We the Citizens of Canada - hear this

Canadian Flag - Vancouver Observer

But if we, the citizens of Canada, win the next election, then there can be big, gloriously positive changes in the way this country runs – which will lead to an outpouring of optimism, a flowering of creativity, an expansion of community-centred energy and a hell of a lot of real fun.

Warren Bell, Vancouver Observer

From Peggy Mason of the Rideau Institute on Non-Nuclear Proliferation

"I am writing this blog post not only as RI President, but as a former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the United Nations.   I had much direct experience of negotiations with Iran, in the context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review process and in many other arms control negotiations at the UN.  Of course that was at a time when Canada’s foreign policy was not based on much sound and fury and little substance but, instead, on a steadfast commitment to, and demonstrated talent for, diplomacy as the means to achieve the peaceful resolution of disputes, as the UN Charter obliges member states to do." - See more at: Ceasefire.

A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

reposted with permission from Split This Rock Poem of the Week.

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

Ross Gay is a gardener and teacher living in Bloomington, Indiana. He is the author of the collections Against Which, Bringing the Shovel Down, and most recently The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude (Pitt Poetry Series, 2015). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, Columbia: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, among other places.

About Split This Rock:

cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. It calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.

Split This Rock explores and celebrates the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the centrality of the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world.

Split This Rock is dedicated to revitalizing poetry as a living, breathing art form with profound relevance in our daily lives and struggles. Our programs integrate poetry of provocation and witness into movements for social justice and support the poets of all ages who write and perform this vital work.

The name "Split This Rock" is pulled from a line in “Big Buddy,” a poem from Langston Hughes.

Don’t you hear this hammer ring?
I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.

About Eric Garner: The Guardian

Capitalism

"… comes from the surplus of the system (profit) being taken out of the real economy (the economy of physical goods and services) and put into the financial sector to generate more wealth for people who are already wealthy. This requires the economy to continually grow to compensate for the extraction of profit, which is essentially the extraction of the economy’s surplus."

Jennifer Hinton on the Greek Crisis, Truthdig

Fire Safety and Preparedness

Garden in July

There is an abundance of advice in British Columbia regarding potential fire hazards and preparedness.

Updates on fire hazard conditions can be found at  Gabriola Fire Dept. 

Air Quality Advisories will give you updates here at  BC Air Quality

Emergency Social Service for Gabriola has a web site here ESS

For BC current alerts and evacuation information can be found at Emergency Info BC

Here is a list of things you might pack ready for an emergency from the Regional District of Nanaimo:

• Battery flashlight/radio - the crank variety are very useful
• Personal medication for up to 72 hours - one week is best. Ask your pharmacist about bubble packing
• basic first aid kit
• personal items (glasses, contact products etc)
• book/game - to keep kids busy
• family photos
• personal papers (photocopies of insurance papers, health info, ID)
• walking shoes
• change of clothing
• bottled water
• non perishable food
• light weight emergency blankets
• large garbage bags to use as a rain poncho, waterproof shelter, to keep pack dry or to capture rain water
• whistle and map
• toiletrries (toothbrush etc)
• information about your pets and supplies
• contact list - family, friends, doctors names and phone numbers
• extra keys to house, vehicles, safety deposit box

Here's wishing for rain and lots of it.

Juan Cole: Seven Churches Burned Down in the Last Week

Church of Global Denial

"This news is being reported tentatively and in the passive mood. The churches burned or were burned. But that arson directed at an African-American church in the South after the Roof murders is likely the work of white supremacists is only hinted at. The ambiguity of thunderstorms is typically brought in, quoting local authorities. But there are lots of thunderstorms all the time in the South and churches have lightning rods. Why would a church that had stood for decades suddenly succumb to a single storm?Shouldn’t the headline be “Suspected White supremacists burn down at least four African-American churches” ? Shouldn’t there be an agent, a doer, involved?

Compare how the press handled Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) attacks on Christians and churches. It was front page news! And the active voice was used, even though these events happened thousands of miles away amidst a fog of war and there were no Western eyewitnesses."   Juan Cole, Truthdig 

With each century we have become more blinded by our own prejudices, more in denial, more fearful and more inadequate in seeking justice.

The End of Wisdom? Not yet.

Senator Clemente Pinckney Atlanta Daily

A young white man went into a church in Charlston last week, sat in a prayer meeting then shot the pastor and eight other people because he wanted to start a civil war. How will he benefit from his hate now he is in custody? Of course he won't benefit - he is just another little puppet filled with propaganda, some drugs and sent out to kill.

We could say the white supremacists who filled his damaged mind with hate are to blame. Or the NRA whose members may be sufficiently ignorant to spout beliefs like one of their Board Members who blamed Clemente Pinckney, the murdered pastor, for the deaths of his eight congregants because he didn't carry a gun. Because he voted against a law allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons without permits?

A childhood friend saw the murderer the morning before the shooting and confessed the pair had never discussed race growing up, but recently heard him spout such racist beliefs as blacks taking over the world. It's an old trope but you don't need new ideas to tear society apart - the old slogans will work for those who are disaffected and who can't do their own research. Puppets that are poor and angry are available in the millions from Budapest to America. What they do know is that life is not fair. They have the scars to prove it.

Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate, said the fatal shooting was a drug-induced accident, perhaps meaning to say "incident" but either way this seems to launder the dirt that is racism.

Jon Stewart confessed he could not bring himself to do jokes on his show the day the killing happened. Clearly sickened by the frequency of these incidents.“I’m confident, though, that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jacksh*t ... Yeah. That’s us.”

Who will call it terrorism when the killing is done by an American who is white - not brown or black or an immigrant from another nation, Stewart asks.

There was an interesting interview on CBC's The Current, where a fellow pastor talked about Clemente Pinckney and how his church had a long history of working for justice.  Doesn't that sound like another assassination - an enlightened soul working for social change, for equality and peace and all those things that make people difficult to manipulate because they are not living in a whirlwind of chaos, fear and powerlessness? 

In the eulogy given by President Obama he said this: Reverend Pinckney embodied a politics that was neither mean, nor small. He conducted himself quietly, and kindly, and diligently. He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas alone, but by seeking out your ideas, partnering with you to make things happen. He was full of empathy and fellow feeling, able to walk in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes. No wonder one of his senate colleagues remembered Senator Pinckney as “the most gentle of the 46 of us – the best of the 46 of us.”

When will we learn the pattern of oppression that is powered by hate? When will we stop rewarding the system that oppresses century after century?