Volume 14 Number 6 January 8th, 1991

ther

LG Ste re,

Douglas College's Autonomous Student Newspaper since 1976

 

ay gage

  
    
     
  
  
  
 
 
 

~All over Canada, instances of violence happen, effecting ¢ ery oppressed and ae
marginalized group in our society.

A number of events spring to mind when you think about it. The Oka and Lil’ wat

blockades still loom large. The Francis St. squats in Vancouver

: show of force only a dictator would love. A doctor from the US is pe

technology to indicate the gender of 4 or 5 week old foetuses, and targeting the
Indo-Canadian community, among others, and using the techniques to urge
sex-selective abortions. Bill C-43 is before the Senate, a bill that if passed, will see the _
right of a woman to control her own body passed into the government’s hands.
Students at UBC give young women invitations to be raped and consider it ajoke. At _
least 35 women have been murdered in Quebec since September because they were
escaping the abuse of a spouse or partner. Our a is on the brink of sending
us to war with a man whois so hungry for land and power, he has no respect for life;
itis a war that will only further the interests of oil companies and the friends of men
in power, especially if they are American.

There is a similar thread to all of this: the violent grasp for possesion and control
of property, both land and human. Especially if the property is female.

The atmosphere in the world around us encourages acts of hatred; it is an ©
ee feeding on Saale te tke what has come before, and it leaves no
room for debate, new ideas or ge. It will not allow people to be individual: tohave —
a different colour skin, to believe in different ideas, to live different lifeways.

It is not so surprising that this same a is the atmosphere that fostered a
man who committed an act which registered on the high end on the continuum of
violence committed against women every day when he killed 14 women at L’Ecole
Polytechnique in Montreal a year ago last month. It has taken almost a year for most
of society to acknowledge him as not an isolated, tormented mad man, but a tool of

dling the use of

  
 

    
 

the forces of OPUS tee Fomen downs
And some still will not: dmit this man’s h tred of n afte ‘his suicide letter

    
    
  
  
  
 
  
    
 
 
   

   

 

women, even a:

 

was published.

How do we stop:

First, we allow ours act. We cannot remain
passive formuch longer emust allow ourselves

__ »,to hear the truth, and not]

- Clear and continuously. We have

_ of looking at life, allowing new
ultimately, live.

 

ave to say "NO!": loud,
@ preach, changing our own ways
a part of the way we think, and

  

Education has been used as a tool to promote hatred, subversively shaping the
way we view the world. It is a tool that must be reclaimed. Listen quietly to the voices
of others, then pass on the knowledge of the possibilty of a better way.
Our world is not all horrible, most people are not ‘evil’. We have the methods
available to change. We just have to use them.
Tamara Gorin
and the Other Press