Hey all! There is a lot of feminist news today so I thought I would post it!!
From Aptn.ca
APTN National News
As Charlene Bearhead sheds light on one of Canada’s darkest moments students of all ages look on.They hang on her every word.
They hear about the atrocities of the Indian Residential School system as part of a large group of non-Aboriginal student’s participating in “Project of Heart” at the University of Alberta this week.
This comes almost two decades removed from the closure of the last residential school in Canada.
APTN National News reporter Keith Laboucan has the story.
Here’s the link to the video: Getting to the Heart of Residential Schools
A man who is said to have blackmailed more than 350 women after convincing them to strip off in front of their webcams has been arrested in the US.
Prosecutors said Karen “Gary” Kazaryan, 27, had hacked into hundreds of Facebook, Skype and email accounts to obtain naked or semi-naked pictures.
It is alleged he threatened to post the nude images of victims publicly unless they removed their clothing on camera.
If convicted, he could receive a maximum jail sentence of 105 years.
This is an awesome story about Somali women returning to the country to rebuild.
Safia Yassin Farah is 34 and her desk is that of a high-flying executive anywhere in the world, except that the view from her office is of high walls, wire and armed guards.
She left the US to take up a post working with young people in Mogadishu, helping them obtain an education and skills.
“I’m here to stay. I’ve quit my job,” Ms Farah says, sounding thrilled and scared at the same time.
“I grew up in the US and got my degree at the University of New Hampshire. I had a job, a house, I had everything.”
She says she was motivated to return after hearing about the plight of Somali children caught up in violence, including being recruited by the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabab, which has lost control of Mogadishu and other towns to Amisom and government forces but still controls many rural areas of southern and central Somalia.
Tonight – Stories We Don’t Tell: Personal Experiences of Gender Based Oppression
Go to this tonight!!
you can find some press on it here.
**TRIGGER WARNING** the contents of this theatre piece discusses lived experiences of violence and contains content that may be triggering to individuals in the audience.
We all live with a residual narrative of thoughts and experiences of violence towards our bodies, towards our gender- from the miniscule events that make up our everyday reality to the seismic ones that shift our world leaving nothing the same. Stories We Don’t Tell is about real experiences. It explores how gender impacts lives. It sheds light on those marginalized by gender and examines effects of socially accepted and normalized oppression, locally and globally. We resist our many layers of oppression by merely surviving, by being present and by telling our stories in the hopes that we are not alone.
the event is free to attend. In the interest of accessibility, childcare is available for this event. Please email volunteer@apirg.org by Jan 23 if you require childcare or have any other accessibility concerns (transport, ASL interpretation, etc)
Today is National Hijab Day! What can you do in your community to support tolerance?
Originated by New York woman Nazma Khan, the movement has been organised almost solely over social networking sites. It has attracted interest from Muslims and non-Muslims in more than 50 countries across the world.
For many people, the hijab is a symbol of oppression and divisiveness. It’s a visible target that often bears the brunt of a larger debate about Islam in the West.
World Hijab Day is designed to counteract these controversies. It encourages non-Muslim women (or even Muslim women who do not ordinarily wear one) to don the hijab and experience what it’s like to do so, as part of a bid to foster better understanding.
First, the changes sharply narrow the scope of democracy in Indigenous communities by removing a broad-based collective power and replacing it with the kind of majority rules mentality that can, for example, see a prime minister elected to a majority government with only 39 per cent of a popular vote in an election in which only slightly more than half of all “qualified” Canadians voted, as happened in the federal election of 2011. In fact, only 5 million out of Canada’s population of 33 million elected the Harper government. Such a decision-making system allows small groups in society to grasp power and wield it as if they have carte blanche — the Conservatives’ recent omnibus bills, of which Bill C-45 is but one, are an example of this in action.
Second, Bill C-45 was simply imposed without any consultation with Indigenous peoples themselves; it was a unilateral political change to treaty rights that violates previous contracts, and as such is simply unacceptable and, it could be argued, illegitimate. Nevertheless, Flanagan justifies the lack of meaningful discussion and dialogue with Indigenous peoples: “Consultation has become a shibboleth of our time. It is, indeed, an essential part of democracy, but it can also become a constraint on freedom.” Translation: if we ask the people what they want they might disagree with our plans for capitalist expansion and then we won’t be free to do whatever we want. This is not real democracy in action.
Third, Bill C-45 will, more correctly, increase the “freedom” of those pursing capitalist accumulation by removing democratic checks and balances in Indigenous decision-making. There can be no doubt that “freedom” has become the go-to watchword for today’s capitalist class and those who work on its behalf.
In essence, Bill C-45 will make it easier for particular groups in Indigenous communities, with corporate support of course, to push through controversial development plans that will, undoubtedly, benefit community members unequally. Thus, the consequences of Bill C-45 might be understood as yet another form of what geographer David Harvey has called “accumulation by dispossession,” that is the privatization of public lands or resources designated for common use to be used, instead, to generate profit for a small minority.
The Romanian Campaign “Why don’t you come over?” solicits their women as objects to be viewed in order to attract immigrants and tourists. Not cool, a little weird and creepy. You can read more about the whole campaign here.
News!
In Brooklyn, a group of demonstrators marched to the police precinct in the neighborhood of Crown Heights to demand justice in the case of Jabbar Campbell, an African-American man who has accused officers from the New York City Police Department of a hate crime. Campbell says he was hosting a party for gay and lesbian friends at his home earlier this month when he was confronted by police. Surveillance footage from Campbell’s apartment shows officers tampering with and turning around the camera monitoring his doorstep. Moments later, Campbell says he was brutally beaten and called anti-LGBT slurs. On Monday, Campbell address supporters outside the precinct.
The BBC has put up an article about women struggling in Hollywood.
Only 9% of directors of the top 250 grossing Hollywood films in 2012 were women, a study has found.Despite the low figure, it is a 4% increase from 2011′s numbers, the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film said.The research found women comprised 18% of all directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers and editors.It also showed women were more likely to work in the documentary, drama and animated film genres.The Centre has been conducting the industry survey for more than a decade to track trends.The number of female producers has held steady at 25% for the past two years, while female writers rose to 15%, up from a low of 10% in 2006.The number of female editors between 1998-2012 has remained fairly constant in the 20%-21% range. Cinematographers have fluctuated between 2%-4%, although figures for 2012 were on the low end of the range.No women have made it onto the shortlist for best director at this year’s Oscars, while Zero Dark Thirty is the only best picture nominee to have been directed by a woman – Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow.
From the Edmonton Journal, a Calgary psychiatrist has been charged after molesting 9 patients who were court order to see him.
Edmonton Events
International Week is fast approaching, and this looks awesome:
Sheryl WuDunn
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women WorldwideThursday, January 31, 7:30 – 9:00 pm
Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science 1-430The greatest resource in the world today isn’t oil or gold or wind—it’s women. There is growing evidence that one of the simplest and most effective ways to alleviate poverty is to educate girls. Empower girls with knowledge, and help them develop some financial independence—it integrates them into the local economy, and connects them to the world. Girls aren’t problems or victims, and their ingenuity and courage is beginning to spread with many helping hands from the West.
Sheryl WuDunn is co-author of Half The Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide, a book that has become a worldwide bestseller. WuDunn’s career spans investment banking for Goldman Sachs, strategic planning for the New York Times, and serving as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing. She is the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer Prize, awarded for her reportage on China’s 1989 Democracy Movement.
Sponsored by the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation; the Global, Environmental and Outdoor Education Council, Alberta Teachers’ Association; and the Global Education Program, University of Alberta International
