Halifax Politics dot ca

My family made the personal decision to boycott china over a year ago.  This was not an easy decision, as over 60% of retail products are made in China.  It is not impossible, if you are prepared to be disappointed when the cheaper clothing, or less expensive toy for your child at Christmas is always made in China!

We have also decided to be flexible, so that if something is simply not available without considerable additional hardship we may still buy it, but we have found that you can reduce your China consumption by over 95%.

It just means you are the guy in the Future Shop turning over all the phones to find one made in Mexico or the Philippians (there were 2 models of 14).  After a while, not buying stuff made in China becomes a rewarding experience in and of itself, like an Easter Egg hunt!

To give you an idea of the vast gulf between most of us in the west and the Chinese leadership, check out this quote by Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party chief in Tibet. “The Dalai (Lama) is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast.”

I have found one website that is slightly harder line than we are, as they propose boycotting western stores that carry Chinese stuff, but they seem to be the most organized and fastest growing, so I urge you to visit there website and consider boycotting China.

“The prevailing argument that market forces and international trade would transform China into a democracy has by now been completely discredited.

The only remaining way for concerned people to exert some positive influence on China seems to be through the power of the individual consumer. In short, a boycott of Made in China products.”

BOYCOTT MADE IN CHINA

http://www.boycottmadeinchina.org/

FACEBOOK GROUP

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2265154413

I gave this presentation last night to HRSB Board Howard Windsor.

My name is Waye Mason. I am the chair of a School Advisory Council on the peninsula and I am the publisher of the parents resource Citadelschools.ca, and my children are in elementary and junior high school.

It will be difficult to summarize my concerns with the staff report in just five minutes, so let me get straight to the point.

The process of consultation run by CS&P was inadequate and has failed to meet its goals

The conclusions were reached without significant or meaningful public input into the process, and therefore, the staff report in response to the consultation does not contain a complete and fair summary of the issues facing our community.

I will come back to this, but first, how did we get here?

HRSB had a capital plan which called for just four elementary schools on the peninsula. From October 2006 onward, Peninsula parents fought to have this process be halted until there had been meaningful public consultation over our options.

In January of 2007, The Minister of Education agreed, and stated no schools will be closed without meaningful public consultation.

In February of 2007 the Minister announced the intention to implement the School Closure Review Report recommendations, changing how school closures occur. Subsequently, these changes to the Education Act were made, with the support of all parties.

In June of 2007, the Department of Education requested a ten year facilities plan from HRSB to replace the older discredited version.

Also in June in a public meeting in St Pats auditorium, Superintendent Olsen presented a proposal for consultation and facility planning, the would be modeled on previsions school closure reviews, and would be largely composed of members of School Advisory Council representatives from the affected family of schools.

This was in line with the letter and the spirit of the Minister’s changes to the school closure process, which called for reviews would “encourage school staff and administration and require school advisory councils to participate”.

Unfortunately for all of us, when time came to meet the consultative team in November of 2007, the proposed committee that had been promised by the Superintendent had been shelved, and the SAC members had been relegated to a “Community Focus Group” with no actual input or agenda.

The Toronto based consultants wrote this report, and no parents or citizens were directly involved in it’s completion.

There were two meetings between the consultants and SACs, there was not a single formal polling, questioning or systematic gathering of our opinions.

Instead, following lengthy ninety minute lectures, the SAC reps and staff from five school families, around 100 people, would have 30-45 minutes split between them to answer, on the spot, what they thought, at the open microphone, with little or no time to reflect on what had been presented. This is about 45 seconds per person.

At the first meeting, we had about 20 minutes to individually fill out a questionnaire, and then another 20 to review the questionnaire with the rest of our table and complete a “consensus document” for our table.

The questionnaire had 44 questions, and was 10 pages long. This works out to 45 seconds per question.

Subsiquent meetings were ninety minute lectures unveiling new, previously unseen proposals followed by less than an hour to understand and then ask questions and raise concerns.

In my opinion, the only reason people kept going to these meetings is that until the very end, they were waiting for the serious consultation to start. It never did.

The community has been promised meaningful consultation. This promise was coupled with a belief that school review needs to be considered in the greater fabric of the needs of the community. I still hope this can happen, but Mr Windsor, it has not yet happened.

Now we have a staff report itself the draws into question validity of the consultants work. Others have said it best. HRSB Facilities manager Charles Clattenburg said in the March 8 edition of the Metro News “I guess we have some more in-depth knowledge that wasn’t picked up during the consultation that we’ve considered.” as the justification for the staff reports divergence from the consultations fundings.

Well, in this, I agree with Mr Clattenburg. There was a lot that was not picked up during the consultations that needs to be considered, not the least of which is a full and fair consultation with the people in the affected communities that know their own communities best.

I urge you, Mr Windsor, please do not accept this staff report.

Do not accept a report that will close successful community schools in the north, south and west ends.

Do not accept a report that proposes to close schools that are full, and for which demand is currently there, and will only increase.

Do not accept a staff report that does not unequivocally support the small school sizes that the community wants.

Do not accept a facilities plan until HRSB has completed the process of school review that was promised by the Superintendent in June of last year.

Thank you for your time today.

Let’s just lay the cards on the table.  My family is not a normal family.  We are NOT strange like AdamS family strange, nor are we scary like Manson family strange.  But we are different.

I work in the music business, Marnie works at the alternative weekly, Rhett has been going to punk rock gigs since he was nine, Emma alternates between Hannah Montana and Acrade Fire as her favorite bands.  Marnie and I just got married after 10 years of living together.   We are politically active, opinionated, and engaged.  We are arty snotbags.

I acknowledge (maybe even embrace) that we not a stereotypical middle class family.

And now, Team MMG (as we call ourselves) have gone to Disney World in Florida.   We stayed at a resort on the Disney property, with my Mom and Dad, my sister and brother-in-law.  There were eight of us, and we were  there for seven and a half days.

Culture shock is an accurate summary of our states of mind after this experience.

Well when I say ours, I do not mean Emma.  She loved all of it, from the plane ride to Spacemoutain.  My girl, who normally wants to go to bed at 9:00pm, was up to midnight the second night there, riding rides, having fun.  And up again the next day at seven am!

But for the rest of us, well…

Rhett struggled at first with how much he is enjoying himself.  My “too cool for school” son is so devastatingly intelligent that in many every day things he has already left me behind with his rapid and logical calculations around things.  He will make a hell of a lawyer if he wants to be one (which seems unlikely).

His personal identity as a seventh grader is gig going, punk rock listening rebel. Hard to reconcile this with a ride going, Mickey ear wearing goomer.  But there you are, they are one in the same when you are in Disney World!

Marnie?  Well, she was forced back in the day to go to Disney  as a rebellious 16 year old, and she did end up reliving some of that bad place this trip.  She also managed to maintain some ironic detachment during the whole thing.  She was the voice of reasoned objectivity that was perfunctorily ignored….. “Marnie, everyone else wants to be at EPCOT for 16 hours straight today, that is the point of Extra Magic Hours!” In retrospect, we should all feel a bit bad about that.

Being at Disney is a state of being.  Why?  Because Disney is very nearly perfect.  The staff love working here.  Customer service is high quality and enthusiastic, everything is designed to maximize your enjoyment.

Disney is the height of western decadence.  Everything is over the top, and meant to keep you, the customer, happy and spending.  Your every need is their concern.  An example — – your bags are taken from shops back to the resort so you can continue to enjoy the park (ie: shop more) unimpeded.

WDW is so well run that you can hardly feel Uncle Walt reaching into your wallet again and again to take money out… and when you do you don’t mind that much.

For us as adults, the issue was simple.  The first morning I said to Marnie “you know, we have to get over ourselves.  There is no ‘cool at Disney’ and ‘not cool at Disney,’  there is only ‘being at Disney.’”    So, we just focused on ‘being at Disney’ for the week, and it sure was fun.

This article is reprinted from the Citadelschools.ca site. 

“We are here hoping to find direction from you.” said Maureen O’Shaughnessy, lead consultant and chief spokesperson for the Imagine Our Schools process.

It is unlikely she did. In a meeting that stretched to over three hours long, there was not a lot clear and unequivocal direction to be found. Held at Citadel High, about 150 parents and administrators took in a slide show presenting four options, based on “community input.”

Here is what we saw:

The projections showing building use are based on the Department of Education’s calculations, which counts classrooms as empty that are being used for internal or external uses for which they were not originally intended. What that means is our schools are not as empty as the projections say they are, which means the whole basis for the planning is incorrect.

The proposals tracks projected per school populations and projected schools size in the same way, treating them as the same thing. Either the proposal is to build schools that in 2018 would be full, used between100-120%, or alternately, the proposal is really to build schools that are 20% bigger than what the community is supposed to have asked for, either way, there is a lack of honesty in the way the issues were presented (see the next article, another proposal for the peninsula).

The consultants did not give us a choice for smaller junior highs. Ms. O’Shaughnessy said several times “The community felt that 500 capacity junior highs are preferred.” The 500 student option was the smallest option available on the questionnaire. The survey results cannot be called a clear call for change, and in no way indicate a desire for schools that size.

The sudden appearance of new material in the public presentation that was left out of the School Advisory Council presentation further marginalizes the school communities. At this late stage to suddenly have the consultants introduce the idea that early French Immersion should be abandoned is nonsense. Clearly that direction came from politicians or the Department of Education, as there was no opportunity for the public to propose this change.

Having beautiful new buildings does not mean we will have more money for programming. Program enhancements and new spaces for learning is meaningless when there is no money for more teachers and support staff. ESL, Afri-centric programming, student support, enrichment, special needs, guidance, and most of all, class size cannot be changed without a massive infusion of new operational money.

There is no consultation in this process. Four times SAC reps, sometimes with citzens and parents have been called into a room to be talked at. There is no group work, no systematic polling of views, no table work, no meaningful dialog between parents and the consultants.

Once we had under an hour to complete an eleven page questionnaire full of loaded questions and with no chance to review it in advance. At no point were the SACs actually polled, or any idea voted on. In the last meeting we sat there in stunned silence, unable to decide where to begin.

This is not what we were promised. In June Carol Olsen promised that each family of schools SACs would meet and that parents, municipal councilors, community reps with staff and consultant support would create the proposal that would go to Mr. Windsor. Now, we have little to no voice at all in a process that will see consultants submit a plan that has little to no support in the community. This is not what the Minister ordered the school board to do, and it is not what the changes to the Act require.

Toward the end of the second hour of the meeting last night, the consultants were asked “How do you tell what direction we want?” Ms. O’Shaughnessy said “if a bunch of people clap” that they know they have support. This is simply not good enough.

Howard Windsor refused a request to meet with the SACs in the fall to discuss concerns about this process.

Now the process has broken and the only choice left to parents to to appeal to the Minister and Cabinet to create clear, step by step guidelines as to exactly how school capital plan process must be conducted by all school boards.

The Scripture tells us that when Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the gates of Jericho, they could not enter. The walls of the city were too steep for any one person to climb; too strong to be taken down with brute force. And so they sat for days, unable to pass on through.

But God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city, and on the seventh day he told them that when they heard the sound of the ram’s horn, they should speak with one voice. And at the chosen hour, when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

There are many lessons to take from this passage, just as there are many lessons to take from this day, just as there are many memories that fill the space of this church. As I was thinking about which ones we need to remember at this hour, my mind went back to the very beginning of the modern Civil Rights Era.

Because before Memphis and the mountaintop; before the bridge in Selma and the march on Washington; before Birmingham and the beatings; the fire hoses and the loss of those four little girls; before there was King the icon and his magnificent dream, there was King the young preacher and a people who found themselves suffering under the yolk of oppression.

And on the eve of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, at a time when many were still doubtful about the possibilities of change, a time when those in the black community mistrusted themselves, and at times mistrusted each other, King inspired with words not of anger, but of an urgency that still speaks to us today:

“Unity is the great need of the hour” is what King said. Unity is how we shall overcome.

What Dr. King understood is that if just one person chose to walk instead of ride the bus, those walls of oppression would not be moved. But maybe if a few more walked, the foundation might start to shake. If a few more women were willing to do what Rosa Parks had done, maybe the cracks would start to show. If teenagers took freedom rides from North to South, maybe a few bricks would come loose. Maybe if white folks marched because they had come to understand that their freedom too was at stake in the impending battle, the wall would begin to sway. And if enough Americans were awakened to the injustice; if they joined together, North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then perhaps that wall would come tumbling down, and justice would flow like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.

We have an empathy deficit when we’re still sending our children down corridors of shame – schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education.

We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can’t afford a doctor when their children get sick.

We have a deficit in this country when there is Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others; when our children see nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree today, in the present, in the twenty-first century.

We have a deficit when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of our cities; when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur; when young Americans serve tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

And we have a deficit when it takes a breach in our levees to reveal a breach in our compassion; when it takes a terrible storm to reveal the hungry that God calls on us to feed; the sick He calls on us to care for; the least of these He commands that we treat as our own.

So we have a deficit to close. We have walls – barriers to justice and equality – that must come down. And to do this, we know that unity is the great need of this hour.

Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we’ve come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We’ve come to believe that racial reconciliation can come easily – that it’s just a matter of a few ignorant people trapped in the prejudices of the past, and that if the demagogues and those who exploit our racial divisions will simply go away, then all our problems would be solved.

All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price.

But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes – a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.

It’s not easy to stand in somebody else’s shoes. It’s not easy to see past our differences. We’ve all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart – that puts up walls between us.

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country’s history, we in the African American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scapegoating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others – all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face – war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

But if changing our hearts and minds is the first critical step, we cannot stop there. It is not enough to bemoan the plight of poor children in this country and remain unwilling to push our elected officials to provide the resources to fix our schools. It is not enough to decry the disparities of health care and yet allow the insurance companies and the drug companies to block much-needed reforms. It is not enough for us to abhor the costs of a misguided war, and yet allow ourselves to be driven by a politics of fear that sees the threat of attack as way to scare up votes instead of a call to come together around a common effort.

The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country’s ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina.

And that is what is at stake in the great political debate we are having today. The changes that are needed are not just a matter of tinkering at the edges, and they will not come if politicians simply tell us what we want to hear. All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal the will to break its grip.

That is how we will bring about the change we seek. That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. He did it with words – words that he spoke not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner.

He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

That is the unity – the hard-earned unity – that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope – the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.

The stories that give me such hope don’t happen in the spotlight. They don’t happen on the presidential stage. They happen in the quiet corners of our lives. They happen in the moments we least expect. Let me give you an example of one of those stories.

There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organizes for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She’s been working to organize a mostly African American community since the beginning of this campaign, and the other day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake.

And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta.

And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia.

And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down. The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down. That is our hope – but only if we pray together, and work together, and march together.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone

In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.

So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.