SOME DAYS ARE LIKE STONE

I woke up this morning with a stone in my chest. Madam Justice Brown read her decision in court yesterday morning. Another disappointing decision for me. For all of us. For democracy. This was the decision concerning the court's use of injunctions as a means to terrorize citizens into submission. With injunctions in hand, BC courts are making awesome decisions about the brutal environmental destruction of our province. The courts are not trying to stop it, of course. And they are actively helping those who do it. BC judges continually find that the corporations doing the destruction have more rights than the citizens who must live with the aftermath. And who must also pay for the aftermath.

Again, the courts are not impressed with citizen's rights. And they have a closed system going concerning injunctions. They give them out and make it against the law in court to base a defense on the unfairness of said injunctions. You just can't criticize the injunctions in court. Madam Justice Brown ruled that my criticisms of injunctions were irrelevant. That's what she said. A process that is protecting the deforestation of our entire province, including our watersheds, is not to be attacked she said. Got that? Oh, yes, it seems that a court process protecting the disappearance of entire species of plants and animals can't be questioned in court. The stunning irrationally of this rule by court injunction, this government by court injunction, causes me from time to time to consider the entire BC court system as corrupt.

However, hope springs enternal in the human breast. I keep hoping I will eventually draw a judge who understands that the use of injunctions as a terrorist weapon against the people is wrong. But not yet. Maybe next time.

There is another reason I woke up with a heavy heart this morning. Today is my oldest son's birthday. He died two years agao from a brain tumor. A healthy young man, just entering his prime when he died; an electrical engineer, an artist and writer, a husband. And I know my son isn't the only one to go prematurely. It's happening to many young and middle aged people,this disease of cancer, this epidemic now underway and so prevalent people don't even want to talk about it.

But we have to talk about it. Cancer is being described as a disease of the immune system or the failure of the immune system to ward off the destruction of healthy cells in the human body. Why are so many young and middle aged people being stricken with cancer, this disease that used to be confined only to the elderly? Some researchers are saying it's because of the degradation of the earth's life support systems coupled with the chemicalization of industry. So as the government gives precedent to the privatizing and chemicalization of everything, and our lives are increasingly governed by corporate values, as our eco systems weaken and threaten in some spheres to collapse completely, as disease spreads alarmingly, our courts were, and still are, in spite of my disappointment in Madam Justice Brown's decisions, I think our courts remain our only hope. By the Constitution judges are oblidged to consider every case before them under the prism of public interest. I think our judges have just gotten confused about the definition of "public".

Our courts need help. They need to feel a ground swell of disapproval when they insist on arresting protesters by injunctions which deprive citizens of their rights. Yes, a veritable groundswell of opposition to Gordon Campbell's "Greenish Games Ever" plan which is the "Blackest Lie Ever".

Yet I remain hopeful. I have the utmost faith in the goodness and good sense of the people who live in British Columbia. And just as I know that some day I will see my son again, I kow the day will come when the court's use of injunctions to cower people into accepting the inevitability of the continuous destruction of our woods, waters and skies will stop. This destruction, these diseases, are not inevitable. We can stop them. And start afresh. I will find out when my trial resumes on Oct. 5 My love, Betty K