Cape Breton Regional Police (CBRP) have charged eighteen men with communicating for the purpose of obtaining sexual services in Sydney, Cape Breton, the Chronicle Herald and the Cape Breton Post report. As usual, police is quoted extensively, and sex workers are never asked how they feel about it.
Poet and writer Joanne Bealy on moving to Nova Scotia: “Within the white community I have seen some crazy doubling down: public silence combined with a privileged kind of outspokenness, a white on white outspokenness wherein a caucasian speaker just assumes that any other caucasian agrees with them.”
Halifax city employees who suffered racism, misogyny and bullying at work, can now call a tip line. As well, the process to hire a consultant to look at safe workplace issues has been set in motion. But are these measures designed to really fix this problem, or are they a distraction?
A dispute about garbage in a Halifax park very quickly degenerates into a hateful diatribe full of racist and Islamophobic tropes. In Nova Scotia we have been spared the headline-producing Islamophobia we have seen elsewhere in Canada, for now. But it’s here, just below the surface.
Evelyn C. White reflects on a visit to the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown. “The full sweep of my thoughts on the matter have yet to unfold. But I believe that everything happens for a reason; that in a province burdened with horrific racial strife, the stark shadow of a pit “house” against the recent burst of hipster eateries in Halifax is worthy of examination. There is merit in the enterprise.”
Scott Domenie on what it will take to beat back fascism in Nova Scotia: “While we should have no moral trepidation about punching a Nazi, we should also understand that keeping the far-right down will require more than our fists. It will require preventing the conditions that allow it to grow in the first place.
Liane Tessier , the former Halifax firefighter and co-founder of Equity Watch, believes that Halifax employees who suffered racism, misogyny and bullying at work deserve a public inquiry, not just some quarterly updates to Council and a review by an external consultant. Tessier fought the city for 12 years after suffering abuse by management and fellow workers before she was vindicated.
A short video where Doug Knockwood talks about his father’s determination to get him and and his brother Ralph out of Residential School.
We’re making good progress addressing racism at the workplace, said Halifax CAO Jacques Dubé. The numbers tell a different story.
Former Halifax Councillor Jackie Barkhouse says that during her term she often told management and Mayor Kelly of staff being harassed and bullied, but that these reports were ignored. Barkhouse believes now is the time for an independent and public inquiry into the toxic workplace that HRM has become for many employees.