Barriers

In my teaching career, one of the most powerful lessons for my students emerged from Atticus Finch, Scout's beloved father in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. A lawyer with a deep sense of fairness and compassion, Finch taught his children a lesson that all of us should carry in life:

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Empathy, the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another, or, more simply put, putting yourself in another's place, I have always felt, should make it easier for us to react to injustices with at least some degree of outrage.

For me, the most effective route to empathy is a simple question: Would I want my son or daughter to be treated in an unjust way (apply your own particular scenario here)? Ask yourself that question as you watch this video:

Integrity And Dishonour On Display

If there were two people in a room, a politician and a private citizen, and you were told that one was deeply dishonourable and one very principled, you would naturally assume that the mantle of dishonour would be worn by the politician. In the following case, you would be completely wrong, as the video and the accompanying story, which you might want to read first, make abundantly clear:

On Canada Day

On this Canada Day, I could write about all of the reasons I am very thankful for having been born and raised in this country. Instead, I will ask whoever reads this to check out The Star's Tim Hapur, who has a very sound suggestion on how we can best honour and work to restore our great legacy.

Perhaps if enough of us act on his words, we can once more become the country of great promise we used to be.

I Don't Know About You ...

... but despite our many earth-bound problems, I find this sort of thing absolutely fascinating:

Contrasting Pictures

This post could perhaps more aptly be entitled A Tale of Two Centuries. The top picture, from yesterday's Dyke March in Toronto, represents some of the best of the twenty-first century as people increasingy accept and welcome the diversity that is humanity. It is hard not to feel a measure of pride in a country that, while still beset with a myriad of problems, has been one of the world's forerunners in promoting equality regardless of sexual orientation. Both the Dyke Parade and today's Pride Parade are ample testaments to that progressiveness.

The second picture, taken from yesterday's Pride Parade in St. Petersburg, could just as easily have been taken in the nineteenth century or earlier, as protesters clashed with paraders who were taking a brave stance in a city where it is illegal to demonstrate on behalf of equal rights for LGBT people; by publicly doing so, they broke a city bylaw that is about to become national law.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon sign into law a bill that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.”

Under Russia’s new law, people who promote homosexuality through any media, including online, can be charged up to $3,200. The fines are tenfold for organizations, which can also be shuttered for 90 days.

According to state-owned pollster Vtsiom, 88 per cent of Russians support the ban. A survey by independent pollster Levada last year found that half of Russians believe homosexuals should be forcibly given medical or psychological treatment.

Changing people's attitudes and perspectives is among the most difficult of challenges. The fact that such challenges can be met is epitomized in twenty-first century Toronto in particular and North America in general.

In a world beset by runaway climate change, choking pollution, government surveillance of its citizens and a relentless and unforgiving corporate agenda that gleefully exploits an increasingly desperate workforce, surely it is time to turn our attention to matters more important than who people spend their time and their lives with.

Oh So True

H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

The Age of the Disposable Worker

On this blog I frequently lament the fact that we live in the age of the fungible worker, the one who is easily exchanged for another should his or her expectations of decent wages and working conditions threaten to impede the flow of easy profits accruing to corporate coffers. It is happening abroad, an example evident in the declining fortunes of China, which has seen wages rising, resulting in multi-nationals shifting their production to lower-wage regimes; we see it in North America, with manufacturers closing up shop to relocate in jurisdictions with more lax labour regulations, the Caterpillar closing being one of the more recent and egregious examples in Canada.

But as bad as corporate indifference to workers' fates may be, there is an entirely distinct class of workers for whom Canada as a nation shows little but withering contempt: the migrant worker, the people we import from places like Jamaica, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, to do the work we refuse to do - agriculture labour such as picking tobacco and fruit and vegetables. As bucolic as such endeavours may sound, they are often fraught with danger, but even when the unthinkable happens, workers and their loved ones are not extended the kinds of protections that Canadians enjoy, an example being the right to inquests into deaths that occur on the job.

Such was the case with Ned Peart, a Jamaican worker brought to Ontario through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, [who] died in 2002 after a tobacco bin fell and crushed him at a farm near Brantford. When the Office of the Chief Coroner refused to hold an inquest, Mr. Peart’s family lodged a human-rights complaint in the hopes of catalyzing broader legislative reforms.

Watch the video below and see if you can avoid the natural distaste that arises when such obvious injustice occurs: