COME ON, LADIES!

COME ON LADIES, LET’S GET IT TOGETHER!
Who? Provincial party leaders Carol James, NDP and Jane Sterk, Green Party, that’s who. They both try to include women but consistently speak to men in their policies and speeches. But are women a separate class? Well, we know that it is male culture that decides what’s important; what will even be discussed during elections and policy making. But in my opinion, both the NDP and the Greens have the potential to break out of this male constructed straight jacket and awaken women to the distinct possibility that women’s issues of just trying to survive as not only poorly paid producers in a tough job market but also as no paid reproducers in the capacity of having and caring for children, also caring for the elderly, the disfranchised, plus, in our spare time, trying to save the entire earth, for Pete’s sake, these are the very issues that strike at the heart of humanity.
The NDP better understands social issues; the Greens know the environment better. Neither party did as well as expected in the last election because each party is only half of what many women are looking for, that is, a platform that acknowledges that the work of having and rearing children is our society’s most important activity. And that the people who do this, or most of it, should be given the money and status this social activity demands. If childless people object to their tax money being spent thus they can trade their owed tax amount for hours, days, weeks, whatever, spent in child care centers, nurseries, schools, doing cooking, cleaning, and teaching. Every citizen must take responsibility for the care of future generations.
We want a platform that stresses that no system of belief should be allowed to raise the sex of one child above another the other, before or after birth. Women fear prostitution and want a party that declares that no woman or child be stripped of their humanity by sexual violation of their bodies by men even if they agree for poverty’s sake. We worry about good food, that there is enough for the children, and that there should be stricter rules about what children can be fed, and corporations who poison food with chemicals and hormones and governments who allow this should be found guilty of child abuse just as the poisoning of the minds of children with pornography and violence on the Internet, film, and TV be declared a crime against children (and let the networks, corporations and the civil liberties unions howl).
Can the NDP and the Greens come together and form one party? I think it’s time. A clear vision releases creativity, both in leaders and the people. Have the corporations, the banks, the monetary experts done such a hot job? The only hot job they know how to do is steal. And then for their thievery demand more taxpayers money while they plunge us further into debt and social degradation. I’m serious, leaders of the Greens and the NDP. You want a majority? Form one party. Turn to your true, largely untapped base, women. Not to ignore or demean men, but to lead them, as well as more women, to a more comprehensive way of including women, children, and the earth in every policy making decision. At a time when mother’s breast milk is the most polluted food source on earth, we just have to do this. We must. And we can. Betty K

OUR RIVERS, OURSELVES

Heading South, that’s where BC rivers are heading, straight into the arms of both US and Canadian corporate control. And gleefully riding the US bound river rapids sits our BC premier who never met a crooked privatizing scheme he didn’t like. And, I might add, riding the crest of his waves not far behind is one of his relatively newly recruited but prized enablers of BC public give-aways: the much admired and prominent environmentalist Tzeporah Berman.
And she’s on record. Ms Berman has publicly stated she thinks the privatizing of BC rivers through the Run of the River projects is a good idea. Why would this poster child for the Clayoquot Sound blockades lend her name and prestige to such a vicious thing as signing off our public river power to private control? In frustration I tuned to an old issue of DOGWOOD INITIATIVE (2002) to an article by Denise Deegan (written for corporations) called MANAGING ACTIVISM; A GUIDE TO DEALING WITH ACTIVISTS AND PRESSURE GROUPS and we are told the following:
“First identify the “radicals” who are unwilling to compromise and who are demanding fundamental changes. Then, identify the “realists”-typically organizations with significant budgets and staff working in the same relative area of public concern as the radicals. Then approach these “realists,” start a dialogue and eventually cut a deal, a “win,win” solution that marginalizes and excludes the radicals and their demands. Next go with the realists to the “idealists” who have learned about the problem through the work of the radicals. Convince the idealists that a “win-win” solution endorsed by the realists is best for the community as a whole. Once this has been accomplished, the “radicals” can be shut out as extremist, the PR fix is in, and the deal can be touted in the media to make the corporation and its “moderate” non-profit partners look heroic for solving the problem”.
And this strategy has worked. In these past years most of us “radicals” have been shut out as the “realists” and the “idealists” have made questionable, supposed “win, win” deals with the Gordon Campbell government and corporations. Only the problems haven’t been solved and there are now serious splits in what little environmental activism there was out there. However, I remain optimistic and believe these splits could be setting the stage for a real environmental movement…one that engages not just a lofty few who think themselves special and rather intellectually superior but masses of people, many who haven’t the faintest idea how bio systems actually work but know that they do work and desperately want them to keep on working. So we’ll see. Betty Krawczyk