Imagine waking up for work realizing that what you do today is worth less than yesterday. Stephen Wentzell reports on a rally the Quinpool Road Superstore in support of Loblaw and Sobeys grocery store workers across the country who have seen their wages clawed back 15% despite remaining on the front lines of a pandemic.
Seven years after Andrella David, a Black resident of Upper Hammonds Plains, was falsely accused of shoplifting at the Tantallon Sobeys store, the company finally made the commitments the community had been asking for. All it took was for the Sobeys’ lawyers to step aside, says an overjoyed Rev. Lennett Anderson.
“Sobeys regrets that this matter has taken so long to come to a conclusion.” That’s the best Sobeys can come up with in terms of apology in a recent racial profiling case. By skillfully exploiting flaws in Human Rights legislation Sobeys almost got away with racism. Good thing Ms. Andrella David and the residents of Upper Hammonds Plains had other ideas.
Andrella David, a victim of shopping while black at the Sobeys store in Tantallon, continues to wait for an apology by the large grocery chain. “This was never about the money for me; it has always been about the dignity and respect that I deserve,” she writes in a recent statement.
Not getting the apology for racial profiling they are looking for, the African United Baptist Association is calling for a boycott of Sobeys stores in their communities. And the boycott may well soon spread to the Atlantic provinces.
An interview with Rev. Lennett Anderson, organizer of the Sobeys anti-racism rally in Tantallon: “Race is not a card I play, it’s the life I live.”
Sobeys is appealing a racial profiling decision by the Human Rights Commission. Protesters gathered at the Tantallon Sobeys to show their displeasure. “We are asking Sobeys not to drag an innocent woman into this process all over again, re-victimizing the victim.”