Through years of turmoil and confusion, Cindi Fisher’s enduring love for her involuntarily committed son gradually changed her from compliant mom to mental health civil rights activist. That’s when authorities banned her from even contacting her son. But could she be a bellwether of a coming nation-wide wave of protestors? Click here to read the
Someone blows up a bus or a building or a bunch of people, and then everywhere, every time, a universal, almost archetypal cry goes up asking, "Why? Why?! How could anyone do such a thing? What kind of a person would do this? Why?!" And the question is always repeated everywhere in the media, too,
Not many people know that local Victoria, BC police and the RCMP have already begun building a massive public traffic surveillance system. And no one knows how they’re going to use it. The A News reporter and Nanaimo constable interwove: “amazing,” “blown away,” “overwhelming.” “This will revolutionize the way we police,” proclaimed Vancouver police in The
Municipal engineers have a lot more power over city life and politics than most of us realize. * It’s an academic lecture about sidewalks. Could I have even dreamed up an event that sounded more inconsequentially mind-numbing? But on this cold, rainy, January night, the little Legacy Art Gallery and Café, as part of the
It’s time to start talking about rebuilding democracy from the grassroots * I helped facilitate two public discussions recently; one delved into a global emergency, and the other a local crisis. Fascinating similarities between them hinted at ways to strengthen community dialoguing and social change. The first discussion involved a panel of three writers noted