test blog #10

Image:  Women Friendly Cities Challenge After the recent, horrific murders in Atlanta of eight people , six of whom were Asian or Asian-American spa workers, there was a lot of discussion online about the nature of these killings. Were they acts of anti-Asian hatred? Were they acts of misogyny? Were they motivated by the hatred of sex workers, as evidenced from the shooter's statements?  Is there another choice, all of the above?  This is where the concept of intersectionality comes in. This word was likely in use for many years before I first became aware of it, in around 2015. I am usually quite late to language changes, so we can assume it was in use among activists far longer than that.  Like most words used by theorists and activists, as  intersectionality  has slowly drifted into common parlance, it is often misused and misunderstood. Eventually it will be -- or perhaps it already has been, who can keep up? -- co-opted by the right-wing to mean somet...

Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, was found guilty on all charges. At long last, after millions protested around the country and the world, a police officer was held accountable for murder. Or as one of the memes says, we only had to burn down the country to do it.   Between May 25, 2020, the day George Floyd was murdered, and April 20, 2021, the day of the verdict, 640 Americans were killed by police.* In the 24 hours following the announcement of the Chauvin verdict, six Americans were killed by police. That number includes Ma'Khia Bryant . Bryant was 16 years old. She called the police for help. A police officer got out of his car and shot this Black child at close range. "We won't rest until the killer is brought to justice." If you watch detective shows, that's a familiar phrase. For victims of police murders, there is no justice. Even when there is video evidence of the killing , police murders might as well be lynchings that take ...

When I read a review of The Sword and The Shield: the Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. , I knew it was a book I'd been waiting for someone to write.  I despise the way Martin Luther King, Jr. has been sanitized and diluted for public consumption. The version of King that is widely celebrated is a pile of sentimental goo that the real King would not have recognized, let alone endorsed. King's radical legacy is reduced to a kind of bland "why can't we all just get along". His memory is used as a pacifier. King is officially lauded because of the fear of Black violence, and the ruling class' desire to promote docility among Blacks. So the public doesn't see King. Doesn't see the King who railed against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, the King who marched with labour unions, the King who knew that without economic justice, desegregation was a hollow promise. The anti-capitalist King. The anti-imperialist King. The anti-war King...

I recently attended a six-hour workshop called Decolonizing Community Spaces. The workshop was led by two facilitators, one a Native American speaking to us from her traditional territories in Montana, and the other a Filipina-Canadian.  About 30 people attended; I believe all were health and service providers in the province of BC.  All the other participants raved about how much they learned, and how they will change their daily practices accordingly. I don't know if they were exaggerating, or if they were starting from a different place than I was. I encountered few, if any, ideas that were new to me, and was left feeling hopeless about the prospects for change. This was clearly not the intended result! Making the invisible visible Much of the course was spent on activities aimed at making visible the many invisible forces and conditions that shape our world. My graduate school experience in Information Sciences often involved similar exercises. One often-used example is un...

Ever since reading, in 2006, The National Dream and The Golden Spike , Pierre Berton's books about the building of the Canadian railroad, I've been interested in the Chinese railroad workers. Two details stuck in my memory: Chinese workers retaining their food traditions (and the racism and abuse they encountered over this) and that they went on strike . I was excited to know that these underpaid, undervalued, and abused workers organized themselves to fight back. So when I saw a very positive review of The Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad , I immediately requested it from my library. Gordon Chang, one of the preeminent historians of the Chinese experience in North America, writes from an American context, but the story applies to Canada and other countries, as Chinese labour built railroads all over the world. Outsized labour under outsized conditions To say that the Railroad Chinese (as they are called) toiled und...

This post has been half-written and sitting in drafts for many months. Days after an armed mob tried to violently subvert the results of an election seems like a good time to finish it. * * * * Here's a statement that should be completely obvious. You cannot wave the Confederate flag or the Nazi flag and also be a patriotic American. History Lesson #1 In 1861, a group of terrorists attacked the United States. This was an act of war, by a group who would soon be known as the Confederate Army.  Representing a self-declared country, the Confederate Army fought against the United States in a prolonged act of treason that lasted four years. 620,000 people died in this conflict, at a time when the population of the country (excluding Indigenous people) was about 31 million. Until 58,000 Americans lost their lives in the Vietnam War, more Americans were killed in the Civil War than in all foreign wars combined. Thus someone who waves the Confederate flag aligns themselves with treason an...

Like many writers, especially those of us who grew up before the digital age, I keep a notebook. I use it to capture ideas, capture thoughts about I'm reading, take notes on experiences, and take notes on various activist or community meetings I attend.  I've learned that I have to make notes while I'm thinking of something, because I am unlikely to remember the thought at another time, out of context. Before the digital age, I carried a small spiral memo pad with me almost all the time.  These days, however, I don't always have a notebook with me, so I do whatever is quickest -- type a note on my phone, scribble it on a scrap of paper, save an email in drafts, or email myself from one address to another. Later on, when I'm blogging, I check my notebook to see my notes. But I don't look at the notes on my phone or the scraps of paper sitting in a neat pile on my desk or any other form of notetaking. My note-capturing process has changed, but my writing process ...

Election day in the U.S. tomorrow. My American family and friends are all quietly freaking out. The whole world is quietly freaking out.  The massive turnout through mail-in voting and advance polling are very good signs. Thousands who didn't vote in 2016 have already voted in 2020. Personally, I think it will be an anti-Trump landslide in the popular vote, and a decisive win in the electoral vote. Not that anyone should put any faith in what I believe! In 2016, I told anyone who would listen that the Republican party would never nominate Donald Trump, then declared that there was no way he would be elected. I'm in good company there: no less a maven than Fran Lebovitz did the same .  The biggest question isn't the outcome of  November 3. It's what happens on November 4th, and 5th, and 10th, and months on, until January 20, and possibly beyond.  Trump has been inciting his minions to question the legitimacy of the election, and as the results come in, that will onl...

The statement If you are exposed to any bigoted, right-wing media or social media -- whether by misfortune, sport, or a delusion that you must counter their arguments -- and someone raises the subject of slavery, you will doubtless see this trope.  They were sold by their own people. Africans sold other Africans. Slavery began in Africa, and was imported to the new world. In fact, you might hear or see some version of this any time racism is mentioned. Or as a complete non sequitur. It appears to be a wingnut favourite. They should stop complaining! Slavery is in the past! Get a life! And anyway THEY started it! Slavery was started in Africa! Blah blah blah!! Meaningless drivel!!  There are many myths and inaccuracies about slavery in the Americas -- this wrap-up in Slate is good -- but this one in particular interests me. Some facts We know that Black people were involved in the transatlantic slave trade. At any time, a handful of people, a few hundred -- perhaps over the ce...

First reactions: the language police I've recently learned that calling a group of people you guys  may be considered insensitive to transgender people.  My first reaction to this was an inner eye-roll, and thoughts along the lines of, "Oh come on, that's going too far."  The same reaction I had to learning that the word crazy  is not to be used -- in any context -- because it's insensitive to people with mental illness. Why are people policing my language this closely? Is this really important? Who determined this is now inappropriate speech? I've always thought of guys  as gender-neutral, and you guys  represents a group of people of any gender -- in the appropriate context. Clearly some people say "guys and girls," and in that context guys means men and boys. But words have different meanings in different contexts, and most speakers of any given language are able to distinguish among those contexts.  Is you guys  really so offensive, to the po...

First of all, it's not a boycott. It's a strike. And a  wildcat strike to boot. When the players on the Milwaukee Bucks chose not to play in the NBA playoffs -- joined by their baseball counterparts, the Brewers, with other teams quickly following -- they became part of a tradition that reaches back to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, to Muhammad Ali, to Carlos Delgado, all the way to the present, to Maya Moore and Colin Kaepernick.  The striking NBA players are part of Black Lives Matter. They are part of the present-day civil rights movement. But they are part of something else, too. They are part of the labour movement. Professional athletes are workers.  They may be wealthy -- though all are not as wealthy as the top earners -- but their working life is perilously short, and throughout history, has been awash in exploitation. If some earn huge salaries today, that's because so many people are profiting from their labour.  Strike vs boycott So why is this action a...