J-T: “I would like you to witness a day in the life of an inmate during COVID-19. In the beginning nobody took it seriously. It wasn’t a big deal until numbers began to rise quickly. We panicked. We were going to break out, we’d plan it all out, work as a team, and I’m talking about the majority of us. We weren’t going to just sit here and die”
Raymond Sheppard: African people did not develop racism and did not benefit from it, therefore the creators and beneficiaries of racism are the ones who must disassemble it.
Once there were bears in California
the woods fat with their smell.
Once bears roamed among redwoods–
aged trees that wouldn’t be felled.
Bears Once, by Halifax writer David Huebert, is a poem about the grizzly bear, once prominent in large swaths of North America, now extinct in California and elsewhere. The poem could as well have been about Nova Scotia’s mainland moose.
Danny CAvanagh: On Tuesday, the CEO of the J.A. Douglas McCurdy Sydney Airport said they have received notification Air Canada flights to Toronto and Halifax will be cut effective Jan. 11, 2021, and the local Jazz aviation station will be closed until further notice. This is a devastating blow to Cape Breton residents, workers and businesses.
Laura Slade: “When you live in poverty, one of the most valuable gifts you can receive is the gift of self-determination. We know what we need. We know where it is best for us to shop, what we’re comfortable wearing and what we need to eat. Each human deserves the dignity of making their own choices.”
How well is Nova Scotia’s health system serving the Black community during the pandemic? Not well at all, says Dr. OmiSoore Dryden, who is the James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies in the Faculty of Medicine and an associate professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology. We spoke about the province’s refusal to collect disaggregated race-based data, the impressive mobilization against COVID by members of the North and East Preston communities, and the challenges of vaccination. More than anything we spoke about racism.
Raymond Sheppard with a meditation on family and the need to forgive. “Covid-19 may be keeping us apart but it does not stop us from sealing the cracks in love.”
We have been reporting on the release of the Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Nova Scotia for many years now. And year after year the news is grim.
41,370 children, one in four, live in poverty in Nova Scotia. For children under six that number is actually almost one in three!
It’s hard to fathom how politicians can shrug off these horrendous numbers, especially given that we know that solutions exist, and all it takes is political will.
Moving away from a place where you weren’t happy, and to a place that is pleasant, where you live near a friend and where the caseworkers are more helpful makes a big difference to our old friend Daryl. His friend and roommate Darlene is equally doing well, Kendall Worth reports.
Alexander Bridge on the covid-vaccine: ” It is time to understand the science-based evidence of this pandemic and trade fear driven by social media for good common sense.”