Category Archives: Politics

Occupy Wall Street – These are the times that Chinese curse Talks about

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

While I support the brave people out participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I have to confess a certain morbid fascination with the current events of the last few weeks, and even months. Government and Big Business is pressing it’s thumb down on the working class – in Canada, the “Harper” government, as it’s styled itself, has legislated ends to two strikes and is now interfering with yet another, undermining worker’s rights to Union negotiation. This stuff is happening all over, in times when the disparity between rich and poor has not been greater for over fifty years.

I’m fascinated because this is the sort of experience that I build stories from. Even the most painful struggles of my own life create fodder for words that will one day go onto paper.

Sometimes I think I should stop being so terrible to my characters, and I could write about utopias where nothing bad ever happens, then I could have happy things happen in my life…..Yeah, I didn’t think it worked that way either.

Also fascinating is the way the media is treating the entire movement. They are doing their best to ridicule and illegitimize it. They are making the protesters out to be a bunch of pot smoking hippies, finding the radicals in the crowd, and picking those people to interview. They’re making fun of them.

A post on reddit had some advice: get a haircut, and wear khakis and polos to protest. It’s important right now, for the protesters to convey that they are not the radicals that the media and the Corporatocracy wants the general population to believe they are. They are people just like you and me, who have been screwed out of jobs. They are the Everyman and Everywoman, and their misfortunes could be yours. They are also young people – college and university trained, and new to a workforce that doesn’t need them, doesn’t want them, and won’t pay them. This is the next generation, the leaders of tomorrow, and the people in power would like nothing more than for them all to disappear. These people need to make it clear that they are not going to disappear, and their government has a responsibility to them.

On that note, I plan to swing by Occupy Winnipeg at some point, to show my support. Hold together, all.

Californian Students Protest Racist Admission Policies with Bake Sale

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

A Californian University is proposing new admission policies that would make racial background a factor for student admissions, favouring minorities. The students have responded with a Bake Sale.

On the one hand, yes, it’s more difficult, and often prohibitive for members of racial minorities who tend to have lower incomes, to attend university. So one might argue that the University is doing a cool thing, no?

But the students have a valid point too. What if a white male, equally deserving, has a low income?

Their point is that it’s wrong to base laws and policies on the assumption that how much someone can afford to pay is based on their race. How much someone can afford to pay should be based on how much they can afford to pay. Now, a policy taking into consideration household income as admission criteria would be reasonable, not racist, and be sticking up for the ethnic groups that tend to have lower incomes.

But that’s not what corporate and government policy is about in the USA – policy in the USA is all about distracting the lower class so that they fight one another rather than attacking the government and Corporatocracy that’s screwing them.

So now they have low income Caucasian males and minorities up in arms against one another, which is exactly their goal. They’re taking something that’s not about race, and making it about race. Because the race issue divides, while the low income issue would bring solidarity between low income minorities and low income Caucasian males. And that’s insidious. As long as the Corporatocracy can keep it’s people fighting one another, these people will be too busy squabbling to unite against their real oppressor.