Etiquette, etc.

For immediate release
February 1, 2012

Toronto, ON — On this National Day of Action to Drop Tuition Fees, members of the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—Ontario (UKPC/FCYA-ON) stand in solidarity with the Canadian Federation of Students and all students as we demand to drop tuition fees and student debt and to advance our entitlement towards universally accessible post-secondary education in Canada. As students who come from a marginalised community, the high cost and unabated increase of tuition fees not only denies us our right to education, but also presents a major barrier that prevents us from genuinely settling, integrating and successfully participating in Canadian society.

With the onslaught of Canada’s neoliberal agenda, as seen through the rabid implementation of austerity measures and cutbacks on public and social services, public funding for universities are unabashedly slashed in favour of the deregulation of higher education, all for the sake of corporate interests and profitability. As these measures intensify the privatization and corporatization of public education, it is not a coincidence that tuition fees have skyrocketed to almost 10% on average within the past two years and continue to rise. Currently, student debt in Canada amounts to $15 billion, a staggering figure which reveals that most students are sentenced to a life of debt and economic uncertainty.

In Ontario alone, students pay the highest tuition fees in Canada—numbering $6,640 per year on average—a 244% increase from what students used to pay 20 years ago. To quell growing dissatisfaction amongst students, Premier Dalton McGuinty garnered support by making education central to his political platform and touted his announcement to provide 30% tuition cuts, a move that privileges benefits for middle-class students. Only 1/3 of all eligible students will receive the 30% reduction. Instead of implementing policy changes to increase provincial budget in education and reduce tuition fees altogether, the provincial Liberal government chose to implement band-aid solutions to address this growing crisis. In line with the politics of distraction, this move is nothing more than an effort to pit students against each other by privileging the needs of certain groups of students over others. McGuinty’s promise is rendered meaningless by those students who need tuition cuts the most: such as part-time students who come from working-class backgrounds, mature students and single mothers who struggle to make ends meet.

For Filipino Canadians, the high cost of post-secondary education presents harsher realities that affect the community at large. Starting from the non-accreditation of foreign educational credentials and non-recognition of previous professional training, Filipino Canadians and other racialised immigrants are often stuck in dead-end, low-paying jobs, thus making post-secondary education even more difficult to access. Worse, for temporary foreign workers under the Live-in Caregiver Program, the issue of accessibility does not even factor into the equation as downright policy restrictions prohibit them from taking educational upgrading courses.

As the older generation of Filipino Canadians has limited access to post-secondary education, it is then no surprise that the youth and students are further pushed into the margins as they inherit the community’s cycle of poverty. Often required to work to support and supplement their families’ incomes, Filipino Canadian youth alongside previous generations are streamlined to become Canada’s permanent sources of cheap labour. Academic and community-based research has shown that Filipino Canadian youth experience staggering rates of downward social mobility, and now have one of the highest high school drop-out rates in major cities such as Vancouver and Montreal. These form the crux of the social, economic and financial barriers that Filipino Canadian youth continue to face in accessing education.

We, members of the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance—Ontario, assert our position that education should be a basic right and not a privilege for the few. We will continue to expose and oppose any government’s neoliberal efforts to slash public funding in education that prevent marginalised individuals and communities from fully participating in Canadian society. Together with all racialised, marginalised and working class students and communities, we will march forward and continue our fight to make education accessible to all towards our genuine development as individuals and as a society.

Drop the fees! Eliminate tuition fees and student debt now!
Stop the privatization of public education!
Onwards with the demand for accessible education!
Advance the movement for genuine settlement and integration!

For more information, contact:
Kenneth Santos
(416) 519-2553
ukpc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook and Twitter: ugnayanontario

femmesandfamily:

Are you new to identifying as a femme? Closeted?  Young?  Isolated? Or just need extra support?

Femmeffirmations is a BRAND NEW blog dedicated to finding established femme mentors for other femmes who need community.

All you need to do to request a mentoris send a message to the blog(link here).  In your request, just let us know what you’re looking for in a mentor (identity markers, age, location, etc).  Then you will receive short list of mentors we think might fit your needs best.  We are also going to publish all of the mentor info on the blog, so you can browse that way as well.  We will tag each mentor’s submission with markers that might make them easier to go through (examples might be dapper, ftm, poc, autistic, etc).

You can message as many mentors as you’d like(you can never have too many femmes!) Just make sure to reference Femmeffirmations, so they know that you found them through the mentorship program <3

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! And remember, all of this can be completely anon if you’d like.  Just please make up a name so we can keep track of who we are talking to.

I know I said goodnight but…. so excited about this!

Beat Nation reflects a generation of artists who juxtapose urban youth culture with Aboriginal identity in entirely innovative and unexpected ways. Using hip hop and other forms of popular culture, artists create surprising new cultural hybrids—in painting, sculpture, installation, performance and video—that reflect the changing demographics of Aboriginal people today.

In Vancouver, the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Nations have been a meeting ground for urban Aboriginal youth for decades and, since the early 1990s, hip hop has been a driving force of activism in the community. The roots of hip hop culture and music have been transformed into forms that echo current realities of young people, creating dynamic forums for storytelling and indigenous language, as well as new modes of political expression. This movement has been influential across disciplines—similar strategies appear in the visual arts where artists remix, mash-up and juxtapose the old with the new, the rural with the urban, traditional and contemporary as a means to rediscover and reinterpret Aboriginal culture within the shifting terrains of the mainstream.

While this exhibition takes its starting point from hip hop, it branches out to include artists who use pop culture, graffiti, fashion and other signifiers of urban life in combination with more traditional forms of Aboriginal identity. Artists create unique cultural hybrids that include graffiti murals with Haida figures, sculptures carved out of skateboard decks, abstract paintings with form-line design, live video remixes with Hollywood films, and hip hop performances in Aboriginal languages, to name a few. While focused on artists working along the West Coast, Beat Nation brings together artists from across the Americas and reveals the shared connections between those working in vastly different places.

As signifiers of Aboriginal identity and culture continue to shift and transform, and older traditions find renewed meaning in new forms of expression, one thing remains constant: a commitment to politics, to storytelling, to Aboriginal languages, to the land and rights, whether it be with drums skins or turntables, natural pigments or spray paint, ceremonial dancing or break dancing. 

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and based on an initiative of grunt gallery. Co-curated by Kathleen Ritter, associate curator, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Tania Willard, a Secwepemc artist, designer and curator. 

Opens at the Vancouver Art Gallery on February 25, 2012

Signal boost for Victoria folks!

peopleofcolor:

MP: Alondra, as you know I’ve been dying to talk to you about this photo of the Black Panther Party’s Free Clothing Program by Stephen Shames. It’s one of my favorite fashion photos because it captures so well what I can only describe as a state of sartorial joy – that happy feeling I get…

This is a series of testimonies given by our aboriginal neighbors. We are posting these in an attempt to allow everyone to better understand just how badly Canada has neglected the first nations of Canada. These are the words submitted to the JRP Hearings, to Enbridge and to the Government of Canada.

mmmajestic:

boobsanderson:

Sec 5.2(1)(c) of the ID screening regs of Aeronautics Act: “An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents.”

OHHHHHHHH, THIS IS FUCKING RICH

this makes my blood boil. sign the petition!