What if I am just ordinary. Of ordinary everything, except for when I'm less.

Fireworks in Oz

Tonight fireworks lit up the sky over English Bay. For an incredible half hour pyrotechnics of the utmost calibre wowed an audience of thousands on the shores. Tonight the artists took us back to a childhood favourite, and one many know for obvious other reasons, the Wizard of Oz. Oz put to music that was high ptiched and heavy on the munchins. The fireworks were perfectly set to the music, on point with the tone, and spectacular.

Apparently it took three days to set it up. Which makes sense since the next one is Saturday. It makes you think good and hard about what you can blow up in 30 minutes. Thanks to corparate sponsorship, anything is possible. Alls fair in love and business. It was beautiful, but what else is even more beautiful is when no one is laying homeless on the street on the way home. While one exists, so will the other. Capitalism isn't working for thay guy on the street corner. Let there be no more casualties of business. Yet, the fireworks will still happen. Should I not go?

I support businesses that are local, buy organic when I can, buy misuc from artists, attend local shows, my neighbourhood. This summer has been one of comfort and trial, made me feel alive, engaged, and with purpose, peace and balance I have acheived good things. So, should I not go?

I think that I will join the masses that flock for this moment of artistic expression, as costly and wasteful as it is. I will always be the one in the crowd gazing intently, reacting, enjoying the beauty of them for what they are.

Cheers Vancouver, fora unique experience as always.

I'm in for the fight

Vancouver is a battleground. Here lives are won and lost based on government policy decisions, and as long as you've got money, yours won't be one of them. Socio-economic status dictates if you get to live. I live 20 minutes from a gentrocide backed by Canadian and British Columbian governments in the name of democracy and safe streets. It is backed by an International community regarding Canada as a leader in human rights and on Olympic Committee choosing it as a site of the 2010 Winter Games. It is backed by a complacent Canadian population, 90% of whom stated in a recent poll by CTV that Canada is the best country in the world.

The city is a constant site of battle. Recently Oppenhiemer Park was barred with iron gates. In the heart of the downtown eastside it was home to many, refuge to more and a communal space where people were always gathered. What gets ignored in all of this is who lives there and why we are okay as a society with letting this happen.

My perpective as a feminist, activist, law student having just applied for future jobs in a profession where morals sometimes get checked at the door, I feel good about my selections and their potential to shift some of this. It is work that needs to be done, and about which I am passionate. But I am weary when people stop listening. When my passion falls on deaf ears. Where it doesn't matter to the leaders of our world that there are people of their country whose needs are not being met who need action now.

We are reaching a dangerous point in this country where people don't see the hard stuff- Canadians are great at patting themselves on the back. When we dig deeply, when we pay attention, we see that the people evicted from Oppenheimer Park were largely aboriginal, likely homeless, some probably were involved in the sex trade, though men tend to be more visible on the streets, and all were likely addicted to drugs. These are the people who are the subject of my advocacy this summer. These are the women and men who live the consequences of the criminalization of the sex trade, residential schools, the welfare cut-off rates, and the definition of disability in the legislation. This stuff matters.

There is hope in the downtown eastside. Those who don't get a voice of their own very often are beginning to speak. Today I went to a potluck barbeque in the park for Pivot, the Community Legal Society for the downtown eastside. I played botche ball with Emma and her grandmother, and chatted with other supporters and people who worked there. It was a great community buidling afternoon with delicious snacks. An anarchist-festival-disguised-as children's-festival Alice in Wonderland costume party was happening just beyond the bushes a little ways down.

But tonight, as I've sat on my balcony downtown, I'm reminded of where I live. I've heard fights in different languages, vomitting in a language everyone can understand and countless sirens. We live in a battleground, and I'm in for the fight.

Rach,
from an "everynight" kind of Vancouver night

Farewell Cowichan

Tonight marks the end of an era. My last night on Cowichan street; my last victorian night before at the only locale from which "Victorian Nights" has been written.

My bags are packed, the only things from the whole appartment that are out are my toothbrush and those very last couple of boxes that haven't quite made it to the storage space across the hall. It seems amzing that every pen and elastic band are accounted for, every piece of paper and dead battery (saved for recycling of course). My fridge contains merely my green provisions, and my countertops only the coffee grinder. Cowichan appartment is a shell of its former self.

This appartment holds the lived experience of two years of law school. I have only been here for law school. I come and go only when law school is on. It is my victorian association of law school. It feels good to get away from it, while at the same time a hint of nostalgia rings clear. Among the many painful hours learning the tests, cases, and policy, this has been a place of productive thought. My law school essays have all been written in this space, to some degree. Even the one that was written in Ontario was researched here. I pulled MANY all nighters within this appartment finishing a paper, take home exam, assignment or studying for an exam. I have returned to this appartment nearly every night for 16 months of my life, and that's a lot. Nowhere other than my optimist park drive home can make that same claim. Not even Jeff's couch.

This appartment has seen an abundance of some things it has likely not seen before, and less presence than perhaps it formerly knew. It has been refuge in stormy times, my first dive into adulthood, and has served my well enough. I look forward to a place with big windows in the future, not a basement appartment. I look forward to having a roomate. I look forward to living in Vancouver this summer. On the West Coast, free from my law school chains, I can explore, travel, and live it up. It's going to be great.

The weather was stormy tonight- some pathetic fallacy at play. As I had my final evening outside on the steps, I felt a twinge of sadness to realize the finality of it. The sky dark, the moon just a cresecent but bright as ever, and the tall beautiful trees that surround the house, which have been my skyscape for a long while, all felt to comfortable, and like home. So, farewell Cowichan Street- its been quite the ride. And to Victoria, for now.

Rach
from a final dark stormy cool Victorian night

Rad people and law documents.

Fast Fact of tonight,

Georgina Beyer is the world's transgendered Mayor, and now Member of Parliament for Wairarapa, New Zealand. I think she's pretty rad.

She will be speaking at OutGames in Copenhagen this year. It was in Montreal in 2006 for its first year (I remember reading about it in a newpaper in Trois Pistoles en francias bien sur), and at the end released a LGBT Document of Human Rights and Freedoms. It was also rad. I was proud to say that Canada could theoretically check off all but one of the areas of law in which the law should be change-it was in the family law section. It was a reminder of the very long way we have come, here, and of the places we have to go.

Happy Earth hour!
Rach

Tears Happen

Tonight's thought:

Sometime I cry in public. I realise it might make me seem vulnerable or unstabble or something. I reject both of those sentiments. I cry when I am feeling shitty about something, and since I go to law school, it happens. It doesn't make me uncomfortable that it makes other people uncomfortable. I don't generally aim to make people feel comfortable for comforts sake. I feel things deeply, and I think its acutally important to maintain that at law school. The law is about people, and if we loose sight of that, what on earth are we doing?

Creating

Tomorrow I get to create. Its my favourtie part. I've done so much reading lately, and I forget how about how much I do enjoy the process of writing. It becomes such a product of investment. When I am spending so much of my time working through these new ideas and articles and putting things together in new mays. Its a beautiful process. I am indeed looking forward to starting tomorrow. Maybe before lunch with a friend/colleaugue, or after yoga in the Fernwood village. I wondered last week if going for a vegan cupcake would negate my yoga practice, but reached the conclusion that they could only complement each other because of how much I enjoy them each. I had a vegan coconut lime cupcake and it was simply incredible. So moist, with such amazing frosting. So. Good.

Fernwood has been treating me well lately. Last Friday after yoga I went to the coffee shop in Fernwood to consume the vegan cupcake with a good friend. The coffee shop is right across the street from the Belfry where we saw Bash'd. We drank our coffee at the wooden benches, while a father and daughter shared an afternoon with books on the couch beside us, and an artist came to draw in her notebook beside me. The cafe had character; people are just living their lives there- talking to each other across the room. There are some pretty rad places in Victoria.

I spent Saturday in the Cook St. Village, at Mocha House, and Serious Coffee. Becuase I have been reading about citizenship discourse lately, I feel like the good citizen is a consumer. We go for coffee and dinners- that is our form of socializing. I do a lot of consuming. On food and property in the form of rent. And alcohol I suppose. Last Saturday night I went for drinks with another friend at the Reef, and then we went next door where another friend was performing spoken word at a fundraiser for a Jamaican orphanage. This week, I went rockclimbing, for a vegetarian dinner with many of the people with whom I planned Ab Camp, created a banner with paint (you know the bricks and a really wet paint brush) circa grade 6, and had a really long nap tonight. So life has been alright in Victoria these days. Very busy, but good. And I really do need to create.

On a side note- Eva Longoria is on some show in television with a scotish guy, and just called the latin music awards as the gay nascar of designers. I can't even begin to say in how many ways that statement is an anomaly in my mind.

So, I am to create this weekend, and shift gears. The Cherry blossoms are blooming, and Victoria is ready to play host to my creative process this weekend. I hope you are well where you are.

Much love,
Rachael
from another cool dark Victorian Night

Bash'd

Tonight my writing comes with weighty words. I went to see Bash'd tonight. It is a gay rap opera telling the story of fictional star-crossed lovers married in Alberta after gays and lesbians gained the right to marry in 2005. Jack is lives in the city, raised by gay dads, and likes to frequent the bar scene. Dillon is from a small town, moves to the big city after coming out to his parents, and meets Jack at his first visit to the gay bar. They fall in love, move in together and marry.

As the two characters state in the play, I wish the story stopped there. But it doesn't. Upon leaving the bar one night, Jack is gay bashed. He survives. After struggling with how to cope, Dillon storms out of their home one night and in his anger, bashes three straight men. Jack finds him as the police arrive, and while in a loving embrace, Dillon raises the gun and they are both shot and killed by the officers.

What's impressive about the show perhaps isn't its story as much as its telling. T-Bag and Feminem rap for an hour, reclaiming words (namely faggot and cock-sucker), identities (on the whole spectrum of gay) and an entire genre of music in the process. Rap began as a social justice movement, requiring only a good beat, clever rhymes and an empassioned artist speaking out about racism. In our era, it has become a site of intense homophobia and violence- against women, gay men and people who identify as trans.

I haven't fully digested it all just yet, but the sadness of it resonated. At the end I was sobbing, which I'm fairly used to doing in public by now. I was not okay. Maybe what resonated most was the unnecesary cycle of violence begun by Jack's gay bashing and continued by Dillon going out to straight bash. Maybe it was recognizing the failure of various institutions at so many points along the way- Dillon's Dad's hatred, the homophobia of the gay bashers, the failure of the couple's supprt group to address and support the couple, the failure of the medical system to adequately provide for Jack in the aftermath of his traumatic beating and, most profoundly for me, of the criminal justice system to fail to find Jack's bashers while responding with such immediacy and bluntness to Dillon's act with their own extreme acts of state-sponsored violence- shooting the two men in what is easily read as self-defense. And maybe it was the realization that the world would hold Dillon out as a criminal, when what is actually criminal is the injustice and inequalities of the lived experience of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trans-identified people and their allies across the world.

What brought me to tears and kept me there was the recitation of the R.I.P.s at the end of the show. It was a reminder that my queer brothers and sisters (and gender-identities in between and outside of that binary) are being beaten and killed ALL THE TIME. There is NO excuse, justification or explanation. When one person experiences violence, we all do. An attack on one is an attack on us all. When we do not speak out, we are as guilty as those who perpetuate the violence. The failure of anyone in the passing cars driving by to stop the bashing from occuring, and actually doing the bashing, all lead to the same result - a man is left bleeding on the sidewalk.

Inaction is action. Its a choice too. There is no neutral in this world. As we move forward, it is important to not take away the voice of those who are discriminated against, but to stand as allies supporting in the fight. There are limits to my whiteness, your heterosexuality, and our ableness, but if we can all recognize that our liberty is bound up in each other's collective lived experience, maybe we can begin a new page in our collective history.

I will leave you with my new favourite quote:

"If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound together with mine, then let us begin." -Lila Watson (Australian Aboriginal Activist)

Reframing Equality

Another equity conference, another year, how much more equitable are we? Well, I don't want to scare you away just yet, so I share the good news first. Today at our conference, we had a diverse crowd. The UVic Law 2nd Annual Community Conference: Reframing equality included the Women's Court of Canada, six sessions put on by the clubs, all difficult to chose between, and rewriting of our own decisions of the court, and a follow up session reflecting and looking foreward.

The sessions had speakers with topics ranging from the Reach of the Charter in the case of the Afghan Detainees, Environmental Resources on Reserve Land, and Grandparents raising Grandchildren. Our afternoon sesions included Indigenous Perspectives in Law: Law's Stories, Acheiving equitable outcomes in refugee cases, and Transforming Law's Family.

My thoughts today were heavy around academic-izing everything. The Day began with the Women's Court of Canada, a group of feminist lawyers, advocates and activists who rewrite equality decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. The judgments are those that we find most difficult to stomach. Those in which the systemic sexism, racism, homophobia, and able-bodied discrimination are clothed in myths and stereotypes, in which equality is just completely out of the imagination of the law. The Women's Court of Canada rewrites the decision to actually acheive equality. They use the tools of law to speak back to itself.

When asked what the judgements best achieved, the women answered, they provided context. The positioned the women in her lived reality in society, and found discrimination or difference approaches to equality. That's a lot of talk, where are the people?

Fiona Kelly came today and spoke about Lesbian families, in particular planned lesbian families. She examined how the law understands and could best reflect the needs of lesbian parents and their family forms. We heard the voices of women parenting in Vancouver and their very different families. It really expanded my imagination of what a family could look like. From two women and an unknown donor who doesn't participate in the raising of the child, to two moms and a donor and his (usually male) parter, to anything inbetween. It was really fascinating to explore what families look like that are so different than our own an,really, how cool would that be? What if every child had four parents watching her back, supporting her, loving her? Aren't more parents the way to go?

So I really think we kept the lesbian and gay parents in the picure. Tracy and Helen; and Alicia, Cassendra, Kevin and Nick. Tracy and Helen had a son, and stuggled with the fact that they felt constrained from living a radically different life becuase of their son but really didn't want to appear as a nuclear lesbian family, however, the donor lived overseas with his male partner. Alicia and Cassancra worked together and though they were never in a conjugal relationship, committing to raising the child that Alicia wanted to have. Their donor Kevin and his partner Nick were just as involved in raising the child. Even when Kevin and Nick's relationship ended they continued to stay with the child twice a week. These two families really pushed the boundaries of law's family in which the heterosexual nuclear family is the norm.

It was the information that I always thought existed and made most sense for my conception of family. Friends as family, family that you chose, parents who are caregivers, all these make sense for my conception of family. Today, I think we acheived presenting lesbian families in their social context, providing legal realities that reflect the diversity of their lived realities. It pushed the boundaries, and I learned a lot.

The Equity Conference gives us an amazing amount to reflect upon. Our community is diverse and pretty great. We are social justice focused, equality centred, and we do a pretty good job. Sometimes we don't celebrate our successes enough when we deserve them, and today we had a fantastic conference at UVic Law.

L Word Epiphanies

Tonight, after a tough evening, I had a small moment of realization. I realized that I am doing enough. I can't do it all. I am me, the world is the world and I shouldn't feel discouraged. It's exhausting to always being the one pushing. My energies are in far too many places right now, and I lose focus.

I think as women we learn to do a lot, sometimes more than we can handle, and I catch myself doing it. I vowed it would go differently. I'm working on it.

I'm looking forward to sunny times ahead.

Rach
from a frigid, *snow-free*, Victorian night

Words Matter

Words carry enormous power. As a future lawyer, words are all I have. Words are my currency; the perfection of the statements that come out of my mouth and those which appear in my written submissions are the bases upon which my future livelihood will be made.

The meanings of words are debated at length in this profession. We have an entire course to learn about interpreting the words the government has chosen to use in its legislation. Every law student knows to be attentive to “means” vs “includes”, and any Charter aficionado knows that positive rights under s. 7 were found in the additional “and” along with the placement of a coma in Gosselin.

Silence, just as much as words, can be oppressive. There is a famous quote that says, “We will forget the words of our enemies, but we will always remember the silence of our friends”. While I don’t consider the first statement to be true at all, the second half certainly is. Recently, I have participated in a number of workshops in the tradition of Theatre of the Oppressed, which is based on the writings of Paulo Feriere in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The tradition comes out of latin America and the work of Augosto Boal, who remarks, “There are no bystanders in life”. Indeed, law school, if nothing else, has taught me that we are all active in holding “the law” in place, and that our words and actions are all incredibly important in establishing the norms and values that society endorses.

What, then, is my point in all of this? My point is, when you choose words, choose them carefully. Think about them, and their affect on anyone who might be around you. When you toss out the words “gay” and “faggot” and “dyke”, they oppresses people. When you use the term “gypped”, that oppresses people. So do the words bitch and douche and retarded. When you talk about “banging chicks”, that’s oppressive. When your team name is Team Ramrod, that, too, is oppressive. Why would you want to cause more hurt with a slip of the tongue when so much pain already exists in the world?

None of us is perfect all of the time, but lets all do better. Let’s be vigilant about what we do and do not say and when. Let’s call each other on our slip ups, and take personal pride in our successes and changes. Instead of permeating this public space that we all share with oppressive comments and hatred, let’s change our words and actions to hold in place a more equitable, more inclusive society.

Happy New Year: Prose v. Law School

It's been a while. I can't promise this will happen often. But when I write, it's a good sign. So tonight I was thinking about how the movie Milk would fit into my analysis of the blood donation ban. Its because law school dominates the landscape of the mental processes. Its a good thing we have a love/hate relationship of the type we do. I was also thinking about the Price girls in The Poisonwood Bible which I am currently slowly reading. It is a beautiful escapist experience, and stunning on its own accord. I love these epic stories about families, ones with all female characters, beautifully penned, that change your world just a little bit.

Literature is nourishing. Law is kind of the opposite at times. It is the most challenging, the most stimulating environment in which to be immersed, but judgments will always be a far cry from the prose of Ann Marie MacDonald, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro. L'Heureux-Dube's judgments are kind of wonderful in the equality realm, Arbour's dissent in Gosselin inspired me throughout first year law, but the stories they tell rarely proceed so beautifully. Is that the only difference? The law tells it in its own way, which is simply less focussed on the beautiful moments along the way.

It was a good victorian night. I heard it was -28 in London. It was about 6 here today. I feel pretty alright with that. Hope all well in 2009 from halifax to victoria my loves.
Rach