EVENTS & MEETINGS:
1) Tuesday, February 14: Meeting of Justice and Freedom for John Moore
2) Thursday, February 16: Planning meeting for "Solidarity Against Austerity" rally and march
3) Thursday, February 16: Occupy Sudbury General Assembly
4) Thursday, February 16: Film Showing of "The World According to Monsanto"
5) Saturday, February 18: Whole Grains, Wheat, Nutrition, and the Inside Scoop on Milling
6) Saturday, February 25: Lads n' Lashes (Fundraiser for Réseau ACCESS Network)
7) Thursday, March 1: Meeting of Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty
NEWS, ANALYSIS, & CALLS TO ACTION:
1) Stop mining on KI lands: What part of 'NO' does Ontario not understand?
2) Sudbury and District Labour Council Announces High School Bursary
3) Coalition forms to protect Wolf Lake old-growth forest
EVENTS & MEETINGS:
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Tuesday, February 14: Meeting of Justice and Freedom for John Moore
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Little Montreal, 182 Elgin St., Sudbury
Matters to be discussed include upcoming educational events in Southern Ontario, producing an informational pamphlet about Moore's struggle for justice, and fundraising.
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Planning meeting for "Solidarity Against Austerity" rally and march
Time: 1:00pm
Location: Rethink Green, 176 Larch Street, Sudbury
The new Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty (S-CAP) decided, as part of a province-wide campaign by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and the Raise the Rates campaign, that we will initiate with other supporters of Raising the Rates in Sudbury a rally and march on Friday March 23rd.
This will be in the lead up to the provincial budget which is slated to come down on March 29th. Below please find a preliminary statement for this event that has been drawn from the statement for the March 16th rally and march being organized in Toronto. We are suggesting that this event start at 3pm in Memorial Park with free food, some entertainment and a rally to be followed after 4pm (when more people can come after work and school) by a march.
To organize for this event, we are inviting you to a planning meeting next Thursday, Feb. 16th at 1pm at ReThink Green (behind Eat Local) at 176 Larch Street.
This event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/297877690266167
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Preliminary Statement
On Friday March 23, 2012 FIGHT POVERTY AND DEMAND: A LIVING INCOME! HOUSING!
QUALITY PUBLIC SERVICES FOR ALL!
Friday, March 23, 2012
Free Food, Rally and March
Starting at 3pm at Memorial Park
Join the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty (S-CAP) and supporters of the Raise the Rates campaign for free food, entertainment, a rally and a march on Friday, March 23rd, in the lead up to the 2012 Provincial Budget. The McGuinty government (which includes Sudbury cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci) has hired former head of the TD bank, Don Drummond, to propose and provide the basis for massive social cutbacks in their 2012 budget. It is being drafted as the Provincial component of the austerity agenda that is gathering force across Canada and internationally. Queen`s Park and Ottawa are delivering austerity, but clearly it is being cooked-up on Bay Street by bankers like Drummond for the benefit of their rich friends.
We have to stop the cuts and fight for what poor and working people need!
The measures they intend to hit us with will fall on top of the losses we have already faced:
-Social assistance rates have lost at least 55% of their spending power since the days of the Harris Tories; the base amount for welfare today is a despicable $599/month
-The minimum wage has been reduced in real terms and more and more workers are forced into low wage jobs with E.I, employment standards and protection for workers being steadily eroded
-The fastest growing numbers amongst the poor in Ontario are racialized people without status; forced in to an economy that benefits from their massively underpaid and exploited labour, but fails to provide even basic services
-Waiting lists for social housing across this province are decades long while people are priced out of the private housing market and homeless shelters are overcrowded
-Access to affordable childcare is almost non-existent while thousands wait for limited subsidy spaces.
For poor people and workers in this province, it has been a constant state of crisis. McGuinty and Bartolucci are now preparing to make this situation much worse. On March 23rd, after gathering for food and speakers in Memorial Park we will take our message to a number of locations where decisions are being made by and for the '1%'.
We will be marching to oppose austerity measures but also to demand the reversing of previous cutbacks, the right to a living income, the right to affordable and accessible housing, and for good quality public services for all! We will be marching against the kind of society Drummond and the rich are creating, and for one that meets the needs and improves the lives of all of us!
JOIN US!
HOW TO BE INVOLVED IN MARCH 23rd:
-Organize a contingent: bring a group of people from your organization, neighbourhood, city or union local to this demonstration - bring your needs and demands
-Drum out Drummond: bring drums, noise makers, pots and pans
-Banners, flags and signs: Organize a 'banner making day' in your area, bring your banners to the march
-Help fund food, transit tokens, ASL, and materials for the day: if you or your organization or union local can make donations of money or in-kind, please help us make this day as participatory and accessible as possible
-Build the movement: add your organization's to the list of endorsers for this day of action
-Get the word out: help us get the message out about this day of action, forward this announcement far and wide, contact us if you would like to help with postering, flyering, etc.
Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty
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Thursday, February 16: Occupy Sudbury General Assembly
Time: 7:00-9:00pm
Location: Myths and Mirrors at 139 Durham St. (above Village International)
For more information, see http://occupysudbury.com
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Thursday, February 16: Film Showing of "The World According to Monsanto"
Time: 7:00-9:00pm
Location: Rethink Green, 176 Larch Street, Sudbury
Join us in the ERC on Thursday, February 16th at 7 pm for a showing of "The World According to Monsanto". For more information on this film, click here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1189345/. Hope to see you there!
This event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/223199507765124
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Saturday, February 18: Whole Grains, Wheat, Nutrition, and the Inside Scoop on Milling
Time: 1:00-3:00pm
Location: Energy Resource Centre at Rethink Green, 176 Larch Street, Sudbury
Paul who will be conducting the workshop operates Loon Song: http://loonsong.net/
Gardening and Farming to Develop Heart-Filled Human Capacity with the Land
We have been gardening and farming on Manitoulin Island since 2003, growing nourishing foods and cultivating vibrant community connections in and for the region around us.
We are located at the base of the Niagara Escarpment below McLean's Mountain in Little Current, where we grow over 30 different kinds of vegetables using organic and Biodynamic practices for CSA, farmers' market, and some restaurant and co-op distribution.
In 2009 we began milling fresh stone-ground flours onsite from cereal grains grown here on the farm. Currently we offer some great fresh Rolled Oats, along with true whole-grain Red Fife wheat, rye, and oat flours (we are planning for whole spelt flour, as well as old-fashioned buckwheat flour with the 2011 harvest).
In the spring of 2011 we're also beginning to experiment with making some of our saved seeds available for purchase (starting with some beans and tomatoes).
Our community involvement keeps us inspired and is a central component of our work
This event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/280826488646709
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Saturday, February 25: Lads n' Lashes (Fundraiser for Réseau ACCESS Network)
Time: 8:00-11:00pm
Location: Days Inn, 177 Elm St., Sudbury
Réseau ACCESS Network is presenting a drag show fundraiser at the Days Inn Hotel on Saturday February 25, 2012. Appearing for the first time in Sudbury, Lads n Lashes, a troupe from Toronto, will WOW you with their impersonations of your favourite stars like Cher, P!nk, Liza Minnelli, Adele, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and many more!
The show will be held at the Days Inn at 117 Elm Street, Sudbury. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door and are available by calling 705-688-0500. Doors open at 8pm and the performance starts at 9pm. This is one show that you don't want to miss!
Funds raised from this event will support Réseau ACCESS Network's direct client services and educational programs.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please contact Dawn Brown, Coordinator of Community Resources at 705-688-0500 or at dawnb@reseauaccessnetwork.com
This event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/169187126520807
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Thursday, March 1: Meeting of Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty
Time: 12:00-2:00pm
Location: Rethink Green, 176 Larch Street, Sudbury
Come get involved in anti-poverty organizing!
Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty mandate:
SCAP is a direct-action anti-poverty organization based in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. We provide direct-action support work assisting individuals in their struggles with welfare and ODSP, housing, employers, and others who deny people what they are entitled to in order to meet their needs. In addition, we mount campaigns against and support educational work about regressive government policies as they affect working people and people living in poverty. We believe in the power of people to organize themselves.
We believe in the power of resistance.
NEWS, ANALYSIS, & CALLS TO ACTION:
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Stop mining on KI lands: What part of 'NO' does Ontario not understand?
By Laura Lepper, courtesy of rabble.ca
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/02/stop-mining-ki-lands-what-part-no-does-ont...?
Without consent or consultation, God's Lake Resources, a junior gold exploration company, trespassed by exploring on Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) lands. God's Lake is now threatening to drill on sacred KI burial area. KI is saying NO to God's Lake Resources, just as the community opposed mining exploration by Platinex in 2008 and De Beers in 2010.
Not only is it repeatedly clear that the Canadian government excels at ignoring Indigenous communities' right to say NO, but it criminalizes them for their opposition to rights infringements.
Ontario continues to refute Native land rights in several ways. Like many other Indigenous communities exercising their sovereignty, the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug -- a fly-in Oji-Cree community nearly 600 km north of Thunder Bay -- was told by Ontario courts in 2006 that they would be forced to negotiate with Platinex. The only allowed outcome of this "negotiation" was a Platinex drilling program, which the KI community knows would contaminate both their drinking water and one of their food staples: fishing.
The forced negotiation is in direct violation of treaty rights and with KI's inherent right to refuse extractive industries on their traditional lands, as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Yet on March 17, 2008, Chief Donny Morris and five other community members were jailed for opposing mining development on their nation's territory.
The jailed KI leaders were released by an appeals court after concentrated grassroots support and a massive public outcry. The McGuinty government doled out $5 million to settle with Platinex, after which the province drafted the Far North Act, promising that no new mines would be drilled in the Far North without First Nations consent. Despite this, the Ontario Mining Act continues to enable mining companies like God's Lake Resources to stake claims without consent on First Nations lands. These latest broken promises are only among the more recent of countless holding up a colonial project.
This colonial project also involves criminalizing those who speak out against Canada's political and financial support for the destruction of the environment for corporate profit. In 2008, the same year as KI leaders were jailed, Ardoch Algonquin community leader Bob Lovelace was sent to prison when his community said NO to a uranium mine on their territory.
First, the government of Ontario creates a problem by wrongfully viewing the treaties as a land-surrender and imposing unjust and archaic mining acts on Indigenous lands, then the government of Canada criminalizes any First Nations who oppose the act or offer another view of the treaty relationship.
Apart from the occasions when Indigenous leaders are imprisoned, the Canadian government treats Indigenous communities as "terrorists." In early 2007, the government of Canada created a wide-ranging surveillance network to monitor 18 First Nations regions identified as "communities of concern," according to RCMP documents. In addition to KI and Ardoch, the list includes other communities in Ontario such as Grassy Narrows, Six Nations and Tyendinaga. These communities boldly opposed mining, housing development, and logging on their territories through road and railway blockades, when the Ontario government would not listen any other way.
Surveillance of these First Nations communities was conducted by the Aboriginal Joint Intelligence Group (JIG), run by the RCMP's Criminal Intelligence branch as well as the RCMP's National Security Criminals Investigations, which operate nation-wide to deal with "threats to national security and criminal extremism and terrorism." While the Aboriginal JIG was dismantled in 2010, the RCMP cannot confirm that RCMP divisions are not currently performing its same activities under another name.
The 2009 annual Strategic Intelligence Report states: "Mining, oil-drilling, logging, garbage dumps, construction of dams, highways, and expanding the industries such as the oil sands can produce permanent impacts on the land, resources and people." The report itself indicates that the government is well aware that it is the environmental destruction resulting from their policies and actions that incites confrontations with Indigenous communities. These are the same communities that the government of Canada criminalizes and places under surveillance, rather than addressing the violations of Indigenous rights which sparked protest in the first place.
On July 5, 2011, the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug voted overwhelmingly in favour of protecting their entire watershed from all industrial activity by approving the KI Watershed Declaration and the KI Consultation Protocol. The KI Watershed Declaration states: "We declare all waters that flow into and out of Big Trout Lake, and all lands whose waters flow into those lakes, rivers, and wetlands, to be completely protected through our continued care under KI's authority, laws and protocols... No industrial uses, or other uses which disrupt, poison, or otherwise harm our relationship to these lands and waters will be permitted."
The KI Consultation Protocol spells out clearly for government and industry the ways in which the KI nation will exercise their inherent Indigenous land rights. Activities affecting KI's lands and resources will only proceed with KI's prior and informed consent. Decisions will then occur only according to KI's laws and decision-making processes. This Protocol states how, when, and why KI will oppose activities on their land.
The KI Watershed Declaration includes a call to action for KI's supporters: "We call on our supporters to recognize and respect this declaration. We call on you to fulfill your duty as treaty people to take action, under our direction, to hold your governments accountable to respecting this declaration. Please stand with us as we assert and implement our Indigenous Laws and responsibilities. Together we can protect this sacred water for all people, all animals, all plants and all life."
The strength of KI resistance against Platinex in 2008 resulted in a community victory and the outpouring of support for exercising their sovereignty in saying no to Platinex. While Ontario and Canada try to say NO to Native land rights with broken promises, dead-end negotiations, and prison, we as treaty people must recognize and actively support the Indigenous peoples who have the legitimate grounds say NO in the first place. Support KI!
Support and follow:
KIlands.org
www.facebook.com/TorontoKIsupport
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Sudbury and District Labour Council Announces High School Bursary
In recognition that young workers are our future and education is empowerment, the Sudbury and District Labour Council is offering one $400 bursary This bursary is open to all graduating high school students in the Sudbury area who are planning to pursue post secondary education.
To be eligible for this award, simply tell us:
What is the connection between the occupy movement and the labour movement?
or
What is the significance of anti-replacement worker legislation to the labour movement?
Essays must be a minimum of 500 words to a maximum of 1000 words.
Submission Deadline: March 30, 2012
Submissions to be forwarded to
The Sudbury & District Labour Council
109 Elm Street, Suite 209
Sudbury, Ontario
P3C 1T4
For further Information please contact the SDLC office (705) 674-1223 / sdlc@persona.ca
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Coalition forms to protect Wolf Lake old-growth forest
Today 17 conservation organizations and businesses launch the new Wolf Lake Coalition to save the world's largest old-growth red pine forest. This exceptional place, located within Sudbury city limits, is in peril more than 13 years after Ontario promised to protect the 300 year-old pines. The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) is proposing to reduce protection in the heart of the Wolf Lake Old Growth Forest Reserve to encourage mineral exploration. The Wolf Lake Coalition is calling on the government of Ontario to honour its promise to fully protect Wolf Lake as part of the Chiniguchi Waterway Provincial Park.
The new Wolf Lake Coalition has an online home at SaveWolfLake.org.
"The Wolf Lake pine stand is a cultural jewel that connects today's generation to the very resources that created Sudbury in the past," said Franco Mariotti of the City of Greater Sudbury's Green Space Advisory Panel. "To not protect the Wolf Lake old growth site is to deny future generations of this truly unique natural asset. It would be a denial of our historic past and a short -sighted vision of our future."
The Green Space Advisory Panel, which is appointed by Sudbury City Council to provide advice on their Green Space Strategy, last week urged the city to afford Wolf Lake permanent protection as the city's newest Ecological Reserve.
Red pine is one of Ontario's most iconic tree species; a signature of our cherished northern landscape. Red pine forests once covered much of eastern North America, including what is now downtown Sudbury. These ancient forests remain on only 1.2% of their original extent, making them a critically endangered ecosystem. The Wolf Lake stand is the largest remaining example of this ecosystem - more than triple the size of the next largest remnant. We know of nothing like it that exists anywhere else.
"If we don't act now to fully protect Wolf Lake, then we lose the opportunity to enjoy the economic and ecological benefits of this unique forest," said Bob Olajos of the Friends of Temagami. "What we have at Wolf Lake cannot be replicated elsewhere."
WOLF LAKE COALITION MEMBERS
Ancient Forest Exploration and Research
Association of Youth Camps on Temagami Lakes
BAM North Productions
Camp Keewaydin
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - Ottawa Valley
Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury
The Council of Canadians
Earthroots
Friends of Temagami
Friends of the LaVase Portages
Lake Temagami Group
Nipissing Environmental Watch
Ontario Rivers Alliance
Paddle Canada
Rob Nelson Photography
Temagami Lakes Association
Wild Women Expeditions