At the end of a challenging year of online classes, Nova Scotia universities are voting to once again raise fees for the coming year. Today, an alliance of 20 higher-education unions, non-unionized workers, and student associations in Nova Scotia, formed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, released an open letter to Premier Iain Rankin and Labour and Advanced Education Minister Lena Diab calling on them to step up to support struggling students.

Savannah Thomas: “As strangers ask endless questions I can’t help but look at Layla and think how unfair it is for her. She loves me and I love her and to be honest, neither of us can understand why that can’t be enough for some people.”

On Oct. 13 last year RCMP officers stood by as 200 people interfered with Mi’kmaw fisherfolk. That mob was 200 individuals that did not appear out of thin fog. They ate their supper, put on their coats and boots and no one stopped them at the door. Fathers didn’t stop their foolish sons. Mothers turned the other way and sisters nodded to get approval. Church leaders knew. Teachers knew. Neighbors turned on neighbors whose histories are still as tangled as the fishing twine of the sinking lobster traps.

“What’s going on in the military,” Judy Haiven asks as we find out that there were 581 sexual assaults in the five years after the Canadian Armed Forces Operation Honour. That’s one assault every three days!

Pro-Palestinian activists in Halifax feel pressured to remain silent about Israeli apartheid and suppression of Palestinians in Palestine. Here in Nova Scotia this manifests in the form of intimidating threats they experience while going about their daily business in the city. It is also exemplified in the overly aggressive policing during the Nakba Day car rally last week.