june
2010
To t h e streets
NEWS Global protests
condemn Israeli assault Thousands march in Toronto and across Canada By James Clark, Features and Opinions Editor
Worldwide protests erupted just hours after Israel’s deadly assault on an international aid flotilla attempting to bring humanitarian relief to Gaza. The nighttime raid led by the Israeli Navy killed nine activists, many of them Turkish, in an attack that many observers are calling a “turning point” in Israel’s relationship with the international community. Governments around the world have condemned the raid and are calling for an independent investigation. Canada and the U.S. have expressed “regret” over the deaths, but have otherwise issued muted responses. Both countries are opposed to an independent investigation. Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in Turkey and Greece, whose governments have recalled their ambassadors from Israel. Thousands more demonstrated in other major European capitals, including London, Paris, Rome and Madrid. Mass demonstrations also took place in the Arab world, despite widespread repression. In Canada, demonstrations took place in a dozen towns and cities the day after the attack. In Toronto, over 1,500 people assembled with just hours notice in front of the Israeli Consulate on Bloor Street West for a rally that later marched to Dundas Square. Activist and author Naomi Klein addressed the crowd at the end of the march. Just one day earlier, several hundred people protested the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Canada during his appearance at the annual Walk with Israel in Toronto. Netanyahu met Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa on May 31, but had to cut short his visit in order to return to Israel to deal with the deepening crisis. Netan-
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yahu was slated to visit U.S. President Barack Obama, but had to cancel the trip altogether. In the week following the raid, protests have escalated all over the world, with plans for a global day of action set for Saturday, June 5. Meanwhile, more aid ships are headed to Gaza, this time with stern warnings from governments around the world for Israel to ensure safe passage. The Irish government has additionally warned Israel of grave consequences if its attacks any more humanitarian aid vessels. Hundreds of peace activists from aboard the flotilla ships seized during the raid were brought to Israel where they were interrogated and detained. Israel has begun to release the activists under pressure from the international community, which is now also calling for Israel’s three year-old blockade of Gaza to be lifted. Israel’s version of events has been undermined by the increasing number of eyewitness reports by activists now freed from Israeli detention. Many have reported to media that the Israeli Navy attacked the flotilla before it sent armed commandoes to board the ships. As more activists speak to media, the diplomatic pressure on Israel will increase. Israel, for its part, has mounted a massive public relations campaign, in an attempt to justify the killings of nine unarmed civilians aboard the flotilla. So far, its efforts seem to be generating more anger and protest, rather than containing the damage. The coming weeks will likely see demonstrations spread on a global scale, and international calls grow louder for Israel to end its siege of Gaza.
Ryerson Free Press The monthly newspaper for continuing education, distance education and part-time students at Ryerson Address Suite SCC-301 Ryerson Student Centre 55 Gould Street Toronto, ON CANADA M5B 1E9
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Editor-In-Chief Nora Loreto
News Editor James burrows
Features and Opinions Editor James Clark
Layout Editor Andrea Yeomans
Culture Editor amanda connon-unda
Photo Editor Dan Rios
Cover Photo KATIA DMITRIEVA
Contributors
christine beckermann alexandra bosanac matthew brett james burrows stephen carlick julia caron elizabeth chiang james clark andy cragg katia dmitrieva diana duong jessica finch kaitlin fowlie Ronak ghorbani richa gomes garson hunter priyanka jain marlee kostiner haseena manek jesse mclaren farrah merali arti patel victoria pinhorn dan rios adriana rolston vanessa santilli lakshine sathiyanathan simon wallace CODI WILSON alastair woods
Publisher CESAR The opinions expressed in the Ryerson Free Press are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. Advertising Ryerson Free Press’ advertising rates are as follows. All prices are for single insertions. Discounts apply for Ryerson groups and departments. Full page—$750 Half page—$375 Quarter page—$195 Eighth page—$95
CORRECTION: In the May 2010 issue, Martin Nakata was misidentified as being from the University of South Australia. He is in fact from the University of Technology in Sydney. PHOTos: Katia Dmitrieva
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 3
First Nations Students Live In University Protest funding cuts that will lead to school’s death By Garson Hunter
REGINA—Federal Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Chuck Strahl has killed First Nations University of Canada (FNUC), according to the Canadian Federation of Students media release of March 31. More accurately, according to Diane Adams, president of FNUC students’ association, FNUC is being left to slowly bleed to death over the summer. Minister Strahl announced March 30 through the federal government’s Canada News Centre that FNUC will receive $3 million through the Indian Studies Support Program (ISSP) for expenses related to programming for students, “so that students can finish their academic year which ends August 31, 2010.” “It’s purely a tactic to slow the death of the [school],” Adams said in a CBC news report. Students, anticipating the federal decision, began a Live-In on March 23, staying in the universities at all three campuses—Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert. Earlier this week, university president Shauneen Pete announced the closure of the Saskatoon campus, and lay-offs of faculty and staff at the Regina and Prince Albert campuses. The Saskatoon campus will be put up for sale immediately, said Pete. Students, faculty and staff, who will have to relocate to find jobs and finish their degrees, expressed shock at the announcement. A long-standing dispute between the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN)— which appoints the Board of Governors to FNUC—and the provincial government of Saskatchewan—which partially funds the university—has played into the hands of the federal Conservatives, who subsequently pulled federal funding from FNUC. FNUC is a university of a colonized people. As Blair Stonechild has pointed out in The New Buffalo: The Struggle for Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education in Canada, “Creating, operating, and maintaining an Aboriginal post-secondary institution within a colonialist environment that produces more failures than successes is a daunting task.” FNUC is a chronically under-funded post-secondary institution with roots in the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (SIFC) of the University of Regina (UofR) in May 1976. The first board chair, Doug Cuthand, said the board intended for Aboriginal chiefs to replace administrators once the path for Aboriginal education had been established. In February 2005, FSIN board chair Morley Watson brought forward allegations of financial mismanagement and corruption against university administrators resulting in the suspension of three senior university officials. He placed Indian Nations people into various positions
of power. Many interpreted this action as a political takeover of the university by the FSIN. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the Saskatchewan government were insistent that the FNUC Board of Governors be depoliticized from the Indian Nations, and instead operate with a structure of governance similar to other Canadian universities, with an independent Board of Governors as well as appropriate representation from the institution’s external stakeholders. The university’s Board has been dominated by Chiefs appointed by FSIN, a structure that didn’t fit with the familiar settler nation model of university governance, and numerous reviews by settler nation people have agreed. CAUT decided December 1, 2008, to censure FNUC—the first such action by the organization since 1979. Ongoing resistance by the Indian Nations to provincial and CAUT demands, coupled with allegations of financial mismanagement of the university, resulted in a decision February 3 by the provincial government to pull its $5.2 million annual contribution to the university. On February 10, the federal government pulled its $7.2 million annual funding. “Yanking FNUC funding [was] the right choice,” wrote right-wing talk radio host John Gormley in an op-ed he ran in Canwest newspapers February 5. Producer of Gormley’s show, Tammy Robert, titled her February 4 blog “Close the FNUniv Chapter, Please.” Conservative blogger The Phantom Observer posted under the heading “Ralph Goodale Flogs A Dead Aboriginal Horse,” and wrote, “I was sorta wondering, which MP would be monumentally ignorant enough, intellectually blind enough and catastrophically stupid enough to try to argue for continued support for First Nations University, despite the fact that everyone was fed up with its governance problems and that the government was quite right to pull its funding.” Students have vowed to continue the Live-In until the federal government restores funding. Saskatchewan has restored funding to the university. This article was originally printed in the Dominion (www.dominionpaper.ca). Since it’s printing, the federal department of Indian and Northern Affairs has bowed to public pressure and agreed to flow emergency funding to FNUniv which will allow for its operation until March 2011. Students have vowed to keep fighting for a multi-year funding agreement that will allow for long-term stability and sustainability of the university. Go to http://fnuniv.wordpress.com to follow the students’ struggle for long-term funding for their school.
Massey Centre strike over SEVEN weeks old Centre that helps pregnant teens and young mothers has had no funding increase in 10 years By Simon Wallace Aleema Khan has worked at Toronto’s Massey Centre —an organization that provides housing, daycare and educational resources to pregnant teenagers and young mothers —for ten years. During this time, none of the centre’s sixtytwo unionized workers’ pay grades have increased. In 2000, during Mike Harris’ premiership and amidst massive cuts to social services, the union membership agreed to a two-year freeze of its pay grid to keep the centre solvent under the expectation that future governments would restore the centre’s funding (reduced by 25 per cent during the Harris years). As contracts were re-negotiated, however, the freeze remained. The centre’s $500,000 debt, a legacy of provincial cutbacks, remained undiminished and new expenses, such as $80,000 of pay equity costs, reduced any maneuverability in its budget. Seven weeks ago the centre’s 62 workers, represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1, walked off their jobs and onto the picket line. “The cost of living has gone up a lot in the past ten years,” said Khan, “and our wages haven’t even increased with inflation.” The union is
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hoping that management will agree to binding arbitration but it is understood that unless the Provincial Liberal government agrees to increase its support no breakthrough agreement will be achieved. As yet the government has shown no signs of getting involved saying it will wait until the labour dispute is resolved to intervene. As Kahn says, however, the issue is exclusively one of provincial funding: “Our issue is not with management, everyone loves working [at Massey Centre] and we all work very well together. Many workers have been employed for fifteen to twenty years: they stay because they love working here.” Thrown into a lurch, however, are those who have been using the centre’s services. When operational the centre has residential space for pregnant teenagers and young mothers, a daycare and has a fully operational high school. Mothers and their children can stay at Massey for up to two years that, Khan notes, provides stability for individuals who would otherwise be bounced from shelter to shelter, case-worker to case-worker and program to program. The strike has emptied the post-natal townhouses and pre-natal semi-independent
housing units leaving many homeless and under threat. Khan had heard a rumor that children’s services had separated at least one child from her mother. Remarkably, however, many of the clients have continued to show up at the centre over the past weeks not for the centre’s services, but to provide assistance, support and to augment the workers’ picket lines. As one former resident at Massey Centre wrote: “ Massey Centre is an amazing place that changed my life. Instead of turning the experience into a negative one, the ladies who dedicate their days and nights to helping the young, sometimes unruly young mothers, made my experience into a very positive one.” A testament to the depth of the relationship between the workers and the young mothers Khan says that workers continue to help out in any way that they can with those individuals who they met at the centre assisting with paper-work and navigating government bureaucracy. It is recognized that the workers and the clients are victims of the same funding cutbacks and that mutual support—between those who provide services and those who use them—strengthens each of their causes.
Freedom of speech—on whose terms? By Katia Dmitrieva
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Freedom of speech is controversial at universities, as shown by Ann Coulter’s recent Canadian tour, which was protested because of her racist remarks. So, when does freedom of expression become freedom to harass? On May 4, Ryerson’s senate approved a statement which addressed this very question. The new statement was proposed by the Governance and Policy Committee, headed by Alan Shepard, Ryerson Provost and Vice President Academic. Fourteen other members, including students and faculty, worked together to craft the final product, currently on the senate’s website. The one-page document summarizes the university’s view; freedom of expression belongs to everyone, regardless of opinion. “The things you or I may find most unacceptable are accepted at Ryerson,” said Murtaza Haider, Ryerson professor and member of the Governance and Policy Committee. He explained that the university is open to all ideas, even if they may clash entirely with another religious or ethnic group’s beliefs. “You cannot be that sensitive,” he said. The Ryerson statement wasn’t without controversy. Debate raged in senate for three months, delaying approval, over the last sentence, with detractors arguing that it gave university administration blanket immunity to control students’ speech. Haider said it actually gives students more freedom. “The only way we could stop someone from speaking is if they’re breaking the law,” he explained. The last sentence states that Ryerson may intervene when on-campus expression is “used in a way that is itself unlawful” or prevents others from exercising their own rights. Secretary of Senate, Diane Schulman, said that Ryerson has a responsibility to “do something to protect its community” but also emphasized that it’s up to law enforcement to act. The administration steps in on a case-by-
case basis. And if the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is being broken, law enforcement will act. She refused to examine what would merit university action, “every case is unique,” she said, “the university is not attempting to interpret the law.” So, what happens when expression leads to negative stereotyping, such as conservative pundit Ann Coulter’s “take a camel” remark to a University of Western Ontario student? The line between freedom of expression and hate speech doesn’t exist for Haider, rather it is a grey zone, determined individually and by Ryerson’s “collective psyche.” “People say very abusive things,” he admitted, “you are free to have those opinions, but know that you will be debated…Ryerson doesn’t just provide a soapbox for one opinion.” Haider went on to say that the best way to expose bigots is to let them speak, “you only give them credibility by denying them speech,” he said. Ryerson is not the only Canadian university to issue such a statement. University of Toronto President, David Naylor, summed up his institution’s view in a speech at the end of February. Ryerson followed suit. Whereas Ryerson’s statement is more general, Naylor drew specific examples from his university. He highlighted targeted groups, including Jews and Muslims, as examples of when freedom of expression deteriorates into hate speech. His university examines free expression not only on the basis of Canadian law, but also on “decency and civility”, putting restrictions on students to limit “passionate advocacy – even righteous anger directed at some perceived injustice.” Although initially marred by controversy, Haider said that Ryerson’s statement reinforces- rather than confines- students’ rights to expression. “Dialogue is the key to understanding. Without debate, Ryerson is just a corporation and we aren’t doing our jobs.”
Primero de Mayo
Hondurans continue to fight back one year after coup By Andy Cragg In Tegucigalpa on May 1, Hondurans celebrated International Workers Day with a march that stretched out over several kilometres, with some estimating that as many as 500,000 Hondurans were participating. This was the first time in the history of the country that a mass march had taken place to celebrate May Day and was remarkable given the country’s history as an American stronghold amidst revolutionary Central American countries. But the events of the past 10 months have politicized many Hondurans. On June 28 2009, Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, was ousted by members of the national military following a several month legislative standoff between conservative politicians and Zelaya, who was pushing his program of social change. The Honduran people have organized and sustained an incredible level of resistance to interim government of Roberto Michiletti that was established after the coup, including numerous massive demonstrations across the country. The main umbrella group of the Honduran resistance movement is the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP), and is composed of a wide array of organizations, including indigenous, campesino, human rights, and environmental groups, and unions. Since the election of Porfirio Lobo as president in the federal elections that took place in November, and which the FNRP boycotted, the movement has transformed and sustained itself through moving away from its demand for the return of Zelaya to
its more fundamental demand for the initiation of a “consituyente,” a national process of refounding the country on more equitable and just terms. Indeed, despite the appearance on May 1 of Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro, and continued cries for the return of the exiled Zelaya, the FNRP stated that, “the principal demand of the demonstrators was the initiation of a National Constituent Assembly that generates social, political, and economic changes in the country.” The FNRP and its supporters have also been struggling against threats of violence, intimidation, and even assassination by government and elite-backed goon squads. According to COFADEH, the Committee for the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, as many as 50 Hondurans associated with community, popular, and labour organizations have been murdered since the coup took place. There is no question that these are politically motivated killings designed to intimidate resistance leaders. The murder of teacher Jose Manuel Flores, an active writer and socialist, is a case in point. On March 23, 2010 an unmarked van pulled up to the school where he was working and several men in ski masks rushed in and shot him in broad daylight. This type of repression has galvanized the resistance movement, lending to the outrage demonstrated by the participants in the May Day march. After May Day, the focus of the movement has been a campaign to collect 2 million signatures in support of the National Constituent Assembly by June 28, 2010, the one-year anniversary of the coup.
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 5
students struggle to find work By Arti Patel
For some, school’s out and a new job search is about to begin. According to Statistics Canada at least 23, 000 new jobs were created for youth aged 15-24 in April 2010. However, some employment hopefuls like Amanda Deokaran, is having a hard time finding a position related to her field. The business management student at Ryerson University, who is graduating in October, says the summer job hunt hasnt been too successful. “I find that there are tons of students and others in the same position all looking for not only a full time job, but just even a summer job,” she said. Deokaran has applied to about 50 jobs online, in person and through relatives and friends. She has researched and looked up at least 100 job postings per day in particular jobs that would give her realistic hands-on experience in human resources. Even though she got responses, she is still waiting for a perfect opportunity to use her skills as a soon-to-be graduate. “The more people applying to positions increases the level of competitiveness so actually getting a response from companies of my choice seems to be the hardest,” Deokaran said. Becky Robinson, an employment support counsellor at Ryerson’s Career Centre, recommends not just looking for online postings but rather getting out in the field. “There are tons of postings out there, get out and meet people. You just can’t network online, students end up doing this because they are more comfortable,” she said. Robinson also has tips for students to watch out for while applying for summer jobs. One way to grab your possible employer’s attention is to always be specific with job postings. Never call an employer asking what they have available but rather knowing exactly which position you want. She also recommends reworking the traditional resumes if your job is in the creative field. “Marketing, graphic communications
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management, fashion or even a summer camp job can be shown through creative resumes,” Robinson said. Other tips include looking for postings through associations related to one’s field of interest or even stopping by the place of employment and speaking to a manager about possible positions. Nine white canvas boards are plastered on a wall at Creasians BBQ on Gerrard Street. Visitors leave their mark behind with names, phrases and comments for the restaurant in black and red marker. “Rye High 2010 Wut Wut,” is written in the middle. This sort of atmosphere is exactly what William Cheung wanted in his restaurant— vey casual, something he wants to find in employees. The owner and general manager of the restaurant near Ryerson’s campus describes his ideal employee to have a “good work ethic and to be responsible.” The 26-year-old sits at a table looking at the space around him, remembering he has only been open for a few months. “Our working environment is very different, we try to be relaxed,” he said. While some restaurants may only open doors to trained or experienced staff, Cheung likes the idea of training someone younger and having his employees develop new skills, something he believes why some employees might be hesitant to apply for certain jobs. “We try to hire our own age group. This is our restaurant we are very casual, everyone here is younger than 26,” Cheung said. Peter Zhao, a business student from George Brown says competition and experience do play a factor in his job search. “It’s been pretty competitive, I have been looking in malls and continue to look,” he said. Using tools online like LinkedIn for example is a great way to make a name in the job market and think about future employment opportunities. “You have to find a way to stand out from other people,” Robinson said.
“Just imagine the kind of stuff that goes on behind closed doors” Government restores social assistance to mother after OCAP protest By Lakshine Sathiyanathan A single mother who was denied social assistance benefits because she is married has had her payments restored following intensive public action. Bsra Nor faced eviction from her home in April when her payments were stopped at the beginning of the month. Social Services told her that she was no longer eligible for assistance from Ontario Works because she is married and asked that her husband come in and provide signed documentation that they are a family, the 21-year-old told rabble.ca. She was told that without his attendance, she would not receive her social assistance benefits. Nor was married in Toronto but her husband lives in the United States and is applying for sponsorship to move to Canada. Social Services made the request even though her marital status had stayed the same since she began receiving social assistance nearly a year ago and she updated her situation at her six months interview. Nor did not wish to comment since her social assistance has been reinstated. “[Welfare services] frequently demand that people obtain the cooperation of a third party that the person on a social assistance is in no position to force to do anything,” said John Clarke, an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). “So they may say ‘I want an exemployer to write a letter saying this’ or ‘I want your landlord to send us a letter saying that,’ or ‘I want your roommate to do this or that.’ And when that doesn’t happen, frequently a person’s benefits are suspended and they don’t
get assisted.” Nor’s mother, a resident of Toronto Community Housing who is active in improving conditions in her community, approached OCAP with her daughter’s situation. After sending a letter to North York West Social Services that elicited no response, an organizer in the Somali-Canadian community went to the office to no avail. On a separate occasion, Clarke visited the office with Nor and their position remained unchanged “We decided that we had to take public action simply because we really sort of endorsed all the possibilities of resolving it in another way,” Clarke said. A small protest at City Hall led to a meeting at Mayor David Miller’s Office with Constituency Liaison Karen Duffy, whose office contacted the manager at North York West Social Services. “We met and the issue was resolved. She did get her social assistance, she was put back on and got the money that she was denied,” Clarke said. But Clarke is critical of welfare services and says that such decisions to deny benefits to clients defy the principles of natural justice and administrative fairness. “It’s such a flagrant violation of the principles of natural justice and yet [welfare services] were prepared to go through with it and it took actual public, fairly hard-hitting public action that this woman thankfully was prepared to take in order to get the matter resolved,” he said. “If that’s the kind of stuff that they are prepared to take into the public arena then you can just imagine the kind of stuff that goes on behind closed doors that nobody even knows about.”
Arctic oil spills may be impossible to control By James Burrows, News Editor As the U.S. government opens up an investigation into criminal negligence in the BP oilrig explosion, numerous oil companies are beginning exploratory drilling in the arctic this summer. Complicating matters is the oil exploration off the coast of Greenland. Over the last two years Greenland has been pushing for more autonomy from Denmark. Part of Greenland’s self-government deal involves a $600 million subsidy reduction, representing about half of its economy. Greenland is hoping that oil will play a significant role in offsetting this financial loss. Some estimates say there may be as much oil off the coast of Greenland as there is in some Middle East countries such as Qatar. The problem is that cleaning up any oil spill may be practically impossible. Several oil companies are rushing into the area. Regulations say oil wells must be completed in the same season but the companies themselves say that in many locations the regulations are too burdensome, as relief wells will take months or even years to complete. By that time the ice will have moved in and drilling will not be possible, leaving oil to leak for months under the ice. This becomes difficult to track as it drifts under the ice. Recently Mary Simon the president of the ITK, the national Inuit advocacy organization recently stated in a speech to the Economic Club of Canada that “Against the backdrop of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Inuit are seeking an immediate pause on drilling in the Beaufort Sea in order to take stock.” The government, however, appears to not be too worried about arctic oil exploration or ensuring environmental standards are being followed. Currently there are only three offshore oil rigs operating in Canada but the government is taking a disconcertingly laid back position on the issue. Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice has implied recently that friendly relations with Greenland will be enough to ensure that environmental standards are followed. Environmental organizations, such as the World Wildlife Foundation have said that Canada itself, however, has weaker regulations than the U.S., making the federal government’s assurances unconvincing. In Canada exploratory drilling permits are subject to ministerial discretion but not an environmental assessment. If oil is found and rigs are operational in the far north, companies drilling in the arctic say that they will have a second drilling ship nearby that can begin drilling a relief well quickly if something goes wrong. But there is no guarantee on how long these wells will take to drill. Currently Greenland only requires that a relief well is begun before the ice arrives but not that it is completed. BP is one of many companies hoping to develop arctic oil. Others include Imperial Oil Ltd., Chevron Canada Ltd., Shell Canada Ltd., MGM Energy Corp. and ConocoPhillips Canada Resources Corp. The oil spill off of the Louisiana coast has made it clear that oil companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. As much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day or more are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, much more than the 5,000 barrels a day that BP originally claimed. Currently BP is also injecting Corexit, a chemical dispersant, to the leak at the source and on the surface. Corexit is currently banned in Britain and is known to be very deadly to fish and wildlife. There is also some evidence that company officials from BP were ordering the workers to take shortcuts in safety the day of the accident, and it is alleged that cleanup workers have been told to not wear respirators or they would not be allowed to work on cleanup operations. Last week workers were taken to hospital and one worker has filed a restraining order against BP asking that it stop spraying chemical dispersants into the gulf. Following the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Corexit has been connected to several health conditions, including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders.
PHOTO: INGRIDTAYLAR/FLICKR
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 7
OPINION Stop Israel’s terror—and Harper’s complicity By Jesse McLaren
civilians on the international aid convoy, Harper was welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. This support for Israeli war crimes is part of Harper’s broader support for Canadian and US imperialism, which includes extending the mission in Afghanistan and deporting U.S. Iraq War resisters to jail in the U.S. Harper’s attacks abroad have paralleled attacks at home, on anyone speaking out for Palestinian human rights. His government cut all funding to the Canadian Arab Federation, Christian human rights organization KAIROS, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. While Islamophobic Ann Coulter was allowed into the country, the government delayed the visa for Palestinian MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouti and banned British anti-war MP George Galloway. Meanwhile, both provincial and federal Tories have put forward motions condemning the student-led Israeli Apartheid Week, an event started in Toronto that has mushroomed to involve 60 cities around the world. Harper’s Achilles’ heel
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the midst of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has massacred international solidarity activists bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. This is the latest in a series of escalating acts of terror, in which Harper is complicit. In an attempt to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, 750 people from 40 countries—including 35 international politicians—organized a peaceful humanitarian convoy called Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Early in the morning of May 31, Israeli forces stormed the flotilla in international waters, killing between ten and nineteen people, injuring more than 50, and throwing others in jail. Israel = terror state This massacre and violation of international law is the latest in a long an escalating pattern of Israeli acts of terror: 62 years of illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing, eight years of a growing illegal Apartheid wall, four years of illegal blockade, and one year after the invasion of Gaza that killed more than 1,300 civilians. But Palestinians have continued to resist Israeli occupation and have inspired resistance movements around the world. So Israel has now turned to attacking solidarity movements. In 2003, an Israeli bulldozer crushed U.S. activist Rachel Corrie, and in 2006, Israel bombarded Lebanon to attack Hizbullah, a resistance movement that supports Palestine. But still solidarity with Palestine has continues to grow. Now, in a desperate—and futile—attempt to crush solidarity, Israel has massacred international supporters in international waters. U.S. imperialism’s pit bull
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The larger context for Israeli state terrorism is U.S. imperialism. For decades, it has used Israel and Arab dictators to maintain control of the oil-rich region. Now a declining economy has led the U.S. to increase the use of its military. The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq were supposed to be followed by “regime change” in Syria, Iran, and beyond. But resistance to those two occupations has created a quagmire for Western imperialism that has prevented it, so far, from further invasions. In response, the U.S. organized two proxy wars in 20006—the Israeli assault on Lebanon and the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia—but these were resisted as well. Military resistance has paralleled political resistance, as people across the Arab world have voted for forces hostile to imperialism: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine. Frustrated by the failures of “regime change” and furious that democracy has empowered anti-imperialists, the U.S. has turned to more violence—fermenting civil war in Iraq and Palestine, and unleashing their Israeli pit bull on Palestine and its supporters. Now economic crisis is exacerbating the military quagmire and leading to more war. The war in Afghanistan is spreading to Pakistan, the war in Iraq threatens to spill over into Iran, and now Israel has attacked a peaceful convoy in international waters. Harper = war criminal Stephen Harper claims to “deeply regret the loss of life and the injuries suffered” but he is complicit in Israel’s war crimes. In 2006, Harper made Canada the first country in the world to cut humanitarian aid to Gaza’s democratically elected government. Harper defended Israeli war crimes in Lebanon by calling them “a measured response”, and was silent on Israeli massacres in Gaza. Now, while Israeli forces were murdering
Israel’s massacre of international activists comes from a position of weakness; so too does Harper’s attacks on funding and free speech. In 2003, the anti-war movement prevented Canada from joining the Iraq War, against Harper’s wishes. In 2006, Harper’s defence of Israeli massacres in Lebanon generated a backlash that drained Tory support. In 2008 and 2009, the anti-war movement won Parliamentary motions in support of US Iraq War resisters—against Tory votes—and is pushing on Bill C-440 that would force Harper to accept war resisters. The anti-war movement, which includes Palestine solidarity, is Harper’s Achilles’ heel. In 2008, Harper only clung onto minority rule through an election campaign based on concessions—including promising to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2011, and admitting his support for the Iraq War was “absolutely an error.” Then at the end of last year, Harper only escaped opposition to the Afghan detainee scandal by proroguing Parliament for the second time in two years. Israel and Harper’s attacks will only build global solidarity. Since the war on Gaza, support for the Palestinian struggle has expanded massively. The international campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has been building momentum, winning wider support all over the world. Attacks on any discussion of “Israeli apartheid” have sparked wider debates, introducing even larger numbers to the apartheid analysis of Israel. In Canada, we have a responsibility to challenge our own complicit government, which cut funding to Gaza, supported Israeli war crimes in Lebanon and welcomed war criminal Netanyahu, while attacking the funding and free speech of its own citizens. We have a few days to build the biggest possible rallies for the global day of action on Saturday, June 5 against Israel’s latest crime. And we have just over three weeks to build the biggest possible anti-war protest against the G20 on Saturday, June 26 to challenge all the governments—especially our own—that provide the military, economic, and political support upon which Israel depends. This article originally appeared in a Socialist Worker special supplement, May 31, 2010: http://www.socialist.ca/En/currentissue.htm.
‘Maternal health’ plan ignores women’s health needs Harper’s signature initiative for G8 mired by political controversy By Richa Gomes From June 25 to 27, eight of the world’s leading economic powers will convene for the Many African countries are culturally conservative. Abortion is restricted in more than G8 summit in Huntsville, Ontario to discuss the future of the international community and 90 per cent of African countries, and banned in 14. Illegal abortions are a booming busidevelop approaches to respond to global crises. Women and children’s health represents ness; the number keeps rising even though cases are reported to the police. the Harper government’s “signature initiative” – a maternal health plan that will include A representative for Maria Stopes Tanzania, which runs legal abortion clinics in the contraception, but has no place for abortion. region said, “The unsafe abortion market is huge in Africa.” Opposition parties, women’s activists and even U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, They’re cheap, hushed and quick. accuse the Conservative government of tainting their decision with conservative ideology Advertisements for illegal “fly-by-night” abortions are pasted on the walls of police staand failing to consider the bigger picture with an objective viewpoint. tions, government offices and poor communities. Only a cell phone number is provided so Earlier last month, in Quebec’s Le Soleil, Brigitte Breton’s editorial contended that the that those behind the operations remain anonymous and escape punishment. “Conservatives don’t have the right to impose their vision on the international scene.” Deadly backroom abortions in Africa cost the lives of 25,000 women every year. The Clinton is also accused of expressing her personal opinion, according to an interview methods are unsanitary, painful and life threatening. with Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon on CTV’s Question Period. “I think Mrs. Clinton By providing women with contraceptive options, the Conservative government argues expressed not her government’s position; she expressed her personal point of view,” said that they can help to reduce the number of maternal deaths, the amount of unwanted or Cannon in response to Clinton’s urge to address reproductive health, which includes disunplanned pregnancies, and decrease the spread of HIV/AIDS. cussing access to contraception and abortion. Harper affirmed that though they have “closed the door on the abortion part,” they In a La Presse column, Alain Dubuc argued the government’s stance illustrates a shift would not be “closing doors against any options, including contraception.” to the right in Canadian society. However, an EKOS survey provided exclusively to the Globe and Mail reveals that the majority of Canadians are in favour of abortion rights: “52 Join the People First rally and march against during the G20 Summit in Toronto. Women’s per cent of Canadians describe themselves as ‘pro-choice;’ 27 per cent say they are ‘pro-life’.” organizations and maternal health advocates will lead the march: Saturday, June 26 at NDP MP John Rafferty questioned this “disconnect” between the Canadian abortion 1:00 p.m. at Queen’s Park. policy and the government’s decision to refuse financial aid for abortion services in the developing world. International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda clarified that “Canada’s refusal to fund abortions applies only to the G8 package and won’t change other aid projects.” While Oda asserted that “Canada has never funded a procedure that included abortion”, she said it will continue to honour its current commitments. Until December of last year, these commitments have included unrestricted funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which offers contraceptives and access to abortion. But whether the government will renew its funding to family planning organizations that provide abortion services remains uncertain. Last month, Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth explicitly told a group of international women’s activists in a meeting sponsored by Ruth on Parliament Hill to “shut the fuck up on this issue.” She said, “If you push it, there’ll be more backlash,” which might mean a cut in funding to organizations like the IPPF, which provides abortion services with government funding. “Canada is a still a country with free and accessible abortion. Leave it there.” Ruth advised those present that continuing to press the issue was not the correct strategy to effect change or progress on the maternal health issue as a whole. WHERE THE PEOPLE GATHER While opposition parties and agencies continue the contentious debate to imagine, dream, and work towards justice, dignity, over Harper’s maternal health initiative, many express concern over the and a voice for the many! divisive atmosphere in Canada over abortion. David Morley, the president of Save the Children Canada said, “I’m worried that this important global initiative is going to get derailed by domestic Canadian politics.” Aid organizations are urging Canadians to look past the Conservative government’s decision to withhold funding for abortions and to focus on the government’s decision to champion maternal health in its G8 initiatives. They insist there are straightforward strategies to reduce maternal and infant mortality through nutritional supplements, vaccinations and contraceptive methods. Family planning is not limited to the provision of safe abortions. “The abortion issue, in the big picture, is a small part,” adds Morley. The World Health Organization (WHO) cites that every year, complications during pregnancy or childbirth account for more than half a million deaths worldwide. Unsafe abortions consist of 14 per cent of maternal deaths worldwide. Access to emergency care and the help of trained professionals can help prevent and reduce maternal deaths. According to the WHO, in only 40 per cent of sub-Saharan African cases are mothers attended to by a trained nurse, midwife or doctor. “The key obstacle is pregnant women’s lack of access to quality care before, during and after childbirth.” Jim Abbott, Oda’s parliamentary secretary announced that the government plans to address this “key obstacle.” Canada’s maternal health initiative consists of “strengthening medical systems and improving access to • vaccinations and proper nutrition.” These are the points aid organizations • All events are accessible. are calling attention to, rather than putting all focus on the controversial • Childcare and kids programabortion issue. ming all weekend! The head of the Canadian International Development Agency elaborated on the maternal health initiatives with specific examples, which include “building an obstetrical care hospital in Kandahar, polio eradication efforts in Afghanistan, helping rural poor people in Bangladesh and providing simple nutritional packages for mothers and children where needed.” Harper’s signature initiative might exclude abortion, but its conservainfo on the week of action following the People’s Summit: g20.torontomobilize.org tive nature and that it focuses on urgent healthcare needs in developing June 26: People First! March and Rally, 1pm Queens Park areas appeals to the African nations.
The G20 is taking over Toronto and they aren’t listening to you!
So join the conversation at
the 2010
PEOPLE’S SUMMIT
FREE!
Register Now!
www.peoplessummit2010.ca or 647.702.7914
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 9
FEATURES
10 ryersonfreepress.ca
American Able Satire and sex appeal on the subway
By Julia Caron
Imagine this: you’re headed towards a bus stop on your daily commute to work. You notice a gigantic advertisement plastered on the side of the bus shelter: a young, thin blonde woman wearing nothing but striped socks and a pair of underwear. It’s not even 8:30 in the morning yet, and you’re sighing at the sight of a woman objectified and hypersexualized all in the name of advertising. How cliché. The problem isn’t even necessarily the fact that she’s half-naked, it’s more that you’re sick of seeing the same kind of woman sexualized in these boring, uncreative ways. What’s even worse is that the fine print of the ad tells you that this is not, in fact, a professional model but rather an every day, average gal. Just like you! Ah, American Apparel strikes again, you tell
yourself. As if this speaks to my life. In my reality, all kinds of people are sexy and sexual: people who identify as queer, as disabled, as trans, as fat, and generally, as awesome. But in this world of American Apparel and various other “real beauty” ad campaigns making claims of representing the “average woman,” I never see myself or the kinds of people I know. It still doesn’t speak to my reality, and I’m sure it doesn’t speak to a lot of other people’s realities as well. Luckily, if Holly Norris and Jes Sachse have anything to do with it, that reality might slowly be changing. This May, riders of the TTC in Toronto will bear witness to the critical sass created by the team of photographer Holly Norris who teamed up with her then-roommate and poet/photographer/ pornographer Jes Sachse to satirize the notorious American Apparel ad campaings in a witty, sex-positive way. Their spoofs of the ads, titled American Able, will be shown on television screens in subway stations across the city as part of the Contact Toronto What’s the Hype? Exhibition. One of the most effective ways for feminists to constructively criticize the fashion industry and their problematic ad campaigns is with humour. Most of us have seen Sarah Haskins’ Target Women videos, which are probably the best known contemporary examples of criticizing the rampant stereotyping and sexism that goes on in advertising while making you laugh your ass off at the same time. Holly and Jes’ thoughtful and witty takeup of American Apparel’s notorious ad campaigns is just another way to think about how (and which) women are presented and sold to us in the advertising industry. To talk a bit about why a photo series like American Able is needed, I caught up with these old friends to ask them a few questions.
PHOTOS: HOLLY NORRIS
Ryerson Free Press: Tell me a bit about your goal with this project and how you came up with it. Holly Norris: Originally, it was just a project for a Women and Pop Culture class at Trent University in 2008. While working on the assignment, I saw a photograph on Facebook of the Fat Femme Mafia in a changeroom wearing tight, shiny American Apparel tracksuits. It got me thinking about how different bodies look in clothing, and how we only see one specific kind of body in advertisements. I had been living with Jes that summer, and we had started talking about disabilities and difference. She does a bit of modeling so I asked her if she could model for this little ad thing I was doing for class and it just grew from there. Jes Sachse: Holly was taking Women and Pop Culture I think? We’d lived together during the summer of 2008 and had some shitty experiences that got us talking about disability politics. Holly was relatively new to critical dis theory, and would ask me lots of questions, which got us into great conversations. The shoot was Holly’s idea, but the actual process was collaborative. The second set was all my own clothing, much of which was American Apparel. The poses were all me, some of the ideas, and the general attitude was mine. But Holly is the genius behind the lens. RFP: There are so many sexist ad campaigns out there. Why single out American Apparel? HN: First off, on their ads there are often little blurbs like “Sarah is a student in New York.” So they are positioning their models as representative of ‘regular people.’ However, they all fit into a specific idea of what a ‘regular woman’ is. More practically speaking, for me as a photographer, it is easier to spoof their advertisements because they have that notable style with on-location shoots, simple cotton basics (which is half of my closet anyway), and helvetica font. It is a lot easier to recreate their ads as there is no need for a studio or for high fashion. JS: God. American Apparel is sexy. I dunno about Holly but I love their style. It’s andro and ‘basic’ and hipster. Lots of lycra, lots of ‘your body as is’ type clothing. However, model and sales clerk wise? Tall skinny white people. The usual. The fact that AA is hyper sexual appeals to me. The fact that the lens isn’t really on an empowered body, is less appealing. Sexy sells. But why does sexy always seem to intersect with misogyny? Ultimately, AA is a popular brand of choice for hipsters, many of whom are educated and/or are familiar with the provocative nature of their ads. American Able doesn’t mock from the outside. It mocks from the inside. I like that. RFP: What do you hope people will take away from the American Able series? HN: I’m really interested in where it will be seen. It is show-
ing on digital screens that are typically ad space, and has the potential to make people do a double take and question what they are seeing and how it differs from a regular ad. I think the realization that it’s a spoof makes people question and critique why – why do they only ever see able-bodied people in fashion advertising? People with visible disabilities are rendered invisible by mass media, and I think the reactions to American Able really highlight that. Even when there are claims of ‘diversity’ it is usually really lacking, to say the least. One rarely sees people with disabilities in advertising, unless it’s in a group photo and then it often seems more tokenizing than anything else. JS: It’s Holly’s project, but personally? I hope people see these ads in the TTC, laugh, and put on something skin tight when they go home and stare at their bodies. It’s like an invitation to a healthy dose of vanity. Why does fashion necessarily have to give people complexes? I’d love to be a model. I love designers and fashion, it’s art on bodies. I guess I love modeling because I feel like I embody a piece of that stare in my own work. That ‘i see you lookin at me’ stare. I know I don’t look like a stereotypical model, and I like my body, but I get stared at a lot, in a different way. So when I pose, I have the opportunity to engage with my voyeurs, or act indifferent about their gaze, or make them question the politics in their stare. Or seduce them. Or pierce them. It’s really fun. RFP: The first thing I took away from the photos was a mischievious, sexy sense of humour. What do you think about the place of humour in criticizing media of an oppressive nature? Do you think it is more or less effective than, say, boycotts or other more traditional activist approaches? HN: I don’t think it’s necessarily more or less effective, it’s simply a different venue for activism. I like it. The images won’t ask you to sign their petition or join them on the streets, but you can sit and look and develop your own thoughts and opinions. And then I hope it will inspire people to at the very least be more critical of the advertising they are usually bombarded with. Spoofs point out the problems with advertising that one might not otherwise identify. It’s a really interesting space. I really like looking at spoof advertisements; I love Adbusters and that sort of thing. We live in this culture where we are so bombarded by advertisements that it would be strange not to respond or react to it. I am so excited to be putting American Able in a space where we would otherwise be seeing corporate advertisements over and over again. I am hoping it will make people ask, ‘why am I not seeing ads like these? Why are bodies like Jes’s not seen in major ad campaigns?’ JS: Humour is my life. On the surface, it’s easy to take me less seriously because of it, but humour also gets you in the door in a way that a rebellious placard never will (lamentably). Me boycotting AA is ridiculous. You show me a fashion line that rocks my disability politics. None of ‘em do! I’ll wear what I want to, because my body, like everything else, contradicts itself. For an extended version of the interview, visit Julia Caron’s blog at alagarconniere.blogspot.com To check out Jes Sachse’s work visit crookedcanvas.ca and for more of Holly Norris’ photography visit hollynorris.ca
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 11
Tuition fees going up, up, up in September By Alexandra Bosanac
For the fifth consecutive year, students will have to dig deeper to pay for their education because Ryerson can’t cover its operational costs. The motion to raise tuition fees for undergraduate programs by an overall five per cent passed unanimously at April’s Board of Governors meeting. That means returning students can expect to pay four per cent more, or about $230, while new students will pay 4.5 per cent more, about $260. Tuition for professional programs at the Chang School of Continuing Education will also go up by eight per cent. But it’s the international students who will feel the sting the most: new students enrolled in the MBA in Business and MBA/MMSc in Management of Technology and Innovation will see their tuition fees balloon by a whopping 25 per cent, whereas returning international students will be spared, sort of; they will only pay five per cent more. The decision comes at a time when the university is in good financial shape—the 2009/10 budget balanced, enrollment and retention is high, pensions are secure, the campus is expanding and Ryerson’s reputation is growing—but since it’s unclear what funding structure will replace the Reaching Higher program, the Board of Governors are adamant about taking a ‘conservative’ approach to the 2010/11 budget—that is, cutting costs and raising fees. The Reach Higher program committed to $6.2 billion in funding to post-secondary schools over four years in 2006. Now that that’s over, the province made a different commitment, and have only committed to $310 million of new funding for a single year, rather than dedicating funding for more than one year. Ryerson has two major sources of revenue: students, who supply 45 per cent of Ryerson’s revenue, and the Government of Ontario, which also has a $25 billion
deficit, its largest ever. The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) is concerned that students will have to pick up the province’s slack. “As the economy is shifting to a knowledge based economy, post secondary education is becoming a requirement in order to be competitive in the marketplace. It’s imperative that we shift our priorities and understand that we need to fund it, and what the RSU believes is that post secondary education absolutely needs to be public and accessible and high quality and for that to be the case, the funding can’t come completely from students,” said VP of Education Liana Salvador. Salvador said Board members are not taking enough of a stand for students. “How are we going to lobby the government if we’re just downloading the Ontario Government’s policies?” Concerned Ryerson’s operating expenses will go up faster than its revenue, the Board cited inflation as another reason why they needed to raise fees. According to a statement from Sheldon Levy, “pension costs increase proportionately with salaries while the costs for other employee benefits such as health, dental, life and disability insurance are projected to go up nine per cent in 2010/11.” The cost of basic utilities will drive up the bill for food plans and in residence fees five per cent come September. And don’t forget raises: salaries total 80 per cent of Ryerson’s operating expenses. The RSU staged a carnival to protest the motion, setting up a canopy with a laptop station by the library building at Gould and Victoria Streets where students could petition board members by email to vote ‘no’ on the proposal. Students sent more than 700 emails until the last minute to every board member, including its student members..
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Technological disconnect By Vanessa Santilli
I am extremely connected. On a daily basis, I usually check my three e-mail accounts multiple times and take my cell phone with me wherever I go. It’s a rare occasion when I don’t log into Facebook every day. Planning a trip to the Dominican Republic for a week, I didn’t think about how disconnected from technology I was going to be. But when my travel agent told me that my friend and I would only have 15 minutes of free internet access to share per day, it started to sink in. My worry only increased when we were told about the high cost of calling home. With calls costing upwards of $40 for only a few minutes, I was going to be making one collect call when I arrived and that was going to be it. How was I going to survive being so removed from technology? To be honest, I thought it almost impossible. At the airport, I swear I felt the buzz of a cell phone on vibrate in my carry-on bag. Call it a technological mirage of the senses. But upon arriving in sunny Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, the technological world was the last thing on my mind. Instead of friend requests and new messages in my inbox, my attention was focused on the ocean, tanning and the beautiful scenery. The first few days I was so busy, I didn’t even stop to think about missing cyberspace. I’d log in to tell my loved ones that I was alive and that was it. I thought I was going to be like a junkie who quits cold turkey. But it was just the opposite. I felt like nothing was missing from my day (although I’ll admit, being in a tropical paradise might have played
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some part in this). ‘Who needs technology?’ I thought to myself. I am now independent and free from the shackles of the World Wide Web. But then came the stumbling block. One day, I logged into Facebook to message my boyfriend to say hello. My friend had used half of our allotted time so I had roughly seven minutes left. Little did I know that Facebook gives you a privacy test when you log in from another country. It displays random photos from your friend’s photo albums, making you identify which friend the photo belongs to. With time running out, an angry guest screaming at the concierge beside us for his lost luggage The author during her seven minutes of vacation internet usage. and photos with obscure faces being displayed, everything seemed to space, free from distraction. I discovered that social messaging tools were created to bring be against me. The message had to wait until I didn’t miss the internet. It was the people us closer together, more often than not, they the next day. that I missed. I missed hearing their voices push us further apart. We communicate I felt cut off. I couldn’t e-mail. I couldn’t and seeing their faces, not scrolling through without actually interacting. We speak withcall. I couldn’t even send a text. It was an their online profiles. out actually saying anything. unsettling feeling. The freedom I was feeling Now that I’m back from my trip, I have Contrary to my original notions, a little had now become restrictive. to admit, my time spent on the internet is disconnect is not such a bad thing after all. The next day – once I passed the privacy less than half of what it used to be. To be In fact, at the risk of getting tossed out of test – I began to enjoy being cut off. Somehonest, I just don’t see the point. If I want Generation Y, I would even go so far as to say times you need time off to be in your own to speak with someone, I’ll call them. While it’s a good thing.
Ryerson Free Press June 2010
pride is political
DAN RIOS
The radical roots of Pride As Pride Toronto bans the term “Israeli Apartheid” from this year’s march, Christine Beckermann looks back on the radical roots of the gay liberation movement, and how the rights we have today didn’t come without a fight—or radical politics.
T
his summer will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Pride Day celebrations in Toronto. For young people who may be heading out to their first Pride, it would be easy to think that the history of the struggle for LGBT rights has been an onward and upward advance of rational ideas over bigotry and hatred; that through reasoned argument, society and the state have come to accept the case for equal rights. In fact, the struggle for queer rights has been a struggle with advances and setbacks, and the politics at the heart of the struggle at different periods have been critical. While there is an early and vibrant history of people fighting for equality for homosexuals that was developed primarily in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these struggles came to an end with the rise of fascism and Stalinism in the 1930s. Even after the defeat of Nazi Germany, there was a conservative climate in many countries epitomized by McCarthyism in the U.S. This climate meant that groups that formed around gay equality in this period, such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, tended to be very cautious in their outlook and focused on education and gaining respectability. It took the social upheaval sparked by the Black civil rights movement to start to break through this conservative climate and it was at the height of the student, antiwar, women’s liberation and Black power movements that the modern gay rights movement burst onto the scene. There are two major events that mark the start of the modern fight for gay liberation in Canada. The riots which took place at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City on June 28, 1969 set off a radical movement for gay liberation in the U.S. which had impacts in Canada, Europe and other countries around the world. And the bathhouse raids in Toronto in February 1981 brought the fight for gay rights militantly into the streets here.
Stonewall The police raid which took place at the Stonewall bar was nothing unusual. Raids were a regular feature at gay bars at the time. In the preceding three weeks, five other New York bars
had been raided. These raids generally created more fear than resistance. But what turned Stonewall into a touchstone for a new movement was the reaction of the patrons that night. Police were used to violent confrontations with students, blacks, antiwar and other protestors, but they expected gays and lesbians to just submit to the humiliation and harassment of the raids. Instead, the patrons who were kicked out of the bar that night, many of whom were involved in the antiwar or other movements at the time, started to fight back. Rey “Sylvia Lee” Rivera, a drag queen who was at Stonewall the night of the riot described what happened: “I don’t know if it was the customers or if it was the police, but that night everything just clicked. Everybody was like, ‘Why the fuck are we doing all this for? Why should we be chastised? Why do we have to pay the Mafia all this kind of money to drink in a lousy fuckin’ bar? And still be harassed by the police?’ It didn’t make any sense. The people at them bars, especially at the Stonewall, were all involved in other movements. And everybody was like, ‘We got to do our thing. We’re gonna go for it!’ “When they ushered us out, they very nicely put us out the door. There we were standing across the street... But why? Everybody’s looking at each other. Suddenly the nickels, dimes, pennies and quarters started flying. ‘You already got your payoff and here’s some more!’” Rivera described the riot as beautiful and exciting. “I’m out there being a revolutionary for everybody else, and now it’s time to do it for my own people”. The police were completely caught off guard and forced to retreat back into the Stonewall bar. The Tactical Patrol Force was called in to control the mob, which was now using a parking meter as a battering ram. As the patrol force advanced, the crowd did not disperse, but instead doubled back and reformed behind the riot police. For the next several nights, the crowd would return in ever increasing numbers, handing out leaflets and rallying themselves. By the end of the weekend, the Stonewall bar was burnt out, but the modern gay liberation movement was born. After the riots, an informal committee of people from Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society met to organize a march which drew out
somewhere between 500 and 2,000 protestors. The march committee started holding meetings and decided that they needed a name for themselves. Martha Shelley, a lesbian activist who was part of the committee, isn’t sure who came up with the name Gay Liberation Front, but remembers pounding her fist on the table and yelling in exultation, “That’s it! We’re the Gay Liberation Front!” Shelley says “GLF was it because it was like the National Liberation front of North Vietnam – the Vietcong. They were like David fighting against Goliath, fighting for their nation and for the liberation of their people. We were all against the war, at least all of us in GLF.” The GLF was not only dedicated to gay rights, but also to the broader social ideals which dominated the 1960s, including peace, equality and economic justice. Between 1969 and 1972, the GLF was an influential force, and grew to more than 80 chapters across the United States and abroad. The GLF in the UK produced a manifesto in 1971 which talked about how gay people are oppressed, beginning with the family, through schools, the church, media, employment and on and on. The first aim in the manifesto was “to rid society of the genderrole system which is at the root of our oppression.” This would be done in alliance with the fight for women’s liberation. The politics of the new gay liberation movement were completely intertwined with the politics of the broader left at the time. In Canada the gay rights movement was very active in the decade following Stonewall, from the first gay rights march which saw 100 people rally in Ottawa in 1971, to the fight against antigay bigot Anita Bryant’s visit to Toronto, to the defence of members of the Body Politic collective after they were charged under obscenity laws for printing an article called “Men Loving Boys Loving Men.”
Bathhouse raids But the key event that brought the LGBT movement in Canada massively into the streets came in February 1981 when police raided four gay bathhouses in downtown Toronto, arresting nearly 268 men and charging them under the “bawdy house” section of the criminal code. It was the largest mass arrest in Canada since the Octo-
ber Crisis in 1970. People who were arrested that night described the brutality and violence of the police. People were physically assaulted and verbally abused by homophobic cops. After a group of men had been corralled into the showers in one bathhouse, a cop remarked that it was too bad that the pipes in the shower room couldn’t be hooked up with gas instead of water, harking back to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. George Hislop, a leader in the gay rights movement at the time, described the behaviour of the police as “gestapo-like” and the police destruction of the establishments was so bad that one of them never reopened. The arrests had an immediate effect, politicizing and galvanizing the gay rights movement here. The night after the arrest, over 3,000 people joined in a protest on Yonge Street which marched down to 52 Division, chanting “Fuck You 52.” The march then moved on to Queen’s Park to protest the Conservative government’s inaction on updating the Human Rights code to include sexual orientation. Participants in the march described the anger and intensity of the crowd. When the police tried to block protestors from turning onto Dundas Street to march to 52 Division, protestors swarmed through. And when a streetcar tried to push through the march, protestors began pushing it and rocking it, breaking a window before the driver finally decided to stay put. Two weeks later, another march was held, this time drawing 5,000 people. And on March 6, a Gay Freedom Rally was held, effectively becoming Toronto’s first pride event. The responses to the Stonewall and bathhouse raids reflected a movement and a community that had had enough, and that was no longer willing to sit back. People’s anger and frustration poured into the streets, and into a new movement which would pave the way for many of the rights which we have today. These rights have not come easily, and this history of ordinary people who were inspired by other groups fighting against oppression, and who saw their liberation as being part of a larger struggle, should not be lost or sanitized out of Pride. This article originally appeared at rabble.ca on May 28, 2010.
Shame
Can we save Pride Toronto from itself? Alastair Woods
For the first time since its inception thirty years ago, Pride Toronto has voted to ban an LGBT community group from its annual parade. On Friday, May 21, Pride Toronto’s board of directors voted 4-3 to ban the term “Israeli Apartheid” from all official Pride events, effectively banning the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from participating in this years Pride Parade or any related festivities. Over a hundred people gathered outside Pride Toronto’s offices to register their opposition to the ban, chanting “Face your community” and “Politics made Pride.” Executive Director Tracy Sandilands, Co-Chair Genevieve D’Iorio and Interim Co-Chair Margaret Ngai delivered statements to the media. All three blamed the threat of financial repercussions as the basis for their decision, which drew chants of “It’s about money” and “Fight the city not the queers” from the energetic crowd. “Pride’s priorities are now set by the city, corporate sponsors and external lobby groups,” lamented queer filmmaker Richard Fung. Speakers also argued that the use of the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ contravened the city’s anti-discrimination policy, and therefore was not welcome in the festivities. Elle Flanders, a former board member of Pride Toronto, says that Pride has forgotten its roots. “I’ve marched with many outspoken political groups during Pride, starting with the Jewish Feminist Anti-Fascist League,” she said, “Pride at its core is about political and sexual expression. When queer political groups are banned for advocating equality rights, it’s no longer Pride.” While controversial, the term Israeli apartheid is anything but a fringe phrase. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a prominent anti-apartheid activist from South Africa, has used the comparison, as has former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the prestigious Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa and even Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The fiasco began when after months of sustained political attacks Pride Toronto announced it would institute a sign vetting policy. The proposal sent the community into an uproar, forcing Pride to embarrassingly backtrack and repeal the policy. The latest move to censor QuAIA was a reaction to a motion before
Toronto City Council accusing Pride Toronto of being in violation of the city’s anti-discrimination policy. The motion was submitted by York West Councilor and mayoral candidate Giorgio Mammoliti, who infamously opposed a bill extending spousal benefits to same-sex couples as an MPP. His babbling rant went from homophobic to downright strange when he ended off his diatribe by reading excerpts from an S&M manual. Letters criticizing the decision came from Zackie Achmat, a South Africa AIDS and anti-apartheid activist, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Aswat, a Palestinian queer women’s organization. Despite her pronouncements of how hard the decision was to make, Sandilands couldn’t fool the angry crowd. On May 13, Xtra released a set of leaked emails from Sandilands to staff in which she clearly demonstrates who is more important to her—and it’s not the community. “Well, as expected, as soon as the news broke the left began howling again,” wrote Sandilands, “I have no doubt we will also be getting them [protest letters] again, as will our sponsors, and we will be mostly ignoring them.” The decision continued to haunt Pride Toronto when organizers of the original Pride march in Toronto signed an open letter condemning the decision. This was followed by another embarrassing blow to the organization when Dr. Alan Li, an esteemed activist and community organizer, refused to accept the position of Grand Marshall. Jane Farrow rejected the honoured dyke title and Michelle Walker declined Pride Toronto’s 2010 community service award, both citing the decision of Pride Toronto to ban the phrase Israeli apartheid at Pride events. Activists have long lamented the corporatization of Pride and the cooptation of queer rights struggles by profit seeking business, but this act of censorship demonstrates without a doubt what Pride has become: an organization more loyal to TD Bank than the very queer and trans communities who gave birth to it. Given the tremendous rift with the community, the future of Pride Toronto is uncertain. But one thing’s for sure, we’re in for an eventful Pride Parade this year.
Ryerson’s Got pride but it hasn’t been easy By Victoria Pinhorn Courtesy of RyePRIDE
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laced at the cusp of the Queer Village and right downtown Toronto, Ryerson is as just about as diverse as universities come…. however this was not always the case. In preparation for Toronto Pride 2010, RyePRIDE one of the Equity Service Groups of the Ryerson Students’ Union, has been doing some research into queer history at Ryerson and digging up some unsettling information. In 2003 a report was commissioned by the Ryerson Students’ Union going as far back as 1977 when former student Doug Chin initiated the Ryerson Homophile Foundation, now known as RyePRIDE. This was the birthplace of a Ryerson pride group and the spark that caused a fire of debate around homophobia and gay rights on campus. The Gay-Buster campaign, the League against Homosexuals, office fires, beatings, verbal abuse, vandalism, bomb threats and death threats are all obstacles that RyePRIDE has had to face in its thirty three year existence. Often people are surprised by this tumultuous past, however the struggle continues at Ryerson. This year RyePRIDE was faced with accounts of verbal abuse, poster vandalism, and the untimely death of one of our out and proud alumnus Christopher Skinner, who was brutally murdered just a few blocks from the Ryerson campus. RyePRIDE is constantly moving forward and working towards a completely equitable campus, however the difficult grassroots past is always in our minds. This year’s overall Pride
theme is “Celebrating 30 Years of Pride” and RyePRIDE and the Continuing Education Students’ Association of Ryerson (CESAR) are working with this theme and focusing on how our thirty three years on campus have coincided with thirty years of successes and struggles during Pride Toronto. Being out and proud is difficult even in our multicultural city and RyePRIDE wishes to go into this year’s Pride Week with not only the past but also the future in mind. For the past decade RyePRIDE has had a contingent in the Pride Parade as well as the Dyke March and celebrated the week of Pride with campus events. This year will be no different. On June 30 Ryerson will show its pride with a Kick Off Barbeque at 4 on the Ram in the Rye patio. On Saturday June 3 Ryerson students will take part in the Dyke march, ending at Queen’s Park with a performance by Cyndi Lauper. Finally a contingent from Ryerson will march in the Parade during the afternoon of Sunday June 4th and will end the Pride Parade at the Ram in the Rye pub for a Closing Celebration Party. Although the days of bathhouse raids and the Stonewall riots are over it is hard to forget the efforts put forth by the founding members of RyePRIDE, Pride events at Ryerson and Pride Toronto. Inevitably RyePRIDE would not be able to be the “queer voice of Ryerson” and our campus would not be as accepting without their perseverance and overall pride. In celebrating this year we hope to commemorate the hard work and dedication of these people by making this the best Pride yet!
DAN RIOS
Experiencing Jane and Finch through Young Women’s Eyes By Kaitlin Fowlie Outreach through Jane’s Walk has enabled hundreds of communities to open up to people external to them. For the community surrounding Jane Street and Finch Avenue, Jane’s Walk has allowed for them to fight back against the dubious stereotypes that abound. Jane’s Walks are part of a series of free neighbourhood walking tours as part of an effort to reintroduce city dwellers to the various unique necks of their city from the perspectives of neighbourhood inhabitants. Starting off in Toronto in 2007, these walks quickly grew from local roots to an international phenomena, now available across the U.S., Europe, India, and Africa. Jane Jacobs, who inspired the concept, was a writer and activist primarily interested in urban planning. She believed that the most effective way to get to know and make a change in one’s environment was not by
manipulating models or drawing concepts from Utopian cities, but getting out and walking around the actual landscape. In Toronto, Jane’s Walk has experienced great success at showcasing the city’s diverse beauty. The Jane and Finch walk, called “Jane and Finch from Young Women’s Eyes,” shed light on an unassuming neighbourhood that thrives with history, pulsates with youth culture, and efforts to achieve unity in the neighbourhood and support of the city at large. The Jane and Finch chapter of Jane’s Walk is guided by seven members of WORC IT (Women of Race Climbing It Together), a community-based organization that serves surrounding areas by mentoring youth, women, and racialized people. The girls and women responsible for the success of the group range from high school to university age, and all share some personal specula-
tions on the sites of the neighbourhood that was once home to celebrities Jully Black and Glenn Lewis. Jane and Finch saw a rapid increase in population from 1961–1971, the period to which it attributes much of the hasty infrastructure responsible for early community problems. Residents poured in from all around the world, causing the population to spring from 1,300 to 33,000. During this time, low-income families were housed in brand new high rise apartments, only to become isolated from other residential areas. As the area continued to develop, conflicts between income and racial groups occurred. Driftwood Avenue is an example of the harsh income divide between the affluent Italian population on one side of the street and the Driftwood Community Centre on the other. One inhabitant of the community centre was forced to wait two years for their
sink to get fixed. This disparity in the standard of living sets the street worlds apart. Unsurprisingly, the two sides have virtually no interaction. It wasn’t until 1973 that proper attention was paid to the area by community workers and the local government. Community pride became a main concern, and various service organizations such as women’s shelters, legal clinics and health centres, were established. Today, the area has maintained the initiatives that initially improved the neighbourhood, and as the participants of Jane’s Walk plod through the rain, Mayor David Miller shows his support and belief in the community. Along the walk, he frequently stops to shake hands with people waiting for the bus or on a coffee run, saying to the group, “in a city this big, people come up to the mayor and say what’s up. That is something about Toronto I think is great. It really says something about this city.” Miller has to leave early to chat with some students who want to set up a skate park at Lawrence Heights. Citizens can rest assured that the Mayor truly believes in the pursuits of the people of Toronto, and it shows. In a recent effort to reshape public discourse, a new nickname was imposed on the Jane and Finch area—University Heights. The walking guides assure the group that likely 90 per cent of the inhabitants aren’t aware of this, and those who are, are less than thrilled about it. However, if there is anything Jane’s Walk has taught me about the neighbourhood, it is that no one can take away the soul of the Jane and Finch crowd. Its un-restrainable multicultural flavour will shine through its imposed epithets as well as any reputation, and that will be what saves it. This is what so many love about Toronto—our neighbourhoods are self made. With a little faith and facilitation from outreachoriented figures like the mayor and participation from the community at large, Jane and Finch can thrive. The neighbourhood has a lot going for it—thanks to its passionate inhabitants who are eager to show off, and cultivate, the beauty that exists in the unassuming vicinity.
The history behind the pretty white dress By Priyanka Jain
As the warm summer weather approaches, it is now time to enjoy the outdoors. When one thinks of summer, reunions with friends, vacations, and all sorts of spontaneous ventures come to mind. Now that the weather permits, summer is also well known for that special occasion in a couple’s life: the wedding. The sun is out, flowers are blooming, and the bride elegantly walks in her spotless white, figure-hugging wedding gown. This beautiful dress, that has sparked reaction by all those who have laid eyes on the bride, has its own story to tell. Although it seems customary in the Western culture that the bride is to wear a traditional white dress, this trend dates back to the early 1800s. During the 1800s, white was typically the colour of mourning; women wore white to signify the loss of a close relative or loved one. It wasn’t until 1840, when Queen Victoria chose to wear a white satin dress with lace trims on her wedding day that white became the new trend for wedding dresses. Victoria’s dress set the standards for upper-class woman who could afford to imitate the Queen’s dress style.
For those who were not as wealthy, those women wore more affordable colours on their wedding day. By the 1890s however, the prosperous economy during the Industrial Revolution made it possible for more women to live their dream of having the perfect white dress for their wedding day. They idolized Queen Victoria for her courage and ability to pull off the glamorous white dress. Department stores came into existence, and white fabric was sold much more cheaply. White wedding dresses had now become a universal trend, as opposed to one solely for the upper-class. With the booming trend of white dresses, fashion in the 1800s became much more glamorous. However, this came to a halt at the beginning of World War I, when women no longer dressed extravagantly; instead, their look was much simpler, and used less material. Coco Chanel was the first to introduce the short white wedding dress in the 1920s, and wore one with a long train. This also solidified white being the accepted colour for wedding dresses. When the Great Depression hit, brides made do with a
dress they already owned. For women who already married in a white dress, it was common for them to dye the dress, and re-wear it. After the war however, the economy stabilized again, and the expensive taste in fashion made a comeback. Queen Victoria-inspired dresses were back in demand, and the idea of an extravagant wedding was practiced by many. The expensive, glamorous wedding still continues to this day, where brides have a wide variety of dresses to choose from. Not only is there the standard white, but there are also similar colours, such as ivory and champagne. The bride can also choose the length of her train, and how heavy she wants it to be—not to mention the detail, or lack of detail, the bride wants on her dress. The list goes on, and brides today can customize their wedding dress from head to toe. The white wedding dress is such a tradition, that many choose not to question the colour. Although the white wedding dress has had its ups and downs since the nineteenth century, this recognized colour is here to stay, and will continue to be a hit all around the world.
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 17
Summertime, Markets Abound While living in London, England, Haseena Manek captures one of the world’s most famous markets: Camden
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PHOTOS: HASEENA MANEK
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 19
CULTURE NXNE aims to remain international and accessible By Ronak Ghorbani
Iggy and the Stooges will play a free concert at Yonge-Dundas Square on June 19.
For seven days starting on June 14, thousands of music fans will devour Toronto in a live music feeding frenzy during the sixteenth annual North by Northeast (NXNE) music and film festival. With 650 bands playing, Toronto will have the likes of Iggy and the Stooges, The Raveonettes, De La Soul and late 1970s punk heroes X grace its stages. “It’s a fantastic chance to see a huge variety of bands, artists and performers that you would never get at one time in Toronto,” said NXNE communications manager Mike Tanner. “It’s an amazing concentration of talent from all around North America and far beyond.” With a $50 wristband, festival goers are granted access to every movie screening and concert but venues only allow a certain number of NXNE passes as their space allows, usually to those who arrive early. Since its inception in 1994, NXNE has morphed from a small-scale festival with a focus on local acts to an international event. “Whereas once North by Northeast would probably have been a great indie rock festival, there’s no way that you can categorize it as an indie festival anymore,” Tanner said. “You’ll hear everything from experimental, to alt, to country, to dance, to metal. It’s a huge range of diversity.” Some of the international acts featured at this year’s festival include Malta’s folk/pop duo Chasing Pandora, punk/blues influenced Australians Kirk Special, Greenland’s ukulele folk songstress Nive and indie/experimental group Peruvians Resplandor. And even with an international focus, NXNE is still the perfect breeding ground for up-and-coming Canadian artists. “Our submission process begins in October each year and we get between 2,500 to 3000 submissions from all over the place,” said Tanner. “Naturally we get a lot more from Canada than the Tel Aviv area, for example. All submissions are listened to and [the reviewers are] not particularly looking for where these bands are from. They’re listening for: Is this interesting? Is it new? Is it not cliché?” One local band that is returning for their third
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time to NXNE is Toronto’s indie/rock band the Great Bloomers, who are currently signed to indie-record staple MapleMusic. “I really love living in Toronto during North by Northeast,” said lead vocalist and recent Ryerson Radio and Television Arts graduate Lowell Sostomi. And although NXNE presents a chance for smaller acts to gain exposure, over the past 16 years the festival has increasingly garnered corporate interest. “The first time we played I didn’t like it at all. There was a lot of corporate stuff going on like schmoozing that sometimes it doesn’t seem like it was about the music,” Lowell said. Lowell does note, however, that festivals such as NXNE still present a chance for bands to check each other out and forge collaborations and make connections that can lead to tours. But even with corporate sponsorships, NXNE is still all about the music, Tanner said, and it has also helped keep ticket prices low. “We deliberately maintain an affordable price for our wristbands and passes,” Tanner said, adding that South by Southwest, a similar annual music festival that takes place in Austin, Texas, is much more expensive. “In Austin the wristbands are $170 and the platinum [all access] passes are $1200,” Tanner said. “Regular people are not going to buy them. Because of that, South By has become an industry event.” Besides the $50 wristband, other options include a one day $25 film and concert pass. There’s also the $100 student-priced priority pass granting access to shows, films and conference sessions which includes workshops on earning a living as a songwriter, beat making, and urban music in Canada today. And in hopes of keeping the festival accessible there are free concerts taking place at outdoor venues including Yonge-Dundas Square, Union Station, Bellevue Square Park and Holy Trinity Square. “We want to spread the wealth around,” said Tanner.
Must-see shows at NXNE Artist: Iggy and the Stooges Why: Classic punk rock staple, known for putting on a wild show Date: June 19 Venue: Yonge-Dundas Square Access: FREE Artist: De La Soul and Kid Sister Why: De La Soul make 1980s iconic hip hop and Kid Sister is one of the fastest growing female rap artists Date: June 17 Venue: Yonge-Dundas Square Access: FREE Artist: Emma-Lee Why: Has a jazzy Feist thing going on but with an original twist and a soothing voice Date: June 17 Venue: The Painted Lady (218 Ossington Ave.) Access: NXNE wristband/pass Artist: Grand Analog Why: Innovative Canadian hip hop hailing from Winnipeg Date: June 17 Venue: Rivoli (332 Queen St. W.) Access: NXNE wristband/pass Artist: Great Bloomers Why: Toronto indie rock band puts on a raucous show Date: June 17 Venue: El Mocambo (464 Spadina Ave.) Access: NXNE wristband/pass Artist: Kirk Special Why: Australian blues punk with overlays of raspy addictive vocals Date: June 18 Venue: Hideout (484 Queen St. W.) Access: NXNE wristband/pass
For full details on the festival visit www.nxne.com.
PHOTO: KRIS KRUG
Regent Park School of Music “Raises the Bar” at Annual Fundraiser By Elizabeth Chiang When Regent Park School of Music (RPSM) opened its doors in 1999, its goal was to provide quality, subsidized music lessons to youth in Regent Park and other areas of Toronto. Eleven years later, the school’s mandate lives on through its students, teachers and supporters, many of whom came out to the annual fundraiser on May 11. The event was aptly named “Raising the Bar” because the community did, indeed, raise the bar through this program. ‘The school is in high demand. RPSM recently opened a satellite location in the Jane/Finch area. With 225 students currently enrolled and about 100 on the waiting list, the most in-demand instruments are the piano, guitar and violin. “We’re working on diminishing this waiting time, and the list in general, by aggressively tackling it as part of our expansion plan,” said Richard Marsella, director of the school. Charlotte and Ranmini, who performed vocals and the flute respectively in the finale performance at the fundraiser, are both members of the choir and have been attending Regent Park for almost eight years each. They both said that the highlight of their studies so far was performing with the choir at a Blue Jays game opener several years ago. In addition to school and friends, the girls make time to practice several instruments. When asked whether they would want to take up any new musical endeavours in the future, the girls had no doubt. Charlotte enthused about playing the guitar and Ranmini said she used to play violin, but would like to learn a stringed instrument. With over 220 tickets sold and 24 lots in the silent auction, approximately $90,000 was raised to support the school’s ongoing programs and new projects, which means that more students like Charlotte and Ranmini can attend.
Marsella stated that the goal of RPSM’s expansion plan is to increase the student body to ten times its current size, by the year 2015. “The turnout [at the fundraiser] was very good,” he continued. Despite the rain on Tuesday night, the well-heeled crowd munched on appetizers while being entertained by the Juno award winning Brandi Disterheft Trio, who provided ongoing entertainment throughout the evening. Highlights from the silent auction included a visit to CBC Radio’s Studio Q for a live taping of “Q” with Jian Ghomeshi, a private jazz piano concert with RPSM alumnus Thompson Thompson EgboEgbo, a guitar signed by Gordon Lightfoot, and an evening with literary host Eleanor Wachtel, which was auctioned off to the highest bid of the evening, for $1200. Other performances of the evening included Chris Patterson of the Arrogant Worms, singer/songwriter Micah Barnes, songwriter Dan Hill, who performed his hit single Sometimes When We Touch to the delight of the crowd and Dave Bidini from the Rheostatics, who read an excerpt from his book On a Cold Road. Marsella has an extensive background in music education, arts management, and artistic programming, which is why he has so many connections to Canadian talent. “I met Dave through my former position as the director of the Brampton Indie Arts Festival, and Micah and Dan jumped in specifically for this event,” he said. He hopes to foster ongoing relationships from the ground-level up by getting successful artists to give back to the community. Although Marsella continues to compose and create his own material – he is in the process of writing a quirky puppet opera that he hopes to premiere in a year or two – teaching
keeps calling him back. “My passions lie in this realm,” he said, “It’s such a creative outlet – you get so much back from the enthusiasm of the kids.” It’s R. Murray Schafer who Marsella credits as a huge influence on his approach to music education, and he added, “equally, the Nihilist Spasm Band teaches me a lot, as they inject a constructive sense of anarchy into their music, and there is a healthy social aspect to what they do. They’ve gotten together every Monday night to make music for the past thirty-five years!” RPMS currently follows the Royal Conservatory of Music curriculum, which is heavily exam based. Marsella hopes to develop a larger, broader based curriculum for the school that would complement the conservatory curriculum and he would like to see a syllabus that reflects more composers and works in Canadian, contemporary, pop and jazz music. In terms of outreach, RPSM has a reputation that precedes itself. Its ensembles, especially the choir, are in high demand and the community often requests performances, which is beneficial to the school, as this allows them to choose gigs for the students that will be constructive and memorable. One of the long term goals is to develop more ensembles so that students have more opportunities to perform. A fundraiser would not be complete without showcasing student talent. Four students performed a piano and violin quartet and the grand finale of the evening was a group performance of “Sugar Sugar,” with arrangement help from Andy Kim. The finale featured all the performers from the night with students on the trumpet, drums, flute, piano, tambourine, xylophone and vocals. As the evening came to a close with an enthusiastic crowd, one hoped that more students could have opportunities like these.
Rob Allen discusses his Bald Man project By Dan Rios, Photo Editor Toronto based photographer Rob Allen recently had his Bald Man project featured in the CONTACT Photography Festival. We talked with Rob about the process of preparing for his exhibition and what it means to be bald. Ryerson Free Press: Do you think the way people look at baldness has changed? Rob Allen: I think I might be a little bit late on this project. Twenty years ago... it wasn’t cool to be losing your hair. Guys would tease you—I don’t actually ever remember a girl ever saying ‘Oh no, bald guys.’ We all have little things we don’t like about ourselves. What did Diane Arbus say? [She said] “You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.” That was one of her guiding motives. I think my awareness of the universality of vulnerability helped me. I expected people to be a lot less forthcoming to be in these photographs, but everyone one said ‘Yeah, sure, that’s fun.’ Whatever stigma may have been attached to baldness has changed and there’s probably a scientific knowledge basis to this. We just understand genetics better now. There was a time when being bald meant weakness, or impotence.
RFP: What challenges did you come across with this project? RA: About midway through the printing process, I realized that I had been preemptive with my decision on what kind of paper to print on. About three weeks ago, when I was most of the way through printing the individual payoff shots—the big, glorious ones—I realized the paper I was using just was not good enough. It was throwing too much light back. It was really a lustre paper rather than a glossy paper, and I had purposely blinded myself to the older paper that I used to use that was giving me just as good prints. Once I opened my mind to it, the prints were better; the paper was a little warmer. And if I want my photos to be approachable, a warm base gives them a kind of approachability that everyone can respond to whether they are trained photographers or not. I finally reopened my eyes and got remarried to the paper I’ve been using for a long time, almost the whole time I’ve been doing digital. RFP: How do you know you have succeeded in capturing the right feeling in your prints? RA: If everything goes well for me, you can feel the energy coming off. Is this someone I would go to war with? It certainly seems like someone I’d want to have a drink with.
RFP: Why do you think baldness is such an important topic? RA: At least once an hour they run an ad on the radio with this guy who says “We want you to come in to our clinic and meet someone who has had hair replacement: me! I’m the doctor here and I want you to see my healthy growing hair.” And I think to myself ‘what are we going to fix next? Is everybody going to be like Michael Jackson?’ … I’ve long been a proponent of promoting the inner self. Make yourself richer inside rather than outside. There were always lessons about baldness for me. As soon as I found I was becoming bald as a teenager, I found that the people that commented on my baldness were always the biggest jerks … Consistently these people are low on the self-esteem scale. In my book I write about the mixed benefits of baldness. It gives you a tool by which to determine what kind of people you are dealing with, really quickly. RFP: Was it a hard decision to go black and white photography for this series of work? RA: I’ve been dabbling in colour for a long time, ever since this digital revolution. I figured it would be the harder thing to manage. But it turns out the hardest thing to manage digitally is getting high quality black and white prints that look as photographic as possible. I say that with my own personal bias, as I’ve shot film for years with large cameras and like the effect. I’ve always admired the work of people like Weston, Adams, and Jock Sturges. There’s something very hard to duplicate in the mid-tones when you use a large camera and I’m constantly trying to get that from my 35mm film work, my Hasselblad film work, and now my digital work. I had a really good compliment with the prints for my exhibition: a guy looked over my shoulder at my samples and said “Wow, you shot film, didn’t you?” That was a real compliment, for somebody who I had never met before to get the feeling that I was trying to get in my prints.
PHOTO: DAN RIOS
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 21
Reviews
MUSIC Canadian rapper matches full-brained lyrics with full-bodied beats Shad – TSOL
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t looks like Shad has finally realized the potential he showed with his 2005 debut and 2007 breakthrough The Old Prince. On TSOL, the London, ON native finds a way to match his sense of humour and intelligent lyrics with beats that sound full-bodied and sometimes even edgy. Of courses, rhymes were never a problem for Shad, and his poetic side is at full strength here. Check the way he calls for more female voices in hip-hop on “Keep Shining” and the comparisons he draws between his life and that of the biblical Shadrach on “A Good Name.” But for the first time, Shad’s beats sound professional and hardhitting. Lead single “Yaa I Get It” features a thump-
ing bass drum with a thrash-y cymbal cacophony, making Shad’s wholehearted rap over the din sound more urgent than ever, while “Listen” is peppered with just the right amount of violin to lend intensity to the song’s rolling boil. Shad’s previous albums weren’t duds, but they sounded like the promising early work of a rapper yet to reach his potential. On TSOL, Shad sounds downright invigorated: his lyrics are sharp, his beats are tight, and his album fulfills five years’ worth of potential. Here’s hoping that, now that he deserves it, he gets his Polaris Prize due. Rating: A- —Stephen Carlick
Melancholic indie heroes let loose a little, gain a lot The National – High Violet
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tone-faced, irony-less and melancholic, the National can be a hard band to take in full doses. It’s why, after the desperate beauty of 2005‘s Alligator, the band’s 2007 praise-winner Boxer never got through to me. Even the band, who musically were already both pent-up and buttoned-down, called it “slow-burning.” With High Violet, the Cincinnati quintet have loosened up once again, and the band’s natural elegance is once more spiced up with some anger, some spite, and some good old-fashioned “letting it out.” Opening track “Terrible Love”—the title alone should suggest a new attitude—starts gently before slowly building to a cre-
A
Producer Hi-Tek and rapper Talib Kweli return ten years after their landmark LP Reflection Eternal – Revolutions Per Minute
nyone who thinks Talib Kweli ever fell off have it all wrong. See, it’s not that he can’t rap—he’s always been one of hip-hop’s best lyricists—it’s that he just isn’t the best beat-chooser, and he’s not a very good self-editor. While his best album as a solo rapper is still arguably his collaboration as Reflection Eternal with producer Hi-Tek on 2000’s Train of Thought, even that album had it’s less-than-stellar moments: “Love Language” and it’s surrounding interludes were just a bit much, not to mention that it was just a little long-winded. So while it’s a dream come true for many to have Kweli back with Hi-Tek a decade later, the result
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scendo of squalling cymbals, while “Bloodbuzz, Ohio” courses along at a clip, thanks to rollicking drums and trumpet fanfare. For a band as restrained as the National, High Violet might feel like their version of venting, but listeners won’t feel vexed by anything here. It’s an austere, elegant album of midtempo atmospherics whose lyrics of desperation and malice sung in Matt Berninger’s silky baritone make it the perfect soundtrack to a night that just didn’t end the way you’d hoped. Cheer up—you might have been headed home alone tonight. Instead, you have High Violet. Rating: A —SC
just couldn’t live up to the hype. Again, the album is too long, with the last five of Revolutions Per Minute’s seventeen tracks comprising a number of cheesy club tracks and flaccid slow jams. It’s too bad, too, because the first twelve tracks could’ve made a pretty amazing album, even though Hi-Tek is far from his best. The highs here are incredible - check the lyrics to “Ballad of the Black Gold” and the jungle-rhythm of “Back Again” - but once again, it’s Kweli’s lyrics that keep the album afloat, not A-list beats or overall consistency. Rating: B —SC
MUSIC
FASHION
The Elwins could become a household name in Toronto
The new and the old at The Clothing Show
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he first time I gandered at The Elwins they were performing in an outdoor ice rink, strumming away cheerfully whilst people in toques and fuzzy apparel whizzed by them. Now I’m watching them rock and bop at The Central on Friday, May 21, and though they’re one of the last to perform, they steal the show. The guys that clamber onto the rug covered stage pack more punch for their quiet appearance. At first glimpse they resemble the wellbehaved, fresh-faced lads that attended math camp, and then they trip you up with 60’s inspired, funky pop-rock tunes that force toes to tap and heads to bob. Lead vocalist, Matthew Sweeney, has an almost-always earnest expression on his face as his fingers pluck out an easy-going beat on the guitar. Sporting a brown tweed jacket, and flannel shirt he chirps away in lilting tones. “I’ve got to find a way back to the start of this day, when I said the things I never would have said. But I said them anyways, and I said them to you, so I’ve got to find a way back to the time machine.” Clever lyrics and delightfully simple riffs are what hook you into The Elwins sound. The songs are catchy, situated somewhere between a relaxed beach vibe, with funkier riffs and a stroll along the English country side, lax-a-daisy rhythm. The song “Kristy May,” starts off nice and easy, and then bounces into a springy tempo: “Took a sip. From a cup. I hope that it. Fills me up. Took a chance. At the dance. But I’ve got bad luck,” sings Sweeney. In no time flat the audience warms to the lively tunes coming from the three dapper young gents. But this trio used to be a duo, before they found Feurd, who’s playing bass and wearing a red striped shirt, round glasses and has an impressively curly-tipped moustache. Sweeney and Travis Stokl, who is strong on the drums, had already been in several bands together during their high school days in Newmarket before they formed The Elwins. After graduating from Humber College with a bachelors degree in music, Feurd, who had played with them before, was recruited to bring a fuller sound to the band. Currently The Elwins are searching for an additional band member who sings, plays keyboard or bass, and they plan to start recording a full-length record in October. The April 2009 launch party of their five track self-titled EP took place in a Newmarket auditorium festooned with Christmas lights and a fun fur draped ceiling. These guys are still a hidden gem in Toronto’s indie music community but a video that they shot with Mitch Fillion back in February for his website, Southern Souls, gave them more musical recognition. The site captures a kaleidoscope of diverse bands and musicians who hail from Southern Ontario and perform in a hoard of spontaneous and natural environments, in the tradition of sites like Black Cab Sessions. Which bring us back to the ice rink in Aurora where Fillion shot The Elwins performing “Propinquity” on a plastic mat in the centre of the action. According to Sweeney, “It was a super fun but cold time. By the end of the performance everybody’s fingers were super numb. We sent out a message to fans inviting them to come and skate in a live music video and there was a great response.” Apparently a group of synchronized skaters requested to join the band but couldn’t make it out. The cheerful love-song is accompanied by falling snowflakes and Sweeney’s girlfriend, Heather Lumsden-Ruegg, who joins him on vocals and plays the keyboard. Both compliment each other with high lark-like tones. “It feels like when you’re around, its a good thing I have found. And while we’re lingering I’ll hold you near to me. Because whenever you’re around, it’s a good thing I have found.” When the boys perform the same tune tonight it sounds a bit rougher yet still pulses along pleasantly. Feurd acknowledges that performing on Southern Souls was a great way to share fans. “We have even been recognized on the street as those dudes from that ice skating rink music video.” Near the end of their set at The Central two fellas sitting near the stage ask the band who they are. When Sweeney introduces each member in his low, soft-spoken voice, they shout back, “But what are you called?” Sweeney’s face breaks into a rare on-stage smile as he answers. In the wake of the band’s last fast-paced song the same guys demand an encore. Soon enough the carefree, rambunctious sound of The Elwins will be easy to recognize. —Adriana Rolston
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hough the word fashionista has become quite the cliché, it’s difficult to think of a better-suited word to describe exactly whom The Clothing Show was created for. Fashion lovers? Clothing enthusiasts? All of the above. The name of the show alone can make the aforementioned F-word swoon—the simplicity is genius and chock-full of mystery. Celebrating its 33 year, the three-day event was held at the Better Living Centre at the Exhibition Place— the show’s home for the third year in a row. The show dates back to 1977 when Marlene Cook founded The Old Clothing Show and Sale. It was originally a small hunting ground for really amazing vintage items. A lot of local clothing designers initially shopped the show looking for great inspiration and ideas for designing their own clothes. Since then, the show has gained momentum and the numbers of attendees and designers has grown. In 2001, when Bonnie Meacham took over, she changed the name of the show—dropping the “Old.” “That started a huge mass of interest from new designers, retailers and jewelry artisans and the show grew to three times its original size,” said Meacham. Today, The Clothing Show is Canada’s largest vintage and new independent designer show. “Though we still represent the show’s roots with a vintage section, we are predominantly a new clothing and accessories show.” A great component of The Clothing Show is its emphasis on supporting local talent. “Most everyone is either a local designer or a local retailer. So, the sales stay pretty much in our community,” says Meacham. The new and local designer area of the show is called the Boutique section, where you can find hundreds of designers. Lisa Greenbaum is the brains behind Greenbaum Clothing Co., a Toronto-based women’s contemporary line for urban professionals. “All of my clothing is washable and easy to wear from day to night,” says Greenbaum as she stands eagerly waiting to help customers at her corner booth at The Clothing Show. She, like many others, likes the semiannual show, not for sales, but for the connections she makes. “I love talking to customers about what they like and don’t like,” she says. Her pieces range from $30 to $180 at full price. Slashpile Designs is the creation of 23-year-old twin sisters Tara and Courtney Neray. The funky and original jewelry brand started off as Tara’s thesis for her degree in
Material Art and Design at OCAD, while her sister was finishing up a degree in Industrial Design. The sisters swear they have been creating jewelry since they were two and a half years old. They are proud to “combine the product-oriented discipline of industrial design with the artistic quality of fine craft.” One of their more interesting jewelry pieces is a drug molecule necklace, where a choice of drugs such as alcohol, caffeine, LSD, and THC are represented in a molecule formation hanging from a chain. “Wear your vice. Start a conversation,” they suggest on their website. This is their second time appearing at The Clothing Show, and like Greenbaum, they understand that the show is more about making connections than making sales. Unlike many of the other booths trying to get rid of products with giant price cuts, Slashpile Designs sell their products at full price, ranging from as low as $15 for tiny earings, but often up to $50 for a signature piece. While some vendors are ok with the idea of not selling very much at the show in exchange for the contacts they make and the feedback they get from their customers, others just can’t afford it since it could mean running a loss. A half booth at the show costs $250 while a full booth costs upward of $440. The show charges vendors for the booth and they have to make enough money to pay that off before they can even think about making a profit. On a more positive note, in an effort to keep up the show’s initiative to support local creative talent, The Clothing Show donates over 1,000 feet of art gallery space to showcase local artists to display and sell their work during the show. The show highlights designers and artists working in any medium including painting, sculpture, performance and videography. The goal of the show is to present art in an accessible and unique manner. The Sample Sales section is where shoppers can find big names like Rock & Republic, Ben Sherman, Fred Perry, True Religion, and Seven for up to 90 per cent off retail prices. Going back to the roots of show, attendees can scour antique and estate jewelry collections. Old-time fashion lovers would also feel that invisible pull to check out the Century of Fashion Competition exhibit where collectors and experts display their best museum quality garments from the twentieth Century. From past to present and for designers and customers—this show is a shopaholic’s dream.— Marlee Kostiner
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PHOTO
DANCE
The Brothel Without Walls
A Year of Firsts for CanAsian
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ith or without walls, the Medieval-esque University College building, hidden in the heart of University of Toronto’s St. George campus, is the last place you’d expect to find a brothel. Instead, The Brothel Without Walls is a photo exhibit. The gallery is one of the three primary exhibitions for the 2010 Scotiabank CONTACT, the world’s largest photography festival. The exhibition borrows its title from Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 essay The Photograph: The Brothel-without-Walls. According to the Canadian media theorist, photography turned its subjects into “dreams that money can buy” which could be “hugged and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.” Thirty years after McLuhan’s death, the works of nine Canadian and international photographers are brought together in this exhibit to depict his prophetic predictions about the unbreakable bonds between photography and our culture. Photography continues to permanently permeate our society. Billions of photos are captured, uploaded, and developed every day and their pervasive presence plugs into CONTACT’s 2010 theme “Pervasive Influence,” perfectly. Some photos teach us a lesson by reflecting back our societal behaviours, even if it may be as shockingly scandalous as a slap in the face. Not the most pleasant feeling, but photography is like life - you use the negatives to develop. Each photo in this exhibit has a story and it probably could not be shortened to a thousand words. The photographer is invisible in photos, always hidden behind the camera. The same applies to journalists, who are trained to remove themselves from stories to eliminate bias. In their photo collections, both Jessica Dimmock and Christopher Wahl aim their cameras in a separate direction and reverse the limelight. They capture different paparazzi and journalists in their candid news hawking moments. The spotlight is shone on subjects who normally make a living from a persistent pursuit of shining the spotlight on others. Dimmock and Wahl’s images expose the behind-thescenes side of the people who work to keep up with the public’s insatiable hunger for celebrity photographs. Across the hallway in the University of Toronto Art Centre, glassy-eyed subjects stare out from glossy, glamour shots. Everything, from their sparkly costume sequins to their meticulously curled hair, is part of a careful composition, certainly not a candid photograph. Susan Anderson captures these child beauty pageant
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contestants in the make-shift studios she sets up in hotel lobbies. The photographs are captured immediately prior to or after the pageant, so the princesses are still in their element and Anderson accurately illustrates them in the true essence of the pageant world. Girls as young as four-years-old are clad in glitzy costumes, glamourously made-up, spray-tanned, and groomed to unbelievable standards of perfection. The importance the parents place on their children’s conformity to social perceptions of beauty is disturbing. Anderson’s images reflect the exploitation of child beauty pageants and present the influence of contemporary culture on physical appearance in front of a camera. At the end of the hallway, a single large canvas stretches across the blank white walls. Douglas Coupland’s Prows shows a picture of two Japanese film stars from the 1950s, an era that existed before the existence of colour television. Coupland adds a personal touch that is analogous to Andy Warhol’s pop culture prints of iconic figures. Coupland alters the photo with the addition of colour calibration bars, reminiscent of the early days of television. An insignificant detail that irritates viewers is the identity of these two women. No name, date of birth, or past film roles information is given, and onlookers cannot help but wonder, who are they? Coupland chooses to leave the ladies anonymous as a nostalgic representation of a time when not every bit of information could be attained by a quick browse through Wikipedia. Coupland states that “the only tactic for survival is pattern recognition.” The calibration patterns in Prows reflects our experiences with the advancement of technology, mainly the television and Internet. Change is inevitable, and new technology will continue to transform our lives; however, it would seem less overwhelming if we searched for a pattern in each new emergence. There are several other artists featured in the exhibit. Marian Gadonneix and Stefan Ruiz’s works both bring colour to the relationship between photography and television. Cluine Reid presents a distinctive style with her silvery, glossy images taped to the walls, a reference to defacements and graffiti in contemporary culture. Both Evan Baden and Joachim Schmid concentrate on the effects of the photography on socialization over the Internet and how personal perceptions of privacy have been impacted by technology. Located at the University of Toronto Art Centre, the exhibit ran from April 29 - May 29. —Diana Duong
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he CanAsian Dance Festival is a celebration of Asian culture through dance, choreography and music. Acclaimed performers from all over Asia and Canada bring their heritage to life through original works and colorful dances. This year, CanAsian challenged its artists by asking them to choreograph their dances during the May Festival at the Royal Ontario Museum. Museum Dances: Ancient Inspiration, Contemporary Interpretation, saw the artists create music and dances based on artifacts or specific exhibits at the Museum. This unique idea was a first for the Festival, and the performances were all the more beautiful because of the setting and meaning behind them. Dance is a powerful form of expression, but in most cases the choreographers’ inspiration for a particular routine is more discreet. In Museum Dances, the inspiration, like a Korean vase or the Gallery of Minerals exhibit, becomes integral to the piece. For the dancers from Sampradaya Dance Creations, their performance within the Vale Inco Ltd. Gallery of Minerals, proved interesting on a number of levels. The dance, choreographed by Natasha Bakth, had the entire Gallery as part of the routine, allowing the audience to explore the exhibit while watching the performers through the crystals. Although the initial idea was to have the audience walk around the exhibit during the routine, the dance was so beautiful that it kept many viewers transfixed. The space for the performance was tight, but the dancers maneuvered almost effortlessly through the display cases. CanAsian’s Artistic director, Denise Fujiwara, describes the experience of hosting the Festival in such an interesting space, “This year was hard because we had to figure out what to do [at the Museum]”. The space also presented challenges for the audience. The performances were being put on in various parts of the museum and the coordination of the crowd became a little confusing. Despite difficulties along the way, however,
Fujiwara’s overall impression of the collaboration was positive and she hopes to hold future Festivals at the ROM. Another first for CanAsian this year was the inclusion of a hip hop crew who performed a break dance/martial arts routine in the ROM’s Cullery Gallery. F.A.M, short for Floor Assassins Militia, has won various hip hop awards and are well known in the Toronto B-Boy scene, but performing at the ROM gave them an entirely different experience. As one member states, their dance was different from anything they’d previously done, “The crowd is different because it’s a museum, we’re usually at louder places and people are yelling and cheering.” The crew choreographed a piece based on Japanese Samurai artifacts and helmets in the Prince Takamodo Gallery at the museum. Unlike the other Festival performances, F.A.M crafted their dance like a story told in six acts. And while the piece was unique, its focus was on street dance more so than martial arts, and the Asian connection got lost in the mix. F.A.M are a Toronto based crew, and as Denise Fujiwara explains there are differences between Asian and Western dance disciplines. As she explains, “Asian dance forms tend to be [those] that you can dance into maturity [while] in the West, we tend to be focused on youth and athleticism.” F.A.M were certainly more about the athleticism, but their crew brought a new flavour to the Festival and hopefully their hip hop stylings will have a place in future CanAsian performances. The CanAsian Dance Festival was founded in 1997, and since then it has been entertaining Canadian audiences with traditional and contemporary Asian dance forms. Denise Fujiwara has been dancing for over thirty years and still participates in shows across the country as well as assisting contemporary dance movements like CanAsian. —Jessica Finch For more information on the Festival visit www.CanAsianDanceFestival.com.
FIGHT! Photo essay: Newmindspace’s pillow fight
Clockwise from top left: The pillow fight commences; Even big bird made an appearance; Friends through good times and pillow fights; Horsing around; The men in black; Some use their pillows as shields; Having fun at Yonge and Eglinton Square; The grab and pull technique. PHOTOS: CODI WILSON
Ryerson Free Press June 2010 25
THE STRUGGLE FOR BIL’IN
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ix years ago, the tiny West Bank village of Bil’in received a letter from the Israeli army stating that a separation wall was to be constructed through the village. The wall was to annex 60% per cent of the existing village in order to make room for the nearby Israeli settlement of Matityahu. Every Friday, since 2005, the villagers and other activists march toward the wall in protest—a gesture of non-violent resistance against the wall. And every Friday, since 2005, the army waits for the protest to begin, only to pelt the crowd with tear gas and arrest whoever they can.
PHOTOS: Farrah Merali
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