What happens when a Mi’kmaw and settler university student share car rides on their way to university and other places? They talk, and the settler learns some hard lessons about colonial oppression, systemic racism and white privilege. “One Saturday afternoon when we happened to be together, Flo shared a very personal story about why she finds it difficult to eat when she is in a social food sharing situation.”
Kendall checks up on several folks we met before to see how they are holding up during the second lock down. Altogether a lot better!
The decision by front line workers at the Out of the Cold Community Association to unionize is mostly about making sure that the current positive working conditions continue, and maybe to offer a bit of an example to care sector workers elsewhere who aren’t as fortunate.
Olivia Katz on the challenges she and other poor people faced long before we even heard of Covid. “These are not recent discoveries, Stephen McNeil knows all of this, he just doesn’t care. These outcomes are a matter of policy, his policy.”
Tenants of Harbour View Towers rallied outside the lobby of the large apartment complex on Brunswick Street in Halifax. They were there to draw attention to a lack of heat and several other issues that their landlord CAPREIT has so far not addressed.
Press release: Last year, Justin Trudeau promised “a federal minimum wage of at least $15 per hour, starting in 2020 and rising with inflation, with provisions to ensure that where provincial or territorial minimum wages are higher, that wage will prevail.” The year-end is quickly approaching, and yet there has been no movement to honour this commitment.
CAPREIT is making $1000/minute in profit and still refusing to repair the heat in the apartment buildings so tenants don’t freeze in their units. Tenants at Harbour View Towers are having a lobby meeting and rallying on Tuesday, December 15th to get CAPREIT to fix the heat and force the landlord to do capital repairs and maintenance – including pest treatment.
Letter: Many media reports over the years have indicated that there are a number of homeless individuals, some living in shelters across Canada, who once served in the Canadian Armed Forces and are now in need of housing, mental health services, jobs, retraining and other supports.
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.”
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.