Women, gender non-binary, racially and culturally diverse people, and those living with disabilities, are regularly targeted by sexist and racist harassment, discrimination and sometimes threats or even violence, when they run for public office. This can dissuade them from running at all and puts them in danger when they do. This behaviour, both in-person and on-line can persist, even among colleagues, when in office. If we do not have diversity and safety in our elected offices, we are neither upholding human rights nor achieving democratic and representative governments. The Violence & Harassment in Politics Working Group is focused on raising awareness greater inclusion in our elected offices.
They started finding reasons to touch me, pinching my butt, snapping my new real bras (“They look a lot better. Did you stuff?”) or straight-up grabbing my breasts. Dropped pencils with awkward leanovers. Staged run-ins. One time, a popular boy I knew who lived on my street forced his way into my living room while my parents were still working and fought with me over a remote control so that he could cop a feel. I didn’t say anything.
Many things are and will be written about this time, that I hope will reflect an awakening from this collective “time-out.” We’ve been sent to our proverbial rooms to think long and hard about our life as we knew it — the patterns of human activity on the planet, how we treat one another and the Earth that sustains us, and the governing structures we have created that permit and promote stark and ever-growing social inequities.
Today, I am grappling with grief and the convergence of two pandemics.
Sue Bookchin, ED, and Project Officer Stacey Godsoe recently met with Mark Furey, Minister of Justice, to share ideas about justice system reform to better serve survivors of intimate partner violence. We thank Minister Furey for his comprehensive and thoughtful response, outlining the scope of initiatives our provincial Department of Justice is undertaking.
The future ahead of us is the future we create every day, in our workplaces, our families, our encounters with strangers and friends. Our real work is to imagine the life we want to be living and draw it toward us. It is not to look behind us to see how they did it before, not to rustle through old texts for solutions, but to re-examine everything we’ve been taught and dismiss whatever divides us from one another. —Jan Phillips
