Tour, Day 1: Fredericton

March 1, 2008

Tour, Day 1: Fredericton

The first leg of the Own Your Media tour got off to a slow start when copious snow and slow snow plows tacked an extra four hours onto the stretch of road between Montreal and Quebec City. We were forced to reschedule the Fredericton to the following night, but had a brief informal discussion with some students taking a class from Tracy Glynn, our inestimable Fredericton contact.

Tracy has written a number of articles for the Dominion. Go check em out. She's also a tireless local organizer, and she was busy promoting local Cinema Politica screenings, postering for a native solidarity talk in New Brunswick, showing up to intervene at countless discussions, hearings and consultations, and in the recent past, campaigning against the ubiquitous "support our troops" placards and stickers.

Last fall, Tracy and others visited local businesses, asking them to remove "support our troops" stickers from their windows. They pointed out that the stickers were funded by the Department of National Defence and amounted to a pro-war stance. Predictably, the campaign angered some military families, and several members of the group received death threats.

We also met Dana Brown, one of the founders of Citizen's Press www.citizenspress.org, an interesting and promising independent project that, like many others, seems to be on hiatus for the moment.

Alex Corey has also been an organizational force in Fredericton, distributing copies of the tar sands issue downtown and helping promote the Fredericton stop.

The Own Your Media event had a decent turnout despite being rescheduled at the last minute, and a number of people showed support in a variety of ways. On to Antigonish.