Joanne Bealy writes an open letter to Premier Tim Houston: “You could still change the already wide-spread perception that the only constituents who matter to you are white, cis, moneyed ones. The Black history of Canada begins in Nova Scotia. You could listen to what the people have said and reach beyond your party’s boundaries to appoint an African Nova Scotian as Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs.”

Rain, the remnants of Hurricane Ida, is coming down in sheets in Halifax as I am reading the recent update by street navigator Eric Jonsson on people sleeping outside in Halifax. It makes for grim reading, especially today. A section on the harm caused by the recent evictions by force of the unhoused people living in tents and crisis shelters is particularly disconcerting.

All the hammers and wrenches in the world cannot help Tim the tool man Houston fix this problem; he better call in the experts, oh wait, he dismissed them. Angela Bowden on the firing of Dr. OmiSoore Dryden, Dr. Kesa Munroe-Anderson, and the appointment of a white Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs.

True allies always take ownership of their own shortcomings and give 100% to overcome their biased privileged background while letting their actions speak.

The forceful eviction of homeless people in Halifax isn’t the only occurrence of violent policing in Nova Scotia at this time, but if it wasn’t for the journalism of Angel Moore of APTN we would never know it. Yesterday Moore reported how Mi’kmaw lobster harvesters were arrested and had their boat seized by fisheries officers on unceded and stolen territory of the Mi’kmaq Nation.

Raymond Sheppard: As African people we must write our own story and let our dreams and ambitions be greater than our fears and inhibitions. Let no one tell you that our history is not important and that we as African people should just get over it.