Hong Kong – Women workers and the fight for a minimum wage

Lin Shiu, 65, walks into the small Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association office, still sweating from her morning shift.

Wearing a blue suit, baseball cap and fluorescent green mesh vest, she gratefully accepts a glass of water. In an hour, she must get back to work cleaning a luxurious Hong Kong mall.

“For my age, it’s difficult to find another job,” says Shiu, who works eight hours a day, six days a week, and makes $3,600 Hong Kong dollars ($505 CAD) each month.

“I will work as long as I can work.”

View the rest of this article in Briarpatch Magazine — November/December 2009 issue.

No Justice for Tiffany

Around the time Tiffany Morrison disappeared, she had started babysitting her older sister Melanie Morrison’s young daughter.

“She was coming to the house to help out and hang out. She wanted to be around my daughter because she loved kids,” said Melanie, thinking back.

Today, nearly four years after Tiffany went missing, Melanie explained that her daughter still recognizes her aunt in pictures and knows her through the stories told about her.

“All of a sudden my daughter will be flipping through the photo album and she’s like, ‘Oh, that’s auntie Tiffany.’ She goes, ‘We’re going to find her, eh? We’re going to bring her home.’ And it just makes you want to cry,” Melanie said, forcing a smile.

“Because deep down, I know my daughter is never going to see her again.”

For the rest of this article, visit The Link (Concordia University’s student newspaper) website.

Tiffany Morrison was last seen leaving Haraiki bar in Lasalle on June 16, 2006. (Photo: Melanie Morrison)

Leduc wins easily in Brossard

With approximately 68.7 percent of the vote, Brossard residents chose compromise over confrontation Sunday night as Priority Brossard leader Paul Leduc was elected Brossard’s new mayor.

“The population said we want change. Without any hesitation, they said they want change in Brossard at city hall and they will get it,” he said.

Leduc – who acted as Brossard mayor from 1990 to 2001 – beat out rival and incumbent mayor Jean-Marc Pelletier, the Brossard Democracy party leader, who earned only 29.1 percent, or 6,159 votes.

“It’s because people wanted change. We now have a real mayor,” said Priority Brossard candidate Pierre O’Donoghue, who was elected in district 2 (B and C sections) with 66.25 percent of the vote.

In total, nine out of ten Priority Brossard candidates were elected Sunday.

To read the rest of this article, pick up a copy of The Brossard Plus Journal, to be published tomorrow, Tuesday November 3, 2009.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

521. That’s the official number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada since 1980. But for one family from Kahnawake, only one woman truly matters.

** After interviewing Melanie Morrison last week, I turned to my classmate/camera person Maria. “I almost cried,” I said. So had she. Putting together this piece – and learning about the issue of missing and murdered Native women, and the widespread indifference that exists across the board here in Canada – was a truly unforgettable experience. It signaled to me that this is something that I can do for many, many years to come: use journalism to affect positive change and help protect the human rights of all both in this very country and abroad. I sincerely hope that someone, somewhere, will see this piece and help give the Morrison family some much-needed closure. I thank Melanie Morrison and the entire Morrison family for allowing me to tell Tiffany’s story, and Ed Stacey for his openness, availability and all the work he’s done. Niawen’kó:wa.

 

UPDATE (31/10/2009): This story has been posted on Rabble.ca, a progressive national news website here in Canada. It’s one of the featured stories in Rabble’s RabbleTV section (and is – as of now – on the website’s main page, also!), so check it out. And keep spreading the word about Tiffany’s disappearance.

Fading into Focus

Pictures of Fouad Sakr’s family line the walls of his modest Park Extension apartment in Montreal north.

“My son’s wedding in Lebanon,” said Sakr, pointing to a framed photograph displaying the smiling faces of his son, his son’s bride, his wife and himself.

On the other side of the room, school photos of Sakr’s granddaughters hang beneath two recognizable images: a small Palestinian flag and the Lebanese cedar tree, the country’s national symbol.

“They say, ‘Please come. We want to see you. We love you. Come,’” said the 63-year-old Palestinian refugee, about his family who live mostly in Lebanon. He has yet to see some of his youngest grandchildren.

“Only in photos on the Internet,” he explained, taking a sip of Arabic coffee.

For the rest of the article, click here. (The Link, Concordia University student newspaper, October 13, 2009)

update.

So, three posts in a 24h period… not to shabby, if I do say so myself. What have I been working on the past few weeks? Well, what haven’t I been doing is more likely the question.

I’m still reporting for the Brossard Journal;  I write 3-4 stories each week, plus take pictures to accompany them. It’s A LOT of work, and every Monday, when the new cycle of stories needs to get started, I go through a mini-nervous breakdown. But then I somehow manage to get everything in by the Sunday night deadline. Knock on wood.

I’m also working on an assignment for my Advanced TV class: a mini-doc on the Morisson family of Kahnawake, coping with the disappearance of family member Tiffany, over 3 years ago. It’s a sensitive issue and one that isn’t talked about enough in Canada. Official numbers suggest that 521 Native women have gone missing or were murdered since 1980. Activists say, though, that this number is much, much higher (since many cases go unreported). I’ll post the video once it’s completed (should be done in about one week).

Other than that, I’m writing a feature story here and there for The Link, Concordia’s weekly student newspaper, conducting research related to a possible CURE research project (details to come, maybe), waiting to hear back about a News Internship at rabble.ca, and trying to sleep/relax/turn off my brain for the remaining 20% of my time.

Ouff. So that’s about it. Class in an hour… Critical Approaches to Journalism. We should definitely have taken this course in first year, but I’m happy we’re taking it now, at least. Very interesting…and for once we journalism students have to really think. Houray!

nobel peace promise.

Like many, I was surprised to see that US President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize late last week. Even more surprising was the notion that he was a deserving candidate because of his position in the Middle East. Peace in the Middle East because of Obama? Really? Seems to me that US policy in the region has remained the same, despite the man of “Change” settling into office.

What have we seen, really, in terms of Obama’s policy in the Middle East? Besides, of course, ever-expanding Israeli settlements (not to mention Israel’s free reign to publicly go against American demands), discrediting the Goldstone report, not standing up for the civilians in Gaza, etc. I think Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said it best: A president of the world who has not done enough to achieve peace here is not worthy of the Oslo crown.

six months.

In exactly six months, I will be done all my undergraduate university classes. Done, completely done. It’s strange yet exciting at the same time. But sometimes I wonder, when I look back at my last four years of university life, what have I learnt?

Luckily, in the last year I have developed a passion. I may not know the “how” (as in, how will this passion translate into a job?) but I at least know the “what” — Palestine.* This one word, one place, comprises so many layers of social justice issues: colonialism/indigenous peoples rights, occupation, human rights, development, prisoners’ rights, natural resources, etc. I finally feel that after years of covering stories about people who were doing something they cared about, who had a passion of their own, I have found mine. (*thanks to some Belgian, apparently..hah)

And yet do I feel like my journalism-school training has helped ignite this passion? Not really. Instead, journalism school has taught me to write a lede (actually, I knew how to do that before university), white-balance a video camera and upload sound to a computer. Had I not taken POLI 391 – The Middle East and Global Conflict in the summer of 2008, I would be a journalistic robot, clinging to the notion of “objectivity” because that’s what good journalists do.

We’re supposed to leave our personal biases at the door and are actually expected to believe that this is possible. We are supposed to work for CanWest or CBC or CTV and accomplish something meaningful, that isn’t dictacted by business interests or the personal allegiances of some family (cough* Aspers *cough). And because of this push towards ‘normalcy’ or ‘accepted behavior’ in journalism, I find that I am now censoring my own work, to remain PC, to remain journalistically legitimate.

Is this really what journalism is about? Or should university instead serve as a place where a freeflow of ideas, concepts and techniques are not only embraced, but encouraged? Shouldn’t the curriculum include a few political science courses, or history courses, or sociology courses, so that the students don’t leave without the least bit of acquired knowledge, apart from journalism? I guess it’s a little too late now, at least for me. There are only six months left, after all. I just hope that the next generation of journalism students is lucky enough to realize that developing a passion – whatever it may be – is crucial to their success. That, and writing a lede. Of course.

hongkong.

My first article from Hong Kong has been published, in The Link student newspaper! Check it out online or swing by the Concordia campus downtown to pick up a hard copy (for nicer layout, etc.). Feedback is always welcome.

can’t this guy….go away?

Mike Huckabee is an idiot. And he could be ignored, labeled a babbling, fundamentalist psycho.. if only so many Americans didn’t agree with him, to some extent. Why is stopping settlement expansion such a difficult concept to grasp?