Winnipeg Enabled

by jay
I think Winnipeg has so much to offer when it comes to groups working for the greater good. They are not always easy to find but they are there. Making strides in the Disabled community is the Manitoba league of Persons with Disabilities (MLPD). They are a small non-profit advocating the concerns of those many people in Manitoba who cannot. If your not part of this community it can be really hard to understand the barriers they face everyday. The group has just celebrated their 35^th year in April. They are a tight knit group governed by elected members of a board. They put out a quarterly paper called “Alert” keeping the community up to date on all their achievements.

I got together with a member of the league to find out more. Born with cerebral palsy, Libby Zdriluk has battled the barriers all her life. Libby has personally been denied certain of her own rights because she was not aware. People really need to take it upon themselves to get what they NEED. Social assistance case workers do not actually take the time to tell their clients about what is available to them to spare themselves a few more pages of paper work. “ I often have felt like I was being bullied, and treated unfairly because I was poor and had a disability.” I learned that in the United states there is something called the Americans with Disabilities act, something we lack in Manitoba and much of Canada. “right now there is nothing to protect us, we solely fall under the charter of rights and freedoms”. This act would ensure that disabled people would be equals in the work place and social assistance would be much more accessible. “When Winnipegers were polled on what is important to them, Disabilities was last. We need more protection. We really need to change our attitudes and and update our policies” it is frustrating to see brand new buildings going up that are unaccessible. It seems thoughtless. There is legislation that suggest making buildings accessible to all people, but it is not enforced. “This is why we need the disabilities act.” This act would also help when it comes to the workplace. ”It would be great to see better work place accommodation. Work places assume that we will take up to much resource and money. It is rare to see a disabled person get a promotion within a company even if they are aptly qualified.

Through all bumps and scrapes there are still great people doing great things. One of Libbys personal Heroes; Jim Derksen. Jim pushed for all the curb cuts, and continues to work with the government on policy issues, and he is still really well respected. Jim actually received and honorable doctorate on Monday June 1^st.

How can we move forward? This blog is all about moving forward. How to get there and where to start. What does Libby do to move forward? She sticks out like a sore thumb, “we need to try and branch out to other communities. You cannot do everything alone, we all need to work together with all sorts of issues. We need to get out of this bubble. There has been a lot of community activism, Winnipeg is very lucky to have an active disabled community. There are always conferences and events where people offer lots of great information for people to use for themselves”. There are also a lot of great services for them, including SMD (Society for persons with Disabilities) who offer on site counseling, and a number of other aids. ILRC (Independent Living Resource Center) who help with independent living, like self managed support.

What else can we do to move forward for social change so we are all equal in this world? Who can we look up to? We're gonna start by branching out, challenging everything and looking up to the people who make change in Winnipeg... well, all of Winnipeg.

Winnipegs Human Rights Museum

After years of speculation and funding woes, construction of the Canadian Human Rights Museum has finally commenced. The 300 million dollar complex located in the heart of the city will dramaticly change the skyline of our urban center. An urban center which is ironically host to the poorest electoral riding in the country.

The museum boasts and ambitious student program which intends to bring as many as 20, 000 thousand students from across the country to the museum every year, with much of the cost taken care of. When these students arrive they can expect to learn from exhibits on a variety of issues that permeate Canada's history. Issues such as the Chinese head tax, the womens suffrage struggle, residential schools and of course the 1919 General Strike.

Exhibits will obviously not be limited to issues exclusively Canadian, with pieces dedicated to the holocaust, and presumably other serious war crimes and humanitarian crises, such as the violence in Darfur, religious oppression, and a host of other potential topics.

Though it is impossible to predict just what exactly the museum will look like when it opens 3 years from now, it would be safe to assume that the exhibits will focus primarily on the horrors of the past. Those we can denounce as we flip the the back pages of history, with the buffer of time freeing us from the duty to address our roles and responsibilities in many of these injustices.

Take the issue of indigenous rights for example. It is safe to assume that this will at least be touched on in some of the exhibits, as the audacity of omitting it from a museum built at the forks (a meeting place for indigenous people for thousands of years) would rob it of any legitimacy. While the museum will almost certainly touch on residential schools and the brutality of Canada's early settlers, it would be surprising, to see it discuss the fact that the UN has deemed a great number of reserves as on par with third world nations, or that some have been on boil water notices for as long as a decade.

Canada's role in Haiti will most likely be overlooked completely, as our involvement is far too recent to dismiss as the crimes of our forefathers. Haiti is one of the most impoverished nations on the planet and Canada's role in overthrowing the democratically elected Lavalas party in 2004 is known throughout the Caribbean nation. Not the case here at home, where the majority of Canadians are completely unaware of our role in the coup, or the fact that representatives of Canadian garment makers Gildan Activewear - whose clothing is produced in Haiti - sit on the interim government, known as the Provisional Electoral Council . These are the kinds of things that we as Canadians should ALL be learning about.

If the Aspers truly wish for their museum to be a beacon of human rights than it should challenge injustices that are currently unfolding, both locally and abroad. But for most Canadians, a few minutes with any of the the Aspers' Can-West 11 newspapers or their local Global TV affiliate will imply otherwise.

Of course not all human suffering can be documented in one building, but the question is, who determines what's in and what's out. With the Aspers getting the project off the ground, and the Canadian government footing the yearly expenses once the museum opens, what do you expect the museum to look like. What do you think we will or won't see and why. And most importantly, what do you WANT to see? Discuss.