According to the CBC, a tape was released earlier today revealing a then-16 year-old Omar Khadr being interrogated by a member of CSIS at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr's lawyer pressed for the declassification of the interrogation DVDs to pressure the Canadian government into advocating for the young man's release from the controversial prison. Read the entire story here...
Showing posts with label women and children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women and children. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Omar Khadr Interrogation Tape Released
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Myanmar Weeps After Devastating Cyclone
According to the CBC, Myanmar's cyclone Nargis has claimed a staggering 22,000 lives and nearly 40,000 more are reported missing. More than 1 million people have been left homeless in the wake of this devastating aftermath as entire villages have been completely destroyed, while several rice crops have also been lost in the storm. Read more HERE...
Saturday, March 8, 2008
International Women's Day--A 10 Year-Old Girl's Afghan Vision
At only 10 years-old, Alaina Podmorow of Kelowna, BC is proving that emerging generations of women are already becoming visionaries ahead of their time. After attending a lecture where journalist and human rights activist, Sally Armstrong, educated the audience about the blatant oppression of Afghan women and girls under Taliban rule, something all of a sudden clicked for the young girl.
Alaina couldn't believe that many Afghan girls had been denied an education under the strict religious laws. Even after the fall of the Taliban in Afganistan in 2001, many families still feared sending their daughters to school due to serious safety concerns. And since cultural norms dictated that girls be taught by female teachers, the shortage of this demographic within the work force stood as a further obstacle between Afghan girls and their rights to an education.
So from these new dark truths emerged Alaina's epiphany: "On the way home, I was telling my mom how moved I was and I decided I wanted to start my group, Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan." And so her movement was born...
Shortly after, Alaina organized a club of the same name at her elementary school. She successfully recruited 18 members, all young girls from her fifth grade class. Meeting every lunch hour to discuss group activities, the girls decided that Little Women for Little Women (LW4LW) would organize a series of fundraising campaigns in order to raise enough money to pay for the wages of female teachers in Afghanistan. According to this reasoning, educated Afghan women would become encouraged to become teachers if they commanded a higher salary.
During LW4LW's first fundraiser, Alaina's group raised $750 by selling donuts and recycling. This initial achievement motivated Alaina to strive for bigger and better things. She set her sights on raising even more funds through a community potluck. And after it was all said and done, all of the hard work paid off--LW4LW received $1500 in donations.
From these humble beginnings emerged and unstoppable movement. Alaina's original vision inspired Canadian girls nationwide, spawning other LW4LW chapters throughout the country. While the group has collectively raised $30,000 to date, this number was about to grow exponentially.
The Canadian government had heard Alaina's story and invited the young activist to a International Women's Day gala in Ottawa on March 6, 2008. Since her enormous contributions to the community and abroad have resulted in the employment of dozens of female teachers within Afghanistan, the federal government agreed to match all of LW4LW's earnings dollar for dollar.
*******
In order to encourage other Canadian mothers and daughters to get involved with LW4LW, Alaina posted letters to Mum on the Women for Afghan Women website. I would like to leave you with one of her letters:
Dear Moms,
I would like you to take a moment and visualize a little girl in Afghanistan. In her heavy black dress, no shoes on her feet, she walks for 4 hours to get to school. She feels like she is being watched as she walks along the path. At any second somebody could attack her. She frantically looks behind her but she continues on because she has to get to school. She is not being forced to go - she would do anything to go. Now visualize her face. Now visualize your daughter is that girl. Isn’t that frightening? It is hard to imagine girls just like your daughters, are in danger. What’s the best thing you can do? Keep teaching. What’s the worst thing you can do? NOTHING!
I challenge all Moms to tell their daughters to make a difference. I would like to see little girls across this country go to meetings with their moms for women in Afghanistan. I have started Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan in my chapter of CW4WA in Kelowna BC. My dream would be to see little girls do the same across Canada. If your daughters want to start their own chapter in your area please contact me at lw4lw@telus.net.
Sincerely, Alaina
CBC News--Video Featuring Alaina
Little Women for Little Women Official Site
Women for Afghan Women Official Site
Friday, February 29, 2008
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...The Other Beauty
Who's the fairest of all?
While we relentlessly convince North American women to be forever youthful with big breasts, teeny waists, white teeth, clear skin, fatless figures, waxed bodies, and designer jeans...
...many women of colour struggle with being too dark-skinned, squinty-eyed, kinky-haired, flat-faced, big-lipped, wide-nosed...
Judging by these impossible expectations, one can't really win!
In Filipino culture, a light-skinned ideal has been perpetuated by what I like to call, mestiza posturing. Mestiza/mestizo is a term borrowed from Spanish to mean one who has mixed indigenous and European blood, and even if individuals do not have this mixed descent, this look often governs mainstream perceptions of beauty. Just take a look at these major Filipina celebrities:
Vina Morales
K.C. Concepcion
Jennylyn Mercado
Taking this idea even further, mestiza posturing can also be seen as a bi-product of the Philippines' colonial/feudalistic legacy in which a system of white authority and brown inferiority was built upon the appropriated archipelago.
In "Emil's Big Chance Makes Me Feel Uneasy," Tricia Capistrano, reveals how much of her life has been dictated by this mestiza complex. She describes this underlying "white is right" consciousness:
I am a brown-skinned woman from the Philippines, where many people I know have a fascination with the lighter skinned--probably because our islands were invaded so many times by whites who tried to convince us that they were better and more beautiful than us. We were under Spain's rule for nearly 400 years, the United States' for almost 50. As a result, skin-whitening products fly off the pharmacy shelves.
With this notion of light-skinned superiority ingrained deeply into her teenage consciousness, Capistrano admits how she used to "hang out with the mestizas, because I wanted to be popular like them." And the quest for whiteness didn't stop there. While her grandmother cringed at the idea of her already dark skin becoming even darker at a friend's pool party, Capistrano's own mother encouraged her to start pinching the bridge of her nose everyday in hopes of "arching" its imperfectly flat surface.
After giving birth to her son, Emil, Capistrano was suddenly able to see the other side of the equation. Emil was a fair-skinned mestizo of Swedish/Dutch and Filipino descent which automatically made him a member of the most exclusive club. This became even more apparent during a family trip to the Philippines when Capistrano was continually bombarded by a slew of Filipina admirers ogling at her mestizo son. He's so cute! So fair-skinned!--they would exclaim.
Fearing the cost of Emil's future college education, Capistrano even considered moving back to the Philippines permanently, confident that her son could easily land a part doing baby commercials. When she was on the verge of booking an agent, Capistrano suddenly reconsidered her plans: "I realized that I was going to be part of the system that can sometimes make us dark-skinned people believe that we are inferior. I do not want Filipino children who look like me to feel bad about themselves....
***************
So even though I've focused the majority of this discussion on the Philippine perspective of beauty, I would like to turn your attention to another demographic--African American women. A friend of mine recently recommended this documentary featurette, A Girl Like Me, directed by a 17 year-old filmmaker, Kiri Davis. In her film, Davis insightfully explores perceptions of beauty through the eyes of African American girls. Like their Filipina counterparts, these young women reveal how they are often taught to perceive lighter-skin as more beautiful, while sometimes feeling pressured to surrender their traditional curls for the tamed relaxed look.
Without further ado, watch A Girl Like Me right here:
Related Resources
Borderlands/ La Frontera: A New Mestiza--Gloria Anzaldua
Emulated through Images: The Globalization of Misconstructed African American Beauty and Hip-Hop Culture--John Hendrick Clarke
Liminality and mestiza consciousness in Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons --Melissa de Jesus
Metaphors of a Mestiza Consciousness --Erika Aigner-Varoz
Tagalog Movies and Identity :Portrayals of the Filipino Self --James F. Kenny
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Their Lenses of Hope--"Born into Brothels"
"As an artist you are responsible to no one and to nothing, except to yourself and to the truth as you see it."
--from Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev
Even the most eternal of optimists would have a difficult time finding the silver lining in their lives. They are painfully poor, unwanted, and live under extremely inhumane conditions. Worst of all, they are born without so much of a chance of transcending these grim circumstances.
So who are they?
They are the children of Calcutta's brothels.
Often born into a long line of sex trade workers who were also sold into this desperate lifestyle, these young girls and boys just exist day-by-day, dreaming of the lives they could be living had the stars been aligned in their favour.
Maybe they would go to school and eventually become India's future doctors and lawyers. Maybe they would nurture their creative gifts to the fullest to become the great writers and artists of their time. Maybe they would one day earn enough money to rescue their families from this endless cycle of poverty. Maybe, just maybe....
*******
Zana Briski was a woman with a vision.
After studying Visual Arts and Documentary Photography at both the University of Cambridge and New York's International Centre of Photography, Briski first travelled to India while pursuing a project on female infanticide. A few years later, she would return to the country with yet another trick up her sleeve.
Briski navigated through a world of pimps and drug dealers in order to capture the lives of Sonagachi's sex trade workers in her photography. But as she began to peel back the disturbing layers of Calcutta's red-light district, Briski found a source of both hope and despair in lives even more stigmatized than these brothel workers--their children.
From the time they woke up to the time they fell asleep, these little girls and boys worked. Whether it was making illegal sales for the family's underground liquor business, or playing the house maid where a hard slap and a barrage of drug-induced insults replaced a much-needed hug, these kids were painfully aware of their bleak fates.
And Briski knew she had to help.
While convincing the local boarding school to admit the children of brothel workers seemed like the equivalent of moving a mountain with one's bare hands, Briski decided to start off small. She would first, teach them the art of photography.
She gave these kids the power of sharing their world through their own eyes and this is what they saw:
**(all photos courtesy of Kids with Cameras)**
So Kids with Cameras was born.
Not only did Briski empower these children by encouraging them to learn more about themselves and the world around them, Shanti, Avijit, Gour, Kochi, Manik, Puja, Suchitra, and Tapasi, have started a movement in which children worldwide are being educated about the harsh realities of war, poverty, and sexual slavery through photography. As a result, children from marginalized communities in Cairo, Haiti, and Jerusalem have also contributed their own artistic visions as seen through their lenses of hope.
**If you would like to learn more, please visit the Kids with Cameras website. I would also encourage you to watch Briski's award-winning documentary that started it all, Born into Brothels.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Iraq--Seen Through the Eyes of Sunshine
Behind the cloud of the rhetoric surrounding terrorism, suicide bombers, Al Qaeda, and the imminent "democratization" of Iraq, lie the countless of mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, and grandparents trying to carry on despite this deadly chaos. For this reason, I'm going to explore this issue from the best vantage point there is: through the eyes of an Iraqi....A few days ago, a good friend of mine had turned my attention to this blog--Days of My Life--and boy, was I ever grateful! Initially, I figured it was just another one of your average-run-of-the-mill-blogs that reads like a diary, or how-to-make-$$-manual, or marketing tool...you get the point.
So I click on the link and what I find almost brings me to tears:
Days of My Life--"Talk about daily life of a teenage girl in Iraq, and days of suffer and success. My nickname will be Sunshine...."
As I read Sunshine's profile, I am left with the sense that she is well beyond her years. At just 15 years-old, this Iraqi teen aspires to be an engineer or pharmacist. And despite living right smack in the centre of American-Iraqi crossfire, she describes how "optimism is my strategy always...."
Each of Sunshine's posts, seemingly unbeknownst to her, provide a powerful commentary on the trivial nature of war and religious segregation. While eerily reminiscent of the young Anne Frank, Sunshine's youthful idealism and candid fear dramatically collide with the values detonating the mortars right outside her window.In "Excellent Eid (part 1)," this Iraqi teen documents her road trip to Baghdad, where relatives are hosting a celebration of Eid ul-Fitr. As American troops ubiquitously line the streets of her journey, Sunshine exclaims: "Thank god we didn’t sleep in the street, when the US vehicles drive we have to stop aside, or drive 100 meters away, slowly with the lights on, if we drive nearby they point with lazer on our car or shoot!"
Once Sunshine and her family finally arrive, she enthusiastically revels in her surroundings as a delicious feast awaits all of the loved ones sharing this special occasion. And throughout her entire story, Sunshine's bright introspection never ceases to amaze me. When speaking to a family friend (referred to as "A") about the fractured relations between the Shiites and Sunnis, the teen is taken by his powerful insights. She shares this valuable lesson with us all:
'[T]he religion should gather us, not separate us, if the religion separate it’s people then I don’t want to belong to any, but I am sure this thing is made by the government, they want to see the Iraqis separated, but anyway it’s not going to happen.' I loved what he said and wrote it at once...well I celebrated Eid for 8 days, with the Sunnis, Shiites, and Christians....
Friday, November 23, 2007
It's Called PRIORITIZE, Alberta!
Alberta.
Let me describe this province in just three words for you--oil, rich, jobs. This is where labourers earn six-figure salaries, where there's a labour shortage in the service industry due to the concentrated work force in the resource sector, and where the provincial government has enough cash to provide every single Albertan a hefty rebate check due to its incredible budget surplus. In fact, during the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the province reported a $7 billion surplus! Which brings me to my next question: Why the heck did 25,000 women and children from abusive homes get turned away at Alberta's local shelters in 2006??
According to a report released by the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters (ACWS), 41 shelters were forced to close their doors on these troubled families due to the lack of provincial funding. Lack of provincial funding? While I'm definitely not a mathematician, a province that can afford to hand each of its citizens a whopping $400 cheque for the sake of being an Albertan, does not experience a lack of funding. They experience a lack of fiscal accountability.
Even more disconcerting is the fact that Alberta women's shelters only receive a mere $22 million province-wide. According to Jan Reimer, the ACWS's provincial coordinator, an additional $20 million is needed to fund employment, infrastructure, and facilate programs needed to effectively support these victims of domestic violence.
C'mon Alberta, we all know you're sitting on a gold mine so the last place you should be cutting corners is from the sanctuaries that provide a safe haven for thousands of women and children. Seriously...
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