* Please Circulate Widely *
==================================================================Sri Lankan Army fires artillery shells into
government-declared “SAFETY ZONES”ACT NOW! STOP THE GENOCIDE OF TAMILS!
EMERGENCY RALLY
Thursday, January 29
6:00pm
United States Consulate
360 University Avenue
Toronto
TTC: Osgoode or St. Patrick– and -
CANDLE-LIGHT VIGIL
Wednesday, February 4
5:30pm to 7:00pm
Sri Lankan Consulate
40 St. Clair Avenue West
Toronto
TTC: St. Clair===================================================================
PRESSURE THE GOVERNMENT OF SRI LANKA:
END IMMEDIATELY THE GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED ON TAMIL
CIVILIANS IN THE NORTHERN REGIONS!!!On January 26 alone, over 300 Tamils were killed in
indiscriminate artillery attacks by the Sri Lankan Army
(SLA) on a village in the Northern district of Mullaithivu
in Sri Lanka. These brutal attacks have left thousands
seriously injured; many injured have bled to death on the
streets as there are no emergency medical supplies and
treatment facilities in these government-declared so-called
“Safety Zones”.New reports indicate that civilians have been left to die
as the army continues to engage in artillery attacks,
including on hospitals.“In a scene of carnage of untold proportion on civilian
targets hit by hundreds of Sri Lanka Army-fired artillery
shells, more than 300 people have died and several hundreds
are bleeding to death within the last 24 hours, amidst
pouring rain inside the ‘Safety Zone’ declared by the Colombo
government. Houses and vehicles burn for a stretch of three
kilometers between Va’l'lipunam Kaa’li temple and Moongkilaa’ru
towards Paranthan road, reports from Vanni said on Monday.
Unattended bodies and injured people unable to move are lying
around everywhere, while a remaining doctor fled and helpless
ICRC officials virtually cried at the scene from their bunkers.”- TamilNet.com, January 26, 2009
===================================================================
TAKE ACTION!
Demand that Canadian Members of Parliament, policy-makers,
and the media exert pressure on the Government of Sri Lanka
to immediately:1. Halt the war and seek a negotiated political solution to
the conflict.2. Allow local and international NGOs and other humanitarian
workers to provide much needed assistance to those displaced.3. Lift the embargo on food, medicine, and other essential items.
4. Stop the indiscriminate bombings and shellings of civilians.
===================================================================
Demand that the United Nations IMMEDIATELY:
1. Adopt a United Nations Human Rights Council Emergency
Resolution calling for an end to the massive human rights
violations against Tamils.2. Establish a United Nations monitoring mission in Sri Lanka
with a mandate to report on all human rights violations and
humanitarian issues.Stop the GENOCIDE OF TAMILS!
===================================================================
For further information, please contact:
CanadianHART
(Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for the Relief of Tamils)Phone: 416-838-9637
Email: info@canadianhart.org
Web: www.haltgenocide.org and http://www.tamilidpcrisis.org/To endorse the Stop the Genocide of Tamils campaign, please
e-mail info@canadianhart.org.===================================================================
Toronto: Stop the Genocide of Tamils January 28, 2009
Article: B.C. man alleges assault and racial abuse by 3 off-duty police officers January 24, 2009
Points to note: Vancouver has a significant South Asian population. Vancouver has problems with overt racism, especially with South Asians and those perceived to be South Asian. Don’t read the comments unless you want to see people insinuating Phil Khan is lying about the assault, including the psychological and physical effects.
Being “colour blind” is NOT a solution January 20, 2009
Colour blindness in North America. For some people, it evokes thoughts of the physical condition. For others, it evokes feelings of resentment. For yet another set of other people, it evokes the one true solution to racism. This colour blindness, in short, is to see, judge, and evaluate a person on their merits and actions, not on their race or colour of their skin.
That sounds like a good idea. In fact, that’s a great idea. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone was judged based on the shit they did instead of people attributing it to their race? Recently, I heard someone vociferate that exact idea: race should not exist. I can get on board with that. The way to do away with the existence of race is to ignore it – no specialized groups, programs, or services directed towards anything that may take race into consideration. In short, to get rid of race is to not pay attention to it. To solve racism and make race as relevant as the shape of your bellybutton is to be colour blind. That’s the proposed solution I hear quite a bit from white people who think they are doing anti-racist work. Admittedly, I stormed out halfway through, so perhaps this person was telling a bad joke, but this is something that I’ve heard enough times to doubt it was sarcasm gone wrong.
Colour blindness is not a solution, it’s an endpoint. It’s a destination we must arrive at.
Colour blindness would mean to ignore the current perceptions of races, and racism stemming from those perceptions. It will not undo all of the years of learning that we have all undertaken. We will not unlearn that Europe was simply going abroad and settling in the “New World”, and all of knowledge was created by Europeans (well, the important ones, anyway). We will not unlearn that if the race of a murder victim is not specified (or divulged through name) in a news story, it must be a white person. We will not unlearn that Natives are supposedly ‘all’ alcoholics, drug users, and criminals, not because of colonialism and racism, but because that is just how Aboriginals are. We will not unlearn that young black men are only ever out to rob, stab, shoot, or sell drugs to you, and any time there is a young black man doing anything but robbing, stabbing, shooting, or selling drugs, he must be exceptional. We will not unlearn that businesses, media, politics, and other major institutions are inhabited by a majority white because they did it on their own.
Instead, we’ll simply ignore that we live in a racist society, and no one would have the footing to challenge these absurd perceptions because we live in a colour blind society where race does not matter. If, say tomorrow, 20 January 2009, North America suddenly decided that the solution to all of the racial tensions and racism is to ignore that race exists, well, a lot of people are going to be pissed off. Everything will stay the same. Maybe people will hurl less racial epithets at one another (white people will be glad to know they’re no longer crackers), but essentially it will stay the same. Those with white privilege and power can comfort themselves in knowing that they don’t think race matters, and people of colour will be at a loss for how to articulate subtle racism and discriminations they experience on a day to day basis. We can’t ignore what matters. Racism, in all its forms and nuances, exists and has material effects. Race will become irrelevant only after a fundamental change in the way we think and the way our institutions are structured.
Colour blindness, while it may seem attractive to a lot of people, is not a practice we should be following, but an end point we must work towards. We cannot demand colour blindness. It doesn’t come on tap.
Edited to add: I want to add this clarification in lest this seems like I think ‘colour blindness’ or that we shouldn’t actually see or think of colour at all:
I should have explained the definition of ‘colour blind’ that I was working with. I meant an end point at which a person’s colour will simply be a physical trait, and not an essentializing characteristic of that person. Colour blind (which now I’m realizing is actually an ableist term that I should have caught while I was writing this post) not in the sense that we don’t ’see’ or acknowledge different skin tones, but that we see skin tones and they are as relevant as shoe size. In short, colour would not come with social baggage. So, with your example, band-aids and makeup foundations would be available in all different shades of flesh tones, but they would matter little socially.
New Year Resolutions January 2, 2009
I hope everyone had a good New Year’s Day (and holiday season, if you celebrate), seeing as how I neglected the blog for so long. Here are some of my resolutions for the coming year.
1. Reflect on my privileges / map my privileges
I find that I can get very caught up in the ways I am oppressed and marginalized without engaging with how I am also privileged in other ways. Anyone who knows me (especially offline) knows that I am obsessed with privilege and intersectionality. If you want to rile me up, start saying “I know what it’s like to be x because I am y. Or say that it’s worse to be y than it is to be x. In 2008, the discussion that sticks with me in this way came out of the US elections, particularly Proposition 8 and other propositions against gay marriage. When exit polls were released, segments of the LGBT activist community argued that voters of colour who voted for Prop 8 were betraying them because they too were minorities and “should know better.” I’m sure some of you may remember The Advocate trying to create hype by calling gay rights “The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle” on their cover. In any case, in 2009, I hope to reflect more on my privileges and the way in which they intersect with my marginalization.
2. Learn more about anarchism
In 2008, I discovered that anarchist theory most closely aligns with the way I view the world and what I want for the world, which is, very simplistically, the end of hierarchies. I used to think that anarchism was basically a movement of disillusioned white kids, with no acknowledgement of race, gender, sexuality, and disability, etc. As usual, a sound intellectual beating is what I get for not taking the time out to learn.
3. Post more about television (and in general)
Somehow I managed to not say a word about the Avatar movie at all. Hopefully, I’ll change that a little bit in 2009 and write about television more, since it’s something I spend most of my free time watching and complaining about. When the new Doctor is announced tomorrow, I may or may not have a post about that, given all the whining about the possibility of Patterson Joseph as the Doctor (“But the Doctor is British!”).
What are your resolutions, if you’re into that kind of thing?
