Darcey's Thesis on Refugee Families
EMCN now has its very own copy of Darcey Dachyshyn's PhD thesis on refugee families. Eventually it will be properly catalogued into our staff resource centre, but for now if you want to read it, please contact Jim. Much of the work in it was supported by us and Darcey's thinking about the issues for these people is very relevant to our own commitment to holistic integrated practice.
Raising Children in a New Country: an illustrated handbook
If anyone would like a sample copy of a little children's booklet called "Raising Children in a New Country: an illustrated handbook", produced by the Bridging Refugee You & Children's Services of US Conference of Catholic Bishops, just let Jim know. Limited quantities-- first ask, first get.
Physical Activity and Recreational Directory for Older Adults
The Winter Spring edition of the physical Activity and Recreational Directory for older adults can be found for download and as an online database at http://www.seniorscouncil.net/content.php?id=200
Please read the information below about the death of people where lack of good housing might be a factor. If you are aware of anyone where this has been the case during the 2007 year, please provide the information to Lorrette as requested but also copy Jim Gurnett at EMCN on it. Thanks for helping ensure we can remember everyone involved.
Criteria for Homelessness Memorial
The Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness coordinates an annual Memorial for people who have died as a result of Homelessness and inadequate housing. The first Memorial was held December 21st, 2005 Sacred Heart Church; the second Memorial was be held January 20th, 2007 at the Boyle Street Community Centre. Our third annual Memorial will be held on January 19th, 2008 at the Boyle Street Community Centre, we will begin at 4 p.m and a round dance organized by Boyle Street Community Centre will follow.
The purpose of this memorial is to educate the community on the tragedy of homelessness and the ultimate cost that some individuals pay. Homelessness and inadequate housing is a struggle which many people are suffering through right now on the streets of Edmonton. Toronto has had a monthly homeless memorial for the past few years and it has been well received by the community; it has been a very effective vehicle for educating the general public on the topic of homelessness and the human tragedy involved.
We require the assistance of our member organizations in order to continue this Memorial. We would like you to gather names and to verify deaths. Although we know many people have passed away in this manner over many years, we are asking you to consider the time frame from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007 and answer the following questions:
- Are you aware of individuals that have passed away in the past year who have died as a result of homelessness or a complicating factor of homelessness? If you are, please use the following criteria to verify this and provide us with information if possible:
- Verify that the individual passed away as a complicating factor of homelessness. For example, living on the street with no fixed address, or living day to day in an overnight shelter, addiction issues, mental health issues, violence, exposure etc…
- Verify that they have actually died, a call to the medical examiners will often verify this.
- Name and date that they have died (*this is for cross-agency verification purposes ONLY, to avoid duplication in the counting process – no names will be disclosed
Please have your feedback to Lorette Garrick at lgarrick@gspady.ab.ca or mail to 10015 - 105 A Avenue T5H 0M5 by January 4, 2008 at the latest.
The committee will review the information, and coordinate the collation and cross-checking of data. Your support is vital to make this initiative succeed.
Brown Bag Sessions
Greetings Everyone, Together with our community partners, the Prairie Metropolis Center (PMC) would like to announce two Brown Bag Sessions in January 2008. These sessions profile current work of PMC affiliate researchers that is of interest and value to our partners in government and the community. Attached you will find posters advertising these events. Could you please advertise these sessions to all who may be interested?
Lori Wilkinson (University of Manitoba)
The Labour Market Initiation of 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 Generation Asian Youth, Views from Western Canada
Thursday, January 10, Noon to 1:00 p.m.
@ Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
2-4 10010 – 107A Avenue Street, Edmonton
Darren Lund (University of Calgary)
Doing Social Justice Activism in Alberta
Thursday, January 31, Noon to 1:00 p.m.
@Education South, University of Alberta
Room 262 Education South.
Thank you for your assistance in advertising these events. We hope to see you there.
Sincerely,
Marlene Mulder
Junior Research Scholar
Prairie Metropolis Center
4-116 Education North
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E5
Phone: 492-0146
December 20, 2007
Media Release
PIA launches More Democracy! campaign for New Year
Advocacy group calls on Premier to implement in 2008 a six-point plan for a more democratic Alberta
Edmonton - Public Interest Alberta (PIA) today called on Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach to make a firm New Year’s resolution for a more democratic Alberta, and to stick to this commitment as a priority of his government.
The request to the Premier came at the launch of PIA’s More Democracy! campaign, a six-point plan to address the worst features of Alberta’s troubling democratic deficit.
“Alberta is badly in need of democratic reform and renewal,” said Larry Booi, chair of PIA and head of PIA’s Democracy Task Force. “The consequences of Alberta’s vast democratic deficit are at least as serious as our province’s more obvious infrastructure deficit, and the problems must be addressed in a systematic and comprehensive way.”
PIA’s six-point proposal came after extensive consultation with individuals and groups across the province, including in eight public forums held in centres across Alberta in the spring of 2007. “People throughout Alberta are increasingly frustrated and impatient with the breadth and depth of the problems with this lack of democracy,” said Booi. “Of all the suggestions we received, six stood out in terms of their potential to make a difference for democracy in the near future.” The PIA proposal contains the following six recommended changes:
- Institute comprehensive reform of electoral and political party financing
- Abolish the Public Affairs Bureau, and replace it with a system that is more open and non-partisan
- Initiate a Citizens’ Assembly to make recommendations on proportional representation
- Strengthen the role of the Legislature and MLAs by further increasing the power of and support for legislative committees and officers
- Create a high-profile Commission on Gender and Democracy to develop a comprehensive approach to achieving gender equity in our political system
- Require a more open, thorough and effective approach to public consultation on issues of public policy development.
PIA also announced an action plan to generate support for the six proposals, including making democratic renewal an important issue in the provincial election expected in the spring of 2008.
Further information on the More Democracy! campaign is available on the PIA website at www.pialberta.org.
Media contact: Larry Booi 780- 420-0471
Sowing Seeds in the Vast Wasteland: The Birth of The Real News
Paul Jay, a veteran Canadian documentary filmmaker, news producer, and CEO of Independent World Television (IWT), was in the midst of a globetrotting four-year quest to change the nature of television news when he explained his mission to a Chicago taxi driver.
"I said we're building a new TV news network," Jay recalls. "No corporate funding, no government funding, no advertising."
And in the straightforward way of a street-wise cabbie, his driver got it instantly.
"Oh," Jay remembers him saying. "You mean the REAL news."
That easily, a name was born. IWT still exists as a parent company, but it's now doing business as The Real News. And if one of the most interesting developments in the news media since Al Gore invented the internet is not quite on the air yet, it's already just a mouse-click away on your computer -- therealnews.com.
Since its launch this summer, visitors to the website have been able to see things they have never seen and hear analysis they have never heard on American commercial TV: Political scientist Aijaz Ahmad dissecting the internal politics of the Bush administration from New Delhi in a way Bill Kristol never has on Fox News (and wouldn't want to); Asia Times foreign correspondent Pepe Escobar of Brazil showing the 10-foot high, graffiti-covered concrete walls which now quarantine Baghdad neighborhoods in the name of reconciliation ("This is what we call peace," he says); Shwan Aziz, an Iraqi Kurd, speaking from the ruins of his devastated village after the recent Turkish aerial bombing: "Saddam didn't do half of what we have seen now. The Baath party bombed our villages, but it warned us before bombardment."
"People are fairly clear that the politicians are talking the way products get sold on TV, but the media reports as if the spin is the real thing," Jay says. "If you're going to have a democracy, you have to have an infrastructure that can say, 'No. That's not true, and here are the facts.'"
The genesis of The Real News came with the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Jay was producing Canada's popular debate show, Counterspin, as he watched the atrocious performance of major media outlets in questioning the rationale for war.
"You can't have the semblance of a democracy when the organs of the press become vehicles of propaganda for the government," Jay says. "And we saw that happen with the Iraq war."
But a television news operation on even a modest scale is an expensive proposition, so it has been a long process of raising funds and building support for the project. Jay counts among his heroes Mark Twain ("He had the courage to go where the facts led him -- there weren't any taboos -- and he did it with skill"), and he signed up perhaps this generation's Twain, Gore Vidal, along with Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham for his advisory board. Over time, that board came to include many of the leading figures in today's alternative news media -- Jeff Cohen of FAIR, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, John Nichols and Jonathan Schell of The Nation, Mark Karlin of BuzzFlash.com, Laura Flanders of Air America, and author and filmmaker Danny Schechter.
By 2005, his team was ready to put up a website with just a description of their plans and goals and a handful of prototype videos.
"It got a huge response. It kind of caught us off-guard," recalls Geraldine Cahill, an Australian who serves as The Real News' communications director. "We weren't in any position to start producing news. But some of the people who became donors then have stayed with us."
And those donors are the key to the plan's success. While The Real News has received some large donations to bring it to this point, the goal is to be funded entirely by viewers donating as little as $5 or $10 per month -- less than the price of their daily newspaper. Jay figures the project can succeed if it can get just a fraction of the four million members who support PBS, and that's just in the United States. The Real News is already chartered as a nonprofit in the US and Canada, and plans a push soon into the huge market of India.
"If enough people do it we can sustain this," Jay says, "and that's what will give us courage and independence. We don't have to worry about quick ratings or the withdrawal of advertising or government funding. We only have one thing to worry about -- did we get the facts right?"
For content, The Real News will rely on an initial staff of about 25 in its Toronto studios and a worldwide network of print journalists and independent producers. It has relationships with writers from The Hindu, India's largest English-language newspaper, The Guardian in the UK, and The Daily Mail in South Africa. It relied on three freelancers for its coverage of the martial law crisis in Pakistan.
"Pakistan has been a great place to flesh out what we're doing," Cahill says. "It's not good when the news is bad, but it was a good test for us."
Cahill also wants to develop relationships with the blogging community. The Real News coverage of the Bali conference featured a 10-minute interview with Ben Wikler of Avaaz.com, the new global online grassroots-organizing effort which has made climate change a top priority, and the interview is now linked on the Avaaz website.
"We know the power the blogs have to talk to particular audiences," she says, "and it can be fruitful on both sides."
Jay speaks often about the impact The Real News could have on democracy and empowering ordinary people, and a section of the website called Organize This! includes stories about the Hollywood writers strike and French labor protests over President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposals to increase working hours and reduce pension benefits. But he rejects the notion that The Real News will be just a left-wing alternative to Fox.
"Fox is a propaganda organ for the Republican party. We're not playing partisan politics. We're going to be against all of them," he says. "We're about investigative journalism and verifiable facts. But if you do verifiable facts, you're accused of left-wing journalism. When Sy Hersh broke Abu Ghraib, is that left-wing journalism? No. It's journalism. We'll be equal critics if the Democrats are in power, or the Liberals in Canada, and the proof will be in the pudding. People can see what we do and decide."
A top priority now is to open a Washington, DC, bureau to cover the US government and the 2008 presidential campaign. By the spring or summer, the hope is to begin distributing an hour-long daily news show via cable and satellite TV -- a concise summary of the continuously updated, 24/7 coverage available on the web.
Ultimately, Jay says he will be able to measure success by that Chicago taxi driver. "I'll get in the cab, and the cab driver's going to say, 'I had this politician in the back seat yesterday, and he was telling me such-and-such, and I said, "Uh-uh. That's not true. I saw it on The Real News."'"
This article originally appeared on ZNet.
Gregg Gordon
