Fighting the good fight

[sabotabby]

Check out this clusterfuck of racism and ableism: Family faces deportation over son's autism. You can be a good and productive citizen all you want, but if your kid has a disability, apparently you're just not welcome in Canada. The good news is this: Protest sometimes actually works. Because public protest made Jason Kenney back down. Awesome.

Here's another issue near and dear to my heart: school surveillance. That article is from the Guardian, citing examples from the U.S., where students must walk through metal detectors and cops are omnipresent, handcuffing and tasering small children, but don't think that Canada is all that far behind. Schools are where the next generation is being trained to accept routine violations of their bodies and their privacy.

Expect to be hearing about my union's campaign to keep the Tories out in the Ontario election. As might be expected, the SUN article contains some inaccuracies and lacks quotes from the vast majority of teachers who would rather not be pink-slipped by a Hudak government.

Here's another fun one from Cracked: The 5 Most Pointlessly Women-Specific Products. I'm a bad feminist because my immediate reaction was "OMG THEY MADE A PRINCESS DI GUN?" Not that I'd ever buy one; I'm Canadian and a small-r republican. Put a Hello Kitty on one and I'm admittedly a bit tempted.

In other news, this guy is a massive douche.

And on a completely unrelated note, the antibiotics appear to be working. I'm still tired as all hell but I can actually speak and breathe properly again, so yay!

Comments

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

Wow that guy is like the king of douches. I'm surprised the antiabortion people were behind him since he A.) had premarital sex and B.) didn't 'make an honest woman of her'. Most of those antiabortion people afaik are Catholic and should really want to be behind 'Christian values'.

[sabotabby]

You'd think they'd also be against having sex with barely-legal teenagers. Except that they're massive hypocrites.

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

You're right barely-legal teens are too old for the Catholic church.

[sabotabby]

OSNAP

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

I'm allowed to make that joke 'cause I'm Catholic (but not a pedophile).

[lienne.livejournal.com]

that is one of my favourite icons

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

If you don't want to be sick do not go seek the post in ontd_political that listed some of the billboard guy's tweets. It made me regret, for the first time in my life, that there's space for only one knee in the typical crotch area.

On the other hand, sometimes the good guys do win, it seems. Thanks for the first piece of news.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

They were planning to have metal detector arches (to find knives) over school entrances here in London, but I think - not sure - they didn't after teachers protested. It really, really makes me wary of ever sending a (hypothetical) child to a state school.

I suppose as I only know of such things from the media I don't really know how much knife-danger there is in schools here. There seem to be a lot of stabbings, but that could be the usual reporting-the-bad-loudly thing.

As someone who hates going abroad because I am completely freaked out by security/customs (and always seem to get searched! but not strip searched - that would traumatise me for life), I wouldn't want a wee child of mine, had I one, searched at school. Ugh.