Blogs

From time to time I will use my blog to reproduce an important voice that you are not hearing in the mainstream media.  In this open letter Malalai Joya, one of the most important women leaders in Afghanistan, speaks of how the occupation is just causing more misery and doing nothing to protect women's rights, on the contrary. 

"But the Afghan people do not just want to hear ‘sorry.’ We ask for an end to the occupation of Afghanistan and a stop to such tragic war crimes".

If you need a dose of inspiration and belief in humanity's ability to save itself and the planet, go to see Fierce Light this week-end.  The beautiful and moving film about what Velcrow Ripper calls "spiritual activism" opens this week-end in Toronto at the Cumberland, Vancouver at the Fifth Avenue Cinema and Montreal at the AMC.   I am also in the film.

Yesterday was a sad day for democracy not only because of the disgraced politicians parading before committees of inquiry and courts but primarily because of the resounding defeat of the STV (a form of proportional representation) in a referendum and the victory for an unprecendented third term of Liberal Gordon Campbell.

Take a minute right now and email your MP to ask him or her to support the demand that Canada use its influence to pressure the Sri Lankan government to call an immediate ceasefire and stop the slaughter of Tamil civilians. 

 I don’t usually pay much attention to Mother’s Day. It isn’t just the commercialism. All holidays are commercialized.   If the truth be told, I’ve never really valued motherhood all that much.   I come from the generation of women that fought for women to be recognized for qualities beyond being mothers and wives. I grew up wanting to be the opposite of my mother who I saw as subordinate to a man who was unworthy of her. In the fierce battle to claim women’s ability to do whatever men could do, many of us denigrated the importance of what mothers contribute to the world.

Two great reviews of the book have just come out today. The first is by Cathi Bond writing for the Globe and Mail and can be found here. The second is by Derrick O'Keefe of the Georgia Straight and can be read here. Please don't forget to leave your feedback of the reviews or click here to leave your own review on this site.

It's the week of Hot Docs, as I have heard at every screening, the largest documentary film festival in the world.  And it is great.  I'm a movie lover but I've always been more of a TIFF fan.  The love of documentary films is more recent for me, partly from my friendships with Monique Simard, now the Director of the NFB in Quebec and Velcrow Ripper, a director whose extraordinary new film Fierce Light is in Hot Docs and opens in theatres in Toronto and Vancouver on May 15 but also because documentary films have become so important to social change.

 On May 12, British Columbians will vote in a referendum on electoral reform that will have an enormous impact across Canada. They are raising money online to put the ad on TV

Just got this amazing response to my book from a colleague at Ryerson

Tranforming Power" in my opinion is one of the most significant Canadian publications of the new millennium. I feel tremendously privileged and grateful to have had the opportunity to read it. The book has had an absolutely transforming impact on me personally. I cannot think of social work, social justice, and education in the same ways anymore.

Prominent Canadians ask Ignatieff to put human rights before trade with Colombia -

Over 50 prominent individuals and organizations have sent Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff a letter urging him to help stop the ratification of the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until a full and independent human rights impact assessment can be carried out.