Can anyone still believe that there is no connection between the economic redistributive functions of the state, including within the social safety net, and the staggering increase in the informal economy? Are we meant to say the emperor is clothed? The economic division of the peoples of the world is staggering. The economic division between Canadians is growing exponentially.
Racism infused much of the violence against aboriginal women in Canada since the earliest colonial time. Organizing against racist violence has accelerated in the last five years to match the threat. Not only the Ontario Aboriginal Women and the AWAN collective have led the way, but so have women of colour formations both permanent and ad hoc. India Mahila persisted through thirty years of support work, but smaller situational coalitions also formed to deal with moments of violence. In Vancouver one such group responded to a number of violent street assaults against Asian women by calling a press conference and asserting their observations of how the media and officials were handling the events and refusing to see the racism that connected them. They wanted to provide a strong image of Asian women in resistance and they did.
Read this section in Canada’s Promises to Keep: The Charter and Violence Against Women, p. 97-100.