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All posts written by Nicole Cohen

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Rally and March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

February 11, 2009 • Nicole Cohen

This Saturday is the Fourth Annual Rally and March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. From the announcement:

Stop impunity around the disappearances and murders of Indigenous
women on Turtle Island! Over 500 Indigenous women have been murdered or have gone missing in Canada, most in the last 30 years. We come together in defense of our lives and to demonstrate the complicity of the state and its institutions (police, RCMP, coroners’ offices and the courts) in the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples.

Saturday February 14, 2009 at noon
Toronto Police Headquarters at 40 College St. (near Bay St).

The march will head to the Coroner’s office (26 Grenville St), followed by a gathering with food at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Women and Trans People (563 Spadina Ave).

A limited number of TTC tokens are available for those attending the event. The UofT Centre for Women and Trans People is wheelchair accessible and will be open from 11 a.m. for those wanting to help cook for the feast, or for event participants who need to warm up.

More details about the event organizers and how you can help below.

(more inside…)
Women Arrested for Sit-In at Israeli Consulate

January 7, 2009 • Nicole Cohen

In an inspiring bit of news amid so much horror and bloodshed in Gaza, a group of brave women activists have just been arrested for staging an old-fashioned sit-in.

As part of ongoing protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, a group of Jewish women have occupied the Israeli consulate in Toronto to protest the violence and destruction that is being waged in their name.

The group– which includes social justice activist and professor Judy Rebick, filmmaker Cathy Gulkin, psychoanalyst and president of Science for Peace Judith Deutsch, fimmaker B.H. Yael, and Canadian-Israeli peace activist Smadar Carmon – is being arrested by the RCMP for staging a sit-in.

They are demanding that Israel stop its military assault, lift its 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip, and allow desperately-needed humanitarian aid into the territory. According to their press statement, “Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip since December 27, 2008. At least 660 people have been killed and 3000 injured in the air strikes and in the ground invasion that began on January 3, 2009. Israel has ignored international calls for a ceasefire and is refusing to allow food, adequate medical supplies and other necessities of life into the Gaza Strip.”

“There are Jews that do not follow the Israeli line and are sickened by what is happening in Gaza,” Cathy Gulkin told the Toronto Star.
- Activist Report
- On The Job
Stop Unfashionable Conduct at Zara

December 17, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

UNITE HERE, a union that represents workers in the apparel, textile, hotel, and restaurant industries, has just launched a campaign against clothing chain Zara. Zara workers in a downtown Montreal store joined UNITE HERE in 2007 to fight bad working conditions at their store, including unpredictable schedules, short staffing, favouritism by bosses, and disregard for seniority.

According to UNITE HERE, however, Zara has fought back, using tactics that may have violated the Quebec labour code: four workers who supported the union at Zara’s Rockland Mall store were fired in April and May 2008; two workers who led a union drive at Zara’s downtown Montreal store were demoted in August 2007; and management held anti-union meetings at three of their Montreal stores, telling workers that joining a union would be “treason” – in fact, it’s their legal right.

These are old, dirty, anti-labour tricks that need to be stopped, especially in the retail sector, which employs a disproportionate number of young women in low-wage work (see graph below). It takes a lot of guts to fight back against an employer that’s being a bully (I should know, I’ve been on strike against York University for the past six weeks), and these workers need our support.

You can read about the situation here, and take action here. For insight into the retail industry and why unions can make a difference, read this.

(UNITE HERE)
Who deserves the Person’s Case Award?

November 16, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

The recipients of the 2008 Person’s Case Awards were announced earlier this month. The award honours people who have made “outstanding contributions” to the advancement of Canadian women and is named for the five women who, in 1929, won the right for women to be recognized as persons – The Famous Five.

The list of recipients is impressive but Shari Graydon – a longtime feminist activist and writer – wonders why the youth award was given to a man named Ben Barry for running a modelling agency. Shari has passed on a letter she wrote to the Persons Case Award Committee (see below). In it, she argues that the Person’s Case youth award could have been handed out to one of the hundreds of young women across Canada who struggle to improve women’s lives in meaningful ways.

I agree with Shari. In the face of the continual violence, exploitation, and oppression women in this country face, and considering the tricky tactics the beauty industry uses to sell us things we don’t need, I do not believe that running a for-profit modeling agency should be recognized as making an “outstanding contribution” to women’s lives, and I can think of dozens of young women activists (many of whom frequent this blog) who deserve this award. Maybe Shari’s letter will inspire you to nominate someone next year.

(more inside…)
Media Democracy Day

October 21, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

Thursday is Media Democracy Day, and events are being held all week in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, where our own Anna Leventhal will be giving a talk titled “Roots of Grass: An (Incomplete) History of Alternative Media in Quebec.”

As the folks at Campaign for Democratic Media have pointed out, Media Democracy Day has taken on a new sense of urgency this year as
the major Internet Service Providers exert more control over Canadians’ online experience, and media ownership is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. For more information, visit Media Democracy Day’s website. City by city event listings below.

(more inside…)
- Media Savvy
90210 and women’s bodies

August 26, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

Ads plastered in subway stations and a provocative television preview (above) have alerted me to the fact that a new version of Beverly Hills 90210 is about to air. While the original show, which ran for 10 years in the 1990s, had a massive impact on television and teen culture—see, for example, the slew of academic discussion analyzing the show—I’m guessing 90210’s revival has a lot more to do with the success of recent teen drama hits The O.C. and Gossip Girl.

Which means, as the trailer for the new show suggests, that the new version of 90210 will have to be way more sexy than the original to keep up with our current lust for consumerist, celebrity-crazed, sex-saturated culture.

Shayla Thiel-Stern has an interesting article up at FlowTV, a site that takes a critical look at television. She argues that comparing the bodies of the women in the first 90210 to the bodies of the woman in the show’s current incarnation reveals a great deal about shifting cultural ideas about adolescent female bodies.

As she writes,

“…the women from both shows demonstrate how in a very short but increasingly mediated point in history, women’s and girls’ bodies are shaped and inscribed by the culture surrounding them. Through pilates, cosmetic surgery, low-carb diets, hair straightening, skin lightening, Botox, and so many other means, women have mirrored media representations of “perfect” women and shaped their bodies to fit the representation. While Photoshop almost certainly plays a role in the perfection process of promotional photos, however, it does not stop women and girls in reality from attempting to alter their bodies and faces to conform to this fantasy portrayal. The old and new versions of 90210 exemplify this idea perfectly.”

Here’s the rest of the article.
Taking back the Airwaves

August 20, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

A few years ago I wrote a piece for This Magazine on the important role campus/community radio stations have played in the lives and activism of feminists. The piece isn’t available online, so I’ll just cut and paste my general point.

Campus/community radio has long been welcoming to women and their views, especially considering the limited access feminists have historically had to mainstream media. Campus/community radio has been an important platform for feminists to engage in discussions rarely heard on mainstream airwaves, tackle important women’s issues and give underrepresented female musicians a presence. It’s a vital outlet in the face of mass media that is becoming increasingly hostile to feminist ideas and generally perpetuates narrow, stereotypical ideas about gender.

That said, I’d like to draw your attention to the horrible situation over at CKLN, the campus/community based at Ryerson University in Toronto. Over the past few months, many programmers and hosts that have been at the station for years have been shut out by illegitimate station management in an effort to make the station commercial.

Among the lists of cancelled shows is Radio Cliteracy, an important and bold feminist talk show, as well as Frequency Feminisms and Honour The Earth, which have been removed from the Sunday grid. So far, over 30 volunteers have been dismissed from CLKN without warning and without cause, including many LGTB, First Nations, psychiatric survivor programmers, women of colour and a trans person.

Luckily, people have been fighting to get back into the station and onto the airwaves with pickets, and by organizing meetings and a website. They need our support, so please do what you can to spread the word about keeping campus/community radio open for all.
- Activist Report
- Arts
Harper and the Arts

August 19, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

There has been much outrage over the Harper government’s quiet cuts to Canadian arts funding.

In the case of the PromArt program – a grant that enables artists to travel abroad to perform, show their films, or promote their books – the cuts weren’t made so quietly. Toronto band Holy Fuck received a lot of media attention, their name evoking the reactionary nature of the government’s assessment of who has been getting (arguably a small slice of) taxpayer dollars.

But it’s not just a band with a swear in its name or lefty journalists like Avi Lewis and Gwynne Dyer who’ve received money, although, as many have suggested, artists’ politics might indeed have something to do with the Conservatives’ budget slashing. Recipients of PromArt have included ballet companies and other high-art performances, which makes the cuts even more confusing at a time when “culture” is increasingly used by governments around the world to attract investment dollars for business development.

The discussions over the arts cuts have directed some attention to the role culture plays in our lives and the often precarious careers of people who make the art and culture that are the base for campaigns like Toronto’s Live With Culture, for example.

Here’s a sample of what people have been saying about the arts cuts, including the always insightful Heather Mallick.

If funding, sustaining and promoting Canadian art and culture is important to you, then take a moment to send an email to your MP. Here’s an action alert from the Council of Canadians with background info and directions on how to send a note of protest.

On September 3, Fuse, a magazine of arts and politics, is hosting a town hall meeting to talk about the impact of cuts to arts funding. Details here.
Save Our Net Party

June 17, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

The Save Our Net coalition and Campaign for Democratic Media are hosting an event this weekend to discuss net neutrality and to strategize ways to prevent the internet from being tightly controlled by telecommunications corps, which are trying to limit what information we can access online.

Steve Anderson, national co-ordinator of the Campaign For Democratic Media, will speak about the issues, including: how these companies have already been caught throttling or slowing internet traffic to businesses and consumers, blocking access to websites that criticized them for doing so, and crippling consumer devices and applications.

Details:
Sunday, June 22
5:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Windward Co-op, 34 Little Norway Crescent Lake-view room (one block west of Queen’s Quay)
BYOB, vegetarian refreshments provided
RSVP: saveournetcanada at gmail.com
Net Neutrality Rally

May 23, 2008 • Nicole Cohen

The Campaign for a Democratic Media is heading to Parliament Hill on Tuesday for a Net Neutrality Rally (I love rhyming names!) to demand broadband access and choice for all, as part of their campaign to stop internet throttling by telecommunications corporations.

Tuesday May 27, 2008
Parliament Hill, Ottawa
Event starts at 11:30 am
Speeches start at 1 PM

Speakers include:
Charlie Angus - NDP MP Mauril Béllanger - Liberal MP
Steve Anderson – Campaign For Democratic Media & SaveOurNet.ca
James Clancy - NUPGE
Philippa Lawson - CIPPIC
John Selwyn - National Capital Freenet
Meera Karunananthan - Council of Canadians

Buses available from Toronto, Montreal, and Chatham. If you can’t make the rally, you can get involved online.