March 15, 2014
by GUTS
- “Stephen Harper has decided it’s a good idea to build a 30-metre Colossus memorializing Canada’s military history along the rugged, windswept coastline of Cape Breton…The design proofs are awe-inspiring — but not for the reasons the chest-thumping Conservatives think. Redolent of Fritz Lang’s dystopian, impressionistic film Metropolis, the imposing “Mother Canada” seems less like a northern Cristo Redentor and more like the stony incarnation of patriotic egos that see no problem in calling assault helicopters for a ride to dinner.”
- Quill & Quire interviews the founder and editor-in-chief of Understory, a new “online publication dedicated to stories of motherhood by Nova Scotian writers and illustrated by local artists.”
- Dawn Foster of The Guardian reflects on the role that women played in the 1984-5 miners’ strike in Britain. “Women Against Pit Closures formed 30 years ago, organised quickly and with remarkable tenacity for those with little direct experience of campaigning – and women’s groups sprung up and flourished in every mining community in Britain.”
- In solidarity with the Mohawks of Tyendinaga, Indigenous Rights activists in Toronto held a blockade of a Canadian Pacific (CP) railway line to “demand an authentic inquiry into the number of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada.” These photos from the blockade are incredible. A press release on Friday indicates that the provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador has joined Nova Scotia’s MPs in the call for a national inquiry.
- Emily Bell discusses the ways in which born-digital journalism startups (Vice, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Politico, etc.) have failed to “revolutionize” conventional power structures in the workforce. “Journalism startups aren’t a revolution if they’re filled with all these white men.”
- For those who enjoy the cold realism of statistics: “According to a new report released earlier this week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the gender pay gap — which had significantly narrowed since the 1970s — has slowly plateaued in recent years.Compiling data from the Census Bureau, the Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, AAUW calculated the median salaries for full-time employment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the U.S., women are paid 23 percent less than men on average.”
- While it is not recently published, you may be interested in checking out The Tyee’s article on Margaret Wente and Barbara Kay’s coordinated denial of rape culture in the Globe and Mail.
- The New Inquiry reviews Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and meditates on the media’s response to the author’s public persona. “A book is not a dancer, a drink, or a woman, though so many reviewers make it sound like Adichie’s third novel is a refraction of its author’s glamor, an aesthetic commodity to be consumed.”
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Giibwanisi, Kaikaikon, and Sleeping Grizzly, the co-founders of Oshkimaadziig Unity Camp — “a land occupation and cultural revitalization project being carried out by the Anishinabek Confederacy To Invoke Our Nationhood (ACTION)” — discuss questions related to environmentalism, spiritualism, and matriarchy.
