"1828a69f-d1d9-465f-8c77-9dbf1ddd5d93"@en . "CONTENTdm"@en . "http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=1213576"@en . "Kinesis"@en . "2013-08-15"@en . "1983-12-01"@en . "https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/kinesis/items/1.0045806/source.json"@en . "application/pdf"@en . " wtMJlDi 3 The pickets are down. The deal has been made. In the aftermath of the Munroe/Bennett agreement, Kinesis looks at some of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres, labour's gains and losses, and whether Solidarity will be able to hold a movement together in the upcoming months. 5 What happens when a group of ordinary people challenges a multinational corporation and their provincial government? Ruth Schneider gives us a profile of the most significant environmental case in the history of the Maritimes. 6 Punam Khosla interviewed two B.C. CUSO workers who returned from Grenada three days after the U.S. led an invasion into that country. The highlights of their story appears here. 10 For most people, alcohol consumption is rarely challenged in their personal lives. Linda Hall discusses the dangers of alcohol abuse and the rea- COVER: Claudia MacDonald. sons why women experience a unique relationship tothisdrug. 13 This month's feature supplement looks at chil- ren: their relationship to the recent strike, their nuclear fears, self-defense programs, anti-sexist literature, the difficulties raising sons, and more. 22 Cy-Thea Sand begins a new column for the arts section, A Little Night Reading, an annotated reading list for feminists. 26 Local poet, playwrite, and English prof Betty Lambert recently died of cancer in herBurnaby home. Jennifer Svendson provides us with a fitting memorial of this extraordinary woman and the works she has contributed to feminist literature. 29 Feminist academics recently tackled the issues surrounding women in sports. Nicky Hood reviews the Canadian Woman Studies Journal's special issue on athletics, photo by Sandra MacDonald I L SUBSCRIBE TO KIMMSiJ Published 10 times a year by Vancouver Status of Women 400A West 5th Ave., Vancouver, B.C. V5Y 1J8 \u00E2\u0096\u00A1 VSW membership - includes Kinesis subscription - $20 (or what you can afford) \u00E2\u0096\u00A1 Kinesis subscription only - $13 \u00E2\u0096\u00A1 Institutions - $40 \u00E2\u0096\u00A1 Sustainers - $75' Name .Amount Enclosed_ Please remember that VSW operates on inadequate funding \u00E2\u0080\u0094 we need member support! O o \u00C2\u00BBr (A 3 So >< < ft ! I iublou'.e\u00C2\u00AB'ement KMCJtS \"A no-concessions agreement\", as announced by BCGEU chief negotiator Cliff Andstein, is hardly the term to apply in describing the strike action and subsequent events of the past few weeks: a rounder epithet like \"sell-out\" or \"sleazy deal\" springs more readily to mind. Leader-to- leader, the outcome of the Kelowna discussions hurt no one's career, least of all Bill Bennett's, who didn't even have to leave his living room to effect even the minor concessions made to Operation Solidarity. In Port Alberni, the day after the 'settlement', the Solidarity Coalition had not received formal notification regarding the deal, and several of their members dutifully headed for the picket lines. They were under the impression that their contribution was still necessary. One wonders at this point, if any of the picketers' contribution had been necessary all the way along. Why, after the majority of unions in the province voted in favor of strike action, was the decision to end the strike made by the leadership of Operation Solidarity alone? That was one of the major questions raised at an open Solidarity Coalition meeting held on Monday, November 14th, the day following the decision that affected hundreds of thousands of workers and citizens of B.C.'s communities. Prepared for the flak, Art Kube waved his hand at the general assembly of union and coalition supporters, answering that the decision was an \"executive issue\". The first question, of course, had been, \"Why did you sell us out?\" But the sell-out was not exclusive .to groups concerned with social issues. That labour in part sold out its own constituency became clear during the question period when several trade unionists, young and old, disassociated themselves from the type of Operation Solidarity leadership that had pulled the rug from underneath them. This is hardly surprising when you consider that a major achievement of the solidarity movement, amongst both labour and community groups alike, had been the understanding that in fact, labour issues were community issues, and community issues were also labour's. Obviously, this understanding, so visible throughout the province, never managed to rise to the top. How did Jack Munro, first vice-president of the B.C. Federation of Labour and leader of one of the two most powerful private-sector unions in the province, end up being the negotiator for the entire Solidarity Coalition? The clue to this is the shifting of power within the executive of Operation Soli darity that began several weeks prior to signing the final agreement. In early November, the Confederation of Canadian Unions (CCU) was expelled from the steering committee of Operation Solidarity on the grounds that they had not paid their membership dues and were unwilling to sign a \"no-raiding pact\". In fact, the B.C. Fed- . eration of Labour had also refused to sign. The expulsion of the CCU left only two in- depenent unions - the Hospital Employees Union and the B.C. Teacher's Federation - sitting on the 24-member steering committee. As the strike approached, the leadership of the public sector unions became increasingly concerned at the lack of too far from B.C. Federation control. Even in the final hour, independent representatives like Larry Kuehn of the B.C. Teacher's Federation, could not be included in the '\u00C4\u00A2 negotiations. For community and labour alike, it is highly disturbing that a deal was worked out so quickly in respect to issues that have been unresolved since last July. But it is even more disturbing to look at how that deal was made. In light of reports from the recent B.C. Fed convention, details of the settlement were indeed worked out in advance, and certain key players were negotiated or manipulated into agreement ahead of time. But, no one bothered to manipulate the Solidarity Coali- support from the.private sector, as represented by Jack Munro. The end result, it would seem, became a matter of cold feet in the opening days of the strike. When negotiations between Munro and the public sector leadership broke down, it was Munro who emerged as the most powerful figure in Operation Solidarity, effecting the final consolidation of conservative interests within that coalition. Clearly, the character of Operation Solidarity had grown and changed throughout the battle. Afterall, there was always substantial concern that a democratically based coalition of labour and ity groups could stray tion. In fact, no one even thought to inform them. Possibly steering committee members of the provincial and Lower Mainland coalitions would have learned more about the weekend's events by staying home and watching television. And so, the membership of the coalition is left to pick up the pieces. There is no other choice. The legislation a- round social issues sits comfortably in Bennett's arena, and it is time to group the forces to continue the struggle. Yes, there has been a violation of trust, but that is perpahs because too much trust had been invested. It had not fully occurred to feminists and other community groups that Operation Solidarity would not be accountable to the Coalition in a significant way. But in the aftermath of the settlement, valuable lessons have been learned. Certainly a more thorough understanding of the trends and different political interests in the labour movement would have indicated the dangers of the expulsion of the CCU from Operation Solidarity, the exclusion of independent unions from the final negotiations, and the last minute insertion of Jack Munro. Negotiations have already begun between the Provincial Steering Committee of Operation Solidarity, and Operation Solidarity, to move towards a more accountable coalition. Both unions and community groups are going back to their memberships to strength- and broaden the issues of particular concern to them. It has been said that the first negotiation attempted by Bennett was the dismantling of Solidarity. If that was the first demand, then we know it must be our last concession. The strike's final days Nov. 7th, 3am: Strike Support - a phone call. Injunctions have been issued against Vancouver teachers prohibiting them from picketing schools. People join together to help organize the morning pickets. By 6am, most of Vancouver's schools and community colleges were covered by CUPE, VMREU, BCGEU, faculty associations and community support pickets. Women against the Budget covered 10 schools, providing additional picket support to several others. Lower Mainland Solidarity closed another twelve. Friday, Nov. 11th: Remembrance Day. School holiday and no picketing. Special meeting of the Lower Mainland Solidarity Steering Committee. Almost full attendance. The first signs of trouble.... several steering committee members had heard rumours that a deal had been cut. The strike was to be called off, but community groups had neither been informed nor consulted. In response, the Steering Committee prepared a statement for^ endorsement by the provincial Solidarity Steering Committee and all regional coalitions. They demanded that the Solidarity Coalition be part of the negotiating process to speak to broader community issues. continued on p. 3 2 Kinesis December '83 MOVEMENT MATTERS Crosbie case sets precedents by Emma Kivisild A Toronto woman arrested in June will plead not guilty to charges of procuring an abortion, possessing stolen hospital goods and supplying tools to procure an abortion in a case that also focuses on precedent-setting civil liberties and police harassment issues. Colleen Crosbie, a nurse and lay midwife, was arrested one week after 14 police officers raided the house where she was living with five other people, some of whom were connected to work in defense of the Vancouver Five. Named on the search warrant were seditious libel, last fall's bombing of the Litton Systems plant outside Toronto, some fire-bombings in Montreal, the abortion charges, and a list of equipment to be used in menstrual extraction, apparently taken straight from the book A New View of a Woman 's Body. One ' focus of the five-hour raid appears to have been Bulldozer magazine, a prison publication that was published at the house. When Crosbie was picked up, the police drove her around for more than an hour, questioning her about the Litton bombing. She was questioned about her midwifery practice before they reluctantly released her on bail that evening. She faces a possible life sentence. The key civil liberties issue in the case is the refusal of the police to disclose on what grounds they were issued a search warrant for Crosbie's house. The preliminary hearing of the case has been postponed from October 24th to March of next year, pending an appeal by the defense to both KIMCJIS KINESIS is published ten times a year by Vancouver Status of Women. Its objectives are to enhance understanding about the changing position of women in society and work actively towards achieving social change. VIEWS EXPRESSED IN KINESIS are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect VSW policy. All unsigned material is the responsibility of the Kinesis editorial group. CORRESPONDENCE: Kinesis, Vancouver Status of Women, 400 A West 5th Ave., Vancouver, B.C. V5Y 1J8. MEMBERSHIP In Vancouver Status of Women is $20/year (or what you can afford). This includes a subscription to Kinesis. Individual subscriptions to Kinesis are $13/year. SUBMISSIONS are welcome. We reserve the right to edit, and submission does not guarantee publication. WORKERS THIS ISSUE: Libby Barlow, Dory Brannock, Jan De Grass, Cole Dudley, Amy Fong, Patty Gibson, Mich Hill, Lisa Jenkinson, Emma Kivisild, Barbara Kuhne, Cat L'Hirondelle, Claudia MacDonald, Judy Rose, Rosemarie Rupps, Joey Schibild, Swee Sim Tarn and Michele Wollstonecroft, Nicky Hood, and Vicky Donaldson. KINESIS is a member of the Canadian Periodical Publishers' Association. Colleen Crosbie the Ontario Supreme Court and the Canadian Supreme Court on the grounds that the trial cannot go ahead until the defense has access to that evidence. If the appeals fail, the case could set a precedent under the new constitution for police raids with no accountability to anyone but the judge who issues the warrant. Another related issue is the invasion of the privacy of Martha Harrison, Crosbie's housemate, whose medical records were seized from two doctor's offices in an effort on the behalf of the police to determine when she had been pregnant. Harrison also had a set of records at Toronto's Hassle-Free Clinic, where a nurse refused to hand them over despite repeated police pressure. Crosbie's case has caused some controversy in Toronto's feminist circles, because of its connection to lay abortion, and her position as a midwife. No group has given her case public support, though emotional, political and financial support has been forthcoming from individuals. The Defense Fund needs money and support letters. They are also asking that individuals write the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL) stressing the national significance of Crosbie's case. Colleen Crosbie Defense Fund, c/o David Cole (in Trust) 11 Prince Arthur Toronto, Ontario. Clampdown on engineering students Engineering students at the University of Saskatchewan were forced to remove the slogan \"Rape and Plunder\" from their van, the Tank. Pressure from the faculty of education and Labatt's breweries, sponsors of the engineers' Hell Week, resulted in the slogan's removal. But it appears that the slogan is st,ill being flashed prominently on engineer-l ing college jackets. \"We were dismayed at the manner in which a serious problem like sexual harassment wasl trivialized,\" said Ken Cochrane, an education professor. \"Several people phoned Labatt's and they felt they were not taken seriously; but when we outlined our concerns in a letter, they responded very promptly, in full, and with understanding,\" he said. The student union has recently passed motions to clamp down on the antics of engineering and agricultural students. Council directed president Beth Olley to write letters to both groups, protesting their activities during Hell Week. Some of these antics include a bash dedicated to murdering homosexuals, pulling down students' pants in public, hosing down passing students and a staged simulated rape. (Canadian University Press) Women protest victim's incarceration Women protested outside courthouses in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver on November 29, the day after an Ottawa woman was jailed for refusing to testify against her alleged rapists because she feared for herself and her family. The twenty-year-old woman was cited for contempt of court and sentenced to a week in jail for refusing to testify against one of the men she previously said raped her in January, 1982, on her nineteenth birthday. The defendant was acquitted of the rape because the Crown said it was unable to make a case against him without her testimony. The same charge against a second man had been dismissed a month earlier after the woman refused to testify against him at his preliminary hearing. In Ottawa, 40 women held hands and sang outside the courthouse to protest the incarceration of the woman. They said they would maintain a vigil outside the courthouse every lunch hour until the woman is released. Cindy Moriarty of the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre voiced women's outrage at the \"judge's decision to use incarceration of the victims of sexual assault as a solution to the problem,\" and said the issue the court should have dealt with is the fear that victims feel when asked to testify. Moriarty proposed that Justice Minister Mark McGuigan set up a task force to look at changes in the procedures for dealing with rape victims. Opposition leaders in the Ontario Provincial Legislature called on Attorney General Roy McMurtry to explore ways to have the woman released as soon as possible. \"We have the bizarre situation where a rape victim has been jailed and the alleged rapists are going free,\" said Liberal Leader David Peterson. In Vancouver, protesters were joined by a woman leaving the courthouse with supporters after testifying against her attck- er. Jiwan Fishman of Vancouver Rape Relief said, \"It is a retaliation against the rapists and the courts that keep women silent. She must be heard. We must be heard. Women must have control over where we tell our story.\" (Resou: Globe and Mail) Part-time workers The federal Commission of Inquiry into Part-Time Work has issued its report. The report says part-time workers are not equal members of the workforce and that governments must begin now to improve the status of part-time workers. Seventy-two percent of part-time workers are women. Only 35 percent of the full-time workforce are women, in contrast to a male participation rate of 65 percent. The report predicts that part-time work will increase by the end of the century between 15 and 19 percent. Copies of the report can be obtained from the Publications\"Distribution Centre, Labour Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. KlA 0J2. December'83 Kinesis 3 BUDGET The final days continued from p. 1 Saturday, Nov. 12: Provincial Steering Committee Meeting. Delegates from the Lower Mainland take the statement to the meeting seeking endorsement. An uproar ensues. Some steering committee (Provincial) members interpret the Lower- Mainland Steering Committee (LMSC) statement as an infringement of their provincial decision-making mandate; others argue that such a statement would be \"divisive\", by separating labour and community issues. The statement is referred to a joint committee meeting on Sunday between Provincial and Lower Mainland delegates. A day is lost. . Sunday, Nov. 13th, 10am: Emergency LMSC meeting. Full attendance, grave concern. Was there time to stop or delay an Operation Solidarity deal with Bennett? In lieu of time, the Nov. 11th statement was scrapped and replaced with a short memorandum for immediate delivery to Operation Solidarity at the Labour Relations Board. It demanded a place in the negotiations for the Solidarity Coalition on issues of community concern and a process of accountability whereby any tentative agreements reached could be referred back to the Solidarity Coalition. LMSC delegates met with representatives of the Provincial Steering Committee, discussed their concerns, and received limited support. They sent their statement directly to the Labour Relations Board. Too late. It arrived shortly before the champagne corks first popped. Our demands were never answered; Sunday, Nov. 13th, 7:30pm: Special meeting of the Provincial Solidarity Coalition Steering Committee. Prior to this meeting, concerned members of constituency groups spent hours discussing the seriousness of the situation with some members of the Provincial Steering Committee who had opposed the Lower Mainland's initiative on Saturday. A more informed and united Provincial steering committee met with observers from the LMSC and community groups like Women Against the Budget. Too late, again. Joy Langan and Leif Hansen, Operation Solidarity officers, came to explain the \"deal\" that Munro was working out with Bennett. There was immediate outrage. People had not been consulted, let alone informed. Without input or participation from community representatives, a process of consultation had been negotiat ed for dealing with community issues. Community groups quickly recognized the. futility of this so-called \"consultative process.\" What did labour achieve? by Lorri Rudland Jack Munro, President of the International Woodworker's of America, Art Kube, President of the B.C. Federation of Labour, and Mike Kramer, Secretary-Treasurer of the B.C. Federation of Labour, all tried to put the best face possible on the Bennett-Munro agreement, but the fact is the community got nothing out of the \"deal\". In the midst of the largest and strongest labour/community mobilization ever seen in the history of B.C., the Operation Solidarity leadership - dominated by the B.C. Federation of Labour Executive officers - decided to pull the plug on the escalating strike action in favour of a nine-point agreement with Premier Bennett. Actually the community got even worse than nothing, -because the \"consultative process1-' incorporated into the community concession presents an illusion that something was achieved. If the community got nothing, the next question is: What was achieved for labour? Bills 2 and 3 were directly aimed at destroying public sector unions, in particular the B.C. Government Employee's Union. Bill 2 attempted' to limit the areas in which the BCGEU could collectively bargain. Bill 3 attacked job se- The making of a coalition Immediately following July 7, the Vancouver and District Labour Council's Unemployment Coalition called an emergency meeting on the budget out of which was formed the Lower Mainland Anti- Budget Coalition. Probably the largest coalition in B.C.'s history, it was comprised of a majority of community groups and trade unions in Vancouver's lower mainland. On July 12, Women Against the Budget, (WAB) representing more than 35 women's groups, was formed. WAB went on to become an important and dynamic part of B.C.'s Solidarity movement. Also motivated by the implications of the Bennett budget, the B.C. Federation of Labour set out to organize Operation Solidarity, which for the first time included both affiliate and non- affiliate unions in a labour coalition. By early August, negotiations began between Operation Solidarity and the Lower Mainland Budget Coalition. The intent - to integrate the two into a broader coalition. It was apparent that the leadership of the B.C. Federation of Labour wanted greater control over this new and potentially powerful coalition. In the resulting struggle, the Lower Mainland fought for and won a steering committee truly representative of its constituency (women, seniors, public sector unions etc.), with the support, but not the domination of Operation Solidarity. During that time, while attention was focussed primarily on the struggle of the lower mainland, a provincial umbrella structure was set in place that was neither directly representative of regional concerns nor accountable to them. The Lower Mainland Coalition, for example, the largest and strongest region in the province was not permitted representation. Other regions throughout the province were in some ways in a worse dilemma. Not only were they divided from the provincial structure by lack of accountability, but also by geography, as the Provincial Steering Committee was based in Vancouver. This isolation of a provincial umbrella body from its regional constituencies was to separate the grassroots strength of the coalition membership from the provincial decision-making structure. The consequences of the weaknesses were: domination of the Provincial Steering Committee by a conservative labour agenda and ultimately, a severe lack of coordinated effort between the Provincial Steering Committee and the largest of its constituencies (Lower Mainland), at the most critical juncture in the escalating job action. curity, seniority rights and due process in termination. If Bill 3 had gone unopposed, seniority rights would have been legislated away and no workers would have protection from arbitrary dismissal. Public sector collective agreements would be virtually meaningless . As a result of the strike and massive community support, Bill 2 will probably die on the qrder paper. On this point, the BCGEU successfully negotiated into its master agreement recognition for a provincial system of seniority rights and have obtained an exemption from Bill 3. The BCGEU and the B.C. Teacher's Federation shared a similar problem with respect to negotiating some form of seniority rights for their workers. The government employees union didn't have much in the . way of seniority or layoff clauses in their collective agreement because they had a job security clause guaranteeing no layoffs, after three years of service. Secondly, the reliance on auxiliary workers in the public service, and on substitute teachers in the education system, meant that regular employees were substantially buffered from threats of dismissal. The massive number'of auxiliary workers without tenure (25% of the BCGEU, for example) would conceivably absorb any layoff. Consequently, in face of staff reductions, the BCGEU and the teachers both had to build a system of seniority rights into their contracts. The teachers now have two \"model\" agreements, approved by the School Boards of North Vancouver and Coquitlam, both of which received exemptions from Bill 3. The teachers successfully built into these agreements some seniority rights protecting teachers with longer service. But, each teacher's organization still has to negotiate School Baord by School Board throughout the province and, in order to receive exemption from Bill 3, each contract must then be submitted to Ed Peck, the Compensation Stabilization Program Commissioner.. Another snag for the teachers is the much publicized dispute over Bennett's supposed agreement to return strike savings to the 1984 education budget in order to keep education funding close to 1983 levels. During the strike, teachers clearly demonstrated a solid committment to quality education. In return for their strength and solidarity on the picket line, the Bennett-Munro agreement may have achieved nothing. Finally, what was achieved for the rest of the public sector continued on p. 30 unions ? 4 Kinesis December '83 ACROSS B.C. Women fighting prisons by Diane Morrison Many people believe the penal system in Canada is inhumane, expensive and inefficient. Many people believe that women are descriminated against at every level of society. Put those two beliefs together and you come up with some shocking facts about the treatment of women in Canadian prisons. Womyn Against Prisons(WAP) in B.C. was formed about five years ago to try to combat some of these problems. Many members have first-hand experience. One woman spoke of being beaten and stripped by a male guard and put in solitary confinement for 25 days. The group is small, but they are doing everything they can \"to let the authorities know we recognize they are discriminating against women\", said a woman speaking for the group. WAP wants to publish the discrimination taking place in prisons and lobby the responsible administrators. They also want to act as a much needed -support/liaison network with women who are in prison. Last August, the Lynda Williams Correctional Centre (LWCC) was\"closed down due to budget cutbacks. The LWCC was the only institution which provided women with an alternative to 24-hour lock-up and allowed them to live and work in the community. The Elizabeth Fry Society proposed to continue the management of the centre but the offer was rejected because a committee was to be formed to make recommendations to the government. In the meantime, the building stands empty. The women from the LWGC were moved to Twin Maples. For over a year at Twin Maples, there have been charges of sexual harassment from the men with whom, because of lack of space, the women must share the section. Pat Drew, director at Twin Maples, says the charges are ridiculous. \"We screen the men very carefully,\" Drew said. \"If anything like that happened, the men would be out.\" A year ago,'Drew said, when the men were first brought into the women's section, there were some complaints, \"But there were not problems that could-not be worked out.\" In fact Drew thinks the climate at Twin Maples is better since the men and women have been together. At Oakalla too, there are charges of sexual harassment and sexual assault. But other actions seem specifically aimed at the women too. The chaplain service, which provided spiritual support and important family ties outside prison, was cut as part of the government's restraint program. A former inmate spoke of inadequate medical services and doctors who had no specialized knowledge in women's health problems. This woman said women recovering from drug and alcohol addictions were not adequately treated for withdrawal. She said she had seen women in such pain that they had taken their own lives or escaped in order to get medical treatment. WAP fights against this kind of discrimination by writing, calling and petitioning the directors and administrators of the various institutions, by trying to get media coverage for the issues, organizing benefits to support the groups' activities, and maintaining an international network with women who are in prison. The group also hopes to get more actively involved examining legal reform in general. The kinds of problems and discriminations these women spoke of are just variations on a theme that women everywhere experience with medical and legal authorities. But their problems are increased because it's so easy to forget about the human beings who are paying their debt to society behind thick stone walls. WAP is looking for new members. Anyone interested in the work this group is doing can contact them at: Womyn Against Prisons, P.O. Box 46571, Station G, Van., B.C. Kit teaches self-help skills The Women's Self-Help Educational Kit is a resource kit designed to help women, particularly isolated and rural women, gain access to the skills and information they need to make changes in their lives. This kit is intended for use by women in groups and can be used to create, sustain and support groups exploring issues of personal and social change. Adapted from popular|||jfe education methods developed in Latin America, the approach of this kit encourages groups to explore common concerns and find collective solutions. The kit is the end result of a three-year demonstration grant, federally funded by Health and Welfare Canada and the Secretary of State Women's Programme. The intent of the programme was to create a preventative mental health support system to alleviate the isolation and powerlessness experienced by women living in resource-based rural communities. The Women's Self-Help Network approached this task by developing and offering two courses, Women Changing and Peer Counselling. It also developed a training programme to teach community women to facilitate these courses. Over a three year period, 900 women were involved in the Network, either through the courses, the training or workshops. The use of the popular education method, by having participants identi- The Network has made the Women's Self-Help fy and define the skills they need to make changes for themselves, gave women a sense of actively creating their world. This process strengthened participants and gave them more confidence to make both personal and social changes in their communities. The kit includes the Facilitator's Training Manual, the Women's Self-Help Handbook and the Collective Handbook. Also available on request is the Final Report of the Women's Self-Help Network and the final evaluation by its independent evaluator. Educational Kit as self-sufficient as possible. The Facilitator's Training Manual contains criteria for identifying trainers and some guidelines on how to self-train a training team which lacks experienced facilitators. A video programme has also -. been developed to help illustrate the Network's use of the Popular Education Method and can be used to supplement the training. The kit costs $25 and is available now from the Women's Self-Help Network, Box 3292, Courtenay, B.C. V9N 5N4. For groups able to share their resources on a regional basis there are a limited number of copies of the video available at a cost of approximately $20. The video tape is half an hour long and is available on half inch video-cassette. Positive steps; BCFW convention by Pat Feindel It's December and that means another Annual Convention of the B.C. Federation of Women (BCFW) has gone by. This year's event took place in Naramata for the second year running. It began with unexpectedly extended travel plans for those from Vancouver, with the Hope/Princeton highway closure adding another three hours to the drive. A flat tire on one of the buses allowed even more time for its passengers to appreciate rural settings, while the other bus load arrived just in time to miss dinner. Never mind, the scenic surroundings were a visual reprieve for those of us accustomed to concrete and cubes. Approximately 25 women attended the convention this year, representing 13 member groups. (Total membership now stands at 28 groups, down from 35 last year. Six of those lost were groups who folded over the year.) Despite a convention shortened by one day and an absolutely-guaranteed-to-burn-you- out agenda, the weekend saw positive developments for BCFW. A friendly and relaxed mood of cooperation prevailed, with a general concern for getting on swiftly and congenially with the work at hand. In terms of both policy decisions and general directions, women seemed eager to move BCFW forward as ah effective and active organization. In two workshops on BCFW structure and future, much discussion took place on the best ways to develop BCFW's role as a communication network and tool for exchanging valuable information, support, and skills between member groups. Considerable discussion also took place concerning what sort of shape next year's convention could take (assuming funds are available to hold it). There was generally a strong push to work for developing action and strategies that would further the already well-developed policies of BCFW, and to move away from analysing and amending internal structures. Delegates eventually agreed that next year's convention would be held in the lower mainland area and that there would be a special effort to publicize it to non-member groups, to include more issue-oriented workshops drawing on skills of both members and non-members, and to keep all aspects of the convention as open as possible to observers and non- members. Although some members expressed concern about the possible loss of a strong enough basis of unity to do effective work together, it seemed the majority saw a need to reach a broader range of women and to expand and improve both internal and external communication systems. As an approach to \"outreach\", it was refreshing to hear creative ideas for how we could interact and exchange resources with our communities rather than \"convince groups to join BCFW\". At the workshop level, in addition to discussions on BCFW itself, women looked at the B.C. \"restraint\" legislation and possible strategies for combatting it. The Red Hot Video Committee discussed its past year's activities and ideas for the year to come, and the lesbian action committee offered a workshop on rural organizing. Specific policy passed included a position on civil disobedience, recognizing that non-violent civil disobedience can be a necessary and effective political tool. (A qualifier stipulated, however, that no member group of BCFW could undertake CD in the name of BCFW.) Women discussed the federally proposed Civilian \"Security\" Service (Bill C157) and strongly opposed the establishment of such a service, while endorsing efforts to educate ourselves and the general public on its implications on the kinds of police surveillance already taking place. The convention voted to continue sending a delegate to the Solidarity Coalition, who would report regularly to member groups. i December '83 Kinesis 5 ACROSS CANADA On trial: The herbicides case in Nova Scotia by Ruth M. Schneider The Herbicide Case in Nova Scotia has been in the courts for over a year now, since a hot day in August, 1982, when a group of landowners challenged the right of a Swedish owned company, Nova Scotia Forest Industries (N.S.F.I.), to spray the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T on Eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Numerous studies have shown the herbicides to cause cancer and birth defects, leading the plaintiffs and we who support them to take the stand that economic security, if that's really what spraying herbicides is meant to insure (a questionable assumption at best in this case), is of no value if one's health and the health of one's children are endangered. Dr. Susan Daum was one of our sixteen expert witnesses, and one of many outstanding women involved in the case, all, interestingly enough, on the side of the plaintiffs. As a toxicologist, Dr. Daum says that persistent chemicals that cause cancer should not be introduced into the environment in any amount. \"It only takes one molecule...in contact with your genes or chromosomes to cause cancer.\" During the month long trial last May, the company lawyers told us that we must be willing to take some risks in life, that it's foolish to be afraid of chemicals which are safe (if used properly, they always added). Their witnesses told us that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States was about to lift its ban on 2,4,5-T, and they informed us about \"risk benefits\" and \"dose effect levels\", assuring us that we were worrying needlessly. But the more they spoke, the clearer Dr. Daum's words became, \"It only takes one molecule...\". Other women involved in the case include Elizabeth May, spokesperson and legal advisor for the plaintiffs, who finished her law degree in the middle of the trial and rose to examine her first witness at that time; lawyer Liz Walsh, who obtained the August court injunction; Victoria Palmer, the main plaintiff and the first to step forward to put her property on the line; and Connie Schell, the meticulous treasurer of the Herbicide Fund Society, who undertook the gargantuan task of knowing where every penny contributed comes from and Where it goes. There are others: Jane Grose and Lynda Calvert, plaintiffs; Jan Newton, economist and expert witness; Liz Calder at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax; Stephanie May, the first to actually sell land to pay a court bill; and numerous support workers. But those of us who were in the courtroom on May 17th are haunted by the face of one young woman. Anna Steele, who worked as a monitor for the Department of the Environment during the 1982 spray season, testified about the ground spraying operation. In a voice almost too low to be heard '\u00C4\u00A2 she told of wind conditions which were too high nineteen times in three days, of machines spraying in watercourses, of chemical spills improperly cleaned up. To contribute, contact: Connie Schell, HERBICIDE FUND SOCIETY, RR. 1, South Haven, N.S. BOE 3G0. The judge gently asked her if she had worn her protective clothing and mask. No, she said, it was so hot that she couldn't breathe with them on. And where was she standing as she took wind readings? By this time the courtroom was absolutely silent, and we could all hear her answer than sometimes she had stood - she hesitated then, and her voice dropped still lower before she continued - right in the spray. Throughout the case, the burden of proof was on the plaintiffs. We had to prove that \"a serious risk of health will occur if the spraying of the substances here is permitted to take place.\" (Page 163 of the Decision). In other words, the chemicals were to be treated like humans: innocent until proven guilty. Because cancer sometimes develops many years after exposure to a cancer causing substance occurs, it is difficult to prove the danger of the substance until it is too late. Because of the many studies Women of Framboise, Nova Scotia, working on their third quilt, which will be raffled, like the others, to raise funds for the plaintiffs. indicating harmful effects from the herbicides, however, the plaintiffs wanted the Courts to grant an injunction prohibiting their use- until more is known. They noted that the herbicides were banned in.many other countries (Sweden included) and in other Canadian Provinces (British Columbia included). The Nova Scotia government has taken the part of the company. Government officials have called the plaintiffs \"subversives\" and the Department of the Environment continued to issue spray permits during the 1983 spray season while the court decision was pending, claiming that the court case should have little effect on the spray program. On September 15, 1983, Mr. Justice D. Merlin Nunn decided against the plaintiffs, determining that they had not met the burden of proof. He awarded costs and damages to Nova Scotia Forest Industries. Since September, not a week has gone by without a plaintiffs' meeting. The EPA has permanently banned 2,4,5-T in the United States, and Dow Chemical has announced its decision to no longer produce it. The Federal Government in Canada' is preparing to introduce legislation which would shift the burden of proof from the victims of pollution to the polluter. Environment Canada Minister, Charles Caccia, has said that ordinary people should not have to prove that a new chemical or a new product is dangerous. Instead, those who are introducing the product into the environment should have to demonstrate that it is not harmful. \"That is\", of course, a very fundamental shift in onus, a very difficult one to bring about, but I think that it's going to become necessary...\" (Radio interview after the decision) . \"Perhaps all we've done,\" Elizabeth May said in a press conference, \"is to stop them from using those chemicals during the last two years that they would have been able to use them.\" The price has been high. So far the plaintiffs have spent over $180,000 on court costs, and the bill from the company for costs and damages has not been delivered. The plaintiffs have decided to appeal the costs because they acted in the public interest and not for their own advancement. They had little to gain, and now they may lose the lands and homes they had hoped to protect. Worse yet, N.S.F.I. plans to step up spray efforts next year, even though they may have difficulty obtaining the chemicals. Connie is tired, but she has agreed to remain treasurer of the Herbicide Fund Society. Shelleen is expecting a baby, but she is overseeing another quilt in Framboise, to help pay for the appeal. Jane is frustrated and Lynda is braced to meet the bailiffs. We are all frightened - but we won't give up. Jane and Steve Grose, with thehr two children, Cody and Shawna. They |jB!|gj|f are one of the fifteen ^Hl families who could lose iflff their homes because a pv& recent court decision ^feull upheld the rights of a ms*- Swedish-based trans- f national corporation to spray herbicides across Cape Breton and Anti- gonish County forest plots. 6 Kinesis December '83 PI INTERNATIONAL by Punam Khosla On October 25 more than '7000 U.S. troops invaded the small Carribean Island of Grenada. This followed a week of confused and traumatic events in which Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, along with a number of his cabinet ministers, was killed as the result of an internal conflict in the governing party - The New Jewell Movement. Using the deaths as a pretext, the U.S. claimed their invasion was necessary to secure the lives of approximately 1000 U.S. citizens inside Grenada. News of the invasion was met with widespread protest inside Canada. In Vancouver, 250 people rallied at the U;S. consulate six hours after the invasion. A similar demonstration took place in Edmonton and Winnipeg within days and more than 2000 people in Toronto took to the streets the following Saturday. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. barred journalists from the Island for four days following the arrival of the Marines, leaving the international community in a position of relying on the U.S. State Department as the sole source of information. In Canada the first independent statement on the situation came with the return of six CUSO workers who had been living and working in Grenada. They condemned the invasion as a violation of the sovereignty of the Grenadian people, denied reports that they had been in personal danger until the arrival of the U.S. marines, and reported that U.S. citizens had been free to leave the Island for a full day prior to the U.S. invasion. Following are excerpts from an interview with Sue Mitchell and Harvey Dotton, CUSO workers, originally from Chilliwack, who had been living in Grenada for twenty-one months at the point of their evacuation three days following the invasion. What was your experience working in Grenada under the New Jewell Movement? Sue: The New Jewell Movement was very dedicated to uplifting the cultural, educational, financial - all facets of the society. There were a number of very dedicated people in the Government working many hours a day. It was a climate where you had people really pulling hard to make better programs and was a really stimulating environment to work in. At the same time you have to recognize that it is a poor country. The people who were making things happen were young and inexperienced. There were difficulties and coming from a western society we had cultural differences to deal with; things move at a different pace, people had different priorities. Who was responsible for putting Prime Minister Bishop under house arrest? Harvey: The Central Committee of the New Jewell Movement. There was a difference of opinion in the party - a unanimous decision had been made to create a dual leadership structure for the party - not the Government - and, Bishop had agreed with this but consistently didn't put it into practice. This led to his house arrest. He was still Prime Minister though and they were reasoning with him to institute this. S: Apparently there were negotiations over the weekend until the Wednesday when there was a demonstration and he was freed from house arrest. 5\u00C2\u00A7\u00C2\u00A7M*' What was the response of the people as far as you know it to Bishop being put under house arrest? \u00E2\u0096\u00A0\u00E2\u0080\u00A2.rfra^\u00C2\u00ABgjr-ttflw.\u00C2\u00ABi\u00C2\u00BB\u00C2\u00AB*-A<\u00C2\u00BB.sy *;<** '8^3fagasyrafc-:-,\u00C2\u00AB c US o wlorkets report rfi* jp __ 14 \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 LUkEUL2Li.i2_iJLL.tiX 1 MUKLiULi 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 S: People were very upset - very, very upset - one of the problems is that not . much information was being put out and there were a lot.of rumours floating around because it's such a small place and everyone knows each other. How was Bishop released? H: There were three groups who gathered to demonstrate on the Wednesday of the release. They joined together and formed a long snake up to Bishop's house. When they got there the guards fired over their heads, this gave them a sense of elation and power so they stormed past the guards and freed Bishop - we could hear them coming back after and they were chanting \"we freed we leader\". Where did the demonstration go at that S: Apparently they went to Fort Rupert. Everybody was waiting for Bishop to go to Market Square to speak - we were waiting Former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and waiting and decided to go home because it was obvious he wasn't going to speak right away. By the time we got back the events of the Fort (where Bishop\" was killed) had already taken place. We could see black smoke coming out of the Fort. What were the events at the Fort? S: We have conflicting stories. Some say they went into the Fort and began to disarm the members of the People's Revolutionary Army (PRA), that Bishop and the people with him had turned on the army and were threatening to overtake the.Fort and assas- inate the officers, that they opened fire on people and the PRA moved in at that point. Others say that Bishop and some others had gone into a room for a meeting and the PRA came - they came in three armoured cars - there was some shooting of smaller weapons, we don't know which side they came from, there were also some larger shells shot from the armoured cars at the tower where Bishop and the others were. H: I talked to a nurse who helped clean up after the events. She said the bodies showed signs of concussion and shrapnel but no rifle wounds. The only gunshot wounds were about two inches in diameter which would indicate a heavier type of fire like what you might get from an armoured car. They were not lined up and shot with rifles. I have to think that the order to fire came from some middle echelon officer. There is no conspiracy at all in my mind - no slightest chance of conspiracy - not even CIA involvement. It's impossible because of the way the events unfolded - it was not a preconceived idea, the situation was spontaneous, highly emotional. Who else was killed at the Fort? Jacqueline Kraft, Fitzroy Baine (labour leader), Eunicen Whiteman (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Vincent Noel (labour s_ leader), the Minister of Housing and two or | three businessmen. The radio reports also | said that some civilians had been killed. 3 What happened after these events - what was g the situation inside Grenada? * H: There was a 24-hour curfew from Thursday j\u00C2\u00A7 to Sunday with a four hour break to replen- \u00E2\u0096\u00A0g ish food supplies on Friday but in practice | the curfew seemed to be quite loose. \u00C2\u00A7 g Was there a lot of sentiment against the I army for what had happened? J H: I think you can describe people as having great feelings of devastation. They were angry that their Prime Minister had December '83 Kinesis 7 INTERNATIONAL been put under House Arrest. No one knew what was happening. When was the' curfew lifted? S: Monday morning at six o'clock. So were Canadians and Americans free to leave at that point? S: Absolutely. H: We could've left on Monday except the plane we had chartered would not land in Grenada. The Government of Grenada did not prevent their landing, other airlines were coming into the airport and people were leaving quite freely without any restraints being placed in the way. S: They were making it easy for people to go, no question about that. The problem was that the plane coming for us was restricted - some of the CARICOM nations wouldn't give permission for it to take off from Barbados because they had a blockade on against Grenada. Can you describe the invasion from your points of view? What were you aware of? H: At five o'clock in the morning (Tuesday) there were heavy planes overhead. We were sleeping and it was still dark. We headed over to the CUSO house at about nine in the morning and as we were going over we could see the American\" marines being air-dropped at Point Salines - Quarantine point. Did you know what was happening at that point? S: Yes, because during the curfew we were kept up-to-date as to what was happening with the Organization of Eastern Carribean States (OECS) and the CARICOM countries. The OECS decided they wanted to invade Grenada but for a while it looked as though CARICOM was going to stall that off. By 'Saturday we knew that there was a decision by the Carribean countries to invade. At that time we heard that the Americans were sending some boats down to Grenada - by Sunday evening there were two American warships in Grenadian waters. The radio was putting out an alert that the country was going to be invaded and that people should report to the militias. We expected the invasion on Monday morning. As soon as we saw the planes on Tuesday morning we knew the invasion was happening - there was no question. What was the level of resistance on the day of the invasion itself by the Grenadian a suicide resistance. You couldn't compete against it, it was just incredible. But not so - after an hour or so of calm the fighting began again and continued on and off in the next few days. Radio Free Grenada was off by nine o'clock in the morning so we were depending on reports from the BBC and the Carribean States. You know that the International Media reported that much of the resistance came from the Cuban construction workers - is this true? H: When the little bit of heavy armament the Grenadians had was put out of action, S: When they first landed at Point Salines, between six and nine in the morning, there was a lot of firing going on - by nine o'clock things were very quiet, it was obvious that they had control of the airport because they were landing planes. They no longer had to drop paratroopers and they were landing helicopters. We thought it was over at that point because we recognized the amount of military hardware the Americans had taken in and we knew that any resistance was pretty much Revolutionary Army weapons anyway - is ludicrous. They said there were enough arms for 1000 people for a month. The Grenadian army was 1000 people. To have enough arms for one month is not inconsistent with the needs for self defence. Why has the world accepted this as being a great supply of arms? So how do you respond to Reagan's line that he got there 'just in time '? H: That the U.S. has found the psychological idea that if you tell enough lies - somebody is bound to eventually believe some of them. Literacy lesson: volunteer and learner the Grenadians took rifle in one hand and machete in the other and headed for the hills. The^Grenadian Army was about 1000 and only about 500 of them would have got to the hills. The Americans were afraid to go in after them because, after all, these people knew the hills. It was their home, they know it like the back of their hand; every trail, every tree. Had they been Cubans as the Americans said, they would have been as lost in those hills as the Americans were. S: It's also interesting to note that the airport itself is on a peninsula that protrudes off a tip of the main Island. From where the Cuban barracks were down there and the way the marines were coming in, it seems unlikely that the Cubans would've even been able to move from the airport position into the hills without having to pass through the areas where the marines were - there wasn't much cover. As I understand it most of the Cubans had been captured at that point anyway. We feel very strongly that the resistance had to be coming from the Grenadians. In a speech explaining the Invasion, Ronald Reagan made the statement that they had discovered enough arms to indicate that Cuba was planning a takeover of Grenada for use as a base of some sort - can you comment on this? S: As a point here, Grenada is just slightly larger than Texada Island - it's very small. H: There were between 100 and 1000 times more arms there after the U.S. marines landed than had been in Grenada the week previous. For the Americans to start screaming about Cuban arms - which were People's Some people say that the invasion of Grenada is a military signal by the U.S. to the F.D.R./FMLN in El Salvador and to the Sandinista Government in Nicaragua that the U.S. is prepared to defend their interests in Central America in the same way as they have done in Grenada - what do you think of this? H: I have to think that the U.S. is testing the water to see how much they can get away with. I feel very strongly that there has to be a gigantic protest from people around the world because that's the only thing that's going to stop this kind of murderous warfare. Do you think it signals a coming invasion by the U.S. into Nicaragua? H: Unless there's a great public outcry - yes. In the last two centuries the United States has intervened one hundred times in Latin American and Carribean countries. The American military presence in Central America has increased dramatically in the last two months. Since the invasion of Grenada 5000 U.S. troops, along with 6000 Honduran troops, have massed along the Honduras/Nicaragua border. The U.S. backed contras have been launching attacks into Nicaragua trying to capture an area to use as a base of operation. They have been unsuccessfull to date. El Salvadoreans face the threat of 4000 Guatemalan troops sitting on their border in addition to the five U.S. warships sitting along both sides of the Central American coastline. The most recent move by the Americans was the stationing of 1000 U.S. military engineers in Costa Rica. 8 Kinesis December '83 PEACE Women at Greenham step up action by Kandace Kerr November 14, 1983 - the first airload of American Cruise missiles arrives at the United States Air Force base at Greenham Common, England. While the women of the Greenham Common Peace Camp watch, American military personnel unload the missiles. More missiles continue to arrive at the base throughout the week, signalling what some are calling Britain's descent-into becoming a 'saturation bombing target'. With the arrival of the missiles, came intensified civil disobedience. Over one hundred and forty women were arrested Monday and Tuesday in blockades of the roads leading to the base. Other women chained themselves to the fence surrounding the base. On Tuesday, British Defense- Secretary Michael Heseltine was splattered with red paint as he entered a conservative students' meeting in Manchester. There has been a peace camp outside the Greenham Common air force base since 1981. The women of the camp were first regarded by the media and the authorities as little more than a silly joke. Today, following civil disobedience, fence cuttings and blockades, that notion has been discarded. There are currently between two and six hundred British police patrolling the nine mile long exterior fence, while inside hundreds of well-armed paratroopers Seline, a woman at the camp, told me: \"They can have whatever they like inside the base, but they won't be able to deploy it. The women in this Country aren't going to let them.\" reportedly have orders to shoot first and ask questions later. In the midst of the increased military presence, police harassment and now.the presence of the cruise missiles, the women of Greenham continue to be a protest against this deathly symbol of male violence . Lisa is one woman living at the camp. When I spoke with her Tuesday, the day after the missiles had arrived, she was cooking dinner for the other women of the camp. They had all participated earlier in several blockades of the road, and some had been arrested. Lisa described the feelings of the women at the camp, and talked about some of their actions. Lisa: \"Well, there were blockades at two gates, and one hundred and forty women got arrested (as of Tuesday)...we got lots and lots of television and all sorts of camera crews and reporters around. More planes are being flown in all the time. \"We've really tried to settle down this week. The worst thing for us, at the moment, is that we are standing under incredible police harassment all through the night graphic from Project Plowshares and that makes things a bit hard at the moment. But all the women who live at the camp are determined to stay here. Now that we know the missiles are starting to come in, we're not going to give up or go home or whatever and forget about it.\" Did you know the missiles were coming in? \"I wasn't sure. I mean, I personally thought they already had gone in two weeks ago - we saw one of the planes, which we heard from another group carried the missiles, that was going in. Because we saw this plane we were quite sure they (the missiles) were in already, and also because there were launchers on the runway. It's very difficult, because all you see is the outside packages. It's all a guessing game. I went through this whole really worried thing about two weeks ago when the first planes went in, the first heavy Galaxies started arriving, because they are bringing in the really sensitive equipment .\" ^gyp*^ How did you feel when you heard the missiles were on the base? \"Well... certainly not very happy...I didn't really expect anything else, t mean, one always hopes for wonders, but...(laughs) I didn't really expect them to be physically stopped, but we still want to keep on working and just keep changing public opinion, and at the moment here in England it changes a lot. I think a lot of people are really frustrated and upset about what's happening, a lot more frustrated than ever before, because it seems so blatantly obvious after the Grenada invasion that they can't rely on the Americans, and that makes things a bit more dodgy, makes people a lot more thoughtful about this whole idea of NATO.\" (Lisa also talked about some of the actions that have occurred at the base, including the large action last month.) \"At the camp, October 29, we took the (exterior) fence down, which was actually supposed to be two days before the first planes landed. I mean for us it was just luck because we planned the action about two months before we decided on that day, because it was Hallowe'en and that day has a lot of history. On October 29, we took about four to five miles of the fence down, we just cut it down, all the way around, to cut the barrier. We find a lot more women are determined to do direct action, non-violent direct action, but on a lot bigger scale than just blockading. They're ready to sort of go over \u00C2\u00A3he step of just blockading, more in the direction of. what the Ploughshares Eight did (as in hammering missile nose cones)...and we find that a lot more women actually come prepared to be arrested, to go to prison for what they're doing, to take the responsibility.\" (Lisa also mentioned that there are peace camps at all known American military bases in England, bringing the total to 102 camps \"A lot of people just don't realize how occupied we are...and from that point of view it (all the peace camps) was very good. And a lot of people in Holland now have become active as well...people there | did a week's vigil outside the American embassy in support of us and of the court case in America.\"(The Greenham women took Ronald Reagan to court in an attempt to stop the placement of cruise missiles at Greenham - see Kinesis, Nov. '83). The goal of the women at Greenham now is to block deployment of the cruise. Seline, another woman at the camp, told me: \"They can have whatever they like inside the base, but they won't be able to deploy it. The women in this country aren't going to let them.\" Lisa told me the only way she could be stopped from doing civil disobedience would be if the authorities were to put her in prison. I asked Lisa how women in British Columbia could help the women at Greenham. \"Well...stop them (the missiles) coming over here, (laughs). We heard about a lot of very good actions, like walking into the testing area and blockades...I mean, the bits and pieces we hear only when women write us about them. We don't get information over here about what is actually happening. I mean there is nothing in the official press about what is happening in the American peace movement, but what we do hear is encouraging, really I think just keep working, it's our only chance... either we change, or we're going to get blown up.\" While the women of Greenham have been a model for many peace camps, they seldom get information on our activities and actions. They would love to hear from women. The address is: Women's Peace Camp, Outside Main Gate, RAF Greenham Common, Newbury, Berkshire, England. December '83 Kinesis 9 PEACE New year's actions planned The Kipichisichakanisik Women's Peace Camp in Cole Bay, Saskatchewan is inviting women from across western Canada to participate in a two day action on December 31 and January 1. The Cole Bay camp was initiated in August of this year, when 80 feminists gathered on the edge of the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range to protest the testing of the cruise missile in Canada and its impending deployment around the world, (see Kinesis Sept. '83). Some of the women remained in Cole Bay after the gathering to set up an ongoing camp. The camp has received ongoing support from surrounding communities with villagers offering their homes as accommodation, sharing skills with the women and setting up opportunities for members of the camp to speak to high school and adult education students from the area. The camp is now located in a small house in Cole Bay. The women of the camp have been busy. As well as doing school educatiohals and putting out a newsletter (available through contacts below), they organized a second Women's Gathering to Stop the Cruise on the October 1st and 2nd weekend which was attended by over 30 women from Western Canada, with visitors from Germany and England. They have also been travelling to different centres in Alberta and Saskatchewan to spread news of the camp and to gather support. At press time, plans were underway for an action to participate in Canada/US Solidarity days on December 2nd and 3rd. Women interested in joining the New Year's action and celebration are urged to come as self-sufficient as possible (warm clothing, food, candles, balloons, wool, banners, musical instruments, face paints ...). If men wish to come, their support is welcomed in doing childcare, and preparing food, but the workshops and action will be for women only. For more information call Edmonton, (403) 454-7689, or (403) 424-9672. The Peace Camp phone number is (306) 829-4400. Mail can be sent to the women's camp at General Delivery, Cole Bay, Sask., S0M 0M0, Canada. Peace Camp targets CIA from all over I am writing this letter to contacts I have made in the peace movement in the Pacific, Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Women for Survival (WS) organized a peace camp to take place outside Pine Gap, the U.S. satellite communications base, close to Alice Springs. We set up camp on November 11th. Because the Northern Territory laws are stringent and in addition Pine Gap comes under special Commonwealth laws, we are liable for arrest just for camping outside the gates of Pine Gap. Canada/U.S. Solidarity Days A peace camp at the Peace Arch on the Canada - United States border crossing scheduled for Friday, December 2 and Saturday, December 3, was in its final prepatory stages at press time. The Peace Camp and related activities were expected to be part of a two-day international event featuring rallies, vigils, blockades and border actions across North America to protest the testing and deployment of the cruise missils. As the 'hot autumn' of protests against the Euromissiles continue throughout Europe and Ndrth America, peace activists from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia were preparing to congregate at the symbolic Peace Arch. Ignoring the international frontier, people from the two nations were about to set up a peace camp, show slides and movies and build a unity tent. Music, a bonfire and the setting up of information tables for the benefit of passing motorists were also on the agenda. The action symbolizes the resolve of citizens of both countries to work together to achieve disarmament. A feature of Canada - United States Solidarity Days against the cruise will focus on actions involving civil disobedience; in this case the establishment of a 24- hour peace camp, beginning 5pm Friday, December 2. This protest involves Australia. Aboriginal women of Alice Springs have said that they too oppose the presence of Pine Gap and they support the women's camp. We have been given permission to camp on one side of the road outside the gates of Pine Gap by the Aboriginal traditional owners of that land. Any action of this sort in Australia must involve our support of the Aboriginal people in their struggle for autonomy and land rights. The presence of Pine Gap represents yet another act of imperialism - this time by the U.S. - against the Aboriginal people. Pine Gap is one of the key satellite communications bases outside the U.S. It is a CIA controlled base which has been described as the 'eyes and the ears' of the U.S. defense. The base is so top secret that not even the Australian government is informed as to what exactly goes on there. Some of its known functions \u00E2\u0080\u00A2to monitor Soviet missile launches, military communications, and radar transmissions etc.; \u00E2\u0080\u00A2to provide an early warning system; \u00E2\u0080\u00A2to map out targets for U.S. missiles; \u00E2\u0080\u00A2to work on the 'star wars' scenario through its research into laser beam technology. It is clear that with one of its prime functions to pick out Soviet targets, Pine Gap itself becomes a number one target. Even if there was only a limited nuclear exchange, Pine Gap would be one of the first places in the world to be hit. WS in Australia have chosen November 11th as the first day of their protest action because it was on November 11th, 1975 that the democratically elected Labor government was sacked. CIA in collusion with the Governor General and the Liberal Party engineered to displace Whitlam and his government. There was reason to believe that the Labor government was considering a refusal to the U.S. on the renewal of Six Vancouver women participate in a protest against Canadian military recruitment on November 9 at the recruitment centre. The \"Die-in\" included using the participants' own blood. the lease for Pine Gap which was due in the following year. November 11th is also Armistice Day when the world remembers the signing of what turned out to be an all too tentative peace agreement at the end of World War I. Another reason for choosing November (when it is already getting very hot in Alice Springs) is that we want to express our solidarity with the peace movement in the U.S. and Europe as the pressure to struggle against the imminent deployment of the Pershing II missiles in West Germany and the Cruise missiles in Britain and in Sicily comes to its height. Especially we want to link hands with the swomen in Cosimo, Sicily and with the women at Greenham Common in Britain. These women have given us inspiration and we hope to generate some energy back to them at this crucial time. We have sent letters off to contacts we have all over the world. We are particularly anxious to reach women's groups and peace groups or individuals in Russia and in Eastern Europe. We also want to make contact with women who are struggling in the so-called Third World. Many of us feel now that one of the best hopes for the kind of transformation that is needed if we are to reverse the arms race can come from the women's movement which is growing and strengthening throughout the world. In Australia on November 11th and 12th there were actions not only at Pine Gap but also throughout the country as women who could not get to Alice Springs joined in the expression of our profound opposition to the base and to all it represents in the terrifying build-up of the arms race. We are asking for a cessation of the lease for Pine Gap; for more information in the meantime to the Australian government and people as to what actually goes on there; and for Australia to become independent through a foreign policy of non-alignment. ^taB^ Women for Survival, PO Box 3603, Alice Springs, N.T. 5 Australia..5750 y^A ^i **** wYUru, \u00E2\u0096\u00A0 10 Kinesis December '83 HEALTH ALCOHOLISM: :jl&A by Linda Hall Christmas - traditionally a time for merrymaking. Trees, gifts, parties and for many,' lots of alcoholic good cheer. People often remark how commercial the festive season has become and how peace and good-will have been replaced by consumerism and stress. Often we \"take care\" of this stress by over-drinking. In some homes, the gifts remain unopened Christmas morning while people nurse their hang-overs. Many a Christmas dinner has been spoiled by someone in the family being drunk. Some individuals pass the holidays in a fog. In fact, the holiday can seem a kind of predictable horror-show with alcohol abuse resulting in an escalation, not a reduction, of stress. Feelings of guilt, shame, remorse, anger, and fear are often generated by alcohol abuse. While I do not wish to put a damper on any reader's f%sfelve mood or rituals, it may be useful, before the holiday gets underway, to provide a brief discussion of the most popular and legal mood-altering drug: alcohol. It is hoped this article can heighten women's awareness of alcohol abuse and generate discussion among women, although it is in no way meant to be the \"final word\" concerning alcoholism. In order to understand why some women drink abusively, it is important to consider women's social roles and the conflict these roles provoke. There is not a woman among us who has not experienced or witnessed the oppressive nature of unequal and restrictive sex roles. Sexual inequality, so deeply entrenched in our private and public social worlds, frequently places women in SexisnflpI alcoholism interact Kilfand reinforce each other as obstacles to women's autonomy. In this sense, the reality of the alcoholic, woman is not separate from the reality of all women. powerless positions. Some women, statistically still a minority, experience yet another form of acute powerlessness - that of alcoholism. Sexism and alcoholism interact with and reinforce each other as obstacles to many women's autonomy and joy of life. In this sense the reality of the alcoholic woman cannot be separated from the reality of all women. a feminist analysis The way in which women in general are perceived and treated within society tells us a great deal about why the woman who drinks to excess is so harshly judged, neglected and abused. So while it is true that alcoholic women are a minority population, many of us either are or know of women whose lives have been made unmanageable because of their relationship to alcohol. It is our daily work as women, to struggle to become wholly human in a gender-based culture which divides personality characteristics, human needs and behavior into the often mutually exclusive categories of \"male\" and \"female\". It is important for us to remember that our roles and our value, as women, are socially assigned. This needs to be firmly asserted in the face of research that strains to explain psychological and behaviorial differences between the sexes as biologically determined. The myth that all women need and want in life is to be a \"good\" wife and mother, continues (although not always successfully!) to be instilled in both women and men. Deviation from sex-specific role behavior can result in varying degress of discrimination, punishment, ostracism and abuse. Within our families, education system, the labour force, amongst our peers and within our sexual relationships, sex roles and thus, social values and identities are systematically inculcated in women's lives. We learn that, even if we mold ourselves so as to live up to male standards and expectations, doing our upmost to \"be\" the \"ideal\" woman, we are still, in spite of our psychic contortions, viewed as inferior, indeed constitutionally inferior. The dominant cultural ideology wrongly purports that women, as sexual subordinates, are innately less able to perform the more valued social roles. Unfortunately, ideological conditioning does have an impact on us and many women internalize this stigmatizing inferior status and consequently, have little faith in their own insights and abilities. While it is clearly evident and hopeful that the constrictive nature and scope of \"feminine\" and \"masculine\" roles and behavior is undergoing daily transformation in countless arenas where women and men interact, it is also important to characterize the kind of social backdrop that we interact in. Ours is a \"drinking society\". A 1979 American Gallup Poll estimates that \"69% of the adult population (18 and over) or nearly 102 million Americans, drink more or less regularly and only 5 to 10% overdo it.\"l Canadian statistics are similar, relative to our population. Alcohol has been incorporated into a great many social and cultural rituals and is consumed for a great many \"psychological\" reasons. It is, in fact, not \"normal\" to not drink and because we are all, to some extent, consumers of normality, we seldom exercise our choice to not drink. Since World War II, the availability and promotion of alcohol has increased markedly With increased urbanization and leisure time, drinking has become a \"social must\". The media continually projects images of the sex appeal and romance that is ours if only we drink a certain liquor. Women are portrayed as beautiful, sexy and composed... but they are never drunk. As women entered the labour force, they became potential alcohol consumers. The alcohol industry has, over the past two decades, made women a major sales target. The media continually projects images of the sex appeal and romance that is ours if only we drink this liquor or that. Women are protrayed by the male standard, as beautiful, sexy and composed. They are always smiling and they are never drunk. We are, then, a society where we frequently use alcohol to oil our social interactions. Most people report greater feelings of self-confidence and sociability after having one or two drinks. What exactly is this chemical substance that is so widely ingested? Most people have a drink or more, anticipating that they very soon will experience the familiar feelings of alcohol intoxication. Yet, few of us really understand just what physiological effect alcohol has upon our bodies that results in one's mood, attitude and behavior being altered. December '83 Kinesis 11 HEALTH The important point here is that alcohol affects all bodies. It is all a question of degree. The more quickly we drink, the more alcohol is absorbed into our bloodstream and therefore into our brain, and thus the greater the feelings of drunkenness. While many experience the beer as just \"running through\" us, and we urinate more frequently, actually only a very small amount of alcohol is lost. The rest, our body has to work to metabolize. It is our liver whiJi plays a key role in this metabolism process. One of the liver's primary functions is to maintain a consistent blood sugar level. When the liver must metabolize excess alcohol present in the body, it does not produce and provide enough glucose (sugar) into the bloodstream. There is then a drop in blood sugar and our brain does not receive the nourishment it needs. Alcohol Anonymous describes alcohol as \"cunning, baffling, powerful\" and so it is, even for the nonalcoholic person. We are deceived by both advertising and by the drug into believing we are more communicative, more carefree, more sexual and more lovable. We are deceived into thinking we are being stimulated when we drink. In fact, alcohol is a depressant. The next time you see someone drinking who slurs their speech or has difficulty responding to a question, realize that what you are seeing is the physiological effects of the drug. Women, generally speaking, tend to weigh less than men and also have different proportions of body fat and water. Alcohol is not fat soluble and women have less body water to dilute the alcohol. Therefore, if a woman of average weight attempts to drink the same quantity of alcohol as an average man, there will be a higher level of blood alcohol in her body and she will get drunker than him. While the alcohol industry, the media, bars and clubs, family, friends and work acquaintances all urge and invite us to drink, those same people are usually appalled at a woman who is drunk. It is a commonplace sentiment that \"nobody likes a drunk\". This reaction is intensified when the drunk is a woman. Society tolerates her even less than her male counterpart. When a woman loses her inhibitions while drinking, she also temporarily loses a grip on the \"feminine\" social attributes and behavior that men have defined for her. Prescribed sex-role behavior of sub- missiveness and servitude require a considerable measure of self-control. When women drink, particularly to excess, their role performance is impaired. The alcohol now has control. The woman at the party who is talking loudly \"at\" everyone or who is slumped in a corner in tears or passed out has committed a serious social sacrilege. She has, in her drunkenness, toppled the icon of the idealized woman. \"If you're a woman and an alcoholic, your culture disowns you\".2 Our culture finds women's alcohol abuse unacceptable and simply doesn't want to know. Women who abuse alcohol are viewed as social failures and are blamed for their sickness. Nine out of ten men with alcoholic wives desert the relationship, whereas nine out of ten women stay with their alcoholic husbands. These statistics often reflect real economic hardship in the case of women being left alone. As women struggle to work and care for their children on their own, their drinking often escalates. They are not socially recognized. They and their problem with alcohol become invisible. They do not have a place in our male-dominated culture. Women's suffering from alcohol abuse is a very real experience. Yet others in society have misread her problem and have given both the drunk and alcoholic woman any number of negative labels - a bitch, a slut, a ball-breaker, a woman's libber, a neurotic or a mad woman. In the 1930's, psychologists began to understand and treat alcoholism as a disease. Since then, alcoholism has been recognized as a physically and psychologically addictive disease, particularly among the mental health profession and among thousands of recovering alcoholic members of AA. Debate continues among many as to the causes, symptoms, effects and treatment of alcoholism. However, women alcoholics are socially negated and neglected and there is a critical lack of research of and treatment for women alcoholics . \".fggrPg Alcohol abuse is perhaps best viewed on live our lives within a power structure where we, as women, often have relatively little power. If we suffer from alcoholism, we have even less control and opportunity for achieving autonomy. Many women mismanage and abuse alcohol at stressful times in their lives. This stress is often the result of an identity crisis. Separation, desertion, divorce, infidelity, the empty-nest syndrome, and post-parturn depression are common catalysts to women developing an alcohol problem. Feeling like a failure at her \"assigned\" role, being alone and ill-equipped to take charge of her life, many women internalize the negative judgments made about her. She blames herself for her problems and hides a continuum. Many recovering alcoholics see their alcoholism as a progressive disease which resulted in greater unman- ageability in many or all areas of their lives. They are unable to choose with any consistency whether or not they will drink. Once the drinking has begun, there is*no choice about whether to stop. The alcohol has seized control and the individual is rendered powerless over it. Alcoholism, as a social phenomenon, has several components - physical, psychosocial and cultural. Currently there is much theorizing about the hereditary or biological factor in explaining why some people drink abusively. No one has yet singled out an alcoholic gene but research does suggest a kind of physical defect exists among some people. Others call it a vulnerability or an allergy. Moreover, a woman's metabolism and hormonal balance has a special chemical reaction with alcohol. Many women experience in- tosication faster when they are pre-men- strual or on the Pill. Menopausal women suffering from depression, who also drink abusively, are high risks for developing alcoholism. Another position argued is that alcoholism is the result of a dietary deficiency .caused by insufficient enzymes needed to metabolize B vitamins in the body. Other researchers purport that lack of self-esteem and the inability to define oneself, rather than be \"other-controlled\" is a contributing factor in the development of a woman's alcoholism. As has been discussed, women develop behavior, self- \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 images, and self-esteem, life experiences .and goals different from that of men. We graphic by Randy Grant the fact that she has a problem with alcohol. Alcoholism in the final sense, means isolation - a lack of connectedness with the world. One drinks to forget, to escape, to feel and be someone else. This identity and role conflict is often further exacerbated by other factors - age, employment, marital status, ethnicity, sexual preference, and socio-economic status. The point is that there are many common collective aspects of the chronic condition of alcoholism. No two people are alike, so no two alcoholics are identical and yet, thoke who are recovering on a daily basis, share a knowledge of the pain and horror of alcoholism. They also share the experience of how being alcoholic women in a sexist society is a further impediment to personal growth and freedom. Informing ourselves about the causes, consequences, and tragedy of alcoholism is the first step we must take towards a greater understanding of the woman alcoholic who suffers today. A following \u00E2\u0080\u00A2article will look at treatment for women alcoholics, specifically, services within the Lower Mainland. Footnotes: lNorman E. Zinberg & Margaret H. Bean, \"Introduction - Alcohol Use, Alcoholism and the Problems of Treatment\" in Dynamic Approaches To The Understanding and Treatment of Alcoholism. The Free Press, USA, 1981, p. 1. 2Marian Sandmaier, The Invisible Alcoholics, Women and Alcohol Abuse in America. McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1980, p. 4. Understanding Alzheimer disease by Sarah Searl and Phyllis Forsythe Alzheimer Disease (senile dementia) affects .300,000 Canadians today. It is a progressive, neurological disease with no known cause or cure. Persons with Alzheimer Disease manifest progressive deterioration \"bf memory, intellect, personality and self- care over a period of 2 to 10 years. This almost always leads to a severely demented, helpless condition. Because of the long course of the disease, spouses and other family members are responsible for the person's care during 75% of the remainder of the victim's life. The severeness of the dementia in the later stages of Alzheimer Disease usually requires institutionalization in a nursing home or extended care facility. Coping with an invisible disease The earliest stage of Alzheimer Disease is accompanied by signs of memory loss, particularly of recent events. The affected person may be able to cover up this for- getfulness for quite a while. Eventually, however, family members begin to pick up signs of memory loss, as in one family which noted their mother gave up corresponding with friends and relatives entirely. When asked about this, she indicated that she couldn't remember the names of her friends' children. Other persons may give up balancing the chequebook or make an attempt to do so, but are unable. Coworkers may be the first to notice that something is wrong, as in one man, who when asked by his wife what he had done at work, replied, \"nothing\". The early stages of this disease are characterized by frustration and annoyance. Because the afflicted person often looks normal, it is hard to suspect a serious illness. Therefore support and understanding for the victim are often not forthcoming. Typical reactions of family members are criticizing the person, ignoring the symptoms, or in the case of many families, seeking psychiatric consultation, ^dfrafir^'' This latter step is taken due to the fact that the victim may show sighs of depres- 1 \u00C2\u00A5 Vital \u00E2\u0096\u00A0 C-il information \u00C2\u00A3d! on women's if^l health c\u00C2\u00A9! issues you won't find anywhere al CANADI/ else Deals only with O issues as they affect women: C reproductive health, nutrition, sexuality, violence, drug abuse, '^te?**' mental health, 1 and more . 1 D Individual $8 D Group or Library $15 1 Mail cheque to: Healthsharing P.O. Box 230, Station M 1 Toronto M6S 4T3 | 1 Send subscription to: Citu Code 1 Hi - \u00E2\u0080\u0094 -- \u00E2\u0080\u0094 -_\u00E2\u0080\u0094\u00E2\u0080\u0094 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 --.--.J sion. Perhaps a spouse has recently died, or the last child has just left home. Apathy and withdrawal are attributed to some external event, and not to the real cause. In some instances psychiatric treatment is instituted - such as electroconvulsive or drug therapy. Although often stopped upon further understanding of the disease, depression remains the main diagnosis of certain individuals suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. The fact that a victim has had to undergo psychiatric care before a correct diagnosis is made often leaves families with feelings of guilt. Occasionally there is residual anger against health professionals as well, which can complicate future relationships with professional caregivers. Fortunately, as more professionals become aware of, the nature of the illness, a correct diagnosis can be given to families earlier in the course of the disease, thereby eliminating inadvertent treatment. Middle stages of Alzheimer disease Generally a victim may be entering the middle stages of this illness by the time the family receives a diagnosis. For the caregiver, it is a time of re-ordering one's priorities. A spouse may feel he must retire to look after a victim, or a woman who has been out of the workforce for many years may be forced to find a job. As a person with Alzheimer Disease does not become demented overnight, there is a long slow process of role deterioration. A woman who has been a homemaker may slowly find she is unable to cook, clean or shop. This second stage of Alzheimer Disease imposes many hardships on the caregiver as well. The needs of the victim may require that she give up most activities outside the home that gave her life meaning. Going out becomes difficult unless someone is available to stay with the victim. The victim may also resent outsiders, considering them intruders in the home. Violent outbursts or constant complaining can be sources of difficulty for the caregiver at this time. Because many activities require, cognitive abilities which are no longer intact, ordinary pastimes such as watching TV are beyond some Alzheimer patients. Being unable to follow the show, they may pester the caregiver to turn it off. Walks are generally well tolerated and give the victim and the caregiver exercise. Cost of remodelling the bathroom to make it safer, or increased medical bills, can cause money worries for the caregiver as well. Some spouses will go to extreme measures to seek out a cure for the dis ease through expensive means. Others, content with traditional sources of medical care, become disillusioned with the medical practitioner who appears too busy to cope with their problems and concerns. People who are frightened or embarrassed by the person's behavior may stop visiting, which further decreases the victim's and caregivers' contact with the outside world. Other families may draw together in adversity and share the grieving process, which can enhance the family's functioning. ' During these stages community support services can be particularly helpful for persons who are caring for their loved one at home. In some communities there is help available through home-makers and community health agencies. However, other services are needed, particularly more daycare centres, chronic homecare, hospital beds for respite care, and home visitors. Tough economic times make restraint measures in these areas particularly hard on caregivers who are trying to support the victim at home. The terminal phases When institutional care becomes necessary, as it does eventually in most cases of Alzheimer Disease, the grief process initiated by this traumatic event is further complicated by the fact that families often find few nursing homes that are willing or able to care for the patient. Given the absence of specific medical treatments and formal rehabilitation programs for victims of Alzheimer Disease, those who do get institutionalized are often drugged and/or simply left to sit in the hallways. Other families have found psychiatric hospitals more suitable in terms of care; however this adds a further stigma to a family already burdened with grief. The distance from home to the institution where the victims are finally placed can also decrease contact with their family and loved ones. Part of the solution to this problem includes the establishment of nursing homes specifically for Alzheimer patients, where family members can continue to participate actively in their care. Strengthening the morale, emotional well- being and caregivlng skills of the family are the most important factors in attaining optimal health and function of victims and caregivers in Alzheimer Disease. The family support group is one way to share coping strategies, information and grief. In British Columbia there are now many such groups available. More information is available by writing to: Alzheimer Support Association of B.C. P.O. Box 86609, North Vancouver. B.C. V7L 4L2. Qr by phoning 922^1129. Calgary conference Early in the summer, a group of women got together and began to talk about what it might be like to have a Health Collective in Calgary. About the same time, the Alberta Status of Women Action Committee (ASWAC) announced it had received funding to organize regional conferences around the province. 'For Our.Own Good', a women's health conference held in Calgary on Remembrance Day week-end was the product of that union. Besides the usual line up of work shops on everything from Herbology to Therapy to Body Image, there were a lot of extras, appreciated by all who attended. First, the community centre hosting the event was brightened up with dozens of international feminist posters. There was a scrumptious and cheap lunch of vegetarian delights with enough nutrition to keep us going all week. A dance performance with acoustic accompaniment talked about the witch burnings and reminded us that these women were also healers...a theme that tied in directly to Barbara Erhenreich's talk in that same auditorium the night before. Ehrenreich spoke to about 200 people about the vicious cycle created by allopathic medicine, and about women's role in healing through the ages. A post-conference meeting with Debbie Haw- lett from the Vancouver.Women's Health Collective helped lay the foundation for the establishment of an ongoing women's Health Collective in Calgary. '83 Kinesis 13 \"Sexual assault? That's something that happens to other people or other peoples' kids!\" Are you suffering from the: 'It will never happen to me or mine' myth? Well, let me offer you some enlightment in the form of a few statistics: \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Conservative figures indicate that one in four female children will have some experience with sexual assault before the age of 13 years. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Statistics for male children are less well known but figures estimate from 10-15% of male children will experience sexual assault. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Approximately 10% of the children who are assaulted are under five years old. There are, also, more children between the ages of 8 years to 12 years old reporting al assault than teenagers. There is no real profile of the individual who assaults children. Statistics show that 97% of the offenders are male, and that 75% of the offenders are known by the child, but we have to face the unnerving fact that people we know and care about could be a danger to our children. This is not easy information to deal wit by Anita Tremblay-Roberts Four young women, 11-13 years did, stand casually leaning against the wall; hands in back pockets, thumbs hooked in front pockets, pelvises thrust forward and lecherous sneers contorting their usually innocent faces. \"Hey baby! Where ya goin'?\" one of them jeers at 11 year old Anna who is walking by. \"Howja liketa go all the way with me?\" one of her 'mates' jibes in. One of the others lets go with a long 'wolf whistle and the fourth steps forward and blocks Anna's path, looks her up and down and says: \"Nice tits.\" Anna blushes deeply at this remark, her shoulders are up around her ears and her two hands fly up, one to cover her small breasts and the other to suppress the giggle escaping her lips. \"O.K.\", I say, \"Now let's try it again, the assertive way.\" The exercise is repeated and this time Anna makes strong eye contact with each person that she passes and when stopped with the 'nice tits' remark she stands calm and centred, hands relaxed by her sides, eyes unflinching, face totally relaxed and says in a full bodied even voice: \"I don't like that remark.\" \"Aw c'mon...what's the matter, can't you take a compliment?\" (the 'guy'). \"I said ...I don't like that remark.\" She repeats calmly but with more emphasis. The 'guy' squirms under her gaze, shrugs and walks off mumbling under his breath. The whole group bursts out in applause. \"So\", I ask, \"How was that for you as the guys?\" They respond: \"It was really hard to hassle her the second time when she was looking right at me.\" \"Yeah, me too!\" \"When she wasn't looking it was easy and I felt like reaching out and grabbing her, but when she spoke to me like that I just felt like, uncomfortable and like, what's the point?\" \"Well, Anna, how did you feel?\" I ask. She says, \"The first time was terrible... I just wanted to die! The second time I felt more in control, like, stronger but it was really hard not to look away.\" \"What do you do if an older guy offers you money?\" thirteen-year-old Laura asks. \"That really happened to me. once. A guy came up to me when I was playing video games and said here and put some, quarters down in front of me. I though why not? So I used them and then later I saw him following me in the mall. I ran and I guess I lost him but I was sure scared!\" \"Good, I'm glad you brought that up...Let's role-play that exact situation. Here's the rule: there is a secret code in our society that says: If you say yes to the money - you've said yes to the man!\" We then discuss at length men, money and power and I give examples that they will encounter when they get older and begin dating and going out to bars and night clubs. Their faces are attentive, they ask serious questions, they are so hungry for information and skills to deal with this exciting but frightening new world that they are teetering on the brink of. We end the class by forming a circle and punching and kicking in unison. It is our fifth week together and their voices are full and unself-conscious as they 'KYAII' with each front snap kick and well aimed punch. As well as assertiveness and punching and kicking, I teach girls and women how to break holds: wrist holds, choke holds, tiie&i Selves; hair pulling, arm locks. I teach them that they have the right to say No - even to people that they like - that they have total rights and-control over* their bodies and that they can say, even to their fathers uncles, brothers, teachers: \"I don't like the way you're touching me/talking to me/ looking at me.\" I tell them that adults can make mistakes; I tell them to tell if they experience a 'funny' (confusing) touch and that they will be believed. I leave my classes each time with a deep sense of satisfaction and joy knowing that I am giving these children and young women a sense of their own power. I firmly believe that even young children can cope with the facts about sexual assault. Although I understand some parents' resistance to talking to their children about sexual assault. in my experience they have felt empowered, not more fearful or jaded, by gaining the facts and the'skills to deal with them. I am currently teaching my program at six elementary schools in Vancouver. If your child's.school is not offering my program and you would like your child to attend, suggest to your parent representative or principal that the school sponsor one soon. I am also interested in doing a \"How to talk to your children about sexual abuse\" workshop If enough parents are interested. For any further information contact me Monday evenings at 874-1968.. Classes for adults begin Wednesday, January 18th at Kits High School, 7:30-9:30pm for 8 weeks. (Self Defence and Assertiveness - fee approximately $30~- register at Vancouver School Board, 731-1131). Also, Assertiveness Training for Women - Tuesday, January 17th at Vancouver Technical School, 2600 E. Braodway, 7:30-9:00 pm for 6 weeks - fee approximately $20. \u00E2\u0080\u0094 14 Kinesis December '83 Where were the kids? by Cole Dudley and Susan O'Donnell Where were the children during the strike? While some were on the lines supporting parents, teachers, or ideals, others stayed home confused and alienated. Many .children had parents who explained their view of the strike - pro or con - while others had no, idea of what was going on at all. Moreover, each child had peer pressure to contend with. One child went to school with her mother, a strike supporter, to see what was happening in all the confusion. Some of her classmates were inside the school and called to her to come in. One of her teachers crossed and set up classes while her other teacher stood beside her on the line. W^M^i A sister and brother coming to school together found that one's teacher went in while the other's stayed out. The brother was able to go to school but his little sister had to hang around in the schoolyard. Classes were divided, with many children being sent to school and the rest staying out. One boy went to school and resented his friends for having a \"holiday\" while he had to stay in school. Who knows what feelings could have arisen if the strike. had gone on any longer. How did this '/ffl\u00C2\u00A7Sji\u00C2\u00AB?> happen? Why were children used as pawns in this political action? It was disappointing to see them caught in this kind of dilemma: forcing children to make a major decision without having given them accurate information with which to make a choice. The children were forgotten by the government, the school board and by Operation Solidarity. Their major source of information was the news media which seemed to take great delight in covering the plight of little children abandoned by mean teachers. All they heard was how much they were hurting and what they were going to lose. Not only was the coverage biased, it was incorrect. Teachers were repeatedly referred to as \"striking\" and most of the children interviewed were either from private schools, which were not affected, or from schools in more affluent areas. The government and the school board, for all their protestations of concern for the children, made no adequate provisions for them. Operation Solidarity also did not address the needs of the children. When the school board tried to divide the teachers by slapping on injunctions, the negotiations could have been stepped up to insure the inclusion of children's rights. BCGEU bargained for the workers who take care of the children but not for the services those children require. Teachers did not discuss the strike in their classrooms because of the fear of being accused of manipulating students.. Consequently, most school children were given no information by their teachers or principals and had very little idea of what the issues were about. The Lower Mainland Solidarity Coalition did make one attempt to integrate children into the fight against the repressive government cuts. They organized a Picnic Against the Budget and included children on the planning committee. In this situation kids were able to pick up information about the budget and put it into their own words so as to discuss it with their friends. They also had input into developing a format for the picnic which kids would enjoy. We do our children a disservice when we exclude them from politics. It is important for anyone involved with progressive movements to consider the effects of our actions on children and to provide them with the information to use in making their decisions. In the event of another job action by schools, parents and teachers should act together and share responsibility for the to families and children at risk. . \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Regional coordinators: specialists who provide back-up skills and advice to front line workers in hcild welfare, income assistance, mental handicap, etc. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Specialized services: Includes Child Abust Teams, Post-Partum Counselling, Homemakers, and Provincial In-Service teams (training program for children with behavior and communication problems) \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Children's Resources: Residential treatment and care residences for children who cannot be cared for in forster homes because of emotional, social or physical problems. Twenty-four centres to be closed. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Children's Resources: Non-residential. Includes street workers, school-based workers, stress care workers, pre-school of emotionally disturbed children, family centres. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Needs test eliminated for Day Care, Home- maker and Special Care Home Agreements: this will result in more and higher user fees. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Pre-natal Program for Native mothers in downtown Vancouver cut. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Big Sister and Big Brothers receive a 10- 20% cut in their grant. oPre-school observation unit at the Children's Hospital has been closed. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Planned Parenthood cut by 24%. This list of cutbacks is not complete - many agencies receiveing grants from the Ministry of Health, Labour, etc. have also been cut. As well, welfare rates have been frozen at the 1982 level. Information compiled by B.C. Assn. of Social Workers, August 29/83). children. This could be accomplished by the formation of an advisory committee consisting of teachers, parents, older children and day care staff whose mandate might be to decide on the actions of the school as a whole. This committee could also have authority to approach the school boards. In this way all those affected by the decisions of the school boards would have a forum to express their views and have access to the decisions being made. It is very important to look closely at the events of this strike and consider the position of children in our society. In a fight concerned with workers' and human rights, how could we ignore the children - the ultimate beneficiaries of these rights? The answer seems to lie in the attitude that prevails in our society. Children are seen and riot heard and are excluded from all controversial topics affecting their lives. Only when they come of age are their opinions valued and are they allowed to participate in decisions. Having been excluded all along, they lack much of the information needed to make these decisions. As children are growing up and forming their ideas, it is important to address their curiosity about the world and to provide safe and educational places for them to express themselves. They need a voice in activities which affect them and access to the information needed to make these decisions. As Michele Hoeppner (13 years) said in her speech at the Picnic, \"We should fight to get a new Human Rights Code, and make sure that kids are included, because they were excluded from the first one, and lots of people just ignore us.\" Services to children cut by new budget: \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Family Support workers:, in-home services 111 Teaching: by Hilary Mackey As I waited in the yard of L'ecole Bilingue, an ancient feeling of nervousness came over me; obviously I haven't made peace with my ghosts of school authority. I was there to interview Marisa Ortho-Pallovicini. and I was waiting for the sound of the bell that would empty her classroom of grade six students. A young blond girl of about ten ran by, reminding me of my friend Marion, when we were in grade six. I cast my mind back to that year, and remembered a sincere but stern teacher whose idea of a controversial topic was the manner in which Tom Thompson died, and that was in the controversial sixties. After the bell rang and the majority of the kids spilled out of the portable, I read the work on the wall while I waited for Marisa to finish up with the stragglers. I read a number of poems written on white paper, each framed with a different colour of construction paper which was also the title of the poem. The first one I read was called \"Black\", and I was pulled into the imagery, surprised by the depth and insight of the writing. I found the rest also to be thoughtful and original; sensin_ tive. No hackneyed phrases intended to sound correct or poetic. Finally, I sat with the woman who communicates to these students that their own ideas are okay to write about. We took up our conversation on a square of indoor- outdoor carpet in front of their desks, where she and the kids sit for their discussions. She's been teaching for about seven years, five of them in Vancouver, and through all of that time she's been trying to teach kids to think for them- by Emma Kivisild \"I have no idea how they would be dealt with. If I knew a child in an abusive situation I would call the Ministry (of Human Resources), but I don't know what kind of treatment they would get.\" The words come from Stephanie Crane, a former worker on the now 'restrained' (i.e. dismantled) Child Abuse Team. That a professional in the field can recommend no resources in the Lower Mainland to an abused child is a reflection of what Crane says amounts to a \"definite choice\" on the part of the Socred government to ignore child abuse altogether. \"We know how to treat abuse, to a great extent, and we're not treating it, because our government has made a decision that this society at this point chooses not to protect their kids, not to prevent abuse that is preventable.\"(At a time when other provinces (Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta) are escalating their child abuse prevention and treatment programs, B.C. is the only province that is cutting back. The Child Abuse Team, a consultative and assessment agency that worked under the auspices of the Ministry of Human Resources (MHR), was not the only program to go. Post Partum Counselling, which provided early preventative counselling, has also been cut, as has Parents and Children Together (P.A.C.T.). P.A.C.T. was an intensive counselling and parenting program for abusive families where MHR or the courts were already involved, and where the children were in most cases already in the care of the Ministry. The program had been funded as a demonstration project by the National Ministry of Health and Welfare, and had a high success rate. Other cuts that of necessity affect the plight of abused children are the proposed elimination of- family support workers from MHR, and the reduction of MHR staff in general with the imminent loss of many of its workers. The only services left are a Child abuse Mo5f6-C P ttim cwt few private agencies, some individual therapists, hospital programs, existing MHR apprehension and foster home services, and the Zenith Helpline. Each has its own \"substantial drawbacks when called upon to bear the burden of what is a massive social problem. Hospital programs, for instance, only deal with that portion of abusers and victims who come into contact with the hospital, and cannot provide enough long-term care. Individual therapists cannot possible provide the support network necessary for effective prevention and treatment. Crane points out that she has investigated foster homes that were in themselves abusive; no mandatory training or education in treatment of abuse is part of the foster parent program. With no viable additional resources available, the maintenance of the helpline becomes a trap for the children, who are always in more danger if they disclose the fact that abuse is happening, and now are more than likely to be left with no support to deal with the disclosure. \"It's taking the identification of cases back to where we were more than ten years ago,\" says Crane. Margo Buck, who was director of the P.A.C.T. program, elaborates: \"We'll move back to where only the really drastic cases are identified, those where the medical staff can tell it's abuse without a social worker even being there, and children speaking out selves, an original goal in a school system that is based on propagating values of the dominant culture, the patriarchy. At first, students find it difficult to give their own opinion, which they must do in the current events class where they summarize an issue brought up by a newpaper article. They examine language, to learn to separate fact from opinion, in the media. Marisa's intent is to show the students that they must learn enough on any subject to decide what they themselves believe. She will discuss any issues that come out of the current events class or the one on family life and human sexuality, which she started with a couple of other teachers, two years ago. The topics which arise include nuclear disarmament, ecology, gay rights, racism, poverty, and relationships with their parents. She started a peace choir three years ago, which performs at nuclear demonstrations, peace walks and on CBC. Singing songs about peace helps kids to get over the feeling of despair that accompanies awareness about the nuclear threat. They discuss other ways in which they can make a difference to the things which are important in their lives; kids at that age have a strong sense of justice. Marisa also uses songs and books with strong images of women to counter the sex role stereotyping that is still prevalent in the education system, and where it is necessary to use books that still use sexist language, she changes the pronouns as they are being read. The result is that the girls are very pleased and the boys feel threatened. Although she believes it is important to understand that the boys feel threatened it is more important not to back down. Through the year she brings up topics like International Women's Day, and works at making the girls feel proud of being girls. The human sexuality course is taught to mixed groups because the teachers who set it up realized that there can be no respect without understanding. The result is that the children are much better friends because they are encouraged both to have a strong sense of self and to appreciate the differences between themselves and members of the other sex. Marisa works on improving this feeling of respect by getting boys and girls to cooperate on tasks in the classroom, like sending a boy and a girl to get the film projector. The teachers in grade seven have related to her that the kids coming from her classes know how to ask questions. Some of the kids go through changes in grade seven, succumbing to the peer pressure which is strong in that grade, but Marisa feels it is a stage we all go through and that eventually they will return to their own sense of what is right and wrong. Of course not all of the attention Marisa receives is favorable, since controversy brings up a lot of fear, but she deals with the negative feedback by reinforcing that she does not shove her own views down, the throats of the kids and that it is important for them to realize that there are many opinions on any issue. Marisa says she'll continue to bring up these issues as long as she is teaching, but that she is presently about ready for a break to replenish her personal resources. December '83 Kinesis IS all the worker is there for is apprehension.\" There is speculation that the increased number of identified cases while the Child Abuse Team was in operation was one reason for its loss of funding. Buck goes on to point out that, \"We want to deal with child abuse as a social problem, see where it is coming from in this society, and if you have a specialized unit (eg. the C.A.T.), then you get data that broadens your whole understanding of it as a social problem. Even if an individual is working very well as an MHR worker, they just don't get enough cases or time for this analysis.\" Crane notes that the cancellation of all these programs will likely mean an exodus of skilled workers who see no opportunities in their field in the province - a wealth of knowledge and expertise that it will be difficult to recover. Couple this probable loss with the inevitable escalation of abuse when it is not dealt with, and the Socreds' attempt to ignore the issue becomes more clearly unconscionable. Margo Buck: \"Almost any assault outside the family unit is committed by someone with an early history of abuse. By not intervening, (the government) is increasing the potential number of abusers two-, three-, four-fold every generation. That's what gets me most upset: that not only would they pretend that it doesn't exist:, but even ignore the fact that it is a problem that is getting larger and larger.\" Green Thumb Players, a children's theatre company in Vancouver, has been operating a child sexual abuse program that was started in January, 1982. The \"Yes Feeling/ No Feeling\" project, which has inspired a similar program in Winnipeg, is in jeopardy because of lack of funding by the provincial government. The theatrical aspect of the project is two series of sketches performed in schools that focus on children's need to learn to recognize their own feelings and respond appropriately to touch from adults. The sketches are but the tip of the iceberg, capping extensive sessions with the particular teachers, parents, and community resource people (MHR, police, abuse teams) involved. The educational aspect ensures that disclosure is made as safe as possible for the child - a possibility that is jeopardized by the severe Socred cuts of child abuse services. Green Thumb is currently assessing what changes they must make. The company is applying for funding from the federal government, and the program may continue from January to June 1984. Requests for \"Yes Feeling/ No Feeling\" must come through the school (which has to raise $500), via Superintendent John Wormsbecker's office. ^-\u00E2\u0080\u0094\u00E2\u0080\u0094^ ...'.'...,. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2\u00E2\u0096\u00A0 In case you didn't know. . ..children's literature as such didn't exist in the western world until about the middle of the 18th c. After the invention of the printing press and prior to the 18th c, \u00C2\u00BBooks for kids were mainly illustrated lphabets, etiquette manuals and lessons rom scriptures, i.e. aids to literacy, nd social and moral instruction. : ( : \u00E2\u0096\u00A0 Iff: Like any literature, children's litera- Bture reflects and helps shape the times Bin which it's written. To-day there's a \u00E2\u0096\u00A0movement to scrutinize the old favorites \u00E2\u0096\u00A0that many of us read as kids - Grimm's I Fairy Tales, Peter Pan, Tom Sawyer, Wind | in the Willows, the Just So Stories, Winnie the Pooh - and new potential favorites being published, and to be cr^^alofthemforthesex-ro. race and class) stereotypes. There's no denying the vivid imagery of the fairy tales or the cosy, warm appeal of little animal heroes in traditional bedside storybooks, but think back to some of the classics you loved as\" a child and be aware of the dearth of female characters and the severely circumscribed and often very negative roles assigned to the few female characters there were. The following lists provide some alternatives to those classics. Thajt these lists are by no means complete attests to the amount of work that has been done In recent years to unearth and create \u00E2\u0096\u00A0progressive reading material for young people. | 1 Lollipop Power, Inc. is a feminist collective from North Carolina that writes and publishes books for kids that offer accounts of alternative roles and life-styles. The books listed below have simple story-lines for young children. Some are a little didactic in the effort to be an antidote to stereotypes, and. the graphics are not all \u00E2\u0096\u00A0inspirational. Some in which the instructional element is subtler have a lot of appeal. All of the books validate the experience of kids who live in non-traditional families. (Annotations by Judy Hopkins) \just Momma and Me. By Christine , Engla Eber. Regina is adopted and at first it's just Momma and her. Then Karl moves in, her mother becomes pregnant and Regina feels a little threatened. But while her Mom is at the hospital, Regina shares her hamburger sub and her feelings with Karl and then is more able to share her Mom's love and attention when she comes home with| the new baby. (Ages 4-8) These books are primarily written Two newcomers to an all-girls' for teenagers, rather than kids, but are included here because of the importance of good books with gay themes for adolescents. The Vancouver Public Library has an excellent annotated booklist, \"Gay Themes in YA Fiction\"(YA denotes 'young adult') from which these selections are taken. The list -includes a variety of recommended reading for adults, much of which comes from the feminist and gay liberation movements. It is also available at no charge from the library. school become inseparable friends ...and then realize that their shared love is more than friendship. Both are afraid to voice the desire to physically hold the other, and when, almost inadvertantly, they find themselves sleeping in the same bed and holding each other, they are washed over with guilt, and are afraid that Chloe's mother might have seen them. Rather than talking about what has happened, they recoil, assuming the feeling is not mutual, and the friendship almost ends. The book concludes Annie on my mind. By Nancy Garden, on a positive but. nebulous note. Farrar, Straus, & Grioux. 1982. 15 yrs. and up. 11111111111 Counter Play. By Anne Snyder. NAL, 1981. $1.95 Paper. 14-18 yrs. Liza and Annie have both gone to .': , , . . Brad has always been a loner till separate universities and have had , ^ _ ^ TT , he comes to Fort Hanmng and meets little contact for a few months mainly because Liza has pulled away. However, as Liza remembers eeting Annie and falling in love ith her; of realizing, first pain [fully and then with joy, that she is a lesbian; and finally the hearing at school and the dismissa f two gay teachers who have be- Alex. They both play on the football team and love camping - they immediately become best friends and shortly thereafter Alex tells Brad that he is gay. Brad accepts this and continues the friendship, and in fact goes to great lengths to help Alex cover up his gayness. In Christina's Toolbox. Homan. Christina loves to build and fix things using the tools in her toolbox. This.is a simple how-to book with appealing illustrations. (Ages 3-6) Amy and the Cloud Basket. By Ellen Pratt. This is a tale told in rhyme about Amy McLune of the village of Pan where people work to uncover the clouds from the sun by day and the moon by night. Amy objects to the traditional sex- roles in this important work and refuses to be denied the chance to try what the men have traditionally done. After initial ar- ' gument the roles are integrated, each person does the job they prefer, and Amy is applauded. (Ages 3-8) ILots of Mommies. By Jane Sever- I ance. Emily and her mother share a house with three other women who all act as parents and role-models and combine energies to make a pleasant home. Emily is laughed at when she tells the other kids that she has lots of mommies, but after an accident that brings all four of them to school, she is believed, accepted and even a little envied. (Ages 3-8) come unwittingly involved (yet who X\" theJr seni\u00C2\u00B0r h^h school year encourage and support Liza and the other students and the foot- ball coach learn about Alex \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 basis of the story is Brad's struggle to continue to support Alex when suspicion that Brad 1 v, Doll face. By Doborah Hautzig. , . % ,, c ni n .-ii in-.o a\u00C2\u00AB -,,- /a, -,,. also gay inevitably follows Greenwillow, 1978. $9.75/$1.75 Pa- JU ,. -i, . \u00C2\u00AB\u00E2\u0080\u00A2 -. \". ' y 'v positive ending with its affirma- per. 14-20 yrs. *.. c c . ,\. , , ., | tion of friendship and the avoid- This is a low-key, but fairly, ance of gay stereotyping make this accepting story about lesbianism, book one of the best on this list. nd Americans of the San Juans. By Dianne BE llBJAimi-e) , she reaffirms her love and \u00E2\u0096\u00A0 ^Hphones Annie long distance to arrange a meeting during Christmas. the The The following are books around anti-nuclear and peace themes. The list and further resources are available from United Nations Education (see p. 20). All of the \u00E2\u0096\u00A0 books are available through the Lower Mainland public library system. For ages 4-^8... The Pig War. By Betty Baker. How the British fought over one Bang, Bang You're Dead. By Louise Fitzhugh. Playing war is different when people really get hurt. War. and Peas. By Michael Foreman. Depicts a strawberry-cream-pie battle between the hungry animals I and the overfed army of the Fat King. Foreman also wrote The Two Giants. Potatoes, Potatoes. By Anita Lobel A mother tries unsuccessfully to protect her sons from war by building a wall around them. The Hating Book. By Charlotte Zolotow. Two girls carry on their own cold war, but discover the source of their misunderstanding. For ages 8-12... The Devil In Vienna. By Doris Orgel. Two girls - one Jewish and one not - try to save their friend- ship during the Hitler era. Days of Terror. By B. Smucker A Mennonite family in revolutionary Russia is persecuted for their pacifist beliefs. The Wonderful 0. By James Thurbei A tale of a town terrorized by vandals who demand that the letter \"o\" be stricken from the language. How The Children Stopped The Ware By Jan Wahl. The children gather strength in numbers and march right into their father's battle. Non-fiction: Hiroshima. By Marion Yass. Written and laid out for easy use by students, this book details the bombing and aftermath |~ of Hiroshima. My Shalom, My Peace. By Jacob Zim. Painting and Poems by Jewish and Arab Children. Filled with empathy for the \"enemy\". Biographies: Sadako And The 1000 Paper Cranes By Eleanor Coerr. Introduces the tragedy of Hiroshima without gore or terror. Sadako died of leukemia nine years after the bombing. (Ages 9 and up) Hiroshima No Pika. By Toshi Maru- ki. One child s account of the bomb ed city. (Ages 10 and up) These three are little books - 3 1/2 x3 1/2, written by Robert Munsch with excellent, detailed, tumorous illustrations by Michael I 'artchenko and Sami- Suomalainen. *Mud Puddle. Anniek Press, Ltd., [Toronto, 1979. |jule Ann, scrubbed and clean, eads outside to play but is am- ushed by a mud puddle and goes home with mud from head to toe, five times in one day. Finally she scares the mud puddle away with the help of some smelly orange soap. (Ages 3-6) Jonathan Cleaned Up - Then He Heard a Sound or Blackberry Sub- oay Jam. Jonathan is upset when his living- room becomes a subway stop and crowds trample through his home. He gets no help or sympathy from the Mayor, and finally discovers [the little man who sits behind the broken computer at City Hall and does all of the work for the city. The Paper Bag Princess. A dragon blasts Princess Elizabeth's castle and carries off her groom-to-be. Elizabeth, wearing a paper bag because her clothes are all burned up, sets off to rescue Prince Ronald. She succeeds, but Ronald is not impressed with her scruffy appearance... and Elizabeth is not impressed with Ronald's values, and dumps him. (All ages) Many of the following titles (all of those not marked by an asterisk) are recommendations of the Vancouver Public Library's ing Beauty, Meet the Practical Princess\" booklist. The list is far too long to be printed in its entirety here, but is available at no charge from the library. It will be updated in 1984. The other books were chosen because they have charm, appeal and beautiful graphics. The storylines range from inoffensive to liberated. You can read them aloud, relax and enjoy the delightful aspects without having to flinch at sexist themes or violence or condescension. The heroes are mostly kids themselves who take initiative in solving problems, dealing with frustration or bad feelings, and learning about the world. (Annotation of additional books by Judy Hopkins. ) Bonny McSmithers, You're Driving Me Dithers, by Sue Ann Alderson. When her mother gets angry at the slightest thing, Bonnie goes to outrageous lengths to bring her round. dark and the unknown. Gorgeous graphics. (Ages 4-7) *The Day the Fairies Went on Strike. By Linda Briskin and Maureen Fitzgerald. Press Gang Publishers, Vancouver, 1982. Hester looks at a long wait for her wish for a cherry tree to be granted, because the Me-Firsts keep the fairies overworked with their unreasonable demands. Hester borrows from her Mom's experiences at work and helps the fairies organize a strike. Appeal- ing characters and cute illustra- who wants to do what boys do, is no exception. Her liberated parents and a young friend see her through the crisis. Jennifer Takes Over P.S. 24. By Mary Lystad. A little girl fantasizes about the things that she would do if she , were in charge of her school. *Counting on an Elephant. By Jill McDonald. Puffin Books, 1975. Sam goes to the store to buy some ginger for his Mom. On the way he meets 1 witch, 2 dogs, 3 tom- especially of the fairies, cats, etc. and interacts with them i*The Travels of Ms. \u00E2\u0096\u00A0Rosemary Allison and Ann Powell. [Women's Press, Toronto, 1973. Ms. Beaver makes her way to the big city where she dams up a stream in Riverdale Park and is dragged off to the dogpound. The children instigate a protest of her arrest. Authority is challenged and her lake is pronounced first safe, then legal. (Ages 4-8) *Ms. Beaver Goes West. Women's Educational Press, Toronto, 1983. (Ages 4-8) Meal One. By Iver Cutler. An uproaring fantasy. A boy and his mother plant a plum stone that grows into a furniture-eating tree. The mother is protray- ed as a real companion and friend to her son. *Good Times, Bad Times - Mummy and Me. By Priscilla Galloway. University of Toronto Press, 1980. \"I hate Mommy, I really do.\" A little girl states her resentment of her working mother who leaves home evarly and isn't home for lunch and won't let her have a dog. She also tells how her mom watches her bath and tickles her and reads to her and takes her out for Chinese food and says at the end \"I love my Munimy\" too. Black and white graphics are simple and expressive. (Ages 4-7) *How the Sun was Brought Back to the Sky. By Mirra Ginsburg. Ham- ish Hamilton Children's Books, Ltd., London, 1975. in various kindly and considerate ways till the fog clears and - lo and behold! - they discover that they have been walking on a giant elephant. Sam gets home kind ents but not the children. There is a relaxed, companionable relationship between mother, daughtei and nature. (Ages 3-6) Plenty For Three. By Lisl Moak Skorpen. Celebrates the joys of childhood with simplicity, making the sexes into friends and not rivals. Martha's Birthday. By Rosemary Wells. Martha's adventures while wearing a pair of ugly, homemade Argyle socks to her aunt's house. Amusing and very real. The Practical Princess. By Jay Williams. The Heroine of this tale, by a modern author, is an unusual princess, who saves her kingdom late but his parents aren't cross. from a dragon and rescues the Graphics are dramatic and colour- prince. \u00C2\u00A3$$$$W- ful. (Ages 3-6) \u00E2\u0096\u00A0^Blueberries for Sal McCloskey By Robert Puffin Books, 1976. This is a relatively old book . (1948) with attractive black and white graphics. Sal and her mother go blueberry picking and run into Little Bear and his mother, to the alarm of the par- William's Doll. By Charlotte Zolotow. William wanted a doll to hug, but his father gave him trains and trucks. Only grandmother, realizing that every child has various needs, finds just the doll for him. . Chicks, snail, magpie, rabbit, Ms. Beaver comes to B.C. to visit Cousin Penny and finds mountains and valleys laid waste by the J.P. McGee Logging Co. The beavers *uck \"|d hedgehog journey to the dam up the river that floats the h\u00C2\u00B0me f,the STM ^atJ^s dl?aD~ peared from the sky.This is a pretty and positive little book with cheerful, colourful, beautiful graphics. (Ages 3-6) *Free to Be - You and Me. Edited by Francine Klagsburn. McGraw- Hill Book Co., N.Y., 1974. logs to the. sawmill and refusi remove it until J.P. agrees to take only the trees he needs and to replant afterwards. (Ages 4-8 to I Madeline I A class! I gutsy Ludwig Bemelmans. picture book with a ctical orphan heroine who has her appendix removed at the hospital. December '83 Kinesis *What the Wind Told. By Betty Boegehold. Scholastic Book Services, 'N.Y., N.Y., 1974. . The wind visits Tossy who is lying sick in bed and tells her stories that go on behind the windows across the street. It's an imaginative, non-judgmental look at fantasy lifestyles that helps lay at rest fears of the This project of Ms. Foundation is a well-known collection of stories poems, photographs, pitcutes and songs that \"dispel the myths that distort reality - lik^e pretty- equals-good, and all-mothers-stay- in-the-kitchen and big boys don't cry.\" If you haven't seen this book yet, get a copy for your kids or just for yourself. (Ages 6-12) 12) Nice Little Girls. By Elizabeth Levy. No child wants to be ridiculed for being different and Jackie, The Endless Steppe. By Esther Hautzig. An autobiographical account of the hardships and joys of a Jewish girl and her family, evacu- summer more stimulating than she ated from Poland to a Siberian OHtf kids Runaway Summer. By Nina Bawden. Eleven-year-old Mary makes her had hoped, when she and Simon hide an illegal immigrant boy. Enchantress From The Stars. By Sylvia Engdahl. The heroine and her father from a highly philosophical civilization attempt to prevent a techni cal society from destroying the planet of a stone age people. Science fiction. Harriet The Spy. By Louise Fitzhugh. Harriet, an imaginative and intelligent girl, is an outcast after she writes with extreme honesty about her classmates, and Engel Randall, spies without qualms on all her neighbours. concentration camp. Womenfolk And Fairy Tales, ed. Rosemary Minard. A collection of traditional fairy tales in which the heroines show resourcefulness and courage. The Island Of The Blue Dolphins. By Scott O'Dell. An adventure story in simple and touching style pits a young Pacific Indian girl against dangerous natural and man-made obstacles on the isolated Island of San Nicholas. The Almost Year. By Florence Rumours and hints of occult power surround a tough, self-centred \u00C2\u00A7 Julie Of The Wolves. By Jean black girl who comes into the George. lives of a white family. A lost, young Eskimo girl survives Wings. By Adrienne Richard. by making friends with a family A young glrl growing up in an off! f wolves. Her intelligence, resourcefulness and heroism meticulously observed are totally believable . A Long Way From Verona. By Jane Gardam. In a witty yet bittersweet style, a teenage girl who wants to be a writer recounts growing up in England during World War II. beat community in California in the 1920's, dreams of becoming an aviatrix. The Pigman.' By Paul Zindel. Lorraine and John's strange attraction for each other grows to encompass an eccentric old Italian, and a whole world of understanding and responsibility opens to them. 18 Kinesis December '83 I I I - m \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 by Diane Morrison A few years ago, if I thought of having children, the only options that came to mind were parenting with one male partner or single motherhood. Neither appealed to me. At thirty, I haven't decided whether or not I want children of my own, but the idea of participating in some sort of support group, as a parent or non-parent, does appeal to me. \"All people should be responsible for all children,\" says the mother of a 15-month- old son. This mother and father share the son's care on an equal basis. They do not live together. The schedule has flexibility, but the time is always even. The woman is on welfare. The father is now on UIC. They pool their incomes, pay the bills, and split what's left over. \"Raising my son the way I want costs me a lot,\" she says, \"but that is part of the misogy- nistic way society works. If I was completely on my own or with more than one child, I couldn't do it...The ability to raise children the way you want shouldn't be a middle-class privilege.\" This woman and a group of friends are in the process of setting up a co-op day care. They want to involve non-parents in a situation where there would always be at least one parent working who could make final decisions. Another woman, Patti, decided to have a second child, knowing she would be raising it on her own. \"If you want something done right...\", she jokes. What she originally wanted to set up was an apartment with a single, non-working mom with whom Patti could leave the baby when she went back to work. But then she answered an ad in the paper for childcare. \"I answered this one because the woman had used her name. I liked that. The next step was to meet her kids.\" Patti feels, when looking for child care, a person with children of her own is important. \"It's a good indication of how they respond to children and what kind of a job they have done with their own. If there are no children, you have to find other ways of evaluating and it's more difficult.\" What Patti pays for child care is a lot less than the market price. And payment takes the form of money, care exchanges, clothes, toys, friendship, and watching out for ways to help out. Another women, with a young child, has recently moved in with Patti. \"My income and expenses are just even, Patti says. \"It will be nice to have a little room to breathe in case of emergencies. It's also by Cole Dudley \"Let's play.\" These words are most often uttered by children; rarely do we, as adults, propose this to each other or to our children. The People to People Play- workers, a group of young women and men who love to play, are determined to change this. They play in parks, in gyms, in community centres, for private groups and organizations, for adults and for kids. And in between \"they play for each other. The Playworkers evolved from a group who set up the Activity Tent at the 1980 Children's Festival, The next year there was no money to fund the Tent so the players took their activities onto the grounds, becoming the Playworkers. The helpers who came back for the next three years to work with the crowds at the Festival decided to organize an ongoing group, the People to People Playworkers. They are now in the process of incorporating into a society. The Playworkers feel that play can energize and stimulate interesting communication and therapeutic laughter. They try to include parents and other adults in their games because they want to break down the resistance which most adults have regarding play. Children have a lot to teach adults, and when they see you playing side by side in their games, the distance separating adults and children decreases and positive interaction becomes possible. The philosophy and the games the Play* workers use come from the Co-operative Games and the New Games books. These publications stress that playing should be non- eliminating and should encourages participation and input from the players. The rules of the games are very flexible, growing and developing as the games continue, and varying according to the situation. For example, rather than ending a game if the children are rambunctious and doing a lot of pushing and falling, you can introduce a handicap such as everyone hopping on one foot. The process is -always more important than the product; the actual process of playing the game is considered more important than the winning or losing. Besides facilitating games, the J also do face painting, bubble blowing, groups and individual juggling, co-operate arts (communal arts), parachute games, dress up and creative role playing, skits, hat ballooning, making music with whatever is at hand, and just generally acting silly. These other activities tend to be drawing cards for more reticent children and also for adults. Draping a piece of material or putting a silly hat onto an adult who is watching the fun can be the catalyst for participation. Breaking down rules and encouraging people to explore themselves and their situations is the name of the game for the Playworkers. If you want to know more or learn how to play their way, write People to People Playworkers, 3392 West 22nd Ave., Vancouver, V6S 1J2, or phone 738-8906, 736-5173 . Grownups who play nice to have someone to share things with, the cute things the kids do as well as the not so cute things. To have another woman to talk to. And to have someone else here so I can run over to the corner store without having.to bundle the kids up and take them with me.\" Patti is also involved with the Single Mother's Action Committeej which evolved out of the last Single%Mother's Symposium. Leslie Stern, one of the co-ordinators, says single parents try to be 20 different individuals all at once. \"There is a withdrawal period, anywhere from six months to\u00E2\u0080\u00A2two years, when a woman tries to figure out how she is going to manage single parenthood,\" she says. When they finally do reach out, there are support groups there with friendship, socializing, emotional stability, help and some solutions. The Single Mothers' Action Committee was formed \"to effect change so women don't have to go through all the distress.\" There are four main areas of study: housing, child care, income and welfare, and women and law. \"Each woman focuses on the most pressing personal problem and commits time to that,\" says Stern. \"A big part^ of what we want to do is educate the public to the reality of single parenting, to improve the image of single mothers, to remove the social stigma of this and being on welfare. Change is limited by our perceptions.\" In an informal study done by the 'Y' in 1981, the most favored housing situation for single parents was co-op housing. Stern's feeling is it gives the children a sense of community, of responsibility to others, as well as a sense of confidence . Ruth Meechen agrees. One of the founders of Inner City Housing Society, Ruth lives in a co-op where she doesn't have any formal responsibility for children but where she has lots of contact with them. I Ruth is retired now and works as an artist from her home. When she first moved into the co-op her family and grandson had just moved away and she was lonely. \"Because of my set up, it was just natural I should develop a relationship with the kids here,\" says Ruth. \"I don't let them interfere with my work but I always have the time to go if they need something...And I like the idea of being granny with cookies in the jar.\" She is pleased the kids feel they can turn to her. And she thinks the parents appreciate knowing someone is there in an emergency. \"It's good for children to have a relationship with an older person,\" Ruth thinks. \"Then it's not a real mystery for them.\" 1NI&S\u00C2\u00A7^ HH Another single mom, with a two-year-old daughter, has always lived communally but has always been the primary parent. She is not willing to co-parent just now because it takes time to get to know people and trust them. \"It's hard to give up decision making powers...Although, an ideal situation would be two or three people willing to take responsibility so no one was the primary parent.\" At the moment she has five people helping her with child care.\"Three of these people have one-year commitments. She met most of continued on p. 19 Feminists raising sons \"I was raised by: feminist mother, I ] in a feminist household] and some of it has^ rubbed off.\" by Claudia MacDonald This article is based on personal experience and conversations with four other feminist mothers: Melanie Conn, Cole Dudley, Anita Roberts, and Paullette Roscoe. We each have one child. Our son's ages range from 6 to 15 years. Many women are attempting to raise sons according to feminist principles in a culture working energetically against that goal. While fighting against and pointing out the limitations of what the dominant culture elicits we are also encouraging characteristics in our sons which they will seldom have reinforced in the world or see reflected in the majority of the men around them. When our boys were younger the task was simpler. We allowed them to cry and be sensitive, taught them to cook, introduced them to strong female and sensitive male protagonists, alternated the procession of \"he's\" with \"she's\". We explained that women drove buses, men cared for babies; we did not wallpaper their nurseries with hockey players. We are at times reassured by the fact that our sons generally have a good rapport with girls. Some are competent cooks and are nurturing with small children. They are basically sensitive and emotional, not afraid to cry and admit fear. They are aware of sexism and other social and political oppression to some degree and attempt to apply that knowledge to their life experiences. They may also be loud and aggressive, they may blow up firecrackers, play with guns and Star Wars, and watch hideous TV shows. It can require constant vigilence to counteract negative social influences surrounding our children. Despite these conditions, as Paullette Roscoe says, \"you can't beat your kid over the head with our analysis.\" Many of us regret the times we have lectured rather than dialogued about our views, pounced on our sons for less than ideal comments, opinions or attitudes as though we could beat the sexism out of them. Because we see the necessity of an extended community in which to foster alternative values, we often feel pressure to provide one whether it is possible or not. We often have restructured large areas of our lives to fulfill that goal, committed more of our time; many of us have sought communal living situations and worked hard to maintain their integrity. Some have invested much time and energy in co-operative schools and daycares, alternative social events. Most of us have struggled to raise the conciousness of those around us. Some mothers have mariaged to create and maintain support systems with people committed to the same goals. Others have found themselves isolated and alone in their efforts to raise sons. We must often rely on mainstream institutions (such as day cares, schools, sports leagues, community centres) that expose our boys to contradictory values. Feminists, as a social group, reinforce our views but there are few feminist alternatives to such social activities as scouts, camps, video games or to the extended family. Although most of us have kept outdated freudian ideas at bay, rejecting such ideas as the impossibility of raising boys without a dominant father figure, most of us believe it an asset for our sons to have relationships with feminist- oriented men, fathers or not. Unfortunately, this belief can be another burdensome responsibility, yet another pressure added to our feminist super-mom agenda. We cannot be responsible for providing such relationships although some of us try. Men struggling against sexism and willing to relate meaningfully to growing \ boys are not a gigantic sub-group, although there are some who are valiantly attempting to do so. Raising sons in an active feminist milieu can creat other unique problems. One mother regrets having exposed her son to meetings and conversations where she believes he has picked up anti-male sentiments which he personalized as \"all men December '83 Kinesis 19 iare bad therefore I am bad.\" We have been concerned about the damaging effects of negative generalizations about men, no matter how casual, being made, in the presence of our young sons and some of us have requested that our friends, housemates, lovers and co-workers refrain from making them. Conversely, it is not desirable to protect them from the painful knowledge of women's experience or our anger, or from becoming acquainted with manifestations of male privilege and abuses of power. With that information must come the message that by their awareness of sexism and by their personal commitment to being a different sort of man, they can participate in the struggle against that oppression. The parenting challenge for feminist mothers is to be able to let them choose for themselves what they believe and what they will reject of the behaviors and values of the society around them and of what we have tried to instill. We do not want our sons motivated by guilt and self-hatred. It seems essential to maintain an awareness of their basic \"goodness\", to adhere to the philosophy that maleness is not inherently bad. It is also useful to have expectations that are possible to fulfill. \"Non-sexist is beyond possibility\" suggests Melanie Conn. She prefers the term \"anti-sexist\" which refers to an ongoing struggle. We can not raise a perfectly \"non-sexist\" male but we are working toward what is more of an evolutionary process which also includes rejecting other negative attitudes such as racism, militarism, and homophobia. We are making a step in that direction. Many of our sons have internalized their feminist upbringing and have often stated their desire to develop into non-sexist men. There are no accurate words to describe what we are striving towards but one five-year-old tried: \"I want to be a man like a woman. Not a woman but a man like you want.\" Alternatives continued from p. them through support groups. She was able to watch how they interacted with her daughter and vice versa. She then appraoch- ed some of them and asked if they were interested in helping. The shared care of her child has not worked other places, \"because no one took it seriously, there were no agreements,\" she said. \"There are political commitments from the people I'm with now.\" This woman feels since 80% of women are mothers, if they can't be freed up to some extent to take part in society, then the women's movement is missing a large segment. \"The role that we are placed in is unnatural. When you are a single mother you are isolated, you're busy just surviving... With some help, mothers could participate and riot be excluded...I think my daughter has more confidence knowing that more than one person cares for her.\" For people who want to spend time with children and young people in a non-parenting situation, there are some formal agencies, although some have been cut back with the recent budget. Big Sisters, Volunteer Grandparents, and the Boys and Girls club are three possibilities. Non-sexist parenting outside of the familiar family unit, or single parenting without losing one's sanity, would seem to take a great deal of energy and creativity. Perhaps if more people can become involved the job won't seem so awesome and we might have time to really enjoy our children. 20 Kinesis December, '83 I by Vivienne Vejrdon-Roe mi \"I'm scared I won't grow up.\" Over the past six months I have interviewed many children and young people for a book and documentary film entitled \"Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow - What Can the Children Tell Us?\" and this simple, clear statement is what I have been hearing continually. Little research has been conducted to investigate the emotional and social effects of living in an age when we know self-annihilation is a possibility.'The most recent survey (1980) was the work of a special task force of the American Psychiatric Association, who examined children's attitudes and feelings by sending out 1,000 questionnaires and interviewing 100 students in the Bost area. The study revealed that children are much more aware of the threat of a nuclear holocaust than most adults would assume. The majority felt that neither they personally nor their city nor their country could survive a nuclear attack. And more than 50 percent thought there would be a nuclear war during their lifetime. My own research confirms these findings. I heard many young people express a very real fear that their lives were going to be unnaturally shortened. If young people feel that nothing lasts, they will develop an attitude of \"Nothing matters.\" It is very difficult to form stable ideals and values in a world that does not appear to be stable. \"I think the turning point for me was seeing 'The Last Epidemic' (a powerful documentary showing that an eminent group of physicians, scientists and military experts do not believe that the United States could survive a nuclear war). I suddenly realized how easy it is to slip into that little world of \"It's not going to happen to me.\" I started crying at the end of it. I was very angry about the adult world handing us this world that is so imper- - feet. Why are we expected to accept the threat of nuclear destruction as part of our growing-up experience? How are we supposed to start out lives with death looking over our shoulder?\" (Jessica, 17) The difference between adults' and young people's understanding of what a nuclear war would really entail is apparent in how they speak of weapons. Adults tend to depersonalize them and refer to statistics, Growing up in the stj nuclear ageyJ%J|j while a child will think of a nuclear bomb as something that blows up people, imagining blood, mutilated bodies and dreadful suffering. We block off any deep consideration of such war because it is simply too painful to imagine. This is a defense mechanism that psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has termed \"psychic numbing\". However, children's fears are much nearer the surface; their defense mechanisms are not fully developed and therefore can more easily be broken down. Another difference in perceptions of the aims race is that young people do not see it as a political issue, as adults apparently do, but as a moral issue. \"We 're discouraged from fighting when we 're being brought up. Yet when President Reagan is facing someone representing another country, it's all right for him to do what children are told not to do. Even if the Russians were the worst people imaginable, even if they wanted to take over the world, there is still no place for the nuclear bomb - there's no excuse\". ^^^ 1?) Young people are regarding national leaders with a certain contempt because they are not exhibiting the values and principles that they have been taught are desirable. I also found the imagining of the other side's way of seeing things, the empathy, very refreshing in young children. Mariy expressed grief at the thought of the destruction of the Earth and our species should we allow a nuclear holocaust to occur. The children fear not just for their own lives, but for all living things and the quality of life, as is evidenced in the following letter to President Reagan. Dear Mr. President Reagan, I know you're probably proud of man's knowledge, but man 's knowledge is destroying the Earth and the Earth doesn't just Resources for talking with kids To deal with our children's fears, Kevin McVeigh, a California teacher, suggests1 we change our oft-used phrase \"Talking to children about nuclear war.\" Children have much information and many strong feelings about nuclear war, and they have a hunger to be heard. Given the opportunity, they will talk freely, openly, and at length about their concerns. McVeigh did a 1 1/2 hour session with sixth- graders which started^ with a \"survey\" of the children's thoughts, feelings, experiences, and attitudes, by asking them a series of questions and letting them give their own answers. McVeigh also included role play and gamess in the session, and asked the children when and how they felt kids should be told about the nuclear threat. There was unanimous agreement that six or seven was the best age, and that the children be told the exact truth (but \"don't tell kids real scary things, like that bombs could come in the night' and kill everybody\"). A complete list of the questions Keven McVeigh asked (and suggests asking) is available at United Nations Education (see below). There are many resources in Vancouver for concerned parents and Public Education Resource Centre.(P.E.R.C.) \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Facilitators for workshops and resources for schools: Women Against Nuclear Technology. (W.A.N.T.) \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Teaching material for senior high: Peace Education Network (P.E.N.) \u00E2\u0080\u00A2\"In the Nuclear Shadow: What Can the Children Tell Us?\" Film or video, 28mins, produced by Vivienne Verdon-Roe, available from U.N. Association and P.E.R.C. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2\"Wanna Grow Up...not Blow Up\" Video, 26mins, Lower Mainland children ages 7-18. Suitable for showing to elementary grades. Available at P.E.R.C. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Teaching material for intermediate grades: U.N. Education. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2Teaching material for junior high, and Women Against Nuclear Technology P.O. Box 65673, Station F Vancouver, B.C., V5N 5K7 Ph: 253-0412. Public Education Resource Centre 1111 6th Avenue New Westminister, B.C. V3M 2B7 Ph: 522-1123. Teachers for Peace Action c/o 6174 Malvern Avenue Burnaby, B.C. V5E 3E8 United Nations Education/U.N. Association 2524 Cypress Street VAncouver, B.C. V6J 3N2 Ph: 733-3912 Peace Education Network 5885 University Blvd. Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1K7 Ph: 224-3722 Project Ploughshares 104-1955 West 4th Ave. for parents of all age children: Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1M7 to man. If we get into a war, I'm not just worried about me and my family or people. If we Want to destroy ourselves, we should do it without destroying nature. When I think about the way people treat the Earth and the way animals treat the Earth, I find a big difference. . Mickey ' Children appear to have a better under- 1 standing of something the American Indian ihas been attempting to teach us since our arrival on this continent. Chief Seattle of the Squamish nation said in the last century, \"Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth.\" In the interviews it soon became apparent that there was one basic difference between those children and young people who felt hopeless and helpless and those who were feeling positive and optimistic about their future. The former were not involved in any way in changing what causes them so much anxiety, while the latter were actively doing something to alter the situation. \"I think kids like myself, students who are not 18, have a lot of influence over what goes on. And I think there's a lot we can do, and we 're not going to sit back and leave it up to everyone else anymore. We 're going to take some responsibility. \" (Anna, 17) It is essential that parents open up the channels of communication and encourage family discussion of nuclear issues and other important matters. Parents who do not exchange views on world affairs are saying, by their silence, that such topics are not their business and should be left to politicians and the \"experts\". Some young people criticized their parents for not having mentioned war/peace issues; they questioned how much their parents truly cared for them if they were not carefully evaluating their future. They apparently had not recognized that their parents might not be able to acknowledge the lemming-like (self-destructive) characteristics of the arms race because they are too paralyzed to do so, or that they might not discuss issues with their children in order not to alarm them. But several teenagers did address the question of frightening children. \"Kids already know (about the nuclear threat). I think it's more terrifying not to talk about it. Mystery is the worst thing possible. Being left alone to deal \u00E2\u0096\u00A0 with it - that's much more frightening. \" (Elizabeth, 14) Children learn by example. Those whose parents were actively involved in the community and were working to bring about peace reported they felt comfort and confidence from their parents' participation. Even if the parents admitted not knowing all the answers, the fact that they were attempting to solve difficult questions was encouraging. These children are most likely to follow their parents and also participate in peacemaking. Not only should parents talk to their children about important world issues, but it may well be to their own benefit to listen to what they have to say. Children tend to bypass all the misleading psychological barriers that block adults and get to the heart of the matter, thought to some their ideas may seem naive and simplistic. llSfe^** I find myself pondering these words of a 7-year old: \"We can get rid of nuclear weapons and have peace and stuff. 'Cos if you want something bad enough and you work at it hard enough, you can do anything.\" Vivenne Verdon-Roe of Oakland, Calif., is trained as both a kindergarten and a college-level educator. She edits a peace newsletter, Spirals. This is a considerably condensed version of an article that originally < Presbyterian Surve y. December '83 Kinesis 21 ARTS Film updates Pygmalion by Janie Newton - Moss Educating Rita based on the play by Willy- Russell. Starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters. Critics have been divided over this latest film from England. At a time when dominant cinema seems obsessed with special effects, teenage rebellion or re-creating history, Educating Rita is a bit of an anomaly. It is a plain and simple tale of a young working class woman's desire for education which she sees as a way of changing her life. In this aspect the film is timeless, for education has always been seen as one route open for the British working class \"to improve their lot\" but until recently this has been a masculine peroga- tive. The film is brought up to date in having a woman as its central character and one whose adopted name is in honour of Rita Mae Brown, author of Ruby fruit Jungle. Rita is a hairdresser who has been married for six years and despite constant pressure from her husband and family, avoided what they see as her inevitable fate: becoming a mother. Instead she enrolls in an Open University course and starts having tutorials with Frank, a professor of literature at the local college. Frank is a middle aged alcoholic whose first love is poetry and whose life has been coming apart .at the seams since his wife left him several years previously. His liaison with a fellow staff member and his relationships with his students are tired and unchalleriging. In Rita he sees enthusiasm and an unjaded approach to both life and Frank, played by Michael Caine, is the disillusioned English professor, who teaches and finally learns from the lively Rita. literature. She in turn envies his lifestyle and command of language. One of the first shots we see-of her is climbing the stairs to his study and being passed by a group of students discussing poetry. Overhearing the word \"assonance\", she asks Frank to explain its meaning. Later Frank incorporates her version that it is a \"rhyme that's gone wrong\" into one of his lectures and it is at this Rita, played by screen newcomer Julie Walters, is a young hairdresser who yearns for knowledge. point that Rita realizes that the power balance in their relationship has shifted. Visually the film is a delight. Filmed at Trinity College, Dublin, it represents any of the old established university towns'. It is successful in showing through Rita and Frank's parallel lives how rigid the class system is in England and how their perceptions of each other is partly based on myth and fallacy. The second half of the film concerns itself \"with the resolution of their unreasonable expectations as Rita becomes more of the person that she set out.to be. Or does she? Rita's \"conversion\" happens a little too quickly and in this way the second half is weaker than the first. Its debt to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion filmed as My Fair Lady, is obvious although Frank is a more sympathetic character than Professor Higgins. Rita is the heart of the film, her determination to explore her own potential should be an inspiration to all of us. It largely relies on humour to get its message across and yet each memorably funny scene is underpinned with poignancy. The audience laughed hardest at the scene where Rita is upstairs desperately trying to study while her husband is knocking down walls to enlarge their house. He speculates why in six months of being off the pill she. has not conceived while she uproots the floorboards to reveal her secret stash. Occasionally the humour seems slightly forced but it is worthwhile noting that it was written as a stage play so those larger than life moments may have suffered in its'\u00C4\u00A2 adaptation for screen. Julie Walters, already an established stage and television performer in England gives an outstanding performarice in her first major film role as Rita. If you like literature and feel like a light hearted look at how one woman sets out to improve herself, then this is a film for you to see. Testament: Psychological images, not visual horrors by Joan | Death is one of the inevitabilities that all humans must face. One hopes, however, that old age will be pleasant and come at the end of a rewarding life. The possibility that old age may in fact never arrive, not just for the tragic few who lose their lives by accident or disease, but for anyone, is horrific and frightening. Testament is a film about just that. No one in the small town of Hamelin will have the opportunity to grow old; some will never even have the time to understand what adolescence is. This tragedy is not brought on by an epidemic or an act of nature but by the stupidity and arrogance of ordinary human beings. A nuclear blast destroys this ordinary American town. There isn't a window broken or a person injured in the explosion but they die slowly, one after the other from radiation sickness. The film centres on a typical middle class family: Carol and Tom and their three children. The first scenes deal with their life. The family relationships are. by no means perfect; they quarrel and nit-pick just like every other living family anywhere. Collectively however, they are looking toward the future with dreams and aspirations. Tom leaves for work in San Francisco one morning and-by that evening Carol and her children are alone with no future and no hope. An interesting aspect of this film is the lack of visual images of horror. The modern audience has become accustomed to ghastly depictions of death and violence. The viewer of Testament is not subjected to running radiation sores or balding or long sequences of people unable to digest food. Rather, the death of Carol's youngest son Scotty becomes representative of all the deaths. The image of a mother cleaning up her child when he can no longer control his digestive system; that same mother holding him, waiting for the end - these psychological images have a far greater impact than visual horror could ever have. Under the direction of Lynne Littman this creation becomes So vivid and so compelling that the audience cannot help but be influenced. The film doesn't point a finger at any super-power or blame any political body. Rather, it leaves us all to blame. We are the ones who must decide whether our children will ever grow up. As in the fairy tale the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which is a central symbol iri the film, we the audience must create a world deserving of our children. Jane Alexander as Carol offers an excellent performance. Her ability combined with those of the children played by Ross Harrison, Lucas Huas and Roxanna Zal create not only a film of social and political importance but also a piece of art. The origins of this movie lie within a story by Carol Amen aptly titled, \"The Last Testament\". One would hope that her work as the author and Lynne Littman's endeavours as the director and producer will at the very, least force people to reconsider their position on nuclear proliferation. Testament is a powerful film that every human who cares about our earth should see. It is a film of the soul, the place where the love and preservation of humankind begins. 22 Kinesis December '83 ARTS Little Night Reading by Cy-Thea Sand For Nights Like This One. By Becky Birtha. 107 pages. Frog in the Well, East Palo Alto, CA., 1983. $4.75 U.S. (paperback). This is a first collection of short stories by a Black lesbian feminist whose work has appeared in the feminist press in years past. The work is subtitled \"Stories of Loving Women\" and concerns lesbians in relationships with each other, as friends, and in relation to biological families. I like the fact that Birtha discusses ideas in her fiction and dramatizes many issues of the contemporary lesbian lifestyle. Birtha is at her best when she is totally in control of her characters' emotions. Her weakness is in creating setting - her language often is too journalistic and lacks descriptive power. Sometimes the reader is told too much, as in the title story, and I think a better editor would have considered \"Sakekeeping\" a practice piece. I consider the story entitled \"Babies\" to be well thought out and provocative. My favorite stories are \"Marisa\" and \"Next Saturday\". The former describes a lesbian from a heterosexual point-of view; the latter is taut with tension and despair. For Nights Like This One reflects the highs and lows of a beginning writer and reveals a talent that should be nurtured into a steadier craft. Undershirts And Other Stories. \"By Cathy Cockrell. 64 pages. Hanging Losse Press, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1982. $4.00 U.S. (paperback) . I was impressed with this collection of short pieces which rivet aspects of Cockrell 's experiences to an article of clothing. Cockrell's language is as refreshing as her perspective: an exploration of sensation, thought and memory from a lesbian, anti-war, and feminist sensibility. Lis- - ten to Cockrell's rhyme and cadence as she describes her lover doing laundry: Your silver labyris on the delicate chain falls near the shrit's top edge; the vertical ribs follow the contours of your breasts, your bones, your solid, muscular body. By 'the end of the day, or the next, : humidity and heat, the shirt A mention of a book or journal in this column does not preclude it being re viewed in depth in future issues of Kinesis. Review copies of fiction by and about women may be sent to Cy- '\u00C3\u00B1\u00E2\u0080\u00A0 Thea Sand, P.O. Box 24953, Station C, Vancouver, B.C. V5T 4G3. will stretch, lose tone, fall away in places where it once hugged close and comforting. Then it must be thrown into a- limp heap 'with the others, unuseable, until their next journey through the suds, water, and heat of the laundry,_ the motion of your hands flicking and folding, smoothing and stacking the still-warm white shells, thin garments trailing' streams of meaning and desire like the misty veils of teenage brides. Reading Undershirts and Other Stories is like looking through a photo album and wondering at the kaleodoscopic richness of our lives. Read this first collection and watch for future work by this astute young lesbian writer. So Long A Letter. By Mariama Ba. 90 pages. Virago Press, London, 1982. $7.95. In the form of a letter to her best friend an African Muslim woman records her reactions to her husband's polygamy in this powerful novel of feminist consciousness. The work is an intriguing introduction to the Black Muslim culture of Senegal. The language is philosophical and precise, as in this meditation on friendship: Friendship has splendours that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love. So Long A Letter won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Unfortunately, Mariama Ba died in 198l after a long illness. Her only novel is a treasure for Western feminists interested in the women and literature of the Third World. Walking On The Moon. By Barbara Wilson. 161 pages. The Seal Press, Seattle, 1983. $5.95 U.S. Run to your nearest women's bookstore for this collection of six stories and a novella. Barbara Wilson, the author of Thin Ice and Other Stories and Ambitious Women, a novel, is getting better all the time. This collection takes us through California, Venezuela, Germany, and Italy with ease, wit and a delightful carousel of characters. Il Circo Delle Donne originally appeared in Maenad. I enjoyed.it then but this revised version is sharper and as enthralling as on first reading. When Wilson depicts heterosexual women who are hopelessly centred on men, she does so with affectionate anger and grace. Her lesbian characters are diverse: some are tragic; others self-defined. The title piece is rich-in emotional dimensions, profound and humorous. Wilson's portrait of an intellectual at eighteen is unforgettable. Barbara Wilson is a serious writer. I look forward to her future work. Black Lesbian In White America. By Anita Cornwell. 129 pages. The Naiad Press, Tallahassee, Florida, 1983. $7;50 U.S. Anita Cornwell is a pioneer activist, a feminist lesbian who wrote for Tne Ladder - America's first lesbian periodical. This is a collection of Cornwell's articles, letters and autobiographical pieces. Introduced by Becky Birtha, the work will have you stomping your feet and pounding table tops in the good old separatist tradition. \"Lament For Two Bambozzled Sisters - a Sequence of Letters\", is particularly hard-hitting. Cornwell's rage at some women's complicity with oppression is acute and unrelenting. This is primal, gut-wrenching rhetoric which may remind some of us what the past fifteen years have been all about. There is also an interview with poet Audre Lorde, which fills in a few gaps about her heterosexual past which are not explored in her recent autobiography, Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name. Cornwell is at her best in the autobiographical excerpts and I hope a complete one is in the works. Shabono. By Florinda Donner. 301 pages. Delacorte Press, N.Y., 1982. This is a fascinating account of an anthropologist's time spent with the Yanomama Indians who \"inhabit the most isolated portion of the border between southern Venezuela and Northern Brazil.\" Donner discards the exploitative objectivity of social science to become as intimate with the people as is possible for a white, stranger. Female infanticide, the capture of the women of an enemy tribe, the ritual rape of captured women and extensive taboos for menstruating and pregnant women are practiced by the Yanomama. Women are honored as creators yet femininity is second rate. The work is flawed by Donner's lack of analysis and integration of her experience, How does she relate the year spent in the jungle with her life as a white woman in the twentieth century? If she liad not been forced to leave, how long would she have stayed? We are left with too- many questions for the work to be sholly satisfying but Shabono is female-centred and is a much needed addition to androcentric anthropological literature. In Search of April Raintree. By Beatrice Culleton. 228 pages. Pemmican Publications Winnipeg, 1983. $3.95 (paperback). Beatrice Culleton tells the story of two Metis sisters, Cheryl and April Raintree, who are taken from their parents to be raised by white foster .parents. The work is important for confronting the issue of non-native people raising native and Metis children, which is currently a focus of attention for native social workers. The book is also a documentation of the relentless oppression suffered by Canada's native people. Cheryl Raintree .is a lively intelligent child who is devastated by the racism she spent years courageously fighting. April survives by denying her native heritage and living in a fairy tale world which eventually crumbles. A novel of documentary realism, In Search of April Raintree, explores both the psychic and physical violence of racism and yet manages to end with a vision of healing and hope. December '83 Kinesis 23 ARTS by Helene Rosenthal In 1980, a year after the revolution in Nicaragua overcame the regime of dictator Samoza and formed a coalition government under the leadership of the Sandanist National Liberation Front (fFLN)l, a team of Canadian film makers arrived in the country. Their purpose: to interview women who had been involved in the resistance, in the actual fighting, and who were now part of those carrying out the necessary work of. reconstructing the country along new lines of freedom and justice. The result: a film which sensitively approaches the question of what changes in the lives of women are evident as a result of their involvement. DREAM OF A FREE COUNTRY: A MESSAGE FROM NICARAGUAN WOMEN, Producer: Edward Le Lorrain, Co-directors: Virginia Stikeman and Kathleen Shannon, Editors: V. Stikeman and E. Le Lorrain, Distributed by the National Film Board, Date: Soon to be released. A moving and inspiring document, it is as beautiful to look at in its bright range of tropical colours as it is deeply informing. Out of a small population of 2 1/2 million, only half are over 15, the majority being women. They comprise 30% of the country's defense forces, with many more engaged in organizing and support activities. They were and are the indispensible factor in the success of the revolution and in continuing the struggle of creating a new society. It is at once a celebratory and sobering thought. Sobering because, as a result of increasingly massive military aid to Honduras (a buildup which began after the Sandanista victory in 1979), Nicaragua's northern neighbour has become the largest new war base for Reagan's interventions in Central and South America. Facing this ominous threat and provocations on its boarders, Nicaragua is having to deploy energies needed to combat a historical legacy of poverty, hunger and other aspects of oppression to ready itself for possible invasion. This was seen in the government's declaration of a state of emergency on Oct. 14 following CIA-instigated attacks on border posts\"north and south and on ports of both seacoasts. The marine attack on Corinto on the west coast alone resulted in the destruction of 3.2 million gallons of gasoline, oil and diesel fuels and 600 tons of food and medicine stored at the port. With fires raging, the entire populace of 25,000 had to be evacuated.2 In this newly aggravated contest, the bond the film creates between its subjects and us makes us tremble for them. Yet listening to them,-seeing them, is like being privileged to attend a symposium on the life force in action. Stories of incredible courage, bravery and hope are related as if they were everyday events, which they are for these people. Telling of how the former dictator's private army, the hated U.S.- trained National Guard,, \"oppressed activists like us\" with imprisonment, torture, rape, disappearances and assassination, a woman refers to Maria Rojas, who became an activist at age 12. She was apparently not at all unusual. Considering what they've been through, these women present an amazingly vital, attractive appearance; it's a pleasure to look at them. Some speak English, not needing the narrator's translation. We meet \ peasants, workers, professionals, soldiers, organizers, a nun, government ministers, women formerly of the petit bourgeoisie. Though it is easy to miss trie impressive names of some (whose testimonies are eloquently recorded in depth in Margaret Randall's Sandino's Daughters^), who the individuals are does not seem to be as important to the aims of the film as the Street vendor and soldier, Nicaragua. Photo from Studio D, NFB Nicaragua: A compelling portrait composite portrait. Their comments are women together in a way that pays homage to all. A Nicaraguan male' painter who has dedicated himself to recording the valour of such women in a permanent form because he does not want it to be forgotten in the transience of journalistic accounts, shows us some paintings he has done. One, of a woman fighter with a baby on her back, commemorates the first village to rise. He tells of how the village artisans used the techniques they had for working in clay, reeds and pyrotechnics, to make contact bombs. So many fell in such battles that children often carried on with rifles, taught how to use them by their mothers. A female photographer who served in several capacities in the army also has something to say about this. Concerned \"to show the world afterwards\" some of the horrors that were suffered, she displays a couple of photos out of the many she took. They are of children maimed and killed, as many were, in the streets all over the country. Some had the bombs they were carrying explode in their hands. Children acted as messengers, built barricades. They, along with older youth, were especially persecuted. One, only seven years old when he joined the FSLN, was assassinated by the National Guard for his activities, a park being later named after him. He had not yet turned ten. Leaders aged six \"to 15 years emerged from such as these. An excellent feature of the film is that it is careful to balance negative with positive aspects. We see happy children \"who got through the war in good shape.\" It was feared by some that they'd be traumatized, says this speaker, proud of the children's \"great capacity to adjust to new situations.\" This natural capacity, she implies, was increased by their unavoidable involvement in their parents' fight for survival and freedom. This strikes me as something more than a virtue made of necessity. It exemplifies the force that through the green fuse of commitment drives these women warriors, as it did the children and the men, giving them the strength and vision to endure. There is humour, too. A journalist named Marguerita laughingly tells on some \"famous\" colleagues - men who were unfamiliar with and so terrified by war, by the revolution, that they had to be physically assisted by the women in order to carry out their assignments. A 25 year old guerrilla commander, Monica Boltodano, recounts how men of the National Guard who surrendered did not want to talk to a female commandante, but she was it! Tales of bravery, over and over. Another commander is Dora Maria Tellez, who became famous when her commando took the National Palace in 1978, a feat which resulted in \"terrific gains\" including the release of 2000 political prisoners. A daughter of the middle class, which \"makes it harder\", she was already active in high school, joining the FSLN in her first year at university in 1972. She worked and fought in the mountains, went underground when that became necessary, had to leave the country after the National Palace takeover, returned to take Leon, the second largest city in Nicaragua, in 1979. Many of these women were members of the National Association of Women Confronting the Nation's Problems (AMPRONAC) which a few women got started in the years immediately preceding the overthrow of Samoza. Following the Sandanista victory it was renamed the Luisa Amanda Espinosa Nicaraguan Women's Association after the first woman member of the FSLN to die fighting. She was only 21. A member of the Association since its earlier days recalls having joined the Sandanistas on account of the cruelty suffered by her mother who was imprisoned by the National Guard for two years. \"I never forgot,\" she says, speaking of women like her mother who were ignored because they were poor and female. \"That is why us older women are joining struggles with younger women...so that not even our husbands can exploit or exclude us. The struggle must go on or we can lose everything we've gained,\" she tells us. During the revolution she conquered her fear to carry leaflets from zone to zone, found food for companeros, learned to avoid ' continued on next page 24 Kinesis December '83 continued from previous page armed guards. Now she works to help \"raise women's social conscience.\" Her message is that personal liberation is through women working together. This theme emerges more clearly as the film proceeds. The women's struggle to overcome sexist oppression has grown directly out of their militant participation in the revolutionary struggle. But we have to see what they are up against, in pushing for change. The dictatorship left a legacy creating almost impossible conditions for recovery, the male painter points out: huge foreign debt; destruction; shortages; rising inflation; educational, medical and social services concentrated in the few large centres; high unemployment. He reminds us of stuff we all know: most women held two jobs - at home and in poorly paid work in the public sector. The female narrator adds (also hardly news) that many had to turn to prostitution. There were many large families, many single parents. The hard life of poor women is underscored in the 76 year old market seller we meet who has been working since the age of nine. Another, a plantation worker - a wife and mother of 11,\" talks of always cooking, cooking, cooking. The children help out, however. \"Little by little,\" she says, \"they bring strength to us, their parents. More than anything, I want my daughters to have an education - not to be what I am.\" Later we learn that while the older women still tend to work at traditional employments, the younger ones are all studying. Grade V is required for factory work. Education, like health care, is free to all, including university. Illiteracy has been reduced from a 55% average before 1980, when an ambitious campaign began, to a present 14% and \"everybody knows the literacy song.\" Indeed, we are treated to a few delightful shots of young children singing it. Nutrition is another special focus, particularly in the peasant population which mostly concerns women. \"We're still fighting against the cultural backwardness of the Samoza dictatorship,\" says a woman previously introduced. She cites as the \"real\" problems those particularly affecting women, such as the lack of daycare and of training centres for skills needed in the rebuilding of the country. An English-speaking nun who says she's been here six years and has learned much, much more from the people than what she has been able to give (she is a nurse), makes the point that one of the problems for women in the post-revolutionary period is that they haye been inundated with projects and they don't know how to decide; \"they have no past training for this.\" The.nun also has some pointed political comments to make about the USA criticizing the Junta (it comes as a surprise to learn the term has positive connotations in the Nicaraguan context) for taking Russian and Cuban aid freely offered, while hedging their own promise of a huge amount to revitalize private industry with conditions which were unacceptable. (For a detailed rebuttal of the many spurious charges the USA has levelled at Nicaragua to justify current military aggression against it, see Tomas Borge Martinez' article in the Guardian, Aug. 21, 1983, p. 17. Martinez is Nicaragua's Minister of the Interior.) On the positive side, the revolution has brought women out of many forms of oppression they suffered in the past. A sewing j machine operator is joyful about the -opportunity the revolution gave her to learn her trade. She hid behind the machine when she came, \"but, together, we've done it.\" She works in a cooperative where they took a collective decision to all earn the same salary, $100 a month. \"I was ARTS completely isolated...now I have a place in society,\" she says proudly. Another talks about her hard life in the past in relation to marriage, and of how all this has changed. Her husband was \"a true-blue macho\" whom she had to serve hand and foot. \"He hit her, he dragged her from church. Nevertheless, she kept reiterating her love for him and gives thanks to God for the miracle of changing her husband into As the beautiful, smiling faces of the women and children of Nicaragua pass in review across the screen, ending the film, we are left to ponder. For one, the debate in the Women's Association meeting.* Also, the power of a feminism which has arisen out of, and been tested in, the crucible of fire and blood. A strength of 40,000 out of a population of 2 1/2 million certainly speaks for itself. Is there an answer for us in this model Sustaining a confident outlook as it moves toward its conclusion, the film does not shirk the troubling issue the majority of women face, of how to bring men's consciousness in line with the lessons of the revolution. Daisy Zamera, former Deputy Minister of Culture, 1980. From Studio D, NFB. a partner who now babysits for her. She is often away from home working on such community projects as harvesting cotton, building roads, cleaning public buildings. Sustaining a confident outlook as it moves towards its conclusion, the .film does not, however, shirk the troubling issue the majority of women face of-how to bring men's consciousness in line with the lessons of the revolution. It is still an enormous problem. We are taken to a meeting in Managua of the 40,000 strong Women's Association (the same that, under its original name, numbered only 25 women at the end of 1977 when it was first established!). It is now a broadly based organization which functions as a consultative legislative body with representation on the Council of State. Reaching out to women all over the country, they decide together which of the laws that instituted \"the discrimination and marginalization of women in our society\" need attention first, so that such laws can be abolished and replaced with others guaranteeing equal rights. Citing inequities in the present system, a speaker points to the fact that there are no women in the (governing) Junta nor in the National Directorate of the Sandanista Front. Does the government intend that women will be represented in proportionate numbers, she asks? Grievances closer to home surface. \"Most of my friends fear their husbands and don't know what to do about it\", says the women we earlier heard tell of how she helped educate her husband to share the load. \"We must help them to learn, to overcome,\" she insists. \"The fighting must not be directed to dominate men\", says another, \"but to eradicate the difference.\" Another still: \"We fought the Nicaraguans: we are ready to fight for ourselves. We must unite... with women everywhere.\" The most trenchant note, perhaps, is struck by a speaker who makes the point that \"We've always said that the liberation of women could only be achieved through revolution. If they are faithful to the revolution, they are then by definition faithful to women's struggle.\" of a revolutionary struggle in which women join with men? Do we keep on lettirig theory dictate practice, creating bitter division about who is politically correct? A hopeful sign is that we have already joined forces in the fight against nuclear annihilation, as in our battles at home with repressive legislation, layoffs, and in our rape crisis work. DREAM OF A FREE COUNTRY is an empowering film: don't miss it. *An update on the women's struggle is that on Sept. 13 of this year, Nicaragua's Council of State approved the passage of a bill concerning conscription for all males between the ages of 18 and 40, and voluntary service for all females in that age bracket. Military service is defined as the active participation of all the people in defence-related activities. However, women have been angrily voicing their | criticism of being excluded from compulsory active service, insisting in Council debates that they \"have won the right to be more broadly included in the law.\" They have not won their point. (See Oct. 5 issue of the Guardian: \"Where Draft Resistance is Right Wing,\" p.14.). Footnotes: iNamed after General Augusto Sandino, a national hero, who led a six year struggle of guerrilla warfare from 1927 to 1933 to get the U.S. Marines out of Nicaragua. ^'\u00C3\u00B1\u00E2\u0080\u00A0Central America Alert, Bulletin #5, October-November, 1983. The information cited is from a yellow insert in the Bulletin entitled, \"News Flash: State of Emergency in Nicaragua.\" Published by U.S. Out of Central America (USOCA), 303 Cortland Ave., San Francisco, CA. 94110, USA. 3published in 1981 by New Star Books of Vancouver, to whom I am indebted for their generosity in providing me with a copy of, this and Randall's earlier book, Doris Tijerino: Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution (1978). Sandino 's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle (the full title) like the film, constitutes a series of interviews and is invaluable as a supplement to it. ARTS _,#f|^S. _ Arlene Mantle by Rachel Epstein Toronto singer, songwriter and educator Arlene Mantle played for two evenings at La Quena coffeehouse during her 2 1/2 week stay in Vancouver. By the second time word had got out and the place was packed. The combination of her music, lyrics and presence on stage kept everyone attentive for the entire evening. Arlene's songs focus on the struggles we're engaged in today. In her words: \"Any great social movement has always had a lot of music accompanying.it. I can't imagine a great movement without it's music...Music is inspiring, it helps to hold people together when they're starting to feel really defeated and down, it's mobilizing...Sometimes I think we need to sing certain songs to recapture some of our history, but if we rely on songs of past movements we won't build a new one. We have to have new music that goes with today's struggles.\" What is most useful and exciting about Arlene's music is that she links our issues. She sings about poor women, immigrant women, women in trade unions, lesbians, the invisibility of women in language, unemployment, pornography, the rise of the right, worker's health and safety, and she sings in solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles. As well she sings a mean blues (and if anyone caught her rock and roll renditions of Elvis and Janis Joplin tunes at the IWW benefit, they were dynamite!) Many of Arlene's songs have come from a process of collective songwriting where a group of people with a common issue or goal get together to share their feelings and thoughts and put them into a song. One of the songs that came from this process is \"Forget Me Not\", a song about the lack.of support some trade unions provide to their unemployed members. It was written by a group of union organizers at the Humber College Labour Studies program. The chorus sums up the sentiment of the song: Well I'm singing Solidarity Forever Trying hard to keep my union^spirit hig) But my spirit's almost spent, and I- can't pay the rent Have you ever seen a union member cry? Another collectively-written song is \"We Hold Up Half the Sky\", written in a women-only workshop that Arlene conducted at an International Council for Adult Education conference in Paris. These women were upset and angry at the invisibility of women in the opening ceremony of the conference so they got together with a few bottles of French wine and transformed their anger into music. Arlene has done songwriting workshops with groups of women workers, trade union women and men, English as a Second Language classes, welfare mothers, public Songs for- the_struggle_ housing tenants, adult educators, religious groups, etc. While in B.C. she worked with a group to write a song about the Socred budget. She and the people who wrote it sang it the next evening at a New Westminster Solidarity Coalition meeting. Arlene's priority is to sing about women, and particularly poor women. Having lived in public housing for 11 years, raising her five kids as a single mother on welfare she feels some impatience and frustration with the organized women's movement and its lack of attention to women's poverty. Her song, \"Hey, Hey, What About Class?\", written for International Women's Day in Toronto, addresses this. Also in her repertoire is, \"This is Not a Love Story\", the most powerful song I've heard yet about pornography and what it does to kids. Arlene's songs are easy to sing along with and the tunes are interesting and varied. They're perfect for picket lines, rallies and just general humming along. She's recorded a tape of 19 of her songs to go along with a pocket-size songbook called, \"Arlene Mantle On The Line\". The tape and songbook are available at the Women's Bookstore, Octopus Books, Spartacus Books, the Co-op Bookstore and La Quena. For information on bookings or workshops, call 251-3872. (Next month an interview with Arlene) Poet exposes 'the dangerous' by Erin Moure' Read this book! You women whose bodies are restless, read this book. You women whose touch is power, read this book. You women and men whose gentleness is suffocated by the politicians, read this book. THE LARGER LIFE, by Libby Scheier. Black Moss Press, Windsor, 1983. $7.95. ISBN: 0-88753-099-0. These are tough poems. They are poems from the mouth of love, directed against the dangerous. As the poem, \"What The Welfare Department Did After The Budget Cuts\" begins: The mothers and children are in detention. The guards are -.fish-faced/ women with dogs. The dogs are children with the faces of dogs. The poem looks in on the tower where welfare is administered; it places the mothers and children inside the building, where they are trapped. People guard each other, and are set up to resent and fear each other; the guards, mothers, and dogs are almost indistinguishable here. Now the ground opens. '\u00C4\u00A2 S^SS^I ...The building topples through the long and gaping slit to/ somewhere without bottom. Mothers and children fly about with/ bits of steel and glass. Guards December *83 Kinesis 25 and dogs fly about too. The/ administrators had not worried about letting them out before/ opening the earth... This image evokes fearsomely how welfare mothers feel after budget cuts to social services. Everything is sucked inward. No one lets them out, before destroying the system where they are trapped, and must live. The \"dangerous\" are ordinary humans after all, who eat, make love, and refuse to murder, and support democracy and the hierarchy of the state, and do not, unfortunately, challenge their thousand discriminations. The love we profess is so often twisted into a way of death; it is eviscerated by the civilization we live in, where \"we have come to believe we need cars\", as Scheier writes (\"Why Poems Should Not Be Fictions\"). The poems reveal satisfaction and clarity happen in small events, like smoking, or ironing. Yet it is \"the larger life\" that Scheier describes most directly and surely - our public lives as social beings, or our lives with the people we cherish, both of which are political and conditioned. Scheier's work as a poet is thankless in this country, where even readers of poetry reject criticisms of the political system in which we live; these poems tie into a tradition of revolutionary writing that is not part of the mainstream of North American poetry. photo by Yossi Schwartz Scheier speaks in these poems of our ordinary lives where, under the surface, violence lurks. Even under the tender acts of mercy, great violence is proposing itself. It hangs in small clouds over human heads on line at banks and cafeterias it is the blood of psychiatrists and the ink of journalists (\"Violence\") The only pure thing is the birth of a child after her mother's nightmares and long waiting. In \"Fetal Suite\", the new child's presence overcomes fear and noise and language. \"How I loved you/ how I felt shame/ for my art\", Scheier concludes. Scheier's voice is capable of many forms: the long line and insistent rhythm of the prose poem, the public rhetorical voice, and the short lulled line of the simple continued on p. 29 26 Kinesis December '83 ARM. RUBYMUSIC by Connie Smith Old Enough. Lou Ann Barton. (1982) Electra/Asylum Records. Recently, there has been a lot of attention given to Stevie Ray Vaughan, a Texas guitarist \"discovered\" by Davie Bowie. And as Stevie's popularity increases, so do the stories about his life. It was one such story that made me want to bring Lou Ann Barton to your attention. If you're a ^%^'.'t Radical Reviewer reader, you may remember that I reviewed Lou Ann's album last year. But I think she's worth talking about At one point in Stevie Ray Vaughan's career, Lou Ann was the vocalist for his band, 'Double Trouble'. I don't know why they parted ways, but it was soon after that he became well-known. Occasionally, Lou Ann's name comes up in reference to him, but overall, she is considered a flash in the pan. Well, let me tell you. If her one album, Old Enough, is just a flash in the pan, I'd sure like to hear her with all her grease on the griddle. Lou Ann Barton sings female rockabilly like nobody's business. (I stress female because if you ask around, people will tell you that women don't\" sing rockabilly. Never did. Never will.) Lou Ann's voice is raw and wild and at times she reminds me of Bonnie Raitt or Wanda Jackson. But I Betty Lambert 1933-1983 by Jennifer Svendson Betty Lambert was a writer to the end. Shortly before her death from cancer on November 4, 1983, she even created her own memorial service which was held November 22nd at Simon Fraser University. She asked that it be called a celebration, and it was - a celebration of the life of a remarkable woman. I first met Betty in 1965 when SFU had just opened. At that time she was a part-time instructor in the English department, but she went on to become an Associate Professor. In our degree ridden world, this was no small achievement considering Betty had simply a B.A. in Philosophy and English. But of course, there were her plays (she had written seventy plays and several musicals by the time of her death), which in themselves gave her an impressive curriculum vitae. Betty's students remember her most as a teacher of incredible generosity. Despite a gruelling workload as teacher/writer/ parent, she always found time to give to her students something of her own boundless enthusiasm that went far beyond the confines of the classroom itself. In addition to being a playright, Betty also raised a daughter} Ruth Anne^ as a single parent and wrote a novel, (titled - Crossings in Canada and Bring Down the Sun in the USA), which created quite a tempest here in Vancouver. A local woman's bookstore even declared it forbidden reading when it first came out. The narrator of Crossings is a woman of her times and her times were the fifties; hardly the stuff role models are made from, but all too real none-the-less. All Betty's women are real - disquietingly so. All too often they show us parts of ourselves we perhaps would rather not see. By this time Betty was used to getting flack from all sides. One of the marvelous things about her though, was that she really didn't care whose toes she stepped on. If she had something to say, she was going to say it - and in her own way. This forthright and determined manner of living permeated everything she did. Often, she described herself as an angry woman - and she was. Angry at the moral and social injustice she saw in the world. Angry at the position of women and the silencing of women over the centuries. Betty used her anger to shape her art but the art she brought to life was not always pretty, nice, amusing, or even pleasant. I remember interviewing her after Jennie 's Story was staged in Vancouver, and she described to me one of the scenes she had been obliged to cut. In this scene Jennie, after having drunk the lye, was laid out on the kitchen table with buckets of blood and vomit all over the place. This was deemed just a bit too much for sensitive audiences to deal with. This is not to say that Betty was not amusing. Indeed, she is most remembered for a remarkable humour that was as developed as her sense of the human tragedy. Her play Spieux - de - Dieu is a bitirtgly witty look at life, love, sex, relationships and a great many other things that contribute to the human condition. In an- Betty's students remember her most as a teacher of incredible generosity. Despite a gruelling workload she always found time to give to her students something of her own boundless enthusiasm. other play, Clouds of Glory she turned her comic/tragic insights to academics - with devastating results. Betty began her life as a writer, primarily as a poet, publishing her first poem at the age of twelve. She said it was by selling poems she kept herself in spending money as a teenager. By the time she was nineteen, she had won a couple of scholarships to the Banff School of Fine Arts. Three years later she sold her first radio play and was on her way. Now, almost thirty years later that way has come to an end-. Betty will be missed by all of us who knew her. We are fortunate that she was able to finish a play Under The Skin and a musical The Foolish Virgin before her death. think it's more their spirit that I feel because Lou Ann's Texas tones are all her own. Ironically, my favorite song on the album is the slow one. It's called \"Maybe\" and it was made famous by 'The Chantels', 'The Shangri Las', and the late Janis Joplin. It's good to know chat the word is getting passed down. Gwen Guthrie. Gwen Guthrie. (1982) Island Records Ltd. When Gwen Guthrie went into the Compass Point Studios in Nassau, she wasn't there to make this album. Instead, she had been asked by her two friends, musicians Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, to do background vocals for a project they were working on. But as luck would have it, her vocals were so predominant, Sly and Robbie's project became Gwen's first album release. Until this time, Gwen was best known as a session singer. She backed Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Carly Simon and Ray Charles. Once, she sang a duet with Luther Vandross, but this is her first attempt at stepping out alone. This album is a dance album. A disco beat runs underneath every song, but that doesn't take away from the funky sound. And one song leads right into the other, so there's no chance to stop dancing. Of the eight songs on the album, only two are written by Gwen. But regardless of the songwriter, there's nothing embarrassing about any of the lyrics and Gwen doesn't use pronouns, so this album can. be for. everybody. The only thing I didn't like is that sometimes there's too much electronic gadgetry in places where I would have rather heard her voice. Showpeople. Mari Wilson. (1983) London Recordings. No, this is not a feminist album...which is too bad because I could really go for a girl like Mari. When she sings, she makes it sound effortless. In fact, Mari's so casual about the beautiful sound that comes out of her mouth, you'd think she didn't mean a word of what she's saying. This is good, considering that in nine out of ten songs on the album, her boyfriend has left her. Mari's music reminds me of being back in high school when all the girls danced together in lines or sat on the edge of the gymnasium stage and did identical hand movements to girl group music. In fact, Mari's songs are similar to the kind of music that was written in the Brill Building during the early '60's. But I'm hardpressed to imagine a group of politically conscious women dancing together singing, \"I love everything about my boyfriend/ he can make my heart beat/ I'm in heaven when we meet/ our love will never falter/ take me to the alter...\" Nevertheless, her version of Julie London's \"Cry Me a River\" is wonderful. Mari began her musical career when she left her desk job at Global Van Lines, in London, to form an 11-piece band. Yes, her own band. She appears on stage in what she calls \"classy tack\" and her beehive is almost a foot high. She's now making less money than she did at the van lines, but she doesn't care. Forming the band was something she had to do, because as she puts it, the fun had gone out of music. continued on p. 28 December \"83 Kinesis 27 ARTS RCoUbSiUctmpbeii: Landscapes of the Heart by Michele Wollstonecrof t Landscapes of the Heart, sculpture by Robin Campbell, was exhibited at the XChanges Gallery in Victoria from October 30th until November 14th. It was part of a two- person show; the other artist, Marie Bergman, exhibited large paintings, poetry and pastel drawings entitled, Landscapes of the Soul. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2> of the Heart includes six wood floor reliefs, sculpted in cedar, of approximately 33\" to 35\" square. The blocks themselves are all made of 4\" X 12\" planks, cut and glued together in three panels. All of these pieces represent mons Veneris (also known as the mound of Venus), mountains and hills. They speak of the power \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 of women's sexual energy, of its inter- connectedness with her emotional and spiritual being, hence the title Landscapes of .the Heart. They are large, solid works. The use of three panels is significant, three being the age-old embodiment of the spirit of the feminine, representing past, present and future.\u00E2\u0096\u00A0*\u00E2\u0096\u00A0 The external squarish- ness does' not make these pieces alien to us, but shows female strength alive and well and rising up. These works are manifestations of my love for Earth in her feminine aspect. They are symbolic landscapes inspired by \"my\" geographical world. Most recently it has been the rushing rivers, rain forests, mountains, and ocean islands of this Pacific Coast. This world which I inhabit is animated by the presence of the Goddess. It is the world of The Mother: The Creatrix. -Robin Campbell, Artist's Statement, Landscapes of the Heart, October, 1983. What is exciting about this work is that it unifies women's sexual power, the landscape that we live on now, and feminine ritual of times past. Robin's work has evolved from the female figures of Sanctuaries (exhibited August '80) that represented steatophagous goddess forms, developed from her studies of Egyptian and Minoan dancing figures. In the more pure forms of Graveposts and Headstones (work done in '80 and '81), the mons and female form were implied; in this current exhibition the work is explicitly mons Veneris. Now Robin has integrated the feel of neolithic ritual objects with actual landscape elements that were sacred to numerous neolithic civilizations, particularly those of Crete. Common to these sites were the gently mounded hill on which the palace and shrines were located2, the burial mounds and beehive tombs (such as at Mycenae), and the double-peaked or cleft mountain located some .distance from the palace hill, but on the some axis. These wood sculptures feature the vulva, each mons holding something different inside or around the \"labial gorge\": earth, sand, shells, water, fur. Although the rising mons has symbolized the motherly form it is not the pro-creative aspect of the mons that Robin is emphasizing with this work, but rather, the potential for pleasure and insight. The clitoris is the highest point of the topography of each piece.' The, wood is worked down from the clitoris, thus making it the focal point of the piece. Warm Earth is a very simple form; the mons rises out of the wood, swelling out towards the sides of the block. The hollowed mons around the labia is filled with dark earth which accentuates the raised clitoris and semi-circle of wood that surrounds the earth. This curve makes a moon shape and the earth-filled space inside it looks like horns, or a double- axe. These shapes re-occur in the other Landscape pieces as well. The horns, suggested both within the hollow and outside the rising mons, are a symbol of the earth's active power^; the double-axe,'visible on the inside of the cleft in Warm Earth and Kyak River (which will be discussed further on in this article), is a moon symbol. Time Flow, by Robin Campbell Warm Earth, by Robin Campbell Beach Rubble Prodded was inspired by Robin's readings of Sappho, in particular: If you're squeamish Don't prod the beach rubble. -trans. Mary Barnard On this piece, the knots of the wood are left and, unlike the smoothness of Warm Earth, the pattern from Robin's chisel covers the surface. The mons opens out- as an oval bowl, painted red, that holds rocks, shells, bits of wood, pinecones and such, in essence, \"beach rubble\". I What is exciting about f this work is that it unifies f women's sexual power, \ the landscape that we live 1 on now, and feminine i ritual of times past. The resulting sculpture, Kyak River, is much more worked into than the other Landscape pieces: the block is thinner, the edges are more rugged and the markings of the chisel cover the surface in turbulant grooves. The hollowed mons is filled with water and looks like a high mountain pool. The knots are accentuated. Wood is like a solidified flow, the eddies and current are revealed in the grain of the wood. _ , . _ , nn Robin Campbell The final piece, and the last that Robin made, is Time Flow, a \"double\" piece that has a rectangular external form. There is The Home Of the Dragon is a beautiful stronga figure-8 or hour-glass shape in the elliptical form rising out of a book-ish centre, filled with sand, within which block of wood. The base of the mons covered with a woolly pubic thatch, that partially hides a deep earthy purple labia. Cosmic Crack is the sole piece that is composed of wood only. Cosmic Crack takes up the entire block, curving forward and down at the front in a fluid motion; the labial parting is circled by the oval figuration of the wood that creates movement around the deep opening. The flattened out, broad triangle above the cleft, is covered with little holes that make it appear like a shaved mons Veneris, or starry sky. This piece speaks of the concealed spaces within us and of another universe, uninhabited by men. The last two pieces are radically different than the first four works. One can see that, for Robin, the connection between mind and body is crucial to making sculpture . Kyak River is the direct result of kyak- king lessons I have been taking, in particular a weekend course on Cowichan Lake and Cowichan River - I felt the sameness of working water and wood. I had to- become one with the water as I Have to become one with the Wood - one with the character of the material: its placidity; its turbulance - its life force.\" -Artist's statement floats.a canoe-like shape or double clitoris.. This figure-8 is the infinity symbol found in the frescoes, pottery and jewelry of the Minoan and Mycenean cultures. (Although Robin is familiar with this symbol, it is interesting that she did not have it in mind when working on this piece.) Unlike floor relief that incorporates the floor as part of the work, each Landscape piece uses its own form as the tension point. Each of the six pieces demands that the viewer crouch down to view it more closely. Unlike sculpture that sits on the floor, these pieces appear to be rooted in it. They are recumbant but not passive. These floor reliefs are meditation pieces. They channel earth's energy up to their highest point and beyond; they draw down sky energy, into the earth. Landscapes of the Heart tells of the connection between the earth's active power and the flow of women's creative and sexual energy. Footnotes: iNor Hall, The Moon and the Virgin, New York, 1980. p. 190. 2vincent Sculley, \"The Great Goddess and the Palace Architecture of Crete\", Feminism and Art History, New York, 1982. pp. 34-35. 3Vincent Sculley, as above, p. 35. 4vincent Sculley, as above, p. 35. ^Nor Hall, as above, p. 10. 28 Kinesis December '83 ARTS * RUBYMUSIC continued from p. 26 Two Sides of Wanda. Wanda Jackson. (1964, reissued 1981) Capitol Records. In the old days, Wanda Jackson hung out with Rose Maddox and Kitty Wells. She also toured with Elvis Presley as his opening act. She knew how to shake it all over, as well. She recorded somewhere around a dozen albums before she changed her lifestyle and began singing on a religious label. Two Sides of Wanda is one of her best if you can only afford one album and you want to get a taste. On it, Wanda sings, \"Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On\", \"Yakety-Yak\", \"Rip it Up\", and other golden greats; better, I think, than the golden boys themselves. Oregon Summer. Marcia Meyer, (to be released in December). There were times when Marcia Meyer wanted to throw all her tapes off the Burrard Street Bridge. A very common feeling, I'm sure, for any woman who sets out to produce an album of her own compositions, all by herself. But Marcia persevered and if everything went according to schedule, Oregon Summer should be released any day now. This is music you will want to play on Sunday mornings, every evening, and when you ride the bus. It is music that will calm you down,- make you dream, make you think, or get you sentimental. Oregon Summer is the sound of guitar, piano, oboe, flute, cello, viola, violin... and Mary Watkins on synthesizer. To say that Marcia Meyer has produced an album of beautiful music is an understatement. On December 9, on Rubymusic (7:30, 102.7 FM), I will be playing selections from these albums. If you're thinking about i spending hard earned money on music, here 's your chance to listen first. The program is called Ruby's Xmas List. Then, on Dec. 16, (same time, same station), Marcia Meyer will be in the studio to debut her new album and to talk about her trials and tribulations as a composer and producer, Women's bands make group record MORAL LEPERS, a Vancouver based women's band, have recently returned from a three week tour of Toronto and New York. The tour came about as a result of an offer to participate in a performance series called WOMENSBANDS, sponsored by A SPACE, an independent artists co-op in Toronto. The series was co-produced by Susan Stur- man, formerly of MAMA QUILLA, and currently of WORD OF MOUTH BAND (a women's band from Peterborough), Clive Robertson, of FUSE Magazine and VOICEPONDENCE (a cooperative record producer and distributor), and Janet Martin, of FIFTH COLUMN, a Toronto women's band, and also a member of VOICE_ PONDENCE. Five women's bands were featured in the series, as well as films by Toronto women artists. VOICEPONDENCE will soon be releasing a compilation record of Canadian women's bands, which will include MORAL LEPERS as well as some of the o.ther bands who performed in the series. Green Thumb Productions: One Thousand Cranes byAnnBemrose Green Thumb Theatre for Young People, a local theatre company committed to exploring social issues from children's viewpoints, recently presented A Thousand . Cranes. Written by Colin Thomas, the play is about a twelve-year-old Japanese Girl, Sadako Saski, who developed leukemia after being exposed to fallout from the Hiroshima bomb at the age of two. It's also about a Canadian boy called Buddy and his struggles with the idea of nuclear annihilation and the effectiveness of peace demonstrations . Sadako (played by Melanie Miller) was an active, engaging girl, full of the promise of the new Japan after the war. Interested in emerging new options for girls, she wants to develop her athletic abilities and does not want to grow up to wear traditional kimonos, or to be a \"lady\" like her mother. When Sadako first begins to feel sick she doesn't want to tell anyone, because \"too many people get sick in Hiroshima\", and so covers her illness as best she can. There is a Japanese legend that says that each crane lives for a thousand years, and that if a sick person folds one thousand paper cranes the gods will give her good health and a long life. Once in hospital , Sadako Sasaki sets out to fold the cranes, and completes 864 before she dies. Buddy (played by Ray Wallis) is struggling with present-day nuclear armament and his fears for his life and the lives of his mother and friends.' His mother doesn't believe in peace marches and he initially decides not to take part in an upcoming demonstration - \"a bunch of stupid kids with signs\" - but he still needs to do something. He builds a fallout shelter in his basement and waits for the bomb blast. Janic Nutter appears as both Mrs. Sasaki, Sadako's mother, and Buddy's mother, Mrs. Harman, both women who are confused and frightened about the effects of the war that has already happened to one and the war that may yet devastate them both. The play moves back and forth between the two situations, always focussing on the need for hope. Hope for renewed health and hope for peace so that no one else will have to suffer and die like Sadako. There is the hope of the thousand cranes and the hope of peace demonstrations, the symbol of visible protest against the threat of nuclear war. One thing that impressed me was the connection the play makes between Star Wars and the bomb. Buddy and his friend Lee (played by Wendy Neil, who also plays Sadako 's friend Yoshlko) re-enact scenes from Star Wars, blowing up evil forces with death rays. But Buddy is eventually unable to play the game when he starts to see nuclear war as a real possibility in his own life. However, where Buddy is initially desperate in his feelings of powerlessness, Lee is constant in her belief that the peace demonstration is an event of significance, a concrete action where their voice is important. Sunday afternoon's performance also included a play called Kids for Peace, written and produced by a children's theatre group coordinated by Bonnie Worthington. This fifteen-minute performance was a montage of scenes including take-offs on television interviews and characterizations of Ronald Reagan and his staff. Like A Thousand Cranes, the production was fast- paced and captivating. The actors and writers are clearly well-informed and inspired, with a lot of enthusiasm for their topic. Green Thumb productions are primarily performed in public schools in the lower mainland, but the company also had successful tours of Sweden, Britain, West Germany, and has plans to tour Australia in 1985. Last year Green Thumb gave more than three hundred performances, including a tour of B.C. and Ontario. A Thousand Cranes is the twenty-seventh original play produced by Green Thumb since 1975, including such works as New Canadian Kid about immigrant children's problems, and the well-received Feeling Yes, Feeling No, about the sexual abuse of children. December \"83 Kinesis 29 SPORTS Feminists study sports by Nicky Hood Given that academics are more inclined to be engaged in contortions of logic in cerebral, philosophic debates than to be limbering up their hamstrings before a soccer match, one might show surprise at an academic journal which has devoted an entire issue to women in sport. However, given the wholistic perspective that feminists hold, it is not that surprising. Canadian Woman Studies Journal - Issue On Sport, Spring/May, 1983, Vol. 4, No. 3, York University. We have as a movement made the personal political. We have fought to build a structure wherein a woman can pursue both a family and a career and many of us are trying to repair the rupture of the mind/body split that is so endemic to our western society and its accompanying ills. The Canadian Woman Studies Journal issue on sport, then, is not so much amazing as it is simply a confirmation that the feminist movement is concerned with the total well-being of women. The first article in English (the journal is bilingual) holds great promise in its title. Alas, \"Sport, Capitalism, and Patriarchy\" (Cathy Bray) does not break new theoretical ground. Bray merely restates the obvious - sport is an institution within our capitalist/patriarchal society that serves to enforce and perpetuate the subjugation of women. It is a good starting place, however, as it gives us a solid base from which to approach the other articles in the journal. Bray demonstrates how the myth that femininity and athleticism are diametrically opposed is used to the advantage of the patriarchy. The relationship between capitalism and sport as an industry is also examined. - This analysis would have been more powerful had the obvious link between sport and Scheier continued from P. 25 lyric. Scheier cuts through the false and politeness we use to reach each ther. Although her poems don't always seem tructurally complete, their intensity brings to question our fixed ideas about poetic structure. Occasionally in the more abstract, lyric poems, Scheier's endings are diffused and appear to abandon the images she evokes in the poem. One senses a loss of energy, whether deliberate or not. Still, nothing here is falsified, rigged, or tricked. Scheier lets the words peak without being terrorized by the old set ropes. This first book of poems reveals a poet who does not throw off any of the threats of our North American ways. She does not excape in a self-conscious ego, masquerading as the soul. She is clear and hard, and speaks without accusations, clearing the way for us to think for ourselves. If we do not think, we are all of us dangerous, whether we like it or not, these poems] expose us. jg)Erin Moure - Reprinted by permission. Libby Scheier was a panelist at last ummer's exciting 'Women and Words' conference at UBC. She will be in Vancouver January 26th to read from her work as part of the Vancouver Industrial Writer's Union's WORK TO WRITE poetry series, 7:30p.m., Mt. Pleasant Library, Kingsway & militarism and the militarist base of the capitalist economy been explored. This otherwise lucid article concludes somewhat ambiguously. While it points out how capitalism is willing to exploit the demise of patriarchal myths regarding femininity and sport in order to take advantage of higher marketability of women's sporting goods, it fails to point out clearly how they are at the same time exploiting women's negative body image. Capitalism is pushing women's obsession for thinness not fitness. For those who are literate in French, this point can be further explored in \"La danse aerobic.en faites-vous?\". The English summary of this article explains how although \"some claim that aerobic dancing is liberating and open to anyone, the typical participant is a woman who has a great deal of spare time, whose priority is good looks and well-being, and who has money to pay for babysitting and fancy tights.\" \"The New Female Jocks\" (Thelma McCormack) seemingly to do with body-building, if one is to judge by the photographs which illustrate the article, turns out to be about Hollywood's images of the female sporting figure. Setting aside the strange choice of illustration, the text alone is confusing enough. McCormack rambles from one film to the next making unnecessary reference to the sexual preference and prowess of male dancers and horse fetishism of young girls. The film \"Personal Best\" is then held up as a beacon of light to men \"who are groping their way toward ending patriarchy.\" There were other articles in the collection which I found both inspiring and informative. \"We Want to Play...We'11 Play\" (Helen Lenskyj) sums up the attitude of outstanding women athletes of the twenties and thirties when they met with criticism for their unladylike behavior. These women overcame overwhelming social pressure to drop out of athletics to achieve international acclaim often in more than one sport. Many went on to work in organizations for the advancement of women in sport after they retired from competition. \"In Praise of Older Women Athletes\" (Diane Palmason) challenges our assumption that athletes are both young and male. And, having got past that hurdle, challenges the assumption that athletes of any sex are necessarily young. Given the opportunity, the older athlete is able to maintain and often surpass earlier levels of performance. This, and the ability of older women to take up rigorous, sports for the first time in their lives, is documented in a number of case studies. The collection of articles overall is fairly comprehensive. There are articles which present scientific data outlining the effects of intensive training on the reproductive system, and research on women's physical potential. Lesbianism as an issue in sport and disabled athletes each have their own article as well as being mentioned throughout the collection of works. There are also two articles which discuss governmental efforts to both discourage and promote women's sports. The one area that has been overlooked is recreational sport. This is too bad because it is as a leisure activity that the majority of women will participate and \u00C2\u00ACa benefit from sport. Nor was there a critical view of the relationship between competitive sport and feminism: Had these two perspectives been included it would have been a more complete issue. Gay Games Summer 1984 Would you like to participate in Gay Games similar, to those in San Francisco? The action has already begun. We need women to take part in the various aspects necessary to organize the event. Specifically, we need women to outline the structure and function of the games, as well as women to be involved in the important initial stages of what could become annual event in Vancouver. We need your skill and enthusiasm. Interested ? Good ! Call 736-4017 for messages or 266-0470 for further information. 30 Kinesis December '83 BULLETIN BOARD EVENTS FREE CHILDREN'S FILMS every Sat. from l-3pm at the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House, 3981 Main St. Dec. 10 - Dr. Dolittle', Dec. 17 - Mysterious Island. MALASPINA PRINTMAKERS 8th Annual Juried Members Show of original fine art prints is on display at the Simon Fraser Gallery, Nov. 28 - Dec. 16 at SFU, Burnaby. WORKING, A MUSICAL adapted for the theatre by Stephen Swartz, directed by Catherine Caines for Studio 58, will be staged Dec. 6-17. Working is down to earth entertainment which celebrates the joys, frustrations and hopes we all have about our working day lives. Preview Mon., Dec. 5 at 8pm ($3.50); Opening Tues., Dec. 6 at 8pm ($4.50); Regualr performances Tues.- Sat. at 8pm. Admission: Tues.-Thurs., $4.50; Fri. and Sat., $5.50; Seniors and students, $3.50 on Tues. evening only. Phone 324-5227 for reservations. Labour- continued from p. 3 Nobody knows...there is no clear concensus of opinion. Some think that a Bill 3 exemption is a rubber -stamp. Others are not so confident. In the case of CUPE, for example-, the strike achieved nothing. Unlike the BCGEU, CUPE already had extensive seniority provisions in their contracts. In essence, they are in exactly the same position they were in when Bill 3 was amended on August 4th. F.or the more than 190 locals of CUPE, each contract has to be negotiated separately and submitted for exemption. The course of action is the same for every other public sector union. As their collective agreements expire, they too must negotiate a contract and apply for an exemption. In the final assessment, it is clear that a deliberate attempt to smash the largest of the public Sector unions failed. But perhaps a critical error was made in defining the parameters of the struggle within Bill 3, rather than negotiating its complete elimination. Bill 3 remains law and all unions must apply for and be exempted from it. No one is positive just how certain these exemptions will be. There are other serious obstacles that were not settled by the Bennett-Munro accord. Unions relying upon the provisions of the Employment Standards Act to cover weak areas of their contracts are now in serious jeopardy. For example, where contracts did not guarantee full benefits during maternity leave, the Employment Standards Act took precedence ensuring that full benefits were paid. Now it has been altered to ensure that only collective agreement provisions apply. Secondly, the continuation of the Compensation Stabilization Program sets up a disincentive for most unions to remedy inequities between categories of workers (for example, women and men) receiving differential pay scales or benefits. There is so little to be had at the bargaining table that most union members would be disinclined to remedy their sister's position at the expense of even a miniscule wage increase. Finally, there remains the question of threatened Labour Code Amendments. What does it mean for labour to sit on an advisory commission that will ultimately assist the Socred government in the process of gutting the Code? This and other questions will provide the basis for important debate in upcoming months. The strike is over. We'll just have tp wait and see. WOMEN AGAINST THE BUDGET (WAB) CONFERENCE Sun., Dec. 11, 805 E. Pender (Ukranian Hall), 9am-5pm. Bring your lunch and a snack contribution for coffeetime. Childcare available (preregister by phoning Cynthia Flood 255-7820). Aim of the conference is to discuss where we've been, what we've done, our role in the Coalition, and where we go from here. All women welcome. B0B\"B0SSIN OF STRINGBAND will be presenting an evening of fact, myth and anecdote about Stringband's recent month-long tour of the Soviet Union at La Quena Coffeehouse, 1111 Commercial Drive, Sun. Dec. 11 at 8pm. Admission: $3. Sponsored by Vancouver Folk Music Festival. DIALOGUE WITH JUDY WILLIAMS at Surrey Arts Centre, Thurs., Dec. 15, 7:30pm, free. Judy Williams, whose work is on display at the Surrey Art Gallery Dec. 15-Jan.8, will discuss the development of her work and her unique approach to painting with water colours. Phone 596-1515 for more info. ART ENCOUNTER FOR CHILDREN at the Surrey Arts Centre., Wed., Dec. 28, ll-12noon for age 4 & 5.(parent participation required) ; Dec. 28, 1-2:30pm, age 6-8; Thurs., Dec. 29, 10:30-12noon, age 9-12. A combination tour and workshop featuring work of Judy Williams.. Pre-register by Mon., Dec. 19. Cost: $l/child. Call 596- 1515 for more info. GAZEBO CONNECTION is holding a party - cocktails, nibbles, music and singing. Dec. 12rat The Holiday Inn, 711 W. Broadway, (prices not yet set). ... SURREY ARTS CENTRE FAMILY CHRISTMAS Celebration, Sun., Dec. 18, l-3:30pm. Make your last minute Christmas decorations (1-2:30), see the \"Celebrations\" exhibition in the Children's Mini Gallery, listen to a storyteller. At 2:30pm Fools Theatre will present a special performance ($2-adults; $1.50-children, students and seniors). Other events free. [ 13750 88th Ave., Surrey. PACIFIC BALLET THEATRE present their annual Christmas concert, a pot pourri of unforgettable holiday delights, Wed., Dec. 21 at 8pm; Thurs. & Fri., Dec. 22 & 23 at 2pm and 8pm at the Surrey Arts Centre, 13750 88th Ave., Surrey. For further info call 596-1515. RAPE RELIEF is holding a New Year's Eve Bash at the Hastings Community Centre: live bands, theatre, food, drink, movies, costumes and more. Childcare is available and there is wheelchair access. For more info call 872-8212. NOT A LOVE STORY - A Film About Pornography will be shown Dec. 29 at 7pm, Rm. 1807 at Douglas College, 700 Royal Ave., New Westminster. A discussion will follow the film. For women only. No admission charge. COMMITTEE OF PROGRESSIVE ELECTORS (COPE) is having a New Year's Eve Party. Full dinner, champagne and dancing to the Kitchen Syncopators at the Ukranian Hall. Dec. 31st. Tickets are available at Octopus Books West and East. $25 for employed; $15 for under-employed, seniors, students. For more info, call Roseanne - 731-0976. MEDIA WATCH FUNDRAISING DINNER, Jan. 17, 1984. A feast for body and soul, catered by Isadora's. Held at University Women's Club, 1489 McRae St. (Granville & 16th). Guest speaker Maude Barlow. Guest entertainer to be announced. Tickets: $19 ($15 unemployed). Women only. For more info, call 873-8511. THE INTERAGENCY COMMITTEE ON WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT is sponsoring a representative of AMES (Associacion de Mujeres de El Salvador) on a cross-Canada tour. She will be speaking in Vancouver on Jan. 22 as part of events being planned for International Day of Solidarity with El Salvador. For details on time and place, contact Beth or Kirenza at 732- 1497. POET LIBBY SCHEIER will be reading from her book, The Larger Life as part of the Vancouver Industrial Writer's Union's Work to Write poetry series, Jan. 26, 1984, 7:30pm at Mt. Pleasant Library (Kingsway & Broadway). Read a reveiw of Scheier's book in this issue of. Kinesis. GAZEBO CONNECTION NEW YEAR'S EVE dinner & dance, Dec. 31 at the Stanley Park Pavil- lion. Tickets reserved by Dec. 12 are: $28 for members; $33 for guests. Later reservations are all $38. GROUPS SELF DEFENSE FOR WOMEN, for ages 12-99, first three Weds, of each month; cost: $12 for 3 wks. Pre-register by phoning the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House at 879-7104. Instructor: Joe Evans. Courses will be continuous. TEEN MOTHERS SUPPORT GROUP for teenagers who are pre-natal, single or married. On-going group. New people welcome. Thurs. 1-2:30pm, at Tupper School (25th - & Sophia St.). Childcare provided. Call Sheena or Irene at 879-7104 for details. \u00E2\u0096\u00BAWEEKENP ART SALE An open house Sale of handmade card*, drawings, etching, lifoogirapH*, sculpture*, seriorapte iwoodcute. ty PERSIMMON BUCKBR\P6E PORTLANP KORANIC ClAJRE KWJUNPZ.IO MAUREEN SWGRUE PECEMBER 110,11* Friday ev/evuwg 1-10 ?.\u00C2\u00AB. *V7-(,l<\\\ea\\ey(dK*eferi rormforrnatum or other viewiiog -rimes phone 251 \"531+ or 253-0743 December'83 Kin< BULLETIN BOARD SINGLE MOTHER'S SUPPORT GROUP sponsored by Little Mountain Neighbourhood House, 3981 Main St., Mondays, 5-6:30pm, beginning with a potluck dinner. Childcare is provided. New women welcome. C.A.A.W.&.S. (Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport) is now having monthly meetings in Vancouver. 3rd Tues. of each month, 7.30 pm. Boardroom, 1200 Hornby, 687-3333. ON THE AIR CO-OP RADIO, 102.7 FM - Dec. 9, Rubymusic, 7:30pm. Ruby's Xmas List, featuring albums reveiwed by Connie Smith in this issue of Kinesis. Dec. 16 features Marcia Meyer to debut her new album \"Oregon Summer\" and to talk about her trials and tribulations as a composer-producer. Courses IYENGAR YOGA STARTING JANUARY '84: Britannia Community Centre, Commercial & Napier St., 253-4391. Introductory Level. Mon., Jan. 16, 7-9pm - 10 wks/$27. Instructor: Claudia MacDonald. Thurs., Jan. 19, 7-9pm - 10wks/$27. Instructor: Paullette Roscoe. Trout Lake Community Centre, Victoria & 15th Ave., 876-9285. Introductory Level. Tues., Jan. 24, 9:30-11:30am -- lOwks/$30. Instructor: Paullette Roscoe. Level I. Fri., Jan. 27, 2-4pm - 10 wks/ $30..Instructor: Claudia MacDonald. Riley Park Community Centre, Ontario & 30th Ave., 879-6222. Introductory Level. Sat., Jan. 21, 10-12 noon - 10 wks/$25. Instructor: Claudia MacDonald. Dunbar \"Community Centre, 4747 Dunbar & 31st Ave., 224-1374. Introductory Level. Mon., Jan. 17, 6-8pm - 12 wks/$42. Instructor: Lindsay Whalen. Wed., Jan. 11, 10-12 noon - 12 wks/$42. Instructor: Gillian O'Brien. Ongoing Level: Tues., Jan. 10, 10 - 12 noon, 12 wks/$42. Level I; Thurs., Jan. 12, 6-8pm - 12 wks/ $42. Instructor: Claudia MacDonald. Columbia Centre for Pain & Stress Management, 645 West 8th Ave., 873-1315. Ongoing Level: Tues., Jan. 10, 7:30-9:30 pm - 10 wks/$45. Instructor: Anne Gregory. Introductory Level: Tues., Jan. 10, 5:30- 7:30pm - 10 wks./$45. Instructor: Anne Gregory. Marpole Oakridge Community Centre, 990 West 59th Ave., 327-8371. Introductory Level'. Thurs., Jan. 19, 7:30-9:30pm - 10 wks/$30. Instructor: Susan Sutherland. CLASSIFIED CYRUS 5 HANG GLIDER FOR SALE. 150 lbs. Call 873-2949. Between 135- THE VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL CALENDAR will make 1984 a bit easier to get through. It offers twelve great scenes from festivals over the years (8 1/2 x 11\" images). The price is $8 per calendar; add $1.50 for postage and handling for one, $1 more for each additional ^calendar. Write to The Vancouver Folk Music Festival, 3271 Main St., Van. B.C. V5V 3M6. All calendars sent via first class mail. UNION WOMEN! Writers, artists, photographers interested in labour issues! Kinesis is preparing a supplement for our February issue on women in labour movements. If you have expertise or interest in this area, story ideas or photographs, contact Kinesis at 873-1427. Deadline for the February issue is January 15 th. \"FOR THE YOUNG OF AGE AND YOUNG AT HEART\", a cassette of original songs by local Vancouver Musicians/Songwriters, produced by Co-op Radio. Features: Devon Hanley, Chris Cairo, Denise Larson and many more. Price: $7.50. Write: CFRO or call 684-8494. BOOKKEEPING SERVICES AVAILABLE on a freelance basis. Help with setting up, payables, receivables, payroll, financial statements, and year-end adjustments. Alex Maas 874-4665. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY COMMITTEE is looking for women volunteers. The theme is \"Women Speak Out\" and we will focus on critiques of what we have and visions of what we want. Please show up at Britannia Centre, Seniors Room, Dec. 6, 13 and January 10th. Welcome. IN 1984 KINESIS will be expanding its book review section. We want to continue to reveiw works from the feminist presses, books on politics and women's issues such as technological change and health. However, we will also be reveiwing best- selling fiction aimed at the \"female market\" to find out what women are reading and how the mass media is responding to the impact of the women's movement; more international literature; more books from the \"straight\" presses. We also want to encourage readers to get involved in reviewing. If you would like to be added to the list of reviewers, or have or know of a book that you would like to review, please contact Linda Grant, 255-1914. HYSTERIA IS PLANNING A SPECIAL ISSUE on media images of violence against women. They plan to publish this special issue in time for International Women's Day '84. Send ideas, suggestions, and proposals for contributions to Hysteria, P.O. Box 2481, Station B, Kitchener, Ont. N2H 6M3 Copy deadline will be Jan. 1, 1984. THE VANCOUVER WOMEN'S BOOKSTORE will be open Fridays until 8pm from Dec. 2 through the 23rd. KARATE FOR WOMEN. Develop strength and confidence, increase your awareness, learn to defend yourself. Karate was developed for self-defense against a stronger opponent. Come train with other women! A woman black-belt instructor is starting classes soon in the Vancouver area. For more info, call 685-2747. GAZEBO CONNECTION is a member-supported organization of 160 gay women in careers. We organize monthly dinner meetings and other social events, and provide opportunities for members to form small interest groups (eg. hiking, book discussion, women's chorus and bridge). For more info call (604) 984-8744 or write #382 - 810 W. Broadway, Van., B.C. V5Z 4C9. I AM A 15 year old feminist male interested in doing child care work. I have experience with groups as well as individuals. Fees negotiable. Call Troy Roberts at 874-1968. References available. Vancouver Kidsbooks PHYLLIS SIMON, M.L.S. 2868 West Fourth Ave. Vancouver,-B.C.,Canada V6K 1R2 Telephone(604)738-5335 Rally for HUMAN RIGHTS IN B.C. December 10th is International Human Rights Day. Make B.C. Hue up to Canada's commitment to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Rally at Old Court House (Robson Square) Noon, December 10, 1983 Followed by events and displays on international human rights at Robson Square Media Centre. Sponsored by B.C. Hunan Rights Coalition (Vancouver Region) Lower Mainland Solidarity Coalition ARIEL BOOKS and TALONBOOKS invite you to meet MARY MEIGS (Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait) Mary will be autographing copies of her new book, THE MEDUSA HEAD, on Saturday, December 10, 2-3 p.m. at Ariel Books, 2766 W. 4th Ave. SEE YOU THERE!"@en . "Preceding title: Vancouver Status of Women. Newsletter.

Date of publication: 1974-2001.

Frequency: Monthly."@en . "Periodicals"@en . "Newspapers"@en . "HQ1101.V24 N49"@en . "HQ1101_V24_N49_1983_12"@en . "10.14288/1.0045806"@en . "English"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "Vancouver : Vancouver Status of Women"@en . "Images provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the Digitization Centre: digitization.centre@ubc.ca"@en . "Original Format: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. HQ1101.V24 N49"@en . "Women--Social and moral questions"@en . "Feminism--Periodicals"@en . "Kinesis"@en . "Text"@en . ""@en .