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I'm sure all the homeless First Nations people on East Hastings are thrilled that Canada and Vancouver have deigned it cool to appropriate Native symbols for their multi-billion dollar Olympics.
Ha, Uncle Salim with racial balance.
How many boycotts have been organized against the Sun?
How many boycotts have been organized against those who advertise in the Sun?
Not just boycott, but make their business and personal lives uncomfortable as possible?
Stop bringing knives to gunfights.
If you were going to boycott their advertizers you would best find a cause such as a specific story that highlights the objections and few will disagree is over the top.
Oh, I think you need to build a case over time, and then carefully choose the straw that will break your back. The Sun can't help itself, so it shouldn't be too hard.
So, glance at the Sun pages that litter the subway station floors, and take note of their full page adds, who they are, etc.
I agree. Getting major advertisers onside was a deciding factor in getting CHOI-FM to dump Jeff Fillion, just as it allowed Le Journal de Québec's union to resist Quebecor's lockout in Quebec City and finally win.
Initially was one advertiser targeted, or a group of them all at the same time?
Also when choosing which advertiser to target, was consideration given to an advertiser that frequently ran ads?
And was the target an advertiser that advertised certain kinds of products. What kind of advertiser's products would be most suceptible to a boycott?
I'm sorry, but it is the wrong approach. Look, why expend resources on a newspaper that would spoil for the fight? Have you ever heard of a book banning reducing sales of the prohibited book? I don't care what you do or how you organize it, the Sun would eat it up and make the boycotters look like jerks. Remember the effort to boycott Chudlieghs?
Rather then repeating Sun trash or trying to reform the permanently aggreived right's messenger of record, our time is better spent refining and propagating our own message and being our own messengers. News print is dying. We can fight the rear guard action of retreating reactionaries or we can forge forward. I say forge, dammit! Forge!
I am not sure that I am happy with the way you present the image of the impoverished and addicted Aboriginal, Catchfire. Why shouldn't any FN person, whatever their degree of income and social inclusion have an opinion about cultural iconography in widely shared public symbols? Perhaps I misunderstand your point - is it to demonstrate the irony of using aboriginal imagary in elite pursuits while many FN people struggle with poverty and addiction, or is it to appropriate the 'suffering aboriginal' as a symbol of your disdain for Canadian racism and elitism? I have some difficulty explaining why this imagery makes me uncomfortable. It brings to mind the fake "weeping Indian," Espera Oscar DeCorti, in the 1970's anti-pollution advertisements.
FM: Have you ever heard of a book banning reducing sales of the prohibited book?
Yes, but I don't think that analogy works anyway. We are not talking about ideas, writers or book publishers, but about advertisers that shun bad publicity because they pay through the nose to try and get good one. Get the numbers to convince them that their corporate image is hurting by association with a racist publication and they will pull their ads faster than you think. I have worked in advertising and in the media and I know this is true.
I don't care what you do or how you organize it, the Sun would eat it up and make the boycotters look like jerks.
Well, for all I know, Le Journal de Québec didn't, and neither did CHOI-FM. In both cases, the management gave in. You don't have to try and mount a public moral/ideological contest that they could steamroll, just get a few major advertisers to cancel and tell the media management why.
I would expect that the Sun being the Sun, they would fight back, and in the process, not be able to stop their reactionary selves from doing something worse than they've already done, like libeling someone or a group, or saying something even more racist or sexist.
They don't work for the Sun Media Empire because they are the best and brightest of the bunch, you know.
I guess one's view of such action depends on what one hopes to achieve through it. If it's the emmediate demise of the Sun, well, prepare for dissapointment. If it's to enlighten the people at the Sun, prepare again for dissapointment.
However, if it's just to make them suffer, the possibilities for fun and victory are ripe for the picking.
For me, it is primarily to educate everyone else - readers and non-readers of the Sun - and to score a victory that will push back the ugliness a bit by latching onto the borderline situations where they push the envelope beyond common decency and making that a metaphor for their whole politics. (But hey, maybe you're not as much of an optimist as I am.)
______________________________
Smash Patriarchy and Have a Nice Day!
The use of the Inukshuk looks to me like appropriation, and out-of-region appropriation at that. But perhaps the desire of elites to use aboriginal symbols to represent Canada isn't so terrible? It seems maybe less terrible than the opening post suggestion that aboriginal symbols are NOT appropriate ways to represent Canada. Am I off-base here?
it seems rather philisophical- the use of symbols to hide egregious nastiness; and to make the nasty look innocent,caring, when they simply are nothing like that. In the meanwhile, Harper just got caught treating a citizen as a subhuman due to her less the anglo heritage, in the Kenya case (my, you should hear the hate radio dimwits go on about that...'who does those goddam people think they are anyway?' is a typical comment!) and Harper was able to kick Karlheinz outta the country, using the CBSA as his own brownshirt org again, re Galloway/Ayers etc (Shrieber's lawyer, Al Greenspan, was on tv protesting that by sending in the order deporting KHS on Fri afternoon 10 past 5pm, the harper creeps avoided any Supreme Court intervention, since, Greenspan explained, the court never sat until tuesday, and thus Shrieber could be sent away legally...iow the Canadian people were being cheated again, with red handed bribery being a Tory tradition, maybe)
it's sad to have no where to whine but on Babble, so im sorry, but.....
bytheway, does anyone think the demise of Frank Magazine sure dovetailed nicely with the harper conman takeover of Canadian gov?
I don't know, Ze. It seems to me to be the latest generation of the 'noble savage' idea. We will make symbolic gestures of appreciation and 'respect'; but acknowledge you as human with human needs and dignity? That, we cannot do.
How many First Nations olympians in Canada are there anyway? How many can afford a ticket to the games?
I am optimistic that pain is the only educator for the willfully ignorant.
The Color of Change campaign seems to be successful in making Fox's Glenn Beck suffer:
Is Glenn Beck Finished?
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on August 24, 2009
In his eight months at Fox, Glenn Beck has repeatedly prophesied the advent of both Socialism and Fascism. He's wished for Osama bin Laden to attack America. He's hosted 911 truther Alex Jones on his show, and helped fan the bizarre conspiracy theory that FEMA plans to imprison dissidents in internment camps. He paces, rants and cries on the air like a crazy person. Once, he pretended to set someone on fire.
Beck's weird theatrics and paranoid right-wing rants have earned him the 3rd highest ratings on Fox (Bill O'Reilly still regularly beats Beck, Sean Hannity beats him sometimes), even as liberals, many corporate media pundits and most non-crazy people shrink away with equal parts bewilderment, horror and disdain. The week before last Beck averaged 2.4 million viewers a day, edging out Hannity for the number 2 spot.
But a Color of Change campaign urging advertisers to drop Beck has already been so successful that Fox may have to reconsider whether Beck is worth it, despite his popularity with the right-wing fringe. At last count, 36 advertisers have pulled their advertising from Beck's show. These include: GEICO, Radio Shack, SC Johnson, Progressive Insurance and Sprint. Last Monday Wal Mart - hardly a poster-child for progressive politics - also dropped Beck's program. (...)
Very very very interesting article.
Near the end, Ganeva mentions a "counter boycott":
"According to Rucker, many of the people protesting the campaign threatened to boycott the companies that dropped Beck, saying essentially "I'm done with GEICO, done with progressive. They're trying to threaten the pushback and people and organizations". "
On the surface, this seems to be trouble for the original boycotters, but in fact it's a bonus.
This will have a serious chilling effect on any advertiser who thinks about parking thier brand on something idiotic.
I don't mind asserting that Fox isn't as much concerned about the advertisers they lost, as much as the ones they don't know they've lost yet.
Yee. Haw!
Wow, that is so embarassing.
Canadians as a group tend to be quite proud of how un-racist we are in comparison to the United States and other places in the world. Many people see the problems of aboriginal peoples in Canada as something "they" must solve, something that may have to do with the history of interaction between European "settlers" and First Nation's peoples, but not "us" because we aren't racist. That anyone could even think what that article said is dreadful. That the writer and editor would actually have either the nerve or the ignorance to actually print it is jaw-dropping, but probably shouldn't be. This serves to remind me, as a Canadian, that my pride should be tempered with a huge dose of shame. If I can be proud of my country's collective achievements even thought I am not personally responsible for them, then I must also accept the shame of seeing something like that in a Canadian pubication.
On a much more subtle note, it reminds the "center" that Harper and his ilk aren't as evolved as they pretend to be. Though Harper is not directly implicated, it is a reminder of the mindset of the "right" as a collective. People may not remember this particular incident when it comes time to vote yet again, but it will contribute to their overall impression of conservative thought.
It is a gorgeous and inspired design. It's the most beautiful maple leaf design I have ever seen. That it could even occur to someone to be anything other than proud that it was designed by a Canadian is incredible.
Although given our history I can see why using native designs can be interpreted as appropriation I would love it if the unique style of native art work became thought of as Canadian style. There is a DNA project of some sort where people send in their DNA and you're ancestry is traced back to original migration patterns. I am proud to say that my matriarchal line is First Nations even if I can't claim it as a part of my personal heritage. But, it would be really interesting to know how many Canadians have native ancestry.
i'm 54 percent native (ojibwa) The reason I know this is way back in early 70's I wanted a 'border crossing' card which, in effect, makes 1st nations citizens both of US and... the other one. Jobs. opportunities. A BC from RC church was produced, and my foster grandma went with me to US customs, where the details/forms were filled etc....the border card came shortly after. I lost it while crossing border from Juarez to the pass in late 70's- the rednecked border agent was furious that such things existed, and he refused to return it after I foolishly showed it to him, and there was a car fulla guys waiting, and....get the pitcher? My bio brother later got his 'status' card, which apparently is a good thing, and being 54 percent 'Indian' i've been encouraged to get it too, but screw the man. A border crossing card is one thing, but status? I grew up in a time being native was a terrible thing. I can barely look at myself in a mirror. i wish i never lived. I imagined what it's like for the true FN, not that it matters anymore, but 'you're born, you hide, you die' was a failed philosophy to live by; i learned way too late.
Natives slam Canadian's 'racist' blog on GamesOh boy...I do not know what to say to you, but I want you to know it was read, and has impact at least my awareness, as being close to that of my daughter's sentiments at times.
Ever need a place you want to get away to, for a bit, you are more than welcome, we have an small RV you can stay in for your own space. Just pm me.
Rachel Marsden ...gah! Puke....
One can only hope she, and they, keep it up, nothing will turn normal Canadians off of the CPC faster.
Many of us grew up with a great deal of internalized racism. I still struggle with powerful issues of self hatred and bitterness, based in my family history that was was forced upon us by racist institutionalized Provincial and Federal policies. Knowing you are not truly alone, but merely isolated in the pain that many of our people have undergone is a small comfort perhaps. I think I shall move this thread to aboriginal issues.
Is this the same person who has a history of stalking?? Some failed relationship or something like that.
When I saw the name Granatstein I about had a heart attack - and was relieved to see it wasn't historian and author Jack Granatstein from York University. It's a really mean-spirited article.
ps: there's a beautiful Inukshuk right across the road from me.