Stand Your Ground Law

Florida has a law which causes many to question its value. The other evening a young black man went to a corner store to buy some candy and iced tea for his brother. On the way home a community volunteer who is armed and works with the police confronted the boy. The boy noticed that he was being followed and phoned his sister to ask what he should do. She told him to run home asap. The volunteer thought the 16 year old boy looked suspicious and phoned the police headquarters to ask what he should do. He was told to do nothing and walk away.

Seeing the boy run away this person caught the boy and in a struggle he claimed his life was threatened so as the boy ran away he was shot four times in the back. The chief of police heard this story and released the volunteer with his gun and badge.

A terrible outrage followed and the next day the chief took a leave of absence. The town was in an uproar and the governor called an inquiry. Meantime there were no charges and the volunteer is out on the basis of this law called stand your ground.  This law in simple terms means everyone has a right to use leather force if they feel their life is threatened. Does this sound like a good law?

Now the ugly face of racism comes into play and sides are drawn. We will never get the full story as there were no or few witnesses. There are other gun laws here in Florida which makes it difficult to maintain law and order when nearly everyone had a hand gun and has the right to use it.

I hope that the Governor will take a hard look at this piece of legislation and correct its application and avoid its miss use.

Post Xmas Let Down

Every year is the same, there is a rush to commercialize Xmas as businesses receive a huge percentage of their revenue over the month of deficit buying. Immediately after Xmas there is a rush to close marginal profit shops and with the new year there is tax and budget concerns - so the big let down. Only this week we saw huge layoffs of municipal workers, lockouts at plants, closures of call centers and rumours of massive unemployment because of the need for balanced budgets.

I am not sure that the world is as bad as it appears in the press but the Fifth Estate seems to seek and print every negative aspect of our society. There is a war on unions and the working people who depend on these institutions to defend themselves against big business are being ignored by the government who today sees these unions as the enemy.

Only a couple of decades ago one could expect to be hired by a company that provided reasonable living conditions and a pension at the end of service, but today unless you are hired by one level of government or another you are probably fresh out of luck. It is rather peculiar that government that today are not protecting the working people of the country have set up some of the very best safety nets for themselves and their workers. Conservatives here and in the USA will do everything to protect big business and even offer huge subsidies to big oil and international companies, and leave the middle class to fend for themselves. Just watch and see how our government will react to the pipelines and watch how these multi-national, foreign owned companies will get legislation to aid them in their bid to transport oil over sensitive environmentally pristine land, to provide oil for China.

The government should be right out there protecting the rights of the people who live in these areas. Why is the government always on the side of big business? Because there is the notion that these powerful companies provide large numbers of employment. Big business only employ people when it is profitable and the moment that any aspect of the business reflects on the bottom profit line they are gone. Interesting that many, if not most, of the multi-nationals pay little or no taxes to Canada. Most have off-shore offices in tax sheltered jurisdictions.

I watched one labour story in London Ontario where Caterpillar International has locked out its hundreds of workers. This plant operated as a profitable Canadian firm for years building excellent locomotives under a branch of GE. The workers were skilled and made nearly $30 an hour with benefits. The CAT Co. bought this Canadian company and locked out the workers because the union would not accept a cut in wages and salaries, benefits and pensions earned and won over the years. They were offered one half their origional package in a take it or leave it offer. Watch what happens and observe who our government will support in this mess.

Canada is losing its middle class and unions and other workers organizations deserve our consideration, as they were the ones who fought for and gained the standard of living we used to have. I was an educator for many years and our federation gave us respect and living conditions from which we now benefit. Let us hope that 2012 will be  a year for the working class and the ordinary people of America. (Canada-USA).

Slavery

Theresa and I were driving to the supermarket and stopped at a red light. As we were waiting we saw this flatbed truck with an unusual load. It was carrying an old wooden boxcar from some railway company. Although we talked about it we never reached a conclusion as to what it was doing in Cape Coral.

We received the answer next day when we were riding our bikes past our local Middle School. There in the play yard was this boxcar. It was part of a display teaching the students about the holocaust. It was one of a few remaining railway cars used to transport people to the death camps in Poland. The boxcar was windowless and small by today's standards and if it were able to talk, think of the tragic stories it would tell.

Large posters were displayed telling the stories of some of the survivors and brought home the cruel realization of mans inhumanity to each other.Jews and other people were picked out to be slaves and worked until they were no longer of any use and then killed. Children seeing this display and hearing first hand the tragic stories were made aware of this horror from the past.

Exactly one week later Theresa and I cut through the local Catholic church yard to observe our eagles and saw a delivery truck in the parking lot. This truck was surrounded by many people who were reading posters and information articles about this particular truck. This truck was about eight feet wide and sixteen feet long with a metal roll up door at the back. There were no windows, bathroom or furniture in this delivery truck compartment. It was the home for slaves, not a hundred years ago but in 2008.

Here in Florida slavery was alive and well in the tomato fields of Southwest Florida. This truck box was the home for twelve migrant workers from Mexico and Central America. They came with a promise to work. Their papers were taken, passports destroyed and enslaved by greedy men who worked them without pay. Any attempt to escape was met by beatings and chains.

This display is making its way around Florida to educate people of this tragic situation. The people who kept these men in slavery were arrested and put in prison for a long time. Conditions have improved in the agriculture industry partially because of this incident.

In ten days we saw slavery and brutality from two different time frames. It was ugly then and is even uglier now. We were shocked when we read about this in the paper and saw it on TV but it is so much more tragic when you see it in the raw.

Slavery is an everyday occurrence in some parts of the world but we never expect to see it in our own back yard.

Ted

When you hear the word Kennedy you think of wealth, power, greed, family and most of all, service. Ted was the greatest of them all and if you take away the negatives, you have a man who left his mark on the USA and the world. People often use the word liberal in a sense not understood. Ted was a true liberal and reached out way beyond the American way to a course of action to right a litany of injustices.

He and his brothers used the power of the White House to bring about social justice in regard to racial equality. Jack and Bobby gave their life for the cause and Ted came along and for decades he went the extra mile in changing minds and outdated thinking to see the racial question resolved. The changes were not immediate but Ted took every opportunity to push his agenda.

On the world scene he was deeply involved in South African politics and was a prime mover in helping Mandela receive his freedom and become a world leader and spokesman for racial equality everywhere.

Ted voted against the war in Iraq. This was a risky and brave move for a cause he describes as unconscionable. He was vindicated later when the facts were known to the world and suffered no political downside.

Perhaps Ted's most personal and successful triumph was in his beloved Ireland. He regularly met with the leadership of Northern and South Ireland attempting to bridge that gap of ignorance and religious prejudice which ripped the gut out of this nation. He could have been the flag bearer when the Catholic and Protestant women of Northern Ireland marched down the streets of Belfast saying that enough was enough.

A blog cannot fairly describe the life of a man like Ted but my thoughts just skimmed the many great achievements of Mr. Edward Kennedy.

Peace Keeping Week

Most people do not realize the we are into a special week in Canada.We celebrate this peace keeping week because for 40 years we Canadians were the best in the world at joining forces with the UN and helped to keep peace in war torn countries. We were the best as outlined in fact that when peace forces were formed we were at the top of the list for our participation.

In my lifetime Canada has sent its peacekeepers to numerous hot beds and did their job with hardly a loss of significant life. One life is one too many but considering the risky fields of action the blue beret stood for UN and forces that at times never had to fire a shot. The very presence of our brave troops signaled it was a time to cool it and begin talks for a permanent solution to the problem.

Canada has been in Cyprus for a lifetime and are the main force there and on their watch hardly a breech of the peace has happened. One incident at the beginning caused the death of 15 of our peacekeepers but since that time a handful.I am very proud of our armed forces but I am disturbed at our government for placing what was the best in the world at peacekeeping to a small combat unit in a war zone without hope of long term peace. Our value has been usurped and our effectiveness as a military power was never significant since the Korean War. Why the great turn around in our world role ? Why are so many of our troops giving their lives to a cause that was not ours in the first place.

We and America have been dragged into a cesspool of misdirected objectives and we are paying the price. Our previous role had us helping countries who asked us to be there and we left after our mission was complete with heads held high and the thanks of grateful countries. This mission will have us fighting a war without clear exit strategy and financial distress when we could use the resources here in Canada.

God bless our troops and I hope that someday we will return to the peaceful role we once cherished and actuated so competently.

The Circle

The circle is one of the most recognized symbols in the world. Nowhere is the circle more symbolic than in the Inuit culture. Their snow houses were circular. their tents were held down by tent rings made of rock , their drums were round and they sat in a circle when eating sharing food placed in the centre for all to reach. Elders sat in a circle when discussing matters of importance and people who were tried by the elders were placed in the centre of a circle for judgment.

Inuit watched the sun make its circle in the summer completing that journey visible for everyone to see every 24 hours. From all these examples it is easy to see how the Inuit believed in the circle of life. The birth of a person , animal or even a flower had its journey with a beginning followed by natural events which eventually led to death. This was not the end but the beginning of a new cycle. This simple thought of nature and its process is appealing to me as I see the relationship to our journey through life as natural as a caribou born on the tundra and living its brief life in harmony with nature and ending in a way which either sustains life or becomes part of the tundra.

While I was in Nunavut I realized the importance of the learning circle. The justice system was deeply indebted to the circle justice. Being a JP in Nunavut gave you a special tool - sentencing circles. For a social crime like abuse to a child or spouse the person once found guilty could be offered a alternate sentence by appearing before the elders of its community for sentencing.

The elders would be summoned and the person say in the middle of a circle. On one side of the circle the family of the accused sat, and on the other side, the family of the victim.

Both sides has a opportunity to tell their take of the situation. The accused also had a chance to speak and often apologized and tried to convince everyone he would do better.

After some time - and there was no time limit - the elders would pronounce a judgement. This judgement was always agreed upon by both parties. Following the sentence both parties came together to see how they could help the make the guilty a better person and the victim some sense of agreement with the result. There are many creative sentences. In one case where I was a participant a man was banned from the hamlet and his family for two months. He had to live on the land with only his basic tools and hunted and fished for his keep. He was looked in on once every two weeks. He returned to the hamlet 2 months later a clean and better person to be accepted back with his wife and 6 children.I was happy with the initial result but checked in at times with the family and they were happy with the result as well.

To make this type of justice you must have the whole community involved and committed.

All over the lands of Nunavut there are tent rings showing that people were there and camped or lived in that spot. Some of these tent rings were used for many years and became historic sights. The Thule age is documented only by these and other visible artifacts. They are protected by law.The circle of life and the circles man has used in his search for meaning and life are never portrayed better than in Nunavut.