Didn’t hear much about the police check study over the summer, but the NS Human Rights Commission recently launched an online survey asking all HRM residents about their encounters with police. We have long argued that what is needed is not yet another study, but an immediate stop to the racist practice, but maybe the survey has some redeeming qualities.
In July we reported on a Nova Scotia Human Rights tribunal asked to decide whether to prevent people who use wheelchairs from washing their hands in a restaurant amounts to discrimination. Well, this time the good guys won, and the the province lost. Another loser was the NS Human Rights Commission, which did not want to consider the case until told by a judge to do so,
News release: The African United Baptist Association (AUBA) stands alongside all Nova Scotian prisoners especially those who are righteously protesting for justice at the local Burnside facility.
A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge has turned down an application to create a class-action lawsuit on behalf of former Africville residents and their descendants. That’s as good an opportunity as any to get Halifax Councillors to step up and do the right thing. Compensation for former Africville residents and their descendants is not an issue that should be decided based on legal subtleties.
Solidarity statement from No One Is Illegal Vancouver and Harsha Walia: “We write in solidarity with prisoners at the Central Nova provincial jail in Burnside as you enter three weeks of ongoing, peaceful and inspiring protest within the prison. We are responding to the specific call for groups on the outside to support your statements and demands. As you state, all of these demands are reasonable and promote basic wellbeing. Prisons, detention centers and borders maintain racial, economic, and social power structures. No cages, no borders!”
Nothing is ever simple when you’re on income assistance. Just ask Kate, a single mother. Michael, the elder of her two children, is a four-year old boy who has non-visible disabilities and is not yet fully potty trained. Now Community Services has sent Kate a letter that it will no longer help pay for the boy’s diapers. A decision like that is devastating when getting by is a struggle. “These caseworkers make me feel me feel as if they’re paying for it, as if it’s coming out of their pay cheques. It’s driving me bonkers.”
Unpublished policies and regulations that say unintended things are part of how Community Services conducts its business.
News release: A coalition of Canadian and German groups asks Germany to withdraw from a loan guarantee process which would provide more than $4 billion US to Pieridae Energy Limited, a Calgary-based company. The German guarantee would enable construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal with an export capacity of 10 million metric tons a year in Goldboro, Nova Scotia.
We talked with El Jones to better understand what is driving the protest inside the Burnside jail, and how people on the outside can support the prisoners. “The prisoners are not saying anything that is in the least contentious. The demands are all very basic, we have known of these issues for a very long time.”