Category: Articles

Community First, Movement Second: A Short Bio of Harsha Walia

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“…the most important feature of powerful social movements, is an affirmation of community.”

– From “Young, Brown and Proud: Personal purpose and political activism” by Harsha Walia

Connection requires a crossing of boundaries. It requires seeing one thing in another without disturbance of difference: that old mean thing still snipping at the threads we THE PEOPLE weave when we breach the gap between ourselves and another, when we see ourselves as one. And it seems these days that those who are best at connecting were born to difference, too. With wide focus, they can see it for what it truly is and pass through as if there were no boundary at all—grasping at those other strands with ease and bringing the rest of us gratefully along. 

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A Giving Voice: Short Biography of Deanna Reder

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A Giving Voice (n): 

A person who hands themselves over in the service of revealing truth; who gives­ even their voice in making sure the untold is spoken. 

—

Here in Canada, many still shy away from the basic truth of our colonial history: that European settlers erased the voices of entire populations already living here, stifling the heart of What-We-Could-Have-Been.

Even today reconciliation with this truth sometimes seems little more than a distant hope on the horizon; and yet, there are those who refuse to let such a cause die. Who give even their voices to this truth above all else, and who aren’t afraid to stand up for the many voices which were lost then—voices of healing that we need now more than ever to understand. 

A Giving Voice is Deanna Reder. 

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Still Learning: Confronting Myself on ‘Naming the Unnamed’ Within

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Sometimes, when something hurts me, it takes a while for me to feel it. I’m the kind that won’t even realize I’d been so affected until much later, years after, and at random. 

Sometimes, what I’ve suppressed never comes to light at all.

Usually this is because, “I don’t know where to put it.” Slow to process, quick to Proceed Past, I’m always moving onto the next thing before I’ve even finished the first. And if one of these things should get stuck in the “forgetting”, the “suppressing”, it’s rejection will likely bring it back up.

Finally found, it causes a shake—a paling, like I’ve seen a ghost. For some time, casting the world in the glare of its light, it is all that I can see. 

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Clasping Hands with the “Women Who Named the Unnamed”

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May I ask you a question, imagined reader?

Who do you think of – who pops into your mind first – when you imagine a woman in your life who has ‘named the unnamed’? Who has stood up in the face of being told to stay quiet only to say simply, I won’t?

When asking myself the same, I feel lucky to find not just one but many such women fill the space—at least, these days I do. Like a breath of fresh air, it’s recently become easier to reach out and find that desperately needed connection with these others—these women who manifest in my mind’s eye as a clasping of many hands (of my hands) outside of space, and time, and memory. 

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Maybe You’ve Never Been to Green Drinks…Here’s What to Expect!

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Straight up, it’s hard to meet people. And in Edmonton’s cold north, the party is often hiding behind closed doors (of course, we’re getting better at it thanks to Edmonton’s WinterCity Strategy!). That leaves a lot of us falling into a Netflix trap, keeping to our own circles and our old habits, and sometimes, forgetting that to live in a city means being a part of the thing, gosh darn it!

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