“We cannot continue to ask for a minute of silence for the women who have been murdered and for those who are missing. We need to scream for systemic change. We cannot be silent. Silent NO more!”
Four Canadian letterpress printers, from Nova Scotia, Alberta, and British Columbia, created 5×7 postcards with their responses to the 30th National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Sets of five postcards each are for sale, with all proceeds going to local groups raising awareness of gender safety.
Wherever there is poverty you will find period poverty, the inability to pay for menstrual products. And given Nova Scotia’s very high poverty rates, period poverty is a very much a concern here. I attended part of yesterday’s Period Poverty Summit to learn more.
Last week a Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Board of Inquiry decided that former firefighter Kathy Symington did not suffer discrimination while working at the Halifax Fire Service.
“In fact the Tessier case shows that for a woman to complain about a male-dominated workplace, such as the Fire Service, the woman has to be willing to fight for more than a dozen years, has to have an airtight complaint, witnesses, and certainly not criticize her superiors. Short of this, women are simply not believed.,” writes Judy Haiven.
Judy Haiven attends the human rights tribunal for former firefighter Kathy Symington, and hears more corporate HR jargon in a couple of days than during her entire career teaching HR at St. Mary’s.
Kendall Worth gives us an update on a young woman he wrote about earlier. Thankfully the harassment by a fellow tenant has stopped, but she lost some of her income assistance benefits. If we had a guaranteed basic income none of this would have happened, writes Kendall.
Halifax activist Masuma Asad Khan, whose name means Innocent Lion Warrior, talks about pursuing a path of activism and challenging stereotypes, and the terrible racism she encounters every step on her way as a result.
Based on an invite to a retreat for senior students there really isn’t much hope that the Shambhala organization learned anything from the Sakyong Mipham mess. The invite describes how the Monarch Retreat includes “receiving and practicing a heart transmission from His Majesty the Kongma Sakyong II (yet another title for Mipham) and a specially-designed Monarch Retreat shrine with a full portrait of the Sakyong.
It’s been a year since Halifax Fire chief Ken Stuebing publicly apologized to Liane Tessier, and both Halifax Fire and the Human Rights Commission are reluctant to share what changes were made at the organization to deal with the misogyny that was so prevalent. “We’re dealing with issues that were hidden, now we are letting it out of the bag and HRM and the NS Human Rights Commission don’t like it, because now they are being held to account,” Tessier says, pointing to the work of Equity Watch, the anti-bullying organization she co-founded.”
Judy Haiven: Not a kind word, not a cup of vending machine coffee, not even a hug. And don’t get us started on why the young woman was not privileged enough to see a doctor or a nurse. This is what happened to a rape victim who walked into the Colchester East Hants Health Centre hospital in Truro last week.