When I saw the picture of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations Chief Allan Adam, his face half swollen, his skin bruised purple, and blood dripping down onto his collar, I was gutted.
I was already feeling unsteady from the chaos unfolding in our world. For me that chaos includes the constant adversity faced by Indigenous Peoples that I report on.
But, seeing a revered First Nations leader in this condition via the hands of law enforcement was a new and higher level of distressing.
IN THE FACE of protests composed largely of young people, the presence of America’s military on the streets of major cities has been a controversial development. But this isn’t the first time that Generation Z — those born after 1996 — has popped up on the Pentagon’s radar.
Today we’re facing the exact same questions that Americans were asking just over fifty years ago, in 1967 and 1968, as riots took place all across America, resulting in over 70 dead and untold injured.
In order to understand how civil unrest had reached such proportions, and how to prevent it from occurring in the future, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders — known as the Kerner Commission, after its chairman, Otto Kerner Jr., who was governor of Illinois at the time.
We are witnessing the head-on collision between the story America’s political, media and educational institutions tell Americans about what their country is, and the reality of what their country actually is.
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated working people and their incomes. The jobs lost during the lock down have been disproportionately low-paying jobs held by vulnerable renters. Thousands of renters have already missed paying some or all of their rents over the last few months, and have no prospect for continued income in a global economic depression.
Long layoffs mean employees lose the right to return to their jobs and businesses face big severance costs.
At 57, Darcy Dawson figured his job as a server in the restaurant at the Holiday Inn and Suites in downtown Vancouver would be his last before retirement. Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and Dawson became one of the 400,000 people in the province thrown out of work.
The government failed the public in preparing for Covid-19, and is failing to prepare for the climate and ecological crisis.
Now is the time in human history that we must combine our skills, knowledge and wisdom. The government must prioritise people and planet, so we can #decidetogether how [we] should move on so that the future is better.
