Stacey Gomez, Asaf Rashid, Jessica Tellez and Wanda Thomas explain how racist immigration policies keep migrant workers temporary. “In Nova Scotia, approximately 2000 migrant workers arrive each year through Temporary Foreign Worker Programs, to plant and harvest crops, and to process our agriculture, as well as seafood products. Abuse of migrant workers is rampant in Nova Scotia and across Canada. The recently released report Unheeded Warnings includes accounts from migrant workers in Nova Scotia about being coerced into speaking positively of their employers during a government inspection under threat of deportation. Other workers report having racist slurs used against them when they spoke out about poor conditions. We’ve also received reports of migrant workers being unlawfully prevented from leaving Nova Scotia farms.”

Kendall Worth: “Winning the award and not having to make plans to be at my brother’s place made me feel I was living my life with a sense of self-worth for once. That is what I believe is the best birthday present I can give myself this year.”

Dr. OmiSoore Dryden:”Perhaps we can focus on why colonialism, racism and anti-black racism are fights that continue for queer and trans folks, be committed in taking actions to combat and disrupt and then, maybe then, we can come together to celebrate.”

On June 7th and on June 29th letters were sent by a number of Nova Scotian Senators to Ministers Blair and Furey regarding the pressing need to establish a joint federal/ provincial, equally led, public inquiry into the recent Nova Scotia mass shootings and related events.

The Senators are expanding their call to action to include Ministers Lametti, Monsef and Regan to further highlight the importance of ensuring that a feminist lens is employed as part of this investigation so as to ensure that a fulsome picture of the events that led to this atrocity are understood and ultimately addressed.

Lynn Jones writes an open letter to Marie-Claude Landry, Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. “During my 35+ year time in the FPS, I’d been employed on many of the programs supposedly to do what you are again doing today yet nothing has changed and the gaps remain…The time for reviews is over. That work has been done a multitude of times over an embarrassing number of years.”

Kendall Worth continues his reporting on how people on income assistance are dealing with COVID-19. “She told me that before she got her free bus pass, she used to create imaginary friends to keep herself company. She said it was not healthy for her to be doing that. “

Martha Paynter, Keisha Jefferies and Leah Carrier: “Nursing has a long history of complicity in exclusion, oppression, and exploitation of BIPOC. Changing that course requires abolitionist action, and the 2020 International Year of the Nurse and Midwife should be devoted to that change.”