Tag: Enviro Topic: Climate Action

Birthday Party Fundraiser for Climate Action

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A Night of Good Cheer and a Rousing Success! $3000 Raised for Raven Trust’s Anti-TMX Campaign!

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On a cold, rainy night in January, over 50 friends and family gathered in Hewett Hall to celebrate Tamiko Suzuki ‘s 60th birthday. After a moving welcome by Sto:lo elder and activist, Kwitsel, the evening turned raucous with parlour games. Guests were given coloured dots on their name tags to show how they were connected to Tamiko  (family, work, UCV, book club, etc) and asked to sit at a table with as many colours as possible! The tables then competed in games of rock/paper/scissors  (in Japanese!), Name that Tune (music from TV and film from the 60’s,70’s  to today), Trivial Pursuit, and Charades, all with some connection to Tamiko’s life. Try to imagine contestants acting out the charades challenges;  “Being charged by a rhino” (which was a true story) and “skinny dipping on New Year’s Day (also true). The winners got to dress Tamiko with items from a box so that at one point she was wearing a diving mask, blond wig, life jacket, and belly dancer belt.

The games were followed by delivery of a cake decorated with a dinosaur and speeches both funny and warm. The evening finished with International folk dancing and many brave friends trying out  Bolivian, Finnish, and Greek/Roma dances.

Instead of presents, Tamiko asked guests to make a donation to  RAVEN Trust’s anti-TMX campaign and over $3000 was raised. An additional $400 was donated to support the Wet’suet’en opposition to the Coastal Gas pipeline.

A big thanks and much love to the Environment Team who sponsored the event, provided the food, set up, cleaned up, matched a portion of the donations, and took part in the games and dances with grace and humour.

 

64 Red Dresses — Art Installation by Doreen Manuel

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Above: Red Dresses to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women

Honour the Women Project

At the Stop Trans Mountain Pipeline rally at Creekside Park on June 9, 2019, Doreen Manuel, Secwepemc Nation film maker, and sister of the late Chief Arthur Manuel, announced that she is collecting red dresses (the symbol of missing and murdered Indigenous women) for her “Honour the Women project”. She will hang red dresses along the route of the pipeline in Secwepemc Territory both as an art installation and as a reminder to all who the victims are.

Thank you to all who contributed red dresses and cash! A total of 64 red dresses were collected from UCV members or purchased from thrift stores using donations by UCV members.

These dresses were delivered to the BC Union of Indian Chiefs and will be hung along the Trans Mountain pipeline route in Secwepemc territory.

This red dress collection drive at UCV  was sponsored by the Social Justice Committee and supported by the Environment Team and other individuals.

The recently released report on the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls states that there is a correlation between resource extraction and violence against Indigenous women and girls. Work camps/man camps built for resource extraction projects are implicated in higher rates of violence against Indigenous women at the camps and neighbouring communities.


For more information about this project, please contact Doreen Manuel at: [email protected]

Irreparable Harm?

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Irreparable Harm? A Tale of TMX Resistence

Documentary Theatre on the BC Supreme Court Trial
230 People Arrested for Protesting the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Wanted

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Mairy Beam — Incorrigible Author, Playwrite and Theatre Director found guilty of criminal contempt for protesting TMX

Above: Councillor Jean Swanson gets arrested. Jean represents COPE on Vancouver City Council. She is an anti-poverty activist and a recipient of the Order of Canada (Photo by Tzeporah Berman)

Update from Mairy Beam

Mairy was arrested at the Kinder Morgan Burnaby Tank Farm gates on August 24, 2018, found guilty by Judge Affleck on Dec 5, 2018 and sentenced to serve 28 days of house arrest and 125 hours of community service.

Did the protesters at the Trans Mountain facilities in Burnaby cause irreparable harm to Kinder Morgan, one of the largest energy infrastructure companies in North America, by delaying a few trucks for a few minutes on a few days in 2018? That’s what the BC Supreme Court believes. That’s why there’s an injunction barring anyone from coming within five metres of any site owned by Trans Mountain Pipeline. The 230 people who were arrested in 2018 for breaking that injunction have a different opinion as to who is causing irreparable harm to whom.

Most of those who were arrested and charged with criminal contempt of court for breaking the injunction have either pled guilty, or been found guilty by Judge Affleck – the same judge who created the injunction. These land and water protectors have made many impassioned speeches in court, trying to alert the judge to the harm that this pipeline expansion, if it proceeds, will cause to First Nations, and to the land and water that we all depend on for life. For that we have been labelled ‘sinister’, and told that by showing defiance of the law, we are inviting chaos and threatening civilization.

Several of the land and water protectors have formed the Sinister Sisters Collective to develop a documentary theatre piece about our journey through the BC Supreme Court. We are calling it “Irreparable Harm?” Using video footage from the arrests, excerpts from the court documents, and re-enactments, we will shine a spotlight on how our justice system treats those who are in opposition to the interests of large corporations.

We will be working over the summer months to compile the most dramatic moments of our encounters with the justice system. Our goal is to present a workshop in October, and then a full production of our theatre piece in the spring of 2020.

Stay tuned!