Guns and Kids and a Couple of Benefit Shows

Guns gotta go folks. It’s that simple. I’m for an all out, global ban on the things (though I’m tempted to relax my stance slightly if they were permitted to be used in the service of protecting one’s garbage containers from scavenging and massively over sized raccoons). But whether you agree with me or not few can argue that if used as intended someone’s going to get hurt, likely seriously. Right? I think even Charlton Heston (RIP) would have agreed. But the bogus claim that guns simply protect the good guys from the bad dudes is underscored by the work of two very different groups for whom I am participating in benefit concerts this week and next.

This Thursday May 1 I’ll be at Mitzi’s Sister 1554 Queen West in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto as part of a fund raiser for Soul2Soul, a small inner city program that helps kids who have lost loved ones, often through gun violence, deal with their grief in creative ways. Unfortunately, as happens so often in under serviced areas of the city, the funding for this program is on the chopping block and the very committed group who run it are trying to save it. Good for them. It’s 25 bucks a ticket, Ghostwalk Creek plays at 8:30, I’ll be on at 9:30. Tickets can be had by calling 416.440.0290 ext.13 or you can try your luck at the door.

The following Friday, May 9 I’ll be playing a couple tunes as part of a fund raiser in Ottawa for War Child
This is a world wide org that helps children who are affected by war. According to their stats 1 in 10 soldiers worldwide is a child. Weapons manufacturers have obliged by making machine guns lighter so kids can carry them more easily. (Place expletive here). It’s shaping up to be quite an interesting, eclectic night of music; some classical, some folk and me. It’s at St. Joseph’s Church (151 Laurier ave. East at Cumberland). Show time is 7pm. 10 bucks in advance through maplemusic.com. Tickets are also available at the venue office. $15 at the door.

The event, co-hosted by Catherine Lathem (CTV Ottawa) will also feature the Stellae Boreales ensemble as well as Doreen Taylor-Claxton.

There will also be a silent auction (with an interesting mix of items donated by Sen. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, Ishmael Baeh, Elizabeth May, Max Keeping, and others); and a fair-trade/organic/gourmet intermission café (courtesy of Bridgehead, Culinary Conspiracy, The Table Vegetarian Restaurant, & others)

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Mr. Premier, Butt Out

Local democracy is making a comeback, folks, and Big Daddy Dalton don’t like it much.

Nope, our paternalistic preem has wagged his finger at all those irresponsible trustees on the Toronto District School Board who had the audacity – after listening to their constituents and their conscience – to vote in favour of creating an Africentric alternative school.

In calling for residents to lobby their trustees and “put a stop to this,’’ Premier Dalton McGuinty is fanning the flames of an already heated debate that has, up until his meddling, been a model of public participation. There have been forums, committees struck, kilos of newsprint and stacks of reports going back over a decade.

The January 29 board meeting was a gleaming example of local control in action, and not just because trustees voted the right way. The chambers were packed to the rafters with parents, teachers and students, both for and against, sitting side by side.

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A Class Act, Finally

When the “s word,” segregation, gets uttered again, there’s an audible groan from those sitting around me.

I’ve ducked out to the overflow section at TDSB headquarters on north Yonge Tuesday night, and am watching the debate leading up to the board’s historic vote on creating the first Africentric school in Toronto on closed-circuit TV.

About 70 others are here, too, and the main chamber’s jammed to the rafters. They’re all black. I’m the only white, and I find myself wondering how many of those whacking this issue with the “s’’ word ever actually mix with those not of their own kind.

The folks here – young parents with little kids, students, elders, professionals, punks – have been waiting for three hours. They’re good at waiting. I’ve seen many of them before at different public meetings in the north end. Waiting. Waiting for the city, the province or in this case the school board to finally listen.

Their patience is humbling. What many (not all, for sure, but many) have been saying is that an Africentric school is part of what they desperately need if they have any hope of rescuing their mostly male at-risk youth.

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Harvesting The Heights

The walk through the public housing project surrounding Lawrence Heights Community Centre is mid-winter bleak.

The four-storey apartments hug the barrier wall behind which the Allen Expressway’s white-noise roar blankets the sonic landscape. Orphaned patches of grass are squeezed like afterthoughts between sidewalks, concrete and asphalt.

But it is these scattered bits of green that excite Anan Lololi, former bass player for 80s reggae group Truth and Rights and founder of AfriCan Food Basket.

What he sees under this useless vestige of British outdoor aesthetics is not only untilled plots of organic farmland but a vehicle for black youth to reconnect with their roots.

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Matter of Trust

Matter of trust
School safety tome shockingly calls for a narrowing of trustees’ role
By Andrew Cash

If you’re a mandarin at the Toronto District School Board, the temperature may be a bit too hot this week. Julian Falconer’s exhaustive report on school safety, dropped January 10, left no stone unturned. But among all the details about sexual harassment and intimidation, the tome goes somewhat silent on one striking fact: if you’re a concerned parent and want to talk to your elected school board rep, good luck.

Fact is, our harried and elusive crew of trustees are busy doing something else a lot of the time. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re earning a poverty-line wage to oversee a multi-billion-dollar public institution – one critical to your child’s future.

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Build It, They Will Come

Build it, they will come
That the board now has to ponder Africentric school is an indictment of its complacency
By ANDREW CASH

If faith-based funding is the third rail of Ontario politics, then this isn’t a good time for anyone to be planning a publicly funded separate school.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that the Toronto District School Board’s ruminations on creating an Africentric alternative school are kicking up so much dust.

But here we are. Between 40 and 50 per cent of Caribbean-born students (most of them males) are in danger of not finishing school or have already dropped out.

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Saving The Males

Saving the males
Poverty piece of the puzzle gets lost amid tears in Alwy Al Nadhir shooting
By Andrew Cash

Standing with about 100 others at a vigil (November 7) at the very spot in Riverdale Park where teenager Alwy Al Nadhir was shot and killed by police Halloween night, I’m aware that I’m one of only a handful of white people.

That fact says a lot about the disconnect between the neighbourhoods clustered around the park, mostly middle-class and white, and those who knew Al Nadhir, mostly poor and black.

And yet, as I listen to a rep from the Black Action Defence Committee frame his death in racial terms, I’m thinking he’s got it only partly right. For here at this hastily organized vigil called Saved the Males, a Portuguese kid speaks up saying the cops are going after his community, too.

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Shabazz Shemozzle

Shabazz shemozzle
Uproar over New Black Panther leader looks bad on everybody
By Andrew Cash

Toronto the surreal. A radical black youth group asks a white Jewish lawyer to help them get a permit for a Queen’s Park rally at which the keynote speaker will be a purported anti-Semite.

As speeches pierce the humid midday haze on May 15 with zingers like “Multiculturalism is genocide” and references to the Ontario government as a “white supremist racist government,”a couple of white guys hand out flyers promoting a rally in support of jailed Amercian black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, an event endorsed by, among others, a group called the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians.

God, I love this city. And yet I leave the Black Youth Taking Action’s Education Not Incarceration rally, which goes ahead at Queens Park with portable mics despite losing its permit, feeling ill at ease.

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