This weekend we present a short documentary produced by distinguished filmmaker, drummer, teacher and author Catherine Martin about the first Idle No More event in Nova Scotia, on December 14, 2012 at the Grand Parade across from City Hall in Halifax.
Very sad news. Dave Kent, a much beloved People First Nova Scotia activist and spokesperson, passed away suddenly yesterday of a heart attack.
Scott Domenie: “Maybe instead of asking each other where or when we had our moment of radicalization, we should be asking – ourselves and others – what brought us to where we are now. … By listening to our answers, we just might learn to better appreciate the diversity and similarities in our journeys.”
Tony Seed on the significance of African Liberation Day, and some personal memories and observations on previous celebrations in Halifax.
This weekend’s weekend video features an interview with Delvina Bernard, one of the founders of Four the Moment, the excellent and unabashedly political a capella band that appeared at many rallies and events in Nova Scotia throughout the eighties.
News release: Please visit the Acadia Art Gallery over the period April 5th to 12th to see an exploration of the Black Press tradition in Nova Scotia in the small gallery space. The exhibit, put together by recent Acadia graduate Sawyer Carnegie, is titled “The Nova Scotia Black Press Tradition: Resisting through Print.”
Poverty activist and frequent contributor Brenda Thompson writes about adults only buildings and the law. She was one of the activists who, in the early 1980s, brought about changes that make discrimination based on source of income (welfare) and age (whether you have children) illegal. Landlords openly break that law all the time, and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission just sits back.
Tony Seed reminds us that the movement to get rid of the repulsive Cornwallis statue goes back quite a while. Read the speech delivered by then 93 years young Halifax activist Betty Peterson in 2010 at the Peace and Freedom Park, and find out more about Betty and other organizers in the biographical notes Tony provides. See you at the Peace and Freedom Park this Saturday!
I had a great time at SMU last week, digging through box after box of newspaper clippings, minutes posters, and brochures related to well over forty years of civil rights, labour and social justice struggles here in Nova Scotia and beyond. Lynn Jones has scissors, and she isn’t afraid to use them. Eighteen boxes of documentation have found a home at the St Mary’s archives.
We are going down memory lane with a short documentary about the forceful eviction of Occupy Nova Scotia from Victoria Park in November 2011.