This weekend’s weekend video is an oldie but goodie about the historic African Nova Scotian communities of Lucasville and Upper Hammonds Plains. Lots of interviews with elders, lots of community spirit and mutual support.
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.”