Say NO to the HARMONIZATION of PST & GST!

The Ontario Liberal Government has recently hinted that the province will combine the five per cent federal goods and services tax with the province's eight per cent sales tax.

This decision was made after consulting business groups, and it is clear that the “harmonization” of PST and GST will directly benefit corporations who will gain massive tax cuts and reduced production costs through refunds for the provincial portion of taxes paid for equipment and materials.

While companies will save an estimated $100 million per year, this merging will negatively impact middle and low income people, and will disproportionately impact women and parents. The price of several household products that are currently exempted from the PST will rise, such as baby food and formula, diapers, shoes, and vitamins and medicine.

It is also unclear as to how Fist Nations will be impacted by this decision, since they are currently exempted from paying PST where sales take place on reserve land.

Instead of getting people what they need and financially supporting the people with the lowest income levels in the province in the midst of an economic crisis, yet again the government will be making tax breaks for the rich. We didn’t create the economic crisis and we should not have to pay for it!

The decision to harmonize GST and PST could happen as early as tomorrow!

CONTACT your local representatives, the Premier of Ontario and the Federal Finance Minister NOW to let them know that YOU DO NOT SUPPORT THE HARMONIZATION OF PST AND GST!

Premier Dalton McGuinty – 1-416-325-1941
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty – 1- 613- 992-6344
Peterborough MPP Jeff Leal – 705-742-3777

FIGHT TO WIN!

Put Poverty in the Budget!

*URGENT! Phone the Finance Minister NOW to get Poverty in the Budget!*

The economy is getting worse. People who live in poverty feel it most.
We need a provincial Budget on March 26 that makes poverty reduction the
priority.

Take 2 minutes today to phone the Finance Minister and tell him – you want
him to put funding in the Budget to tackle poverty!

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s public statements so far indicate poverty
reduction might not be his priority. But economists around the world agree
that the best economic stimulus is to put money in the hands of low-income
people, and to invest in social infrastructure to create jobs.

Now is the time for the Finance Minister to make the connection between
economic stimulus and poverty reduction.

Take two minutes to call him, and tell him to put funding in the budget to
tackle poverty in Ontario! Don’t be shy! It’s easy and effective.
Here’s what to do:

If you’re calling from the GTA: Dial 416-325-0400.

If you’re calling from outside the GTA: Dial 0-416-325-0400.

Use the automated operator to call collect.
The collect call will be accepted.
When the receptionist answers, tell him or her:

“*I’m calling from [your community]. I’d like to leave a message for Dave Pryce, the Minister’s Chief of Staff.*”

The receptionist will either write down the message, or will put you through
to voicemail.

Feel Free to leave a message along these lines (or your own!):

· *I’m calling from [your community].*

· *I’m disappointed by the Minister’s speech to the Canadian Club
that he didn’t mention investments to reduce poverty in the upcoming budget.

· *I’m very concerned, and I really want to see you make a
significant investment.*

· *With the economy getting worse, now is the time for the
government to get moving on poverty reduction.*

· *[Here’s how this is affecting me / people in my area…]*

· *Please make poverty the priority in the March budget. *


When you’ve made your call, please send a quick email at isac@lao.on.ca so they can track how many calls have been made.


*Make the call for poverty in the Budget – Today!*

Bridging Communities of Resistance: Solidarity in Anti-Racist, Anti-Colonial Struggles

Peterborough Public Library - Auditorium
10am - 6pm

A day-long forum that aims to address issues of Indigenous people and people of colour in political organizing, both within academia and within grassroots movements. The forum will feature a plenary session around the racialization of poverty, and several workshops ranging from a DARC Resistance workshop on solidarity between Indigenous peoples and people of colour to women of colour involved in punk scenes. We hope this forum will provide a space (physical and discursive) for Indigenous people and people of colour to explore strategies for challenging white normativity/supremacy within organizing as well as to foster new activist communities built on similar experiences with racism. This forum is being co-organized by the Decolonizing Anti-Racism Coalition (DARC) and the Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty (PCAP).

Schedule
Date: Saturday March 21, 2009 (International Day for the Elimination of Racism)

10:00 am: Welcome and Introductions (coffee and tea will be provided)

11:00-12:00 pm: Presentation of TCCBE project: "Canadian Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination (CMARD)" and "Spaces of Racism II"
Discussion on racism in Peterborough and the CMARD initiative.
Speakers: Andres Salazar, Muna Ali and Manal Elawar

12:00-1:00 pm: Workshop
"Challenging Invisibilized Whiteness: Organizing within Predominantly White Settings" (closed; hosted by DARC)
This workshop will be a space to address the experience of organizing within predominantly white settings (specifically at Trent and within Peterborough) and to come up with strategies for dealing with invisibilized whiteness in these setting. As a group, we will discuss our experiences with activism and academia as Indigenous people and people of colour working within spaces where we might be a minority. How can we ensure accountability on the part of groups we organize with to address issues of invisibilized whiteness and racism? How can we offer substantial and productive challenges to invisibilized whiteness? How can we approach these issues without exhausting ourselves or bearing the burden of responsibility? This will be a closed workshop for Indigenous people and people of colour.
Facilitators: Teresa Cheng and Kam Husbands

12:00 – 1:00 pm: Workshop
“Challenging Invisibilized Whiteness: Organizing within Predominantly White Settings” (open; hosted by the Trent Women’s Centre)
This will be an open workshop for participants to discuss similar issues of accountability, invisibilized whiteness, and racism within organizing. The Trent Women’s Centre will share some past and present experiences of dealing with these issues within their organization and potential strategies for ensuring a truly anti-racist, anti-oppressive framework.
Facilitators: Meghan Ritchie and Zahra Murad


1:00 - 1:45pm: Lunch
Lunch will be catered by organizers from DARC and PCAP as well as by donations from local organizations. We will also have snacks throughout the day, catered by local businesses.

1:45 – 2:45: Workshop
'Cultural Appropriation/Cultural Theft"
In this workshop the group will arrive at working definitions for 'Cultural appropriation"/ 'cultural theft' generated from discussion, the participants own experiences and the critical race theory I will present as a facilitator. We will watch videos, listen to songs and look at visual art and fashion examples to build on our understanding of these two terms. We will dicuss what cultural appropriation means in the context of colonization, slavery, global racism, power and privilege. We will discuss the importance of self representation as marginalized people who generally have less power to represent ourselves in ways that we decide upon ourselves or as communities. We will discuss the damage that can be done through cultural theft, stereotyping.
We will then look at cultural theft through looking at histories of American Pop music and the appropriation of queer, trans and Black music and dance. We will look at appropriation in the context of European racism and how appropriation relates to privilege, money, fame and power. Finally we will look at the notion of appropriation and how it informs our practices as community organizers - what does appropriations of tactics, movements and voices look like? What are the differences between appropriation and solidarity? What are differences between appropriation and reclamation? Emphasis will be put on how cultural theft impacts LGBTTT2IQQ people and racialized people and how to use these concepts to shape responsible art and organizing practices. We will interrogate our own practices as community organizers and activists and learn tactics for how to become anti racist ally.
Speaker: Leah Newbold

2:45-3:00 Break

3:00-5:00: Panel Discussion
"(e)RACEing Poverty: Developing Anti-Racist Actions and Strategies to Eliminate Poverty"
The goal of this panel is to bring together activists and community based organizations to discuss racialized poverty. Presenters will be from a broad base and will include members from the New Canadians Centre, PCAP, DARC, OCAP, Community Race Relations Committee and No One Is Illegal. The panel will also serve as an action-oriented event to develop strategies and actions to eliminate poverty with an emphasis on issues of racialization, colonization and imperialism.

5:00-6:00 pm: Workshop
"DARC Resistance: Bridging Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonial Struggles" (closed)
This informal workshop is for people of colour and Indigenous peoples who want to learn more about the ongoing colonization of Turtle Island and how to support each other in Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonial organizing. Through this workshop, people of colour and Indigenous peoples will unmap their complex relationships by sharing experiences and thinking through the following topics: How can people of colour be effective allies and work in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements without reproducing colonialism? What is the relationship between Indigenous peoples and people of colour as colonized peoples?
Facilitators: DARC members

**********************************************
9:30 pm-2:00 am:
Beats 4 Justice!
A Fundraiser for DARC and No Olympics on Stolen Native Land Organizing
We will be having a music/performance/spoken word night at the Sadleir House Dinning Hall to raise money for DARC and an No Olympics on Stolen Native Land organizing.

Performers:
LAL
Sean Conway
Dakus of Disco Duniya
Stolen from Africa

For more information, contact: darcpeterborough@riseup.net or pcap@riseup.net

(e)RACEing Poverty: Developing Anti-Racist Actions and Strategies to Eliminate Poverty

Saturday, March 21, 2009
Peterborough Public Library
3:00-5:00

The goal of this panel is to bring together activists and community based organizations to discuss racialized poverty. Presenters will be from a broad base and will include the New Canadians Centre, PCAP, Decolonization and Anti-Racism Coalition, OCAP, and No One Is Illegal - Toronto. The panel will also serve as an action-oriented event to develop strategies and actions to eliminate poverty with an emphasis on issues of racialization, colonization and imperialism.

This panel is poart of Bridging Communities of Resistance

BLACK HISTORY MONTH FILM NIGHT

THE LITTLE BLACK SCHOOL HOUSE AND STOLEN FROM AFRICVILLE

When: Wednesday Feb 25th @ 7 pm
Where: Sadleir House Lecture Hall
751 George St N (north of Parkhill)
Free!

Please join us for an evening of films on Black pasts and presents in Canada:

The Little Black School House (2007)
The Little Black School House unearths the story of the women, men, and children who studied and taught at Canada's racially segregated schools. Compelling personal stories illustrate that many of the students who attended Canada's all-Black schools look back on the experience with conflicting feelings: fondness for the dedication of their Black teachers, and outrage at being denied equal access to education, a right fundamental to democracy in Canada. The Little Black School House provides an historical perspective on recent calls to create "Black-focused" schools, after ongoing claims from within the Black community that their students are being ill-served by the education system.

Stolen from Africville (2007)
Stolen From Africville outlines the rise and fall of the historic Black community of Africville, Nova Scotia. Africville was a peaceful and thriving community whose roots can be traced back to the mid 1700s and the historic Underground Railroad. However, under the guise of "development", the Nova Scotia government bulldozed the land in 1969. In 2004, the United Nations conducted an assessment of this tragic injustice and recommended reparations for the Africville community. To this day, nothing has been done.

*Featuring Q & A with Stolen from Africa
STOLEN FROM AFRICA is a Toronto Based Movement used to promote cultural and historical awareness through education, fashion, music and the arts. We hope to empower society by confronting issues surrounding black/indigenous oppression and humanity as a whole. We are merely people of various ethnicities, who are inspired by the effects of colonialism wit aspirations of connecting and learning from the communities in which we live in world wide.

*Discussion of racialized poverty in Peterborough with PCAP.

Presented by the Community and Race Relations Committee of Peterborough, OPIRG-Peterborough, and the Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty.

For the full list of Black History Month 2009 events in Peterborough, please visit http://www.racerelationspeterborough.org/calendar.html

"The Harris Years Were a Dress Rehearsal for What's Coming”

When: Thursday, February 26, 2009
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Where: Sadleir House (751 George St. N.) - Hobbs Library

What: A public lecture by John Clarke, member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, addressing ongoing anti-capitalist and anti-poverty struggles. Reflecting upon the Mike Harris years, Clarke will speak to the need for a renewed resistance against the powerful as the economic crisis increases inequality, violence and suffering.discussing the ongoing struggles of middle and working-class people under the oppression of the Canadian State.

Sponsored by the Canadian Studies Department, CUPE 3908 and PCAP

For more information please visit the following links:
http://trentarthur.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1208&Itemid=47
http://www.ocap.ca/archive/short_history_of_ocap.html

OCAP Statement on 2009 Federal Budget

Today’s budget will do little to help low income Canadians. Harper’s
government has made some attempt to placate the opposition, but his
efforts will only help a shrinking fraction of the population. The
spending strategy is described as Timely, Temporary, and Targeted. Indeed
it is. It’s too little, too late, for too few. While 75 billion dollars
are given to the financial sector, there are only scraps left for the
poorest in our society.

In line with the ongoing Harper agenda, the budget emphasizes tax cuts,
instead of making real investments in housing, infrastructure and people.
He crows about investing in social housing and unemployment insurance. The
budget says that it will invest 2 billion into social housing. Sounds
great. But the cost of repairs to Ontario's housing are estimated at about
$1.2 billion. And 60,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing
in Toronto alone. Given that much of the infrastructural funding is
dependent on cost-sharing with the cash-poor provinces and municipalities,
the figures are misleading. Harper claims that he’s making things easier
for laid off workers by adding 5 weeks to employment insurance. Given that
60% of Canadians aren’t eligible, this will do little for the majority of
those suffering in the economic downturn.

As factories close and businesses go bankrupt, more and more Canadians
will need help. Unfortunately the tax cuts, benefits and incentives will
do little for them when they’re evicted, unable to obtain employment
insurance, or scraping by on welfare and food banks. A budget that would
really address the needs of the increasing ranks of poor Canadians would
raise the welfare rates, expand employment insurance in a serious way,
build new and quality social housing invest in transit, education and
health care. This budget doesn’t even try.

An economic recession that leads to layoffs, evictions and poverty is not
the time for bailing out the corporations and playing political games.
It’s the time to organize in our communities to support one another, and
to fight to ensure that the poorest, the most vulnerable, are not
abandoned yet again.