Raymond Sheppard: “The Canadian government, in concert with the African Canadian community, could establish the mandate and or purpose of the public inquiry, and provide the funds necessary out of the money it made from the historic enslavement of the African and the trillions that this wrongdoing generated and continues to generate.”
Members of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners frequently point to the Marshall Inquiry and the resulting changes to the Police Act when challenged on their reluctance to tell Halifax Regional Police how to do their job. Today we fund out it isn’t that simple.
“In normal times we’re talking about guys who work for nine months straight, at very low wages. Now with COVID-19 we’ve got workers that have been on board ships for 13 or 14 months. They’re all trapped and they can’t get home to the Philippines, they can’t get home to India, to the Ukraine,” says Karl Risser, an International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) inspector here in Nova Scotia. .“It’s getting desperate. We’ve heard reports of seafarers jumping overboard, seafarers fighting, massive tension on board, because no one knows for how long they will be stuck there.”
Martyn Williams: There were numerous core concerns raised by stakeholders and by design experts regarding Cogswell’s lack of connectivity, lack of character, and lack of genuine buy-in and involvement from the community and stakeholders. Now we must take time to reconsider Cogswell, before mistakes are made. The new Cogswell just exists on paper right now. Nothing is irreversible.
Raymond Sheppard: “Most of the things we have been told as African Nova Scotians are lies.”
Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald: What is the life and value of a woman or girl worth? Almost nothing if the hard and painful realities of systemic sexism, misogyny, men’s assaults, torture, and femicides are not laid bare on Nova Scotian soil in a federal-provincial inquiry or review. TW graphic descriptions of rape, violence and torture.
Mount Saint Vincent University is cancelling contracts with its part-time instructors, causing either fewer courses to be taught or sections of courses to be combined. We spoke with Scott Stewart, Chair of the alliance that’s raising the alarm.
This documentary puts a face to the rapid changes gentrification has brought to the Halifax North End. We meet some of the older residents who reminisce about life in their old neighborhood, one that actually deserved to be called vibrant.
Raymond Sheppard in this very personal essay describes how an injury to one is an injury to all, how acts of racism targeting an individual traumatize the entire African Nova Scotian community. “During the past fifty years of my life I have personally experienced racism and injustice. Like most African peoples, I have felt the pain, frustration, anxiety, and panic attacks caused by racism. This suffering never goes away because racism never goes away,” he writes.
The two main Jewish organizations are silent on the recent racist attacks on Black people on both sides of the border. “Human and civil rights organisations one after the other have come out in support of the campaign Black Lives Matter – but not B’nai Brith Canada, or CIJA,” writes Judy Haiven.