Raymond Sheppard in a letter to the prime minister: “Your office and the Federal Liberal Party are on record as trying to pass legislation to penalize those individuals who out of desperation might have accessed CERB funds. This act would only serve to re-victimize African Canadians who have suffered long and hard in this country and continue to do so.”
Yesterday the federal government announced that the site of the Shubenacadie Residential School has been designated a National Historic Site. “When you come here you can feel the spirits here, and feel the energy,” says Dorene Bernard in a moving short video.
The CBC generates revenue but is mostly funded by tax paying Canadians, including African Canadians. Nonetheless, the CBC has no national programs hosted by an African Canadian that deals with African Canadian culture, heritage and lineage. In fact, the CBC has only a handful of African Canadians employed across Canada, and even fewer in Atlantic Canada.
And each child we birth
We are begging in hope
To stop killing us
Take our heads out your scope
And your head
out your asses
Cause your killing without care, without consequence
In masses
On the evening of August 13, 2020, in my own neighbourhood, right outside of my children’s classroom, I witnessed a Halifax police officer accelerate his vehicle to make physical contact with a woman, temporarily throwing her off balance. Vehicular assault. From a block away I could hear her pleading with the officer to leave her alone up until that point. After stumbling momentarily she asked the officer why he’d done that and then used the phrase “Black Lives Matter”. My heart raced.
Black youth on the South Shore are organizing a Black Lives Matter picnic with their supporters on August 30 at 3pm at Hutt Lake in Chester, please come. This picnic is a Black youth response to the hate crime that happened August 15, 2020 at Hutt Lake, a local swimming spot in Chester, NS when a group of families including a Black man and 9 year old child were threatened by local youth waving a noose and confederate flag who made racists threats in person and publicly online.
On August 28th at 2pm, community members will gather to demand justice for Kayla Borden, a local woman who one month ago was racially profiled and arrested by 6 Halifax Regional Police (HRP) Officers.
Join us on August 28th from 2-4pm to demand justice for our community member Kayla Borden. On July 28, 202 Kayla Borden was racially profiled and arrested by 6 Halifax Regional Police Officers.
In terms of racism and policing much of the focus has been on Halifax’s urban core, but what about rural Nova Scotia?. We talk with Jessica Bundy, a young African Nova Scotian academic who wrote about the policing experiences of Black residents of the Town of Digby and surrounding communities.
Black Nova Scotians and allies rallied outside the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission offices on Spring Garden Road. The NSHRC is reluctant to pursue race-based human rights violations while its employees often lack a lived understanding of racism, protesters say. And the commission isn’t listening.