People’s Health Radio is out and about!

Hi all!

People’s Health Radio Programmers are coming out from behind the control board over the next week!

If you’re local to Vancouver, come check us out as part of the Organizing Centre’s table at http://crafts4acause.wordpress.com/:

Crafts for a Cause is a craft fair that supports social justice struggles.

It’s a fundraiser, and it happens in three ways:

• Community groups working for social justice sell art and crafts to support their organizing work,
• Table fees from individual artists are donated to these groups,
• Finally, the $2 entrance fee supports Rhizome Cafe, an amazing community-centered space in the city.

The Mass Incarceration Agenda | rabble.ca

The Mass Incarceration Agenda | rabble.ca.

Incarceration is bad for health.  It is unhealthy for the people who are locked up, for their families and dependents, and for the communities that they are integrated into.  Currently poor people, Aboriginal people and people who are addicted to illicit drugs are massively over-represented in prisons across the country, and their numbers are growing.

This show looks at the mass incarceration agenda from the ‘ominous’ crime bill and mandatory minimums to prison construction and privatization in BC to targeting of poor people who use illicit drugs in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. The show includes interviews with Caleb Chepesiuk from the Canadian Students for a Sensible Drug Policy; Stephanie Seaton a blogger from Summerland BC, who has done extensive research on prison construction in BC and Brookfield, the private partner in BC prisons; and Laura Shaver of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users about her experience of prison.

Healing Trauma in our Movements: A Spotlight on the Kindred Collective in the Southern United States | rabble.ca

LISTEN HERE: Healing Trauma in our Movements: A Spotlight on the Kindred Collective in the Southern United States | rabble.ca.

Last week, I  had the chance to speak with Tamika Middleton and Cara Page of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective from their base in Atlanta, Georgia.

Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective is based out of the Southern United States. Founded in 2007, Kindred is conceived by healers and organizers in the South as a response to the crisis of trauma, violence and social conditions in the Southern United States.

Tamika and Cara shared insight about the work that Kindred is undertaking to identify the roots of trauma within movements in the Southern United States, their work to build networks of healers.and creating leadership models that promote wellness, and encouraging connections between personal and collective wellness in progressive work.

I was inspired by their clarity of vision and their focus on identifying the roots of ill health and trauma within progressive movements in the Southern US.  It was also clear that they draw lessons and strength from the deep roots of healing traditions and strength within those same communities (particularly African American) that have been burdened with exploitation and oppression over centuries.    They put forward their position strongly in our interview, so I won’t get into it too much.

Thoughtful about ways we could apply their example and analysis here at home in Vancouver, as well.  There is a common cycle of intense activity, followed by feelings of sadness and burnout among organizers.   How can we build sustainable and healthy movements while we organize against an unsustainable and fundamentally deadly system?

Learn more about Kindred’s work at their website: http://kindredhealingjustice.org/

Occupy Wallstreet and Privatized Prisons in BC

An interesting BC connection with the Occupy Wallstreet protest.

I heard on the news this morning that the ‘private-public’ park that Occupy Wall street protesters are camped out on in New York is owned by Brookfield Properties, part of Canadian based real estate company which manages $150 billion worth of assets world wide.

Brookfield is also the company contracted to design, build and operate a new 216 cell privatized prison in Surrey, which will be used to house the increasingly large number of poor people, people who are addicted to illegal drugs and Aboriginal people under Harper’s new ‘Ominous’ crime bill.  You can read more about privatized prisons in BC at the thieverycorp blog.

People’s Health Radio will be at the Occupy Vancouver activities starting this weekend and will have a report on our next show (October 26, 1pm).

“Homes Not Jails”

VANDU marches against mass incarceration

Today VANDU had an action against what we are calling the ‘mass incarceration agenda’ for Canada.  About 50 of us rallied at the Vancouver Public Library, passed out leaflets and then marched on the street back to VANDU in the Downtown Eastside.   We chanted “homes not jails”, and “stop the war on the poor” all the way back., and we passed out leaflets from the Canadian Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.

We took this action because we can see the horrible impacts that mass incarceration agenda – basically jailing even more poor people, people who use illicit drugs, Aboriginal people, immigrants and refugees – is going to have on the health and well being of our community.

We call it a mass incarceration agenda because the policies are being enacted at all levels of government and by different political parties.  At the federal level, the Harper Conservatives ‘Omnibus Crime Bill’ introduces mandatory minimums for drug offenses, reduces access to parole and pardons and very clearly targets people who use illicit drugs and immigrant and refugee communities.  It will mean more people in jail for longer, and when we say ‘people’ you know the type of people we mean – the people in our community – poor people, people who are addicted to drugs, Aboriginal people, migrants and refugees.

Meanwhile the Provincial Liberals are building the jail space to put all the newly minted criminal masterminds in.  The first is a $90 million, 216 cell remand centre in Surrey, and a second one is slated for the Okanagan.  Both will be privately operated with the Surrey facility already contracted out to a company called Brookfield Financial Corp.

And of course the rogue Vancouver Police Department are happy to fill the prisons with people from the Downtown Eastside and other poor neighbourhoods.  People like the woman who came into VANDU this week because she found out she has a warrant for her arrest because she failed to appear at her court date for vending tickets!

The mass incarceration agenda is scary!  When parents are separated from their children, when people are ripped out of their communities, when people have to deal with the stigma of being an ‘ex-con’ for the rest of their lives the health impacts are deep, structural and inter-generational.

People’s Health Radio is planning a show on the ‘Ominous’ Crime Bill on October 26, so tune in for more analysis and discussion of how we can oppose this awful agenda.

 

Report back from the fight for health care in the US

LISTEN HERE: Report back from the Frontlines of the Health Care Fight in the US | rabble.ca

How is the fight going in the belly of the beast for public health care?

We talk to Rohith (fellow collective member) about his summer spend with the Physicians for a National Health Care Program in Chicago.

 

Smile with Dignity Campaign Gains Momentum in Vancouver

The Smile with Dignity campaign maintains that Dental Care is a Human Right

On March 16 of this year People’s Health Radio did a recap show on the Smile with Dignity campaign, a grassroots effort by local organization the Alliance for People’s Health to include basic dental care under the BC Medical Services Plan. (https://peopleshealthradio.wordpress.com/category/dental-care/). The campaign has 3 demands:

1. Include basic preventive and restorative care under the BC Medical Services Plan;

2. Access to dental care be determined by need and not ability to pay;

3. Structural issues undermining equality in dental care be addressed.

On this show we spoke with the organizers from the Alliance for People’s Health, health researcher Bruce Wallace and members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users about how the current provision of dental care services in BC adversely impacts the health and well-being of families, older people and poor and working class people in this province.

Since our show in March the Smile with Dignity campaign has been steadily building momentum, continuing their social investigation and talking to people on the streets of Vancouver about their difficulties accessing appropriate, timely and affordable dental care. These stories are uploaded on a regular basis to the Smile with Dignity campaign blog: http://smilewithdignity.wordpress.com/

Different media sources besides People’s Health Radio have been covering the campaign’s development. The Georgia Straight recently posted this article online: http://www.straight.com/article-413227/vancouver/campaign-dentistry-streets-vancouver, and on August 3rd the CBC Early Edition interviewed Smile with Dignity organizer Azar Mehrabadi about the campaign: http://www.cbc.ca/earlyedition/past-episodes/2011/08/03/dr-lin-west-vancouver-heritage-new-hep-c-drug-calling-for-transfer-fee-changes-cherry-tree-rot-smile/ (go to 1:49:19).

We will continue to report on the progress of the Smile with Dignity campaign as they prepare to take their demands to the street and push our provincial government to expand MSP to include dental care for all.

Smile with Dignity Organizer Mel as the Justice Tooth

Up Up Updates!

Hello!

We have been a little (ok, a lot) slow in adding extra content here on the blog since it’s been summer, some of us have been away, some of us working on other projects.  I keep thinking of new things I want to write about here and so postponing my updates, but as the world continues to roll around on it’s axis, so new ideas keep coming.

So, some housekeeping.  We are now a bi-weekly radio show!  That means that we’ll only be posting two or three podcasts a month but that will leave us more time to do writing, researching, interviewing, not to mention our other non-radio related organizing work!  We are hopeful and happy about this change.

We also plan on doing some regular features that will be exclusive to the written blog, where we explore different ideas about the social and structural determinants of health.  We’ll also be sharing more about who we are in the collective, and we’d love to hear from you also about who you are and what you are passionate about in the world of health, social justice, and fighting the good fight.

 

 

 

 

 

Aiyanas and Martha are in the Philippines!

Two of our regular hosts are away on a solidarity mission in the Philippines. You can find their blog at http://thistinyglobe.wordpress.com about their mission, the situation of the Philippines and what they learn while they’re there.

They’re both compelling writers and there is so much to learn from the struggle of the Filipino people for a just and lasting peace in their nation.  Well worth checking out.

-Jen

We’re not alone!

People’s Health Radio will be one year old in September.  We’ve got 20 hours of back episodes up online, and we’ve covered a really wide variety of topics… from fat oppression, to Haiti solidarity, to homeopathy, we’re nothing if not eclectic!  And we’re still learning more with every episode (for example, we’ll never again record in a windy area without a sock over our microphone…)

One exciting thing about being involved in the radio show has been learning about other bloggers and podcasters who are also passionate about health and social justice.   We’re not the only ones!

Three of the health justice blogs and podcasts that I follow are:

* http://globalhealthequity.blogspot.com – this blog is written by three medical students in Eastern Canada and focuses on examples of primary health care and the “distribution and determinants of health” particularly in the global south.

* http://healthjusticeradio.wordpress.com – This is the online home of Health Justice Radio – a weekly radio show that airs on CFMU (Community Radio in Hamilton, Ontario).  Their show airs Monday afternoons – if you’re keeping track, that means three hours week you can tune into Canadian made radio on the topic of health and social justice!

* http://www.healthonearth.net/ The online home of Health on Earth – a weekly global health radio show produced by students of McGill’s faculty of Medicine and Nursing.  Airs Wednesday evenings.

We all have our own unique perspectives and interests, and there is so much to learn.   As I learn of more blogs and podcasts I’ll be sure to add them to this page.

-Jen