rabble.ca's Activist Toolkit explores Black History Month this February.
canadian history
Harkening back to Champlain's immigration policy
Americans gripped by immigration and ethnicity issues should glance for perspective at the large print on the base of the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor ... Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me ... Canadians with similar anxieties about immigrants and refugees -- categories that were often historically identical -- should think about Samuel de Champlain, who founded our country in the early 1600s.
Norman Bethune: Stepping forward to revolution
Extraordinary Canadians: Norman Bethune
(Penguin Canada,
2009;
$26.00)
When Norman Bethune left Montreal for Spain in 1936 to help the Republicans in their doomed effort to hold back Franco's fascists, he spoke no foreign languages and had no fixed role waiting for him. But he was among a group of determined individuals who believed "if fascism could be stopped in Spain, a larger war would not break out," and he wasted no time making himself useful. When Bethune left Madrid less than a year later, he had created and implemented a mobile blood transfusion unit, the first of its kind, that treated soldiers right at the front and drastically reduced fatalities. He was also on the verge of collapse, drinking heavily and making enemies on all sides.
Activist Toolkit weekly roundup: #IWD, radical workshops, intersex allies, men against violence, pro-choice
| March 8, 2012Henry Morgentaler
Dr. Henry Morgentaler is most famous Canadian pro-choice physician. His outspoken support for reproductive rights have taken him to court rooms, protests, fundraisers and award ceremonies across the country. His relentless campaigning and trust in women has helped made it legal for women to get safe, confidential and sanitary abortions.
Biography
Day of Pink
The first day of pink was held in September 2007 at a rural high school in Cambridge, Nova Scotia. A grade nine student had worn a pink polo shirt on his first day of school. He was bullied by a group of grade 12 students using homophobic and transphobic slurs. Bullies threatened that if the student ever wore pink again, he'd pay.
17 year old David Shepherd and Travis Price heard about the incident and took action. They bought 50 pink tank tops from a discount store and used social media to organize what they called a "sea of pink" in solidarity against bullying. More than 300 students showed up in pink.
Blackface
Blackface is a racist gesture that involves someone painting their face black, typically to enact racist stereotypes about African Americans. It harkens back to when white minstrels would rub burnt cork on their faces and play stereotypes of enslaved African Americans. The belief that people of colour were intellectually, emotionally, physically and generally inferior was bolstered through the creation of African American caricatures that were played out for the entertainment of white people. These were created in the 1800s, but the same racist ideology is still common today.
Racist caricatures
Activist Toolkit weekly roundup: Starting a co-op, SmartMemes, decolonizing workshop, going viral
| February 16, 2012Chloe Cooley Incident
Chloe Cooley was a young black woman who was enslaved in Upper Canada during the late 1700s. She was enslaved by a white farmer named William Vrooman, a loyalist who had fled to Canada after the American Revolution. In 1793, Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe put forth a complicated piece of legislation.
