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A Previous Valentine's March

Yuris and The Men's Banner

This year I wasn't able to attend the 8th Annual Memorial March for All Missing and Murdered held on Valentine's day. I wish I had gone but I've learned that I need to accept when I can't participate in everything all the time. 

From what I've seen in the media it was a successful march. I always regret reading the comments on any article relating to indigenous issues or events. They make me loose my faith in humanity. 

These photos were taken in 2012 at one of the evening marches. The quality of photos are not that great. Since I began to document my experiences in art and activism I can see my learning curve. 

David Jacks helping to carry the banner.

I remember I attended this march instead of going to an evening class.  The week before I announced this march was happening, I thought it was appropriate since it was intro to Native Studies. 

Portage ave.

A sign I liked

The name I carried.

Sunrises On A Finished Banner

 Monday early morning in July of 2011. I worked out in the hot sun for five days completing the biggest banner I had ever made at the time. 

Sunday night I sat at the campfire waiting for the sun to rise to take this picture on Pope's Hill. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. 

People were still dancing long after the concerts ended. 

After the mini photo shoot I curled up into a little exhausted ball and waited for my mom to pick me up and take me home. 

A Place Of Beauty

The summer of 2011 was very productive for me. One of my trips took me to Victoria BC. 

Bre, a fantastic woman I met at the Pan Canadian Feminist Gathering invited me to make a banner with her and local activist groups. 

While there I stayed with Renay, one of the most interesting and awesome feminists I've ever met.  Her home was a space of pure beauty. 

When ever I think of a place of refuge, somewhere to rejuvenate my spirit. I think of her and my time spent in Victoria. 

The spring and early summer had been packed with the gathering (I was part of the main group hosting), writing and directing my film Dreamcatcher and creating a 20 foot banner for the first time at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. It was all satisfying work but emotionally exhausting.

I found it reassuring to be called an artist and have my work appreciated. 

Part of my experience at the folk festival and the gathering left me feeling like what I was doing wasn't making any sort of difference. That I was putting myself out there in potential danger for little to no pay off. 

Before I visited B.C. I wondered if what I was creating and the intent of my work was getting through to people. That's something I still wonder time to time. It is part of the reason I've been reluctant and nervous to continue with this blog and post regularly. 

But the people I met in Victoria helped me realize that what I do is valid. That I create a unique dialogue and experience on the topic of violence against women.  I just have to remind myself that every once in awhile. 

A Lovely Little Note

While I was making a banner at the Winnipeg Folk Festival Campground in 2011 my friend Sarah slipped this into my tent. She was at a workshop and I'm not sure on the details but she gave little love notes to all the people she was camping with. 

I had barely filled the banner and had to take a break. After a long hot day in the sun I found this lovely message in my tent. It was such a delightful surprise. My whole being felt so much lighter. 

This was the fantastic view I had of the campground around me. 

The Beginning Of A Banner

Taken in 2012 the night before the Winnipeg Comic Con.

Whenever I begin a new banner one of my technical problems is finding the space for prep work. 

This is the storage room at Urban Shaman Art Gallery. We were there late after one of the galleries openings. 

After I painted in the lettering and pulled up the cloth I saw this. 

 I like that I branded the floor with this message. And nobody at the gallery minded. 

WINNIPEG RALLY FOR GAZA 2: JULY 19, 2014

 

 

Here are some of the photos I took earlier today.

 

Below is my Step-father Darrell Rankin and my three nephews Asher, Roscoe and Linkon.

 

 

The rally took place at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Monday, September 29, 2008

I have had an interesting journey making the first Men’s Banner shown in a previous post. It is an example banner. One I bring with me everywhere when I talk to groups or march in rallies. My next few of posts will be of my experience making the first banner in 2008.

From left to right
Sid Rashid (UMSU Vice President)
Thane Carr (My older brother and UMASA member)
Brock Campbell (UMASA Co-President)
Clayton Thomas (UMASA Co-Event’s Coordinator)
Jonny Sopotiuk (UMSU President)

Monday, September 29 was the official day I started the banner. I set up in the hallway of University Centre at the University of Manitoba. I had asked several students from different organizations on campus to be the first to have their hands on the banner.

Later on in the day Mitch Tripple (UMSU Vice President) placed his hand on the banner.

I was very optimistic about this project. I thought the banner would be covered quickly and that I would need another one before the Christmas break.
To me asking men to promise not to commit an act of violence seemed a simple request. That anyone would want to lend a hand.

Murdered, missing cases need answers

Murdered, missing cases need answers

The Beginning

The Men's Banner is a project I started thinking about in 2007. It is a project directed at men to make the commitment not to use their hands for violence against women. I hope to bring a Men’s Banner to university campuses across Canada. This blog is to document how that ambition goes.
I started this in reaction to the missing and murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada. I hope to bring attention to this horrific subject as well as make a positive contribution in my community.

(Re-posting everything due to the change of my url)

There is a heart in my hand…

This photograph always makes me smile. It is from the Winnipeg Comic Con 2012 banner. The handprint belonged to a young boy, about 11 year’s old (I think). He was with his family and I don’t remember if he was in a costume. There were a lot of people around my booth and I wasn't able to focus on him or talk to his parents but it felt like his family really got what I was trying to do.

Top 10 list: How not to respond to Indigenous experiences of racism in Canada | rabble.ca

Top 10 list: How not to respond to Indigenous experiences of racism in Canada | rabble.ca

Only 4.5%…

“4.5% of the men in the United States is an incredibly high number – that translates into over six million men.

If you added up every US citizen who was officially unemployed or looking for work in 2001, that would be less than the total number of rapists.

If you added up every US citizen who is Jewish, that would still be less than the total number of rapists.

If you added up every teenage boy who had any sort of job – an afterschool job, a summer job, working full-time after dropping out, including all of those – you’d still have over a million fewer people then the total number of rapists.

There are twice as many rapists in the USA as there are single mothers.

For every drunk driver who is in a fatal accident this year, there are over 500 rapists.

If you take every doctor and nurse in the United States; and you added them to every librarian, every cashier, every cop, every postal clerk, and every bank teller in the whole country; you still wouldn’t have as many people as the number of rapists in the United States.

(Think of that a second – think of how often, in your daily life, you’ve seen cops and cashiers and all those other folks. Odds are, you’ve run into rapists more often than that).

To paraphrase Tim Wise: In short, “only” 4.5% of the male population is a lot of people, so that even by the most optimistic assessment of how many men are rapists, there are literally millions out there who not only would but have raped a woman. When combined with those who are less vicious – those who haven’t raped, but would be willing to in the right circumstances, and those who would make excuses for why other men rape, it becomes clear just how real a widespread a problem rape and rape-supportive attitudes are among men today.”

— 

http://amptoons.com/blog/2004/05/05/how-many-men-are-rapists/

Source via afronaut

Sailor Moon Says!

 

Source:http://majinbabe.tumblr.com/post/54383546666

If A Report Of Mugging Was Treated Like A Report Of Rape

 

Source: http://irritable-belle-syndrome.tumblr.com

Just Don’t!

 

In reaction to San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s sexual harassment lawsuits below is a gif set of  Stephen Colbert demonstrating his own anti-sexual harassment system using his “don’t touch” screen (you need to ask the screen first).

 

This is just another reason why I like Stephen Colbert so much.  My source for the gif’s is below.

 

Source: http://sandandglass.tumblr.com

California Prisons Sterilized Female Inmates without Permission

 

"From 2006 to 2010, 148 women [in two California prisons] received the procedure called tubal ligation which prevents the woman from having any more children…in direct violation of prison rules. Former prisoners and advocacy groups are calling the sterilizations coercive and reminiscent of eugenics."

And that’s just what was uncovered by one minor journalistic investigation into two women’s prisons in California.

Press Release regarding a petition to the governor to investigate

How to e-mail the governor’s office directly (facebook, twitter)

How to contact the state’s Attorney General (facebook, twitter, tumblr)

Source: http://anarchistpeopleofcolor.tumblr.com/

The Glorification of White Crime

 

Interesting dialogue taken from tumblr, reblogged on my account and I decided to add it here.

 

 Source: daughterofmulan:

Take a facet of crime, and then look at television shows/movies that feature those criminals as protagonists.

White mobs.

White pirates.

White serial killers.

White political corruption

White drug dealers

I mostly want to talk about this as a TV phenomenon, but pick a crime, any crime, and Western media has probably made a movie/TV series/play/etc. with a white person that romanticizes the criminal activity. No matter what, a white person can do whatever terrible crimes and still have a TV/movie fanbase that loves them.

When you see black or brown people committing crimes on screen, you are to see them thugs and criminal masterminds and people to be beat down.

When you see white people committing crimes on screen, you see a three-dimensional portrait of why someone might commit that crime, how criminals are people too, and how you should even love them for the crimes that they commit because they’re just providing for their families or they’ve wronged or they’re just people and not perfect. This is particularly a luxury given to white male characters, since there few white female criminals as protagonists.

If and of the above shows were about black or brown folks, there would be a backlash of (white) people claiming that TV and movies are romanticizing criminals and are treating them too much like heroes and that it will affect viewers and encourage violence and “thuggish" behaviour. And yet fictional white criminals get to have a deep fan base who loves these white criminals, receive accolades and awards, get called amazing television that portray the complexities of human nature. Viewers of these characters see past the atrocious crimes and into their humanity, a luxury that white characters always have while characters of color rarely do. The closest that mainstream TV has come to showing black criminals as main characters is probably The Wire, and even then, the criminals share equal screen time and equal status as main characters as the police trying to stop them.

The idea that crime can be so heavily romanticized and glorified to such a degree is undoubtedly a privilege given to white characters. The next time you hear someone talk about Dexter Morgan or Walter White in a positive way, it may be an opportunity to rethink how white people can always able to be seen as people no matter what they do, while everyone else can be boiled down to nothing but a criminal.

I always felt extremely uncomfortable with this trope because, not only is it racist, but it tends to feed into the already too common propensity society has to humanize, romanticize and exonerate irrevocably terrible white men. Like if you’re a white man and you commit awful crimes, you will likely go down in history as a legendary celebrity and historical figure

Tootsie Role and Misogyny

 

Dustin Hoffman on playing a woman in Tootsie (1982)

“If I was going to be a woman, I would want to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me, ‘Uh, that’s as beautiful as we can get you.’ And I went home and started crying to my wife, and I said, ‘I have to make this picture.’ And she said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen, and I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out.’ She says, ‘What are you saying?’ and I said, ‘There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.’ It was not what it felt like to be a woman. It was what it felt like to be someone that people didn’t respect, for the wrong reasons. I know it’s a comedy. But comedy’s a serious business.”

madlori:

aboysbestfriendishismother:

This is a man in tears when he came up against the experience of being a woman in a misogynist society, and realizing what it means for them, and for him, too.

Source: aboysbestfriendishismother