In order to eliminate an $800 million budget deficit, the Rob Ford administration is prepared to make major cuts to such core services as libraries, child-care and community centres, shelters, drop-ins, public transport, and more. With Toronto’s growing population there is a demand for more, better quality services, not less. These cuts are sure to have horrible consequences for the thousands of Torontonians living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The Toronto Stop the Cuts Network is a non-partisan group comprised of neighbourhood-based organizations. Residents in these neighbourhoods will be directly impacted by the potential cuts.
On Sept. 26, 2011 Toronto Stop the Cuts held a rally outside of Nathan Phillips Square. North Toronto resident Elliot Shek, 52, was one of the many gathered there.
Image of flags outside the First Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre by Daniela Costa
“The immigrant is a human, not a hammer, not a shovel, not an animal,” says teacher Isabel Benevides. “They would do to immigrants what they did to horses in Portugal. They would check the teeth and muscles of the first Portuguese immigrants to test their capability to work. They were treated like animals.”
Benevides has no idea why Canadian immigrant officials checked the horses’ teeth. Class expert Vojko Zadkovic explains that was the method used to determine a horse’s age.
It’s an odd class discussion but in this conversational environment such talks are not out of the ordinary.
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Toronto’s cultural diversity is immediately apparent inside the First Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre. Students of various descents are gathered here tonight, every one of them genuinely interested in learning a language other than their own. In a city that promotes multiculturalism, here’s a cultural centre that actually stands true to that idea. “Multiculturalism is for everyone,” says Sandeep Agrawal, an urban planning professor at Ryerson University. “If you think about the essence of multiculturalism, it is for multiple cultures to come together and provide strength to the fabric of the nation.”
In 2001 foreign-born residents made up more than 50 per cent of Toronto’s population. Torontonians come from over 150 countries and speak more than 100 languages; the top three foreign languages are Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese.
Known as “First Portuguese” in the community, the centre is located in Toronto’s west end at 60 Caledonia Rd. It primarily serves the area’s abundant Portuguese population. A semi-detached structure, the centre is mainly composed of old brick and white vinyl siding. Trees and shrubs surround the building, along with a chain link fence and several picnic tables.
Founded in 1956 by a group of settlers, the centre was a place of assembly and would ultimately help establish a Portuguese presence in Toronto. By 1964 the centre had set up a language school and been incorporated as a non-profit organization. The centre relies on small government grants to fund projects while donations from members help cover its everyday expenses. In 1976 the centre helped fund the Canadian Ethnocultural Council. The CEC works to “ensure the preservation, enhancement and sharing of the cultural heritage of Canadians.”
Unlike many cultural centres that cater solely to immigrants of a particular culture, First Portuguese has opened its doors to all Torontonians. “Multiculturalism is not just for immigrants,” says Agrawal. “It’s for all of us but obviously it is viewed as something which is for immigrants and that’s where the problem is.”
English language lessons for adults and Portuguese language lessons for adults and children are held at the centre. Computer, art, and Canadian citizenship lessons also occur there. In addition, First Portuguese functions as a day centre for the elderly along with hosting several cultural and community events.
Portuguese lessons for adults at the centre take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. A one-time $20 registration fee is required. Every three months $100 is paid.
The centre houses a lobby, an office, a library, a washroom, a kitchen, and a meeting hall which hosts most of the centre’s events and its day-to-day activities. Generic paintings and traditional Portuguese art align the walls. Several plants and Christian symbols are bunched together at the back of the room.
Three crosses sit upon Benevides’ chest. A recent widow, Benevides is dressed all in black. She’s an older woman with a habit of wearing gold. Born in Portugal, she has been living in Canada for the past 35 years. “I’m a Canadian and I’m very proud of it,” says Benevides.
Zadkovic was born in Croatia and speaks several languages including Spanish, French, and Italian. The 64-year-old believes adding Portuguese to the list could benefit him greatly. “I work for the immigration department at the airport so I often deal with Portuguese-speaking people who don’t speak English,” says Zadkovic.
Born in Aruba but raised in Guyana, Ivor Rajroop, 52, is currently attending his third class at the centre. A South American who already speaks Spanish, Rajroop says he’d like to learn his continent’s other major language – Portuguese.
Of course the class does have its drawbacks. Benevides admits three months is not long enough to get a good grasp of the language. As someone who has also taught children for many years she believes that, while the approach is similar, adults are harder to teach. Furthermore, some students would prefer advanced lessons. “It’s a little bit basic for me because I speak Spanish as well,” says Zadkovic. “There are not too many secrets for me here.”
As of 2005, eight out of 10 Canadians report feeling strongly about the maintenance of culture. “Canadians in general do believe in multiculturalism and have embraced it as part of the national identity,” says Agrawal.
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Steam rises as a sweet smell fills the air. A white teapot holds the drink of the day – camomile tea. Students pass five mismatched mugs around the room, each hot to the touch. The Portuguese use the word “chá” for tea whereas the Spanish use the word “té”, explains Zadkovic. “Chá” is a word of Arabic origin that the Portuguese latched onto after the Moors invaded. “O nosso cháé a nossa tradição,” says Benevides. “Our tea is our tradition.” First Portuguese has made many traditions throughout the years but its most significant has been the constant strengthening of multiculturalism in Toronto.
Photo of Community Food Room cans by Daniela Costa
Run by the Ryerson Students’ Union, the Community Food Room offers members free non-perishable and, on an irregular basis, fresh perishable food items. Located at 55 Gould St. in room 212 of the Student Campus Centre, the Food Room’s policy is that “no student should sacrifice food for education.”
The room runs on a points system with ever member being given 10 points a week. Canned soups, for example, are five for a point.
Those wanting to sign up must show their OneCard. The service is available to all students, staff and faculty of Ryerson University. There are over 100 registered members with 50 to 60 of them using the room each week.
Service began over 10 years ago in the face of students’ increasing financial obligations. With tuition fees so high, many are not making hunger a top priority.
The Food Room also offers low-budget recipes, nutrition and healthy eating tips, and referral services.
Most of the room’s items, however, do not comprise a healthy diet. The room sells the Good Food Box as an alternative. Filled with local fruits and vegetables provided by Food Share Toronto, the boxes cost between $13 and $18 and, depending on their size, can last as long as two weeks.
The Food Room holds three food drives each year: one for Thanksgiving, winter, and spring.
The Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank provides the Food Room with most of its donations. Bi-weekly food shipments are received throughout the year. Due to the recession, however, contributions have been lacking.
This video displays images of the Community Food Room:
Launched in late 2010, the Kinect for Xbox 360 was to give players the ultimate controller-free gaming expereince. “You are the controller,” boasts Microsoft. But are you being controlled?
According to the terms of service, Microsoft can monitor players’ chat sessions. It may also “disclose any information as necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request.”
The Kinect is a motion-tracking camera add-on for the Xbox 360. It allows players to use the system without needing to touch a game controller through gestures and spoken commands. Gamers can use voice or video chat through the Video Kinect application.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Dennis Durkin, corporate vice president and chief operating and financial officer for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, told investors that the Kinect presents opportunities for targeted advertising campaigns. His comments raised privacy concerns as to whether or not Microsoft was watching users and reporting back.
“We can cater which content we present to you based on who you are,” said Durkin. “How many people are in the room when an ad is shown? How many people are in the room when a game is being played? When you add this sort of device to a living room, there’s a bunch of business opportunities that come with that.”
Microsoft has since denied that the Kinect watches players to target adverts at them.
Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear banner by Kelly McCarthy
With his “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”, Jon Stewart calmly called for the end of extremism and counterproductive argumentation. Stewart was listening for the voice of reason which is not necessarily always the loudest.
A comedian by profession, Stewart uses his status as a public figure to move people to action. While not a journalist, Stewart informs the public in an unbiased manner through the use of satire on his Comedy Central program, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”. A self-described “fake news” program, the show draws on recent news stories to mock politicians and the mainstream media.
“The Daily Show” won two Peabody Awards for its “Indecision 2000” and “Indecision 2004” series. The shows spoofed the 2000 and 2004 American presidential elections. The program also won the 2004 Television Critics Award for Outstanding Achievement in News and Information.
Whereas the media often accepts the administration’s spin, neglecting to expose its hypocrisy, Stewart uses humour as license to confront public officials and demand accountability.
“Humour allows people to relax and sometimes be more willing to give over the information because they’re sort of caught off-guard,” says Evan Carter, a Toronto comedian.
By means of critical commentary, Stewart holds public officials and the press accountable to the masses. By comparison, the media’s need to remain objective has hurt its methods of storytelling.
“Journalists have a role to play in society and that is to uncover stories that need to be told and to interpret them and analyze them,” says David Nayman, a journalism instructor at Ryerson University. “Satirists also have a role. Sometimes they can be more biting and much harsher with their critiques because they don’t have to worry about being objective or being accurate with the facts.”
“The Daily Show”, as opposed to other satirical programs, uses effective means of fact-checking.
“Virtually everything that is said, every visual that is shown, every quote that is reported and everything that Jon Stewart says himself can be substantiated factually,” says Nayman. “You might disagree with the interpretation, but it’s there.”
“The Daily Show”would be better understood not as “fake news” show, but as a new form of critical journalism. It’s different because it uses satire to achieve what the press no longer pursues – critical inquiry.
Whether individuals enjoy politics or not, most can still appreciate the program’s entertainment value. All the while they are being exposed to political information as a result of being entertained.
“It’s like watching a very serious teacher teach a grade one class on how to do math and then you turn the channel and you watch Big Bird teach a group of grade one students how to do math,” says Carter. “They’re both going to learn that two plus two is four and you’re going to get them to say the answer, it’s just a different way of doing it.”
“The Daily Show” simplifies otherwise complicated stories to its viewers, thereby making the issues less confusing and more compelling while maintaining its credibility.
Stewart appeals to a younger audience by blurring the boundaries between news and entertainment.
“As an entertainer, Stewart provides some interesting insights into government and politics, but often his humour relies on the general cynicism, mistrust, and perceived corruption of public officials. His show is funny precisely because the American public has so little regard for its political figures,” says Tracey Raney, an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University. “Does that work to produce a new generation of critical thinking, active citizens, or does it feed into a larger political culture that de-intellectualizes complex policy issues, and treats politics as entertainment?”
A 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey found that 40 per cent of Stewart’s audience are between the ages of 18 and 29. Twenty-seven per cent of his viewers are above the age of 44. It further revealed that his audience is more educated, follows the news more regularly, and is more politically knowledgeable than the general population.
That same year the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 per cent of those 18-29 regularly learned about the presidential campaign on comedy programs, compared to 23 per cent of those who said they regularly learned this information from network news. Fifty per cent of the 18-29 demographic surveyed said that they “sometimes” learned about the campaign from comedy shows.
“It’s entertainment, but there is a deep value system behind it,” says Nayman. “It’s inarguably leftist-liberal by American standards. What’s wrong with that? It’s a counterweight to a lot of the more right-wing conservative outlets that are out there.”
While a leftist, Stewart does not skewer according to right or left. He holds government officials accountable for their failures regardless of what parties they represent.
“Every news source is going to have their slant and I think it’s up to the individual to get the news from a number of different sources, to digest it in the best way possible,” says Carter. “To rely on it as the one and only way that you get your news is a mistake on any level of news watching.”
“The Daily Show” invites viewers to reconsider journalistic conventions, acting as an alternative, not a substitute for traditional journalism.
“The hope is that people will watch something like “The Daily Show” and judge for themselves what’s being criticized and decide if that’s important enough for them to go out and do something about it,” says Nayman.
Stewart knows what his show represents and he knows his words are influential. He chooses to use his status as a public figure to encourage people to take action.
“It’s not really about being some sort of prophet. It’s about entertaining,” says Nayman. “Satire has always been entertaining but has also served a larger social purpose.”
With most of the mainstream media turning to “infotainment” to ensure high ratings, “The Daily Show” chooses instead to present “news that entertains.”
Watch Jon Stewart’s final speech at the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”:
A global push for the development of democratic societies that respect life and acknowledge the worth of every individual is in strong force. Citizens throughout the world share a common purpose of community. Community is expected to eventually best a culture of fear and violence. Journalists in cultures of impunity hope to one day be free to have a voice. The flipside of the culture of impunity is the digital era. Yet restrictions on access to information are putting the brakes on a legitimate global civil society.
In 2009 the Committee to Protect Journalists came out with its “10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger” report. The accused were Burma, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan, and Egypt.
Censorship in Burma has done away with independent media. The government regularly monitors email and blocks users trying to view material of political opposition groups.
Independent bloggers in Cuba host their content outside the country as any blogs criticizing the Cuban government are banned.
In Egypt bloggers frequently face detentions. Some are detained for months without judicial order. Reports of mistreatment and torture have surfaced.
Governments in Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Syria have focused their attentions on obstructing blogging. In Tunisia, for example, the government conducts surveillance and hinders bloggers’ movements and their access to the internet.
The Vietnamese government uses regulation to censor bloggers. It expects Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft to supply details about their users.
Bloggers in China posting material seen as unflattering to the government may be imprisoned. According to Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, the Chinese government has imposed restrictions on microblogging and shut down a number of prominent blogs.
In Iran and Saudi Arabia there are even calls to impose the death penalty on bloggers thought to be dissenters.
The world does not always hear about government sanctioned killings. Attention to the issue only seems to occur when high murder rates develop. Yet murder rates in these nations tend to decrease as more and more journalists self-censor. Such pervasive censorship makes journalistic integrity and objectivity at the global level impossible.
“Democracy Now!” takes a look at the repression of online journalism:
Security camera images of three suspects by Toronto Police Service
Toronto police have released security camera images of suspects in a stabbing that occurred on Feb. 22 in a Cineplex Odeon movie theater at 785 Milner Ave.
Two boys suffered stab wounds to the neck and back. Both were taken to the hospital with non−life threatening injuries.
Three males are thought to have been involved in the assault.
Two of the suspects are described as brown, 18−20, and 5’6″ to 5’9″. One of them was wearing a black jacket with white sleeves with a symbol on the back.
The third suspect is described as black, 18−20, wearing a black “Budweiser” jacket with a white hoodie.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416−808−4200 or Crime Stoppers at 416−222−8477.
British journalist Brian Deer loves newspapers. He spoke of this love, among other things, at Ryerson University on Wednesday.
Deer is a traditionalist who misses the days when interviews were done by phone and articles written on a typewriter.
“You used to hit up the phones,” said Deer. “Unlike these days when everyone’s emailing and there’s silence in the newsroom.”
Deer first fell in love with newspapers as a youngster. He recalls trips with his father to newsstands and being in awe at the abundance of papers.
With more than 10 national newspapers coming out of London alone, he certainly found himself in the right place to exercise his chosen profession. According to Deer, no other nation does newspapers quite like the UK.
Deer rose to national prominence as the UK’s first social affairs correspondent. He won a British Press Award as Specialist Reporter of the Year in 1999 for his work at the Sunday Times. His reports on the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine controversy for the BMJ brought him international acclaim.
“The romance for me will always be in newspapers,” said Deer.
"Online News" graphic by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Newspapers are in trouble and have been since the rise of the internet. Journalism, however, does not start with newspapers nor does it end there. Online content can also be considered journalism at its best.
Online writing rivals that of material published in a newspaper. In fact, many of the great articles available in newspapers make their way to the World Wide Web. As a result, this content has been made accessible to a much larger readership.
In the early ’90s, however, this was not thought to be a likely outcome. Clay Shirky described the unthinkable scenario in newsrooms as “the ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow.”
Yet that’s exactly how events played out.
“Online content has the potential to reach a wider audience,” said Roger Cullman, a photojournalist and regular contributor to blogTO. “By its virtues of immediacy, it has become more effective in disseminating the news.”
The dilemma for newspapers is that making news available to the public is no longer difficult.
“Journalism is better served because online you have a community that can contribute to the story and that story gets enriched by its community,” said Vinita Srivastava, a multimedia journalist and a professor at Ryerson University.
The writing is of equal quality between the two mediums. This is true for both news reporting and feature writing.
“It’s certainly a threat,” said Tim Falconer, a freelance writer and Ryerson University instructor. “In terms of great long form writing, I think you’re seeing more and more of it appear online now.”
Journalism has made the successful shift to the online world and some even believe traditional print media will become obsolete. Should that day come, there is no need to panic. Shirky put it best: “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.”
In this video, Vinita Srivastava looks at the impact of blogs:
Photo of a poster of the Confederation des Travailleurs Haïtiens (CTH) by Rafael Robles L.
Former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to Haiti on Sunday after 25 years of exile in France. Charges were formally filed against him on Tuesday, CNN reported.
The charges are related to financial corruption and could possibly include human rights violations.
The Duvalier dictatorship began in 1957 when Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier was elected president. He later declared himself president for life and, upon his death in 1971, was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude, then only 19.
Duvalier lived a lavish lifestyle, one which included a state-sponsored US$3 million wedding in 1980. He made millions from the drug trade and by selling cadavers to foreign medical schools.
Under Duvalier’s rule, thousands were killed and tortured, and hundreds of thousands fled into exile, according to Human Rights Watch. He is accused of embezzling Haiti and taking money from the country’s treasury.
A popular uprising in 1986 ended the three decade rule of the Duvalier family in Haiti.
Human rights groups have continuously asked that Duvalier be brought to justice for the crimes committed during his 15 years of rule.
The reasoning behind Duvalier’s decision to return to Haiti remains uncertain. His arrival, however, comes at a time of much tension as the country is still recovering from the earthquake and a recent presidential election swamped in controversy.
The following video is a report on Duvalier’s detainment in Haiti:
Daniela Costa 