Even the music has changed in the station’s transformation into a hub for information and solace. During “Bouquet de Rose,” a prettily-titled nine p.m. broadcast described on the web site as “tender music,” an impassioned rap song about consoling Haiti was played the other day, more wrenching than tender.

The office’s décor evidences the seriousness with which it approaches its role in Montreal’s Haitian community. There is a map of Haiti in the foyer, and one of the station’s walls features a framed picture gallery of every head of the Haitian state since independence in 1804. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first emperor of Haiti, is present in dramatic Napoleonic military dress, as are the corrupt, autocratic Duvaliers, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, who ruled Haiti from 1956-1986.

A studio named after the hero of South American independence, Simon Bolivar, is a nod to regional history, or maybe just to CPAM 1610’s own Bolivard.

A seasoned journalist and producer, Bolivard hosts a two-hour Haitian music program at 10 a.m. on weekdays, as well as an afternoon chat show with co-host Sophie Stanké. He is serious about the future of Haiti, and has a wonkish grasp of policy and figures. He pointed out that 85 per cent of cars in Haiti are Japanese-made, which leads him to suggest that some of those Japanese cars be assembled in Haitian plants. Criticizing aid

Jessie Marchesault for the McGill Daily

CPAM 1610 has been a vital hub for Montreal’s Haitian community since January’s earthquake regimes, he pointed to Canada’s use of Canadian contractors to build Haitian infrastructure, which denies local business a significant opportunity for development – “If you give a man fish everyday, he isn’t going to eat. You have to teach a man to fish.”

As Bolivard continued his tour of the office, signs began to emerge that a normal life – pre-earthquake life – still went on. There were incongruities of design – a childish painting, which Bolivard decided was not of Haiti but of somewhere in Asia, leaned against the boardroom wall, along with a grinning picture of Barack Obama, taken at a time when his hair was thicker and darker. And commercials still lead in to the crushing news from Haiti.

“You can find all the products of Haiti and the Caribbean at Marche Cascoute,” runs one, in French.

The earthquake hasn’t robbed Bolivard of his sense of humour, either. Showing off a dark, cluttered equipment room, Bolivard joked that this was “our Ali Baba’s cave.”

He also mentioned, laughing, that his co-host Sophie is “the only white person working here.”

Of course, things aren’t normal, nor will they be for a long time.

Bolivard told me that everyone he knew “was touched in one way or another” by the earthquake. For his part, most of his family was hundreds of kilometres away from Portau-Prince when the earthquake struck. But the capital of his homeland, which he left 20 years ago, is destroyed. “My image of Port-auPrince has disappeared forever,” Bolivard said.

He described the difficult balancing act between returning to normalcy and capturing the dire tone of the disaster. “Since January 12, we have been trying to put things back in their place, but gently. If we tried to do it quickly, people wouldn’t have accepted it.”

Conditions in Haiti are still desperate, and many believe the Préval government has been unfocused, even inept, in responding to the crisis. “We can’t always be rosy about what’s happening there,” says Bolivard.

An important thread of optimism running through CPAM 1610 is the resilience and growing strength of the Haitian diaspora.

There are nearly 100,000 Haitians living in Montreal alone. “We are becoming trained and educated,” said Bolivard of his fellow emi-

grants. Remittances from Haitians abroad amount to $2.5 billion dollars a year, he continued. In other words, there is hope yet.

CPAM 1610, for its part, is planning a move. The offices at Jarry and 19th are cramped, and look frayed and tired. The transmitter that pumps out the station’s signal uses 1,000 watts, which Bolivard noted with some chagrin. The transmitter at the new office, however, will use 10,000 watts; he rarely passed up an opportunity to say so. That means that before long the range of CPAM’s signal will be 10 times as wide as it is now.

The move is scheduled for “sometime this year,” although it is a big job and delays are inevitable.

Bolivard points out that the huge transmitter (a monolithic black box, like the one in the first scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the antennae from the roof have to be moved. The new office will be on the Rive Sud, miles away from their current location in Montreal Nord. “It will take a lot of money,” says Bolivard. Still, he is optimistic about the move and its attendant upgrades. And with well over a month since the earthquake shook the station’s world, CPAM 1610 looks up to the task.

20Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

The theatrics of thought A look into the new handmade

what should be clear. Discussing Meno’s passivity in responding to Socrates, Zwicky writes, “Meno’s failure to engage, his apparent insouciance thrown lightly over the abyss of his inattention, is breathtaking.” More breathtaking is this sentence’s lack of clarity.

Considered in pieces, the style is often bright and animated. But

collectively, it weighs Plato as Artist down. For an essay which deals with philosophical issues that are famously complex, the style is distracting.

Artist’s best moments are when the clarity of its expression equals the originality of its approach. In a passage early in the book, for example, Zwicky masterfully combines Socrates’s behaviour regarding moral beauty with her extensive knowledge of Plato’s other works to strengthen the connection between Plato’s account of the relationship between moral and mathematical beauty. Later, she compares Meno’s naïve idea of virtue with a “field of naturalists” who “leap to reflection on the genus of some plant, without looking carefully at its special characteristics.”

In moments like these, Artist is an energetic and informative commentary on Meno. To a new reader, it offers a more human approach to a text that, considered in the traditional scholarly way, is daunting and obscure (who really acts or speaks like Socrates?). And to an experienced reader, it offers new views and moments of realization – I never thought of it like that before!

As a work that changes the way Meno is often discussed, Artist succeeds. It applies sympathy’s power over understanding to a text that is often viewed unsympathetically.

Ultimately, though, Artist falls short of the potential its best moments hint at, as its tendency toward convoluted and inaccessible language defeats the originality of its project.

dox: processes of modernity have indeed produced an expectation of cleanliness, yet simultaneously, the more we desire to be clean the more we rely on processes of production and consumption that create more garbage. Today’s modern home is burdened with a profusion of cleaning products, designed to make our lives spotless. But the chemical industry on which we rely is one of the most toxic and polluting in modern manufacturing, and we inevitably produce more garbage and waste by preserving our effortless consumer lifestyle and obsessions with being clean.

In his series, Animals in the City, McGill’s Jason Prince explored new and unusual ways of cleaning the city. He proposed, for instance, the use of animals instead of machines to clean the streets. But what would you do if you walked outside onto the street and saw a team of goats munching in the gutters? In another presentation, Patrick Evans showed that today we see something even as minimal as snow as a pollution

to be disposed of. Each season, $60 million is spent on snow removal, seven million cubic metres of snow piled away – the equivalent to a snowman bigger than the Eiffel Tower. When does it stop?

Processes of modernization have produced an expectation of cleanliness in modern cities, which has become a reflection of city’s morality. “Soap” traced the attitudes of cleanliness through various facets, demonstrating the social implications of what it means to be clean, and explored – through varying conceptions of cleanliness – the socially constructed processes and techniques of actually “cleaning.”

The presentations analyzed the connections between personal and public hygiene as linked to broader subjects, such as changing public expectations for appearance and precision over centuries. In light of the waste generated by the cleaning industry, one would hope that society will eventually calm down and accept that a bit of dirt never did any harm.

Gavin Thomson The McGill Daily

Jerry Gu / The McGill Daily

“S

ocrates, is virtue teachable?” asks Meno. And so Plato’s Socratic dialogue, Meno, begins.

Meno has, of course, been studied extensively. But rather than offering a new interpretation of the dialogue, Jan Zwicky, in her recent book, Plato as Artist, offers a new approach. She treats Meno not as a piece of pure philosophy, but as a piece of philosophy and art.

Plato as Artist’s main goal is to “enliven” Meno, which, Zwicky writes, is a “philosophical jewel” with “a kind of geometrical perfection.” She aims to regard Meno’s “every detail as worthy of our concentrated philosophical attention,” so that its meaning “springs to life.”

To do this, she synoptically treats the dialogue as a plot, in which the characters feel and respond and act as beings who are more than mere pawns expressing philosophical ideas. Meno, Meno’s slave, Socrates – all are depicted with psychological realism: why does Meno turn his head? Here, the way Socrates touches Meno’s shoulder is ironic – he’s implicitly mocking Meno’s vanity. Here, Meno is lying – look at the way he scratches his elbow. Meno says that, but really he means this – the details are in his posture. Artist treats the characters intimately; they become more like us.

Plato as Artist’s approach is refreshing.

Delving into the nuances of Socrates’s dialogue, illuminating Meno’s implied thoughts, and treating the characters’ gestures as another form of language sheds, in Platonic fashion, new light on an old work. Artist deals with the implicit language of Meno more than it does the explicit, and the former comes to have a meaning of its own which, in turn, contextualizes the latter.

Through this approach, Meno’s hidden strengths are highlighted; apparent quirks and contradictions

begin to make sense. And it becomes clear that Meno’s theatrics are worthy of such attention.

Unfortunately, Zwicky’s prose style is unsuited for Artist’s subject.

She often favours rhythm over content, cleverness over truth. The book mingles high formality with slang, falls into long-winded digressions and, at its worst, ignores the economization of expression and clutters

Too fresh, too clean “Soap” explores our society’s fear of dirt Chelsea Blazer The McGill Daily

N

orth Americans are obsessed with being clean in every way possible. We fear anything and everything from germs and dust, to weeds, sewage, and even snow. We (and I use this word loosely) use a cocktail of chemicals in our daily struggle against dirt.

We clean, clean, clean, and not only do we maintain our own personal hygiene, we expect that the second we leave our home, the streets of Montreal will be clean as well.

This obsession with cleanliness is a topic brought forth by the presentation “Soap,” held in Montreal at the Canadian Centre for Architecture on Tuesday, February 16. Through a series of arrangements led in Pecha Kucha format, the presenters demonstrated the moral and social implications of what is means to be clean, if not too clean. What is clean? What are we losing by having an obsession

with being clean? Is the very idea of being clean part of larger issues of a city’s morality and politics?

The desire for cleanliness has manifested itself in both personal and public hygiene to the point where it seems almost innate.

Cleanliness habits have been deeply ingrained in the North American personality throughout generations, becoming a reflection of the growth of the urban modern city and the ideals brought forth with it. “Soap” investigated the history of cleanliness in Montreal, taking us on a journey through its most unusual places.

Delving into the sewer systems and then back up to the peaks of the snow pile wastes, “Soap” expanded the topic of Montreal’s cleanliness in ways we would never expect, and showcased how a city’s standards of cleanliness can be linked to broader norms of modern society.

The abbreviated images and the diversity of presenters made this an event worth seeing. The evening consisted of six separate presentations in French and

English, each speaker interpreting the theme of cleanliness in uniquely different ways. The presentations held my attention with their unusual topics ranging anywhere from the subsistence of animals in the city to the neurotic daily removal of snow.

In her segment Taking Baths In Public, Jennifer Blair draws a compelling argument about the link between the historical phenomenon of the public bathhouses – and how these illustrate the changing conceptions of cleanliness – and one’s social status and reputation. In the early 19th-century, cleanliness was not a norm, it was something that had to be earned. The idea of taking a bath was not necessarily linked to actual bodily cleanliness, but was a cultural custom linked to broader concerns such as social interaction and repressed sexuality.

In her vision of the bathhouse, Blair claimed that the very idea of getting clean stems from a fascination with getting dirty. The notion of the bathhouse expresses a para-

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010

21

CULTURE ESSAY

Contemporary craft A look into the new handmade Aaron Vansintjan Culture Writer

T

he term “arts and crafts” evokes nostalgia for the bygone days of glitter, Elmer’s glue, and sticky hands.

Back then, we used construction paper, scissors, and tempera paint and innocently called our creations art. Some of us went further and cut up magazines, sewed quilts, or crocheted toques and scarves.

Associated with childhood in this way, the arts and crafts can seem harmless and juvenile.

But today, grown-ups are using craft as an alternative way of life or as a form of activism and protest.

Green movements now go hand-inhand with do-it-yourself culture, and local craft communities are claiming to battle the forces of materialist capitalism, one crocheted sock at a time. Craft has become much less effete and, judging by the communities that have developed around it, much less juvenile.

Craft making has, in fact, long been linked to activism and cultural movements. Often, social unrest is accompanied by the desire for people to come together and return to traditional ways of life. The sixties and early seventies were marked by a notable rise in craft and handmade items – during the Vietnam War, quilts were made as a form of political agitation. These days, knitting circles have been created throughout North America and Europe to protest the war on terror, and craft has been used for environmental activism to encourage society’s respect for the things we use.

Elizabeth Kalbfleisch, a professor of art history at Concordia University, comments that the present movement “is a way for people to con-

nect in an urban environment....

It’s a movement driven by young people who feel disconnected....

In troubled political times, there is an interest in returning to simpler practices.”

There’s no doubt that craft has been on the rise recently. Many say that we are riding the wave of another arts and crafts movement, or even better, that craft is feeding into society’s ideological shift away from an unsustainable economy.

Craft may be at the forefront of the next social révolution in its ability to strengthen bonds between people, materials, and the methods used to create the items that populate our day-to-day lives. Like every movement, the craft movement seems to be grounded in the idea of progress and social change.

But it’s impossible to pin down the existence and nature of such a movement without first defining its boundaries. When it comes to craft, this is difficult because the concept incorporates a number of interconnected ideas. It’s an umbrella term for everything from cabinet-making to soap-making to knitting, and craftspeople can be artists, artisans, skilled workers, hobbyists, or businesspeople. “Craft means different things to different people,” states Kalbfleisch. As she sees it, there are many practitioners of craft: those that stress the value in “studied, trained work,” those in the “fine arts” or “high arts” that use craft as a medium, and another group of people who “wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves practicing artists or craftspeople, who are just the public that is embracing craft practices.”

In an essay, “Craft Fairs Redux,” to be found in the book Handmade Nation, Susan Beal remarks that “in just a few years, craft fairs have mushroomed into sustainable annu-

al events, continuing to attract more and more vendors with remarkable wares for sale.” Since the first Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago in 2003, almost every major North American city has begun to hold regular craft fairs. The Internet has also provided the nationwide community space that craftspeople previously lacked. Sites like Etsy. com, Craftster.com, the German site DaWanda, as well as a host of design blogs have all contributed to the selling and promoting of local handmade items on a global scale.

But though all this talk of the resurgence of craft paints the medium as the easy way out of a recession and an alluring way for artsy types to support themselves, it’s not clear whether such dreams are indicative of reality. Being self-employed in a niche market isn’t that simple, says Rachel Dhawan, a selfemployed craftsperson in Montreal.

Dhawan started a business as a jeweller and silversmith two years ago, and now earns enough money to support herself. But Kalbfleisch remarks that “there are very few art stars and fewer craft stars; living off craft is ‘the exception rather than the rule.’” Despite the optimism that Handmade Nation, journalists, community web sites, and bloggers have encouraged, paying the rent through craft takes a lot of effort and can be a big leap.

Dhawan argues that the biggest problem the craft world faces is pricing. Once a craftsperson makes the decision to support themself through art, they have to start charging much more for their wares. Selling handmade products is a business like any other; the hardest part, says Dhawan, is convincing consumers to spend more of their money in order to support local businesses. This may be hard,

since the choice between a $30 pair of jeans made in Southeast Asia and a $200 pair made in your own city is obvious at first. But Dhawan claims that the latter is, in the end, more economical and environmentally friendly. Clothes made by skilled craftspeople last longer, look better, and are made of higher quality material. “That’s a big leap to get over,” says Dhawan, “and that only comes if individuals find themselves frustrated [with the status quo] and with an intense desire to have something different.”

As a thrifty student, I found the Valentine’s Day craft fair at Church St. Michel alienating. It presented art that I didn’t need, expensive soap that I didn’t see the value of, and clothes that I didn’t want to wear. On the other hand, the vendors were friendly and the general vibe was exciting and enjoyable. I felt comfortable talking to everyone, and people were approachable and excited to share their stories.

While I found the content lacking, the spirit I wanted was there. All the craft fairs that I’ve gone to, in my opinion, have been marketed toward the wrong crowd. While cities like Toronto, Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver will always provide a fresh supply of young, well-off, and

well-educated professionals willing to decorate their homes, the necessary step that the craft movement has to take is a step down. We need handmade goods that offer utility, and we need skilled professionals that offer quality items that we can use. I’m willing to spend money on handmade furniture because it will last longer. But why should I spend money on candles and cute knitted socks when I can find cheaper alternatives or don’t need them in the first place?

The world that I’m looking for wasn’t to be found in contemporary craft culture. While craftspeople are on the right track, the consumers still have a long way to go. The craft movement is on the rise, but mostly among yuppies and those that are already settled in life. The movement seems to have stopped at its most susceptible market, and it’ll take a large part of the population to concede to the admirable ideology of craft. As Kalbfleisch remarks, craft is often seen to be “soft,” but “it can also be quite edgy.” I want the spirit of DIY mixed with pacifist political agitation and a change of lifestyle on a global scale. This wish is reflected by a large part of the craft movement. But if a back-to-the-roots barter-based economy is what we want, we may have to wait a while.

All photos by Aaron Vansintjan for The McGill Daily

There’s space for craft in Montreal Top right: The Long Haul is one of Montreal’s gems, home to a bustling artist community and one of the driving forces behind the craft revival. Opened by John Tinholt and Vanessa Yanow in 2001, it provides studios and regularly organizes events. It’s located in a warehouse in Parc-Ex. Top left: General 54 is Montreal’s prime craft and clothing outlet. Providing fashionable goods by some of Montreal’s finest designers, it is co-owned by Gen Heistek and Jennifer Glasgow, another big name in the Montreal craft scene. It’s in the crafty neighbourhood, Mile End, at 54 St. Viateur O. If you’re interested in learning more about handmade goods in Montreal, this would be a good place to start.

Bottom left: Headquarters Galerie is a recently established hub for local artists in Montreal, with its own clothing line. It’s in the Village, at 1649 Amherst.

Bottom right: Craft fairs, or “bazaars,” are often held in church basements. Last weekend’s Valentine’s Day craft fair was held in L’Eglise St. Michel, on St. Viateur and St. Urbain, a common venue for craft fairs in Montreal. Stay on the lookout for more.

24Art Essay

A piece // body peace Sally Lin

The McGill Daily, Thursday, February 18, 2010