Feed the hungry for real

[Re: “Grub grab,” Nov. 29] The Commando Bouffe participants should be ashamed of their irresponsible and counterproductive behaviour. Not only is looting a morally reprehensible and a aggressive crime, but it does very little to help the hungry people they claim to support. I suspect that the thrill of a heist and a desire for attention are strong secondary motivations at work here.

A well-organized food drive would yield a greater amount of (non-perishable!) food for the hungry than a childish grab of (perishable!) buffet trays. Here’s an idea: collaborate with socially minded shops to offer promotions to customers who bring in food bank items. If you’re ambitious, organize a charity that offers incentives to restaurants that allow you to pick up “waste” (much of which is quite untouched and edible) at the end of the night, refrigerate it and distribute it to the needy the following day.

If you wish to truly engage the issue of hunger, dig to the source. Shouting “blame capitalism!” and stealing some trays is an easy and ignorant answer to the problem, but it is certainly not the correct solution. Host some employment and money-management workshops for the poor rather than wasting time in court dealing with the criminal charges that will result from the Commando Bouffe.

As the saying goes, steal a fish and you can feed a person for a day. Teach them to fish and they will be fed for a lifetime.

>> Ryan Livingston

Risking women’s rights

[Re: “Reasonable protests,” Nov. 29] As a women’s studies student from the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, I would like to challenge the sexism and racism of the reasonable accommodation hearings as well as the equally offensive response of the Status des femmes du Québec. I would like to emphasize that my position is an anti-racist and anti-colonialist approach to women’s equality.

To have talks on “reasonable accommodation” is hypocrisy unto itself. It creates a fiction that white persons of European descent who immigrated here less than 400 years ago are original citizens of the land (the “Québécois” and “Canadian” people). It is clear from history that both Quebec and Canada were created through the colonial expansion of Britain and France, by displacing and enacting outright genocide on the Indigenous nations who had originally and selflessly welcomed these white foreigners.

The question must be asked: after 400 years of unreasonable accommodation of white settlers unto this land, how can Quebec claim to now decide to “reasonably accommodate” immigrants and people of colour?

The position of the Status des femmes is also hypocritical. As a feminist, I would like to remind the Status des femmes that feminism is about women’s power and agency—about allowing women to make decisions for themselves, and to live their lives free from violence and discrimination of any kind. The racist assumptions that Muslim women who decide to wear the niqab or hijab are oppressed and “brainwashed” encourages racist stereotypes of non-white women. This blatant racism condones not only racial discrimination against people of colour in Quebec (and Canada), but also encourages psychological and emotional violence (as well as physical and sexual violence) against women of colour, all the while denying that such violence against specifically non-white women exists.

This kind of state-sanctioned abuse goes unrecognized because the normative definition of racism and violence excludes the lived realities of women of colour mainly because they do not subject white, heterosexual, able, middle-class citizens (especially men) to systemic inequalities of power.

As a feminist of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, I would like to remind the Bouchard-Taylor commission that their “hearings” are nothing more than a perpetuation of state-legitimized racist and sexist ideologies that contradict the myth of Canada and Quebec as a “peaceful” and “multicultural” society that welcomes “outsiders.”

>> Lily Tandel

Safe sex is sexy

[Re: “World AIDS day events,” Nov. 29] In light of World AIDS day, I can’t help but think that Montreal has not come to terms with the prevalence of HIV and AIDS here, within this city.

We pride ourselves as being called “the sexiest city in Canada,” so liberal and open about sex—but it seems this nickname may come at a price—we are experiencing an increase in STIs amongst young people.

Epidemiological statistics have shown that HIV and AIDS transmission rates have increased in Canada since 2003, with the biggest increase among women between the ages of 15 and 29 years old.

Meanwhile, formal sex education has been abolished in Quebec schools. Girls are not getting accurate, reliable, nor accessible information on protection, agency and management of their sexual encounters—specifically in condom negotiation.

Montreal needs to open its eyes, particularly with regards to young girls. We can still take pleasure in the title of “sexiest city” but how about we also adopt the “safer sex city” at the same time?

>> Emily Sheppard

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