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Feminists, Poverty-Environment-Health Activists: Attention please!

Author: Chrystal Ocean (Green)

11 Oct

A commentary by Elsie Hambrook, Chair of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women, is a must-read.

When Doris Anderson, former and famed editor of Chatelaine and lifelong activist, came to Saint John on a stormy winter night in 2003, drawing hundreds of women to hear her speak on electoral reform, she confided something that, years later, still makes some of us think…

Getting the message out to the public [no matter what it is] is damn hard these days. Not just because the media and corporate and party elites are so strongly against democratic and electoral reform, but because, among other things, locations where people come together are increasingly not available for canvassing or soliciting.

For example, at the All Candidates Meeting in my community, I wanted to distribute Fair Vote Canada flyers on the seats in the theatre. I’d printed off 250 flyers, plus sheets of the FVC petition for candidates and audience members to sign (was hoping to ask a question at the mic on ER/PR).

When I arrived at the ACM venue, I asked permission of the manager to distribute my flyers on the theatre seats.

Denied.

So I asked permission to distribute the flyers outside, at the front of the building.

Denied again.

Even the purportedly public sidewalk fronting the building was off-limits….

Full article

Filed under: All Candidates Meetings, British Columbia, Chrystal Ocean (Green), Democratic Reform, Environment, Healthcare, Non-Partisan, Poverty, Vancouver Island, Women's Issues

One Response for "Feminists, Poverty-Environment-Health Activists: Attention please!"

Kim October 12th, 2008 at 8:42 am 1
Chrystal, it’s true that most politicians don’t want electoral reform – at least not the way you see it. It is also equally true that Canadians in general do not agree with you vision of reform despite the ongoing pleadings of so many well-meaning people on this site.

We, as Canadians, don’t want more power for special interest groups. They already have a far greater voice in government than their numbers warrant.

We don’t want members of parliament who are not directly elected and responsible to the people. We want representative who we vote for by name and we want the right to vote them out when we want them out. That’s the only way that they are truely accountable. We don’t want representatives who are protected on their party’s short list because they aren’t responsible to anyone but their party.

What we do want is a triple E Senate. If you start using your energies to push that, you might actually get somewhere because that would be a huge step forward for democracy.

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