The Dominion - Youth

Dressing Up

hillarybain — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 05:06:53 +0000

Kids shake it up in Halifax's North End

HALIFAX—Eleven-year-old Craig Cain eagerly shakes bottles of Hope Blooms salad dressing and pours them into dishes for a potential customer to taste. He tells the customer his favourite flavour is Creamy Dill and Garlic, and smiles widely when a purchase is made. It is 7:45 on a Saturday morning. At one point, when offered a $20 bill for a $6 bottle of salad dressing, he pauses and asks, without guile, “Do you need change for that?” He is eager. So eager, he happily got up two hours earlier that morning to volunteer to sell salad dressing.

Cain is one of almost 40 kids who work on a youth project at the North End Community Garden in Halifax, and who, with the help of sponsors and the program’s organizers, have started a registered charity and a business: Hope Blooms. The majority of the money from the business goes into a scholarship fund for the young people; the rest goes to a community charity.

“First we pick the stuff from the garden, then we take it in, then we clean it, then we spin it, then we cut it, then we put it in the blender with the other ingredients and then we pour it into the bottles.” Cain has been working in the garden for two years. He has learned how to grow plants and how to make salad dressing. He says it’s a lot of fun.

Eleven-year-old Karen Chen says she and her colleagues have to pay attention to how many vegetables they grow, and that relates to how much salad dressing they can make and sell. Each bottle of salad dressing contains a half-cup of herbs. “It’s a lot. We need a lot each time,” says Chen. “Some people just come to our garden and take our stuff and smash it. It’s bad. I think that each plant has its own life,” says Chen, “It makes us really, really angry.”

Vandalism of the garden is only one of the challenges the kids in the area are facing. “The community has its challenges, as do all marginalized communities, as it relates to crime and poverty,” says Cheyanne Gorman-Tolliver. Gorman-Tolliver works with the Black Business Institute (BBI), which is working closely with Hope Blooms. “But the people are strong and they make a way.”

“Sometimes we have to start over again [after the garden is vandalized],” says eight-year-old Folayemi Boboye. “We may have to make more compost and start growing again.” Boboye has a unique view on the garden: she says it is patient.

“I think it’s the kids who are patient,” counters Chen. “We have to have patience and help the garden.” They agree, however, that, like all of us, the garden needs to take time to grow. It needs someone to take good care of it.

Jillian Martin, who works at the North End Community Health Centre, has noticed a difference in the young people’s commitment to taking care of their garden and their business. Each year, their willingness to show up and work hard improves. “Now that they know what it’s all about,...as soon as they get there, they’re ready to work,” says Martin, who describes her role with the garden as a manager of operations.

She says it was a real learning process and that it took a long time to get the business started and on track. With help from the BBI, they came up with a business plan and learned about things such as a financial forecast—“terms we’d never heard of,” says Martin. The Centre for Women and Business at Mount Saint Vincent also provided a lot of assistance. “We’re good at using our resources and asking for help because we recognize that we don’t really know what we’re doing when it comes to business, but the spirit is there and the dream is there so we just have to kind of go with the flow. It’s not hard to keep going because there’s just so much inspiration and the kids love it.”

The kids also love the business camp BBI hosts each year. At the camp, the children learn important points of running a business. They learn “entrepreneurship...and the value of making a product, selling it, and feeling proud of yourself for doing your own thing” says Martin. Cain says he is learning how to count change, how to sell, and that sometimes it’s important to get up really early.

Cain wants to start his own line of salad dressing when he grows up. He wants to be a business man.

The program has the kids seriously considering their futures. “They actually take the time to think, ‘what do I want to be when I grow up, and how do I get there?’” says Martin. A few weeks ago, one young girl asked Martin what community college was about and whether she could use the money from the scholarships for college rather than university. Martin says, “They’ve been starting to ask [these kinds of] questions, realizing, 'I do have a prospect of education, I do have this money coming when I graduate, what should I do with it?'”

Jessie Jollymore, Martin’s colleague at the Health Centre, is the woman whose vision was to develop the garden. She says that when she has taken the young people to various events and presentations, she has them speak about their dreams for the future. The children talk about wanting to be teachers, doctors, marine biologists: at this point, says Jollymore, the room goes silent. She says people are surprised to hear that these kids from low-income, disadvantaged communities have dreams. “They shouldn’t be [surprised],” she says, “Everyone has dreams.”

Chen wants to be a chef when she grows up. “Getting people to eat nutritious food is the biggest challenge,” she says. “Some people don’t like vegetables and eat unhealthy things.” After displaying her knowledge of the various nutrients and vitamins found in fruits and vegetables, she continues, “I never really liked cucumbers, but after I started working in the garden I took a bite of cucumber and felt like I wanted to go outside and yell, ‘Delicious!’”

Boboye eats a lot of vegetables now too. She takes what she grows home to her mother. “My mom always makes some salads and they’re really good.” She says she has learned that it’s important to eat good, healthy food.

“The moms have really taken an interest,” says Martin. “I think they really enjoy coming to a place where they can see their kids flourishing.”

Last year, the youth shared their proceeds with ARK, a shelter for street-involved and homeless youths. “They’ve been developing a sense of making money, and giving it back to the community.” This year, they will choose another organization with whom to share their proceeds.

Chen says, “We’re helping a lot of people by selling what we make.”

“It means a lot to me to see positivity coming into the neighbourhood...the community gets a really negative rap sometimes from the media,” says Martin.

Jollymore says that the whole project is about the kids having a sense of empowerment regarding their futures. It’s also about spreading that sense of empowerment throughout the community. Cain wants to see more people from his school come to the garden and help out. “They don’t get paid to come here, they don’t get paid to make [the salad dressing],” says Martin, but they come anyway.

A greenhouse is in the process of being built so herbs for the salad dressing can be grown all winter long. It looks like the business will keep flourishing. So far, Hope Blooms has sold out every week they've set up shop at the market.

Charlene is a freelancer and a recent graduate of Journalism at King's. She holds a BA and MA in English literature. She works as a Junior Program Officer at Imhotep Legacy Academy.

Craig Cain

Greenhouse

The Young Ones

Moira Peters — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 05:55:36 +0000

Heather Meek.The Young Ones.Levels.jpg

The Roots of Rage

hillarybain — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:44:34 +0000

Halifax's poverty, racism and "swarmings"

HALIFAX—Halifax doesn’t feel like a violent city. In fact, walking down North Street past jellybean-coloured houses and a view of the harbour, you can even hear birds chirping. But this is the same city—the same area of the same city—where seven violent attacks stunned Halifax residents over Labour Day weekend. All were perpetrated by groups of young people, most of whom are allegedly black.

“Violence can happen anywhere, but not with the volume and intensity that Halifax has for a city its size,” says Jeff*, a recent victim who sustained severe injuries. Jeff will be unable to work for several months and says the recent attacks in Halifax have left him with conflicting emotions. “I love this city but don't want to live somewhere where I don't feel safe.”

Jeff and his partner were walking in his North End neighbourhood early one September evening when they were approached by a group of young people who asked them for a cigarette. Before he could respond, Jeff was severely beaten by between six and eight young men and women.

His experience is typical in what have become known as "swarmings" in Halifax. Swarmings are violent physical attacks perpetrated by large groups of people upon individuals or small groups. These attacks are unprovoked and random: the perpetrators and the victims are unknown to each other and, while robbery has sometimes been involved, it does not appear to be the main motivation for the attack.

This kind of violence is not new to the city. In 2006, after several swarmings and an unrelated deadly bar fight, Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly initiated a Roundtable on Violence in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM). Now, four years later, the roundtables are over and the report is written, but Halifax's streets are still not safe. At the time of this article's release, an eighth attack—where injuries were sustained—and another attempted attack—where the victim escaped—were reported.

According to a 2005 Statistics Canada survey, Halifax has the highest rates of violent crime in the country—sexual and physical assault, homicides, robbery and break-and-enters. Furthermore, the locally-commissioned roundtable report, written by criminologist Dan Clairmont, states that the HRM is tied with Regina and Saskatoon for the highest percentage of youth (ages 19-24) involved with violent crime in the country.

“The causes of youth crime are hard to pinpoint in terms of finding a single, all-encompassing source,” says Charys Payne, Dalhousie law student and youth worker. “However, one of the roots of crime is, of course, poverty. Furthermore, in the North End—a racialized community—this is coupled with the experience of racism.” The Ryerson Anti-Racism Task Force defines racialization as “the social process by which certain groups of people are singled out for unequal treatment on the basis of race and other characteristics, whether real or imagined.” The Task Force also says that racialization is a historical process.

In Halifax, the roots of this process are clear.

According to the website of the 2006 Racism, Violence and Health Project undertaken by Dalhousie University’s Department of Social Work (for which Payne was a researcher), thousands of Blacks settled in Nova Scotia during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and thousands more settled here after the American Revolution. They were promised land and freedom in exchange for fighting for Britain, but upon arrival were denied both land and equal rights.

In more recent history, the infamous destruction of the Black community of Africville in the late 1960s displaced citizens who were then relocated to the Uniacke Square public housing project in the North End of Halifax. Former Africville residents and their descendants, according to the Racism, Violence and Health Project website, still face serious socio-economic hardships, and many still live in public housing.

In 2007-2008, Payne was the Executive Director of Saint George’s YouthNet, a youth organization a few blocks from Uniacke Square that offers free morning, lunch, after-school and summer programs. Reflecting on the causes of violence in the North End, she says, “intergenerational poverty begets systemic violence.” Payne explains that poor, racialized youth “already face the strongly held stereotype that they are violent and angry so this behavior becomes a sort of armor which shields them from the pain of exclusion from middle class judgment.”

In short, for symptoms to improve, the core issues need to be addressed. From Payne’s perspective, “while the reality is sometimes bleak this does not mean that the situation cannot be resolved."

“It all comes back to issues that are unaddressed in our lives,” says Marshall Williams Jr., suggesting abuse, discrimination and lack of self-respect as examples of the roots of violent behaviour. Williams is a resident of the Preston area, the largest Indigenous Black community in Canada and member of the IMove (In My Own Voice) youth group, a media-based program for at-risk youth. Unfortunately, young people don’t get together on the streets to talk about their issues, according to Williams. “They’re getting together and reflecting them back out.”

Williams, 29, says more and better recreation facilities, community organizations, and an improved education system could give support to young people—especially to those who do not have their needs met within their homes. He has seen the decline of these supports as he has gotten older, with fewer recreation opportunities available, and decreased youth involvement in community organizations.

According to Williams, “The people in the position to address these things are not addressing them.”

The Roundtable on Violence was intended to locate and target the underlying causes of Halifax’s crime and violence, but it is unclear whether or how the recommendations have been implemented. Mayor Peter Kelly did not respond to calls for an interview.

Sarah MacLaren, Executive Director of Leave Out Violence (LOVE) Halifax, says the greatest disappointment regarding the roundtable report is that it was released just prior to the city’s 2006 budget, but appropriate funds were not earmarked to address the recommendations.

MacLaren also notes that when money is spent, it’s not necessarily spent well. As an example, she points to new recreation facilities in the HRM: while some youth will benefit from these facilities, she says that those who can’t afford new sneakers or sports equipment, or who don’t have transportation to the recreation centres, are the ones who could really use them.

There is also the question of the education system. Rocking back in her chair behind a desk full of papers, MacLaren says she does not believe all the responsibility lies with the Department of Education, but “in terms of access to youth over years and hours, they have the most. Youth spend a lot of time at school.” Unlike provinces that have publicly funded alternative schools, Nova Scotia lacks educational infrastructure for those students whose needs lie beyond the traditional classroom, or who have unique learning needs.

MacLaren asks, “Where’s the formal curriculum around life skills? Where are the alternative schools?” She sees schools as a logical locale for prevention-based programming, but does not believe that they are the only place to engage disenfranchized youth. Most of the young people MacLaren works with have already been implicated in violence and, she says, “I have seen youth completely turn around when given the support they need.”

LOVE, an organization that helps youth overcome the challenge of violence in their lives, is only one of the places young people end up. Many youth who have committed a violent crime end up negotiating the Youth Criminal Justice System, which MacLaren sees as being a prolonged and sometimes unhelpful process.

One of the recommendations of the roundtable report is a stronger focus on in-depth restorative justice programs through the Department of Justice and the Community Justice Society (CJS). In practice, restorative justice involves both those who have been involved in and affected by the crime—i.e.; the perpetrators of the crime and the victim—in a co-operative process that determines the outcome for both parties, with the intent to seek true justice.

"Enforcement and accountability are necessary, but so are social development strategies that provide alternatives and opportunities,” says Yvonne Atwell, Executive Director of CJS. While CJS is a program of the provincial government, the roundtable report recommends that the municipality’s role in furthering restorative justice in Halifax “would be an advocacy [role] vis-a-vis the provincial government.”

So far, “we haven’t seen anything from the city whatsoever,” says Atwell.

Williams believes that if the money spent to keep people in prison were redirected to community programs and supports, Halifax would see fewer people locked up. He says it costs around $125,000 to keep someone in prison for a year—which, for five people, would be over $600,000. "I guarantee,” Williams says, "if you put half that money into community programs and supports, four out of those five youth aren’t going to be in the criminal system anymore.”

For Jeff, whose life has been turned upside-down by the attack, “the best type of punishment for this would be to give back to the victim.”

In a recent email exchange he acknowledged his anger, especially given he is no longer able to do the work he loves. At the same time, he says he’d "like to have the opportunity to explain to [the attackers] and show them how I live and work in the hope that maybe it would restore what little empathy they have towards other people.”

As complicated as it may be for the victim, Williams sees this kind of empathy as a two-way street. “It’s really hard to hate somebody when you know what they’ve been through,” he says.

* The victim’s name has been changed to protect his or her anonymity.

Angela Day is a writer, educator, urban gardener and community organizer with roots in Halifax. She currently coordinates programs for young women across HRM. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Swarming Illustration

Marshall Williams

Olympics Sidelines Youth

Moira Peters — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:22:21 +0000

Understanding wider impacts of the Games

OTTAWA—The Winter Olympics have come and gone, and Vancouver is left to take stock of the lasting effects of having hosted this global mega-sporting event. As decisions are made about the fate of social housing in the Athlete’s Village, and as the last of the Red Tents are taken down, Vancouver might consider what the Olympics has meant for one of its most marginalized populations—homeless and street-involved youth.

Young people who watch the Olympics are expected to benefit from the Games, according to sociologist J.J. MacAloon in This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games. MacAloon says youth ought to relate to the athletes, who are themselves young adults, and be inspired by the example of these fine role models. Go to any Olympic host city organizing committee’s website, and you will encounter special games, educational activities, and interactive content geared directly at youth. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recently taken its focus on youth a step further with the introduction of the Youth Olympics, whose inaugural event is to be held in Singapore in August 2010. Its stated goal is to “inspire youth around the world to embrace, embody and express the Olympic values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect.”

Vancouver is the capital city of the province with the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So, consideration might have been given to the effects the Games would have on these young people. Whatever the Olympics has meant for Canadian youth overall, the Games' effects on Vancouver’s homeless and street-involved youth are not so rosy. The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) failed to meet approximately half the commitments outlined in their Inner-City Inclusivity Statement, according to the Interim Report Card compiled by the Impacts on Community Coalition. VANOC used these commitments to promote their bid and recruit wider support in Vancouver for hosting the Olympics. One such failure, according to the Report Card, was of VANOC’s commitment to protect inner-city housing and shelters. The Report Card points out that homelessness has more than doubled since Vancouver won the Olympic bid, and at the same time, between 1,085 and 1,580 units of low-income housing were lost in the inner city alone. The majority of housing losses occurred as a result of the transformation of Single Residence Occupancy (SRO) hotels into condominiums. According to a report by Pivot Legal Society, low-income housing loss in this period is a direct result of real estate speculation pressures generated by the Olympic Games.

A report by the Social Policy and Research Council of BC indicates BC Employment and Assistance Rates (i.e., Employment Insurance and welfare) remain far below a living income, particularly in an expensive city like Vancouver.

These factors, albeit not all related to the Olympics, combine to exacerbate homeless and street-involved youths’ difficulties surviving in Vancouver.

“You don’t know what it is to live on welfare until you’ve lived on welfare. It’s awful. Especially in BC. You can’t even live off welfare and have a place unless you have housing [provided], which is impossible,” said Sarah*, a young woman living in a youth homeless shelter in Vancouver.

The irony, of course, is that the Olympics are touted—especially at the bidding stage—as an event that will make things better for the inhabitants of host cities.

But Helen Lenskyj, in her book Olympic Industry Resistance, points out that Olympic host cities face a multitude of negative effects, particularly in relation to affordable housing and homelessness. Sara pointed out, “Not only are they making condos to try and shove their problem under the carpet but they’re deciding that oh, if they make some place and get [homeless people] off the street [the city will] look good... But actually [now that] the Olympics is done those places [temporary shelters] are coming down and new buildings, which people are going to pay for, are coming up and the homeless people are right back where they were.”

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions published an extensive report in 2007 about housing and the Olympics. Their research suggests that Olympic Games “are often catalysts for redevelopment entailing massive displacements and reductions in low cost and social housing stock.” They also note the common use of legislation “to allow for speedy expropriations of property or to criminalize homelessness.”

In BC, the provincial government passed a controversial Assistance to Shelter Act less than three months before the Vancouver Olympic Games began. The act gave the police new powers to move homeless people off the streets and into shelters. Advocates for homeless people dubbed the law the “Olympic kidnapping act.”

Such policies are consistent with global efforts to market cities to tourists and potential investors, according to E.J. McCann’s 2009 article, “City Marketing.” These strategies include “the constant policing and management of the city itself, so that its public spaces—and even its people—or at least those who are on public view in spaces likely to be traversed by tourists or business people—correspond to and enhance the brand.”

This happened with particular intensity—according to a number of homeless and street-involved youth who witnessed police activity—during the year leading up to the Games. In particular, homeless youth found themselves increasingly moved from downtown tourist streets such as Granville or Robson.

“There are certain neighbourhoods [the police] won't let you in, but in the West End, if they find you in one place? They'll be checking it every night after that for about a month,” said Curtis, a young Aboriginal man living in a youth homeless shelter. The Downtown East Side—an area notorious for open drug use, sex trade work and poverty— was the only neighbourhood these young people felt was free from police harassment in the year before the Olympics.

“They don't care if you're down there. They'll come up to me while I've been using drugs and they're like, we don't care that you're using. Just stay out of sight,” said Jennifer, a formerly homeless woman who continues to attend the youth drop-ins at her local homeless shelter.

The pressure to get off downtown streets meant that some youth had trouble accessing the services clustered around the West end of the city, including youth shelters such as Covenant House and Directions. It also meant they were pushed into areas of the city where they faced increased risks of drug involvement or crime.

“The East Side is the worst because you can get caught up in anything out there. We don't want to do that. That's why a lot of us come out to this area,” said Michael, a street-involved youth currently living in a shelter in the West End.

During the Games themselves, scrutiny by police seemed to ease. “The worst of the bad effects didn’t materialize,” noted Am Johal of the Impacts on Community Coalition (IOCC), “largely because of civil society pressure on government.” Pressure tactics included volunteer training offered by Pivot Legal Society and the BC Civil Liberties Association for Vancouver residents to monitor police, and an ongoing campaign against Olympic-induced displacement by the Carnegie Community Action Project.

Despite these efforts, homeless and street-involved youth still encountered the police during the Olympics, particularly if the young people were perceived to be out of place. Justine, a young Aboriginal woman who had recently secured social housing in Vancouver’s affluent West end, relayed a conversation she had with police during the Games: “[I was] just walking down the street, like [the police said] ‘You don’t look like you’re from around here.’ And it’s like, ‘I just live down the street actually.’ And they’re like, ‘Are you sure, what’s your name, what’s your address?’ and like interrogating me when I walk down the street just because you don’t look like you belong in the area.”

Homeless and street-involved youth also noticed police treated other young people differently during the Games, particularly if they were obviously Olympic revellers. “If you’re wearing Canada gear, you can be as hammered as you want and the cops won’t bother you, as long as you’re going, ‘Go, Canada!’” said Jason, a young man currently housed in Vancouver’s east side. This injustice rankled Jason and other youth, particularly given that they experience regular police harassment for relatively minor infringements.

As cities gear up for future Olympic Games—London 2012, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016—and as Toronto begins to prepare in earnest for the arrival of another mega-sporting event (the 2015 PanAm Games), it will be important to assess the effects on people from all walks of life, including low-income and homeless youth. These young people live in a city in a way most people don’t. Athletes, tourists, international media, and police and security forces will be stomping through the bedrooms and living rooms of street-involved and homeless youth when they descend on a host city. If the Olympics are marketed as the purview of the young, then young people ought to be the true beneficiaries, rather than the victims, of the Games.

*All names used in this story are pseudonyms.

Jackie Kennelly is an assistant professor at Carleton University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, currently studying the effects of the Olympics in Vancouver and London on low-income young people.

Street Youth & the Olymics

Growing Farmers

Moira Peters — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:35:35 +0000

Canada needs policies to support young farmers: NFUY

HALIFAX—"Between 1991 and 2006 the number of farmers under 35 years old decreased by over 60 per cent," said Kalissa Regier, a 31-year-old organic grain farmer.

That's a trend that Regier and other young farmers, who gathered in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, over the first weekend of March, are hoping to change.

Regier, President of the National Farmers Union Youth (NFUY), flew in from her farm in Saskatchewan to join a dozen other young farmers (some aspiring, most already farming) from across the country in a NFUY workshop and training weekend.

The barriers to young farmers are huge, said Regier, and the global industrial food system makes it difficult for farmers to sell their product at a fair price. The NFUY, the youth arm of the National Farmers Union, is committed to building a different kind of food system, one that is socially just, locally focused and economically viable for family farms.

The group's Campaign for New Farmers—a focus over the weekend—aims to increase the number of farmers in Canada.

To start farming you need access to land and equipment, said Cammie Harbottle, a 28-year-old vegetable farmer and Vice President of the NFUY. She said many young farmers have difficulty finding a bank willing to lend them money for start-up costs. Harbottle, who farmed for six years in British Colombia and is entering her second season in Colchester County, is having difficulty securing capital to build the packing shed she needs in order to wash and pack her vegetables for market.

Tyrel Murray, who has been farming for three years with his brother Chad on family land in Pictou County, faces similar challenges. The Murrays need infrastructure, specifically greenhouses and barn space, but lack the capital to take their operation to the next level.

Advocating for policies that support young farmers—like policies that provide access to capital—is just one of the aims of the Campaign for New Farmers, said Harbottle.

In the meantime, and despite the odds, the young farmers who crowded into a room at the Tatamagouche Centre are choosing to farm, and to feed their communities.

Regier will return home to plant more than 1,000 acres of grain in Saskatchewan. The Murrays have started a farmers market in New Glasgow that is gaining momentum and popularity. Harbottle has begun seeding in her greenhouse and plans to expand her markets in Halifax and Tatamagouche.

When asked why she farms, Harbottle didn't hesitate.

"Because I love it and it makes sense to me," she said. "It's always made sense to me to grow food. We need to show people how to grow food and how to connect with their food at the local level."

In a profession that Murray described as "working like hell and not making much money," the feeling of optimism and enthusiasm among the young farmers is difficult to ignore.

"There's been a shift in the current," said Murray. "A shift in the thinking [about local food], enough to lead me to believe that it could be a healthy industry again."

Hillary Bain Lindsay is coordinator with the Halifax Media Co-op and a member of the National Farmers Union.

An original version of this article was published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Young Farmers Circle

Riot Police in School Yards Prompt Demonstration

Moira Peters — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:43:10 +0000

Youth not the problem, say protesters

HALIFAX–With solemn faces, CJ Hamilton and Chris Whynder carried a banner reading “Education Not Incarceration" through the North End of Halifax. The two Auburn Drive High School students, who have since graduated, led a 50-strong multicultural march on June 20 to Halifax Regional Police headquarters on Gottingen Street. The message of the protest, organized by the Black Independence Network Nova Scotia (BINNS), was clear: Halifax police and media need to stop portraying black youth as criminals.

“Schools, not prisons!” Dalhousie University faculty member Isaac Saney bellowed into a megaphone. Walking beside him, a young girl carried a sign that read: “Domestic Terrorists Wear Blue!”

Since violent events at Cole Harbour District High School and Auburn Drive in May, BINNS has accused the media of misrepresenting what the group says was unprompted police brutality towards black students. BINNS literature handed out at the protest said riot police arrested 14 black youths at Auburn Drive after a schoolyard argument on May 1.

In a similar incident at Cole Harbour, three youths were arrested following a series of fights at the school on May 4.

One protesting parent, who preferred not to be named, said police used unreasonable force against her son, leaving him with a black eye and rings around his wrists from handcuffs.

“Police have to do their job, but I think they’re being excessive, especially towards youth,” she said. “I mean, wow, you’re a big, bad cop, you’re carrying a gun, you’re going to bully a 15- or 16-year-old?”

An editorial in a local daily called the black youths involved in the two school incidents “pimps and drug dealers,” but The Dominion's anonymous source says her son, a student at Auburn Drive, is a good kid.

“Youth are not the problem,” Saney said after the protest, “it is the way society is structured socially, economically and politically.”

He said racism from police and the media is typical, not unusual.

“The black community has come to unfortunately expect it,” he said. “It’s part of being black in Nova Scotian society.”

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op. Currently she's writing the first ever Ethics Code for the oldest newspaper in North America, The Dalhousie Gazette.

Domestic Terrorists

Youth protest against the tar sands in Fort Chipewyan

dawn — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:45:05 +0000

n730047778_1367933_2932.jpg

Youth from Fort Chipewyan marched through the streets to protest against the tar sands in -32 degree temperatures this afternoon.

The march was organized by 10 year old Robyn Courtoreille, who got other youth involved in the protest.

"Syncrude and Suncor have been poisioning our water, air, so we protested to let them know we want a future not cancer," said Dailen Powder, 12, after the protest.

"I was protesting because I dont want anymore deformed two jawed fish in our lake," said Cherish Kaskamin, 11.

There is another protest in Fort Chipewyan planned for January 12th.