The Case for Legalcare Parallels the Struggle for Medicare

Justice touches every part of a Canadian's life as certainly as medicine does, like medicine, justice affects the mental and physical well being of every Canadian.

Canadian society has become so increasingly legally regulated in each and every thing we do. Cameras are on street locations considered “high risk.” At intersections on our roads considered “high risk” for accidents someone is always watching us so that the Law can see what’s going on.
We have now, each and every one of us, to wear seatbelts; when we don’t, we end up in court. Children, by law, have to be provided with seating devices in automobiles and when that doesn’t meet the requirements of the law, we wind up in court. So what has justice or the law become? It has become a highly public issue. Law or justice is no longer just a matter of the black and white, right or wrong, it is now more than ever a very grey area that requires you, more than ever, to attend court.

When someone is accused of a legal offense it is no longer, even when it comes to speeding tickets, a matter of right or wrong, there are often many areas of grey. The every day or ordinary man and woman is ending up in court, foreign territory for most of us, and we, each and every, one of us need to provide ourselves with a defense that costs money we do not have.

Because access to the justice system is not equal you may find yourself feeling bitter as a result of being unable to afford even an adequate defense, or for that matter, any defense. When you have power, privilege, and politics on your side, you have the resources to access justice.

Take for example the privilege that politics brings. The local press, The Daily News and The Chronicle Herald reported recently that the minister of social services has moved to quash a court order that required the minister of social services to attend the teen's case conference in Halifax youth court as her legal guardian. Yet within days, while others are forced to wait and have to place their lives on hold, the minister of social services can jump the queue to get a Supreme Court of Nova Scotia hearing as quickly as thought. Membership has its rewards in respect to justice in Nova Scotia.

Unless you are wealthy, or you were born wealthy, you are denied access to the legal defense you need. You, though innocent, may wind up in jail. Jail is no longer the reserve of guilty it used to be. You could end up there too. People comfort themselves by thinking that jail is the exclusively reserved for those who were brought up wrong, or who were exposed to violence during their childhood years, or those who were abused. That is no longer today any more. You may end up in there with them.

It is just a matter of time before it happens to you. Security in the ever present justice system that is evolving is, or should be our number one priority in case you haven’t noticed. How many people know how you qualify for legal aid in Nova Scotia? How many people realize the working poor have no eligibility for legal aid in Nova Scotia?

If you make, as a single individual, more that $13,000.00 annually in Nova Scotia, you have no eligibility for legal aid and yet you may be facing a trial that can cost you thousands of dollars you do not have. Thousand of hours and skills you may not have, may be required or be involved in order that you get just an adequate legal defense.

Your defense may require that you leave your employment, or you may get fired, though innocent, because of the charges laid against you in the first place. Moreover, pending charges may show up on a criminal record search even though you have not been proven guilty which suggests that innocence until being found guilty in Nova Scotia has been removed from the justice system. Future employers may have second thoughts about hiring you, or even a current employer might consider firing for some other unrelated circumstance. Most people want to crack down even harder. What do you do? What resources would you have to fight for your freedom?

Consider that you may lose your life to a so-called legal process that may take years on the signature of some old, career managing crown attorney, looking for promotion in a backwater town who simply has the unchecked power to do it. The charges have their own momentum and there are no checks or balances in place to prevent the crown from stealing years of your life from you.

There is a case to be made for Legalcare in Canada which parallels our struggle for Medicare. It is an essential struggle that needs to begin now. We cannot expect the lawyers to lead this struggle and, as with Medicare, the struggle may, as in Saskatchewan, begin at someone’s kitchen table, propelling them into politics.

The challenge which lies ahead for Canadian is obviously enormous, but we are a patient people and justice will prevail and those who thwart it, beware.

A media Moment -- Spotlight: Mrs. Carrie M. Best

The late Mrs. Carrie M. Best developed a newspaper she called: The Clarion from injustices within the Negro community, as it was called then.

Victims of injustice such as Viola Desmond The Clarion supported and championed these causes.

Later she changed the name of her newspaper to The Negro Citizen and it is to her efforts in part that this blog owes its creation and it is on those same foundations on which this one person effort delicately rests.

Mrs. Best realized, as I do, that Black people are often not treated fairly in Nova Scotia. They were allowed only limited access to movie theatres, not served in restaurants and denied access to employment and to justice which other citizens, financially better situated, are accorded full access. This in part explains why so many Black Nova Scotians take up residence in the region's prisons.

Not only are prisons a very poor use of taxpayers' tax dollars, imprisonment is also a waste of human potential and that’s why it is not calculated into the cost of running the nation's prisons.

A recent United Nations report on racism in Canada does not give our nation passing grades.

The Alinsky Vision

_________________________________________The 4th Estate, April 9, 1970... 3

Only BUF Making Progress

Halifax Waiting For A Knight In Armor?

By NICK FILLMORE

Social activist Saul Al­insky provided no cure-all for the problems of min­orities in Nova Scotia dur­ing his visit last week.

Alinsky bluntly told or­ganizers they were fooling themselves if they thought anything important was happening in Halifax which would improve the lot of the poor.

He said that full-time, professional organizers were needed to work in the community and said that institutions like the Mari­time School of Social Work should be producing people who are willing to challenge the social structure and work for change.

Alinsky, who has organized blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans and poor whites in the U. S. to fight for their rights, said that organizations working for change should not have to rely on government .funds as is the case in almost all Nova Scotia pro­grams. Funds should come from the community.

His criticisms clearly showed the failure of· social workers to come to grips with a system that forces thousands of families in Nova Scotia to live at sub-standard levels. He de­nounced the claims of welfare clients that people could not be organized because of fear of reprisal.

Alinsky's final session In Joseph Howe School before more than 800 citizens was disappointing to most people.

"What the hell do you expect the second coming?" barked Alinsky when youth worker Eddie Carvery said the famed American wasn’t dealing with local Issues. During earlier sessions at St. Mary's University; however, he had laid the basic groundwork for or­ganization.

He said organizers could expect to spend months sitting on back porches or having coffee with people before it would be possible to get their trust and have them unite behind a common cause.

Alinsky’s theory may apply to North End Halifax, where deprived residents are fed up with the disorganized at­tempts_ to confront the establishment over such matters as housing, recrea­tion and welfare payments. They are, for the large part, a broken people who would require months of field work to unite behind a solid front of any sort that would [make them] able to stand together on an issue.

People who have considered them­selves community leaders were in some cases despondent because Alinsky so clearly showed them nothing really was happening in Halifax.

Even as Alinsky spoke, and as var­ious speakers from the floor confronted him, many people seemed to be looking for a knight in armor to come charging onto the scene to lead the poor. But he didn’t appear. It just doesn't happen that way.

BUF THE EXCEPTION

The only exception maybe the organizers behind the Black United Front, who seem convinced that a five-year program will do much to unite and improve the lot of Nova Scotia’s 18,000 blacks.

The appointment' of Jules Oliver to ­head BUF may already have been an­nounced by the time The 4th ESTATE goes to press. Oliver, who is also highly rated by federal officials who are financing BUF, may have the or­ganizational ability to make the body function properly. But a capable staff to begin self-help programs in the various black Communities is also vital.

Racial problems at Halifax City Hall recently may have, set back race relations considerably. There is evi­dence of a white backlash.

And still to be resolved is the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission pub­lic Inquiry Into charges by BUF chairman Carlyle Warner that he was dis­criminated against in nor being con­sidered for the job as Chief Planner in Halifax. And his more recent charges that there were acts of reprisal against him at city hall appear more serious.

The entire future of race relations -- as far as black community leaders are concerned -- could depend on the tone and outcome of the Warner inquiry. Also at stake may be the future of the Human Rights Commission.

Present day community activists are invited to respond or to reflect to this flashback from the past and they may do so by leaving a comment on this site or by emailing me directly at fsjboyd@yahoo.com.

Flash!! Police Brutality

The 4th ESTATE

Vol 1 No 26 Phone 423-9383 Halifax, N. S. April 9, 1970 10 cents, 24 Pages at page 1.

Page 10 Police - from 1

Street at about 1 a. m. and said he was told that he was being arrested for loitering.

"When the police car came, they handcuffed me behind my back and threw me into the back seat," Said Drummond.

"One of them sat on my head, and after he got off he kept hitting me in the head with his right fist while I was handcuffed.

"It was the same policeman who kept hitting me and calling me names," Said Drummond. "When we got to the police station they took off the handcuffs before they took me in, but this guy kept hitting me and the other policeman told him to lay off."

A man being held in jail told The 4th Estate that he saw the policeman strike Drummond.

"I was bleeding in the police station and this guy still kept trying to hit me," said the youth.

When Drummond appeared in the Police Court he was charged with resisting arrest.

"You're damn right I resisted," said Drummond. "I knew what they were going to do."

The youth is being represented by Halifax barrister Walter Goodfellow.

Flashback: The 4th Estate Covers the Oldland Affair

The 4th ESTATE

Vol I No 25 Phone 423-9383 Halifax, N. S. March 26, 1970 10.¢ 20 Pages at Page 1.

HALIFAX READY FOR SAUL ALINSKY

Minorities Seek Help

The highly successful Encounter on Urban Environment and the contro­versial Robert Oldland fia­sco are difficult acts to fol­low in usually calm Hali­fax.

But the Nova Scotia Hu­man Rights Commission and the Maritime School of Social Work may have a man to top them both.

Saul Alinsky, the most feared social activist in modern time, will be in Halifax March 26-27 to talk with black; Indian and white minority groups about how they can best organize themselves to promote change.

Recent developments in Halifax, such as the fail­ure of City Council to de­lay its hiring of Robert Old­land (See, Page 10), have black and labor leaders searching for a power base and methods which will make their presence felt.

OPEN TO PUBLIC

Alinsky will be the cen­tral figure in a two-day set of seminars in which var­ious social development groups will measure their efforts by Alinsky stan­dards. The sessions at St. Mary's University, will be open to the public.

The U. S. organizer of “people's movementsll has won international acclaim for his work with blacks, Indians and poor whites. (See Page 5).

The Encounter on Urban Environment, when 12 highly qualified urban af­fairs experts were brought to Halifax-Dartmoutl1 in late February, began a serious dialogue about the area's problems.

ALINSKY - Page 18

Looking back can sometimes be therapeutic, or have certain benefits attached to it, or is it as the saying goes, all water over the dam that will not be seen again?

There’s a song that once had currency in the 1970s and it raised a very important question and it goes like this:

"if we had a chance to do it all again, tell me, would we?" Would the Robert Oldland affair today bring people to the streets as it did in 1970 on an issue concerning race relations?

Are people as engaged with each other and with their government today as they were in the past in 1970?

Have we just grown so prosperous, or so cynical that values, such as, integrity no longer matter?What are the lessons of this flashback?

Get interactive, write. Given me your views and we’ll given them back here in these pages in a

few weeks time and tell you what you said.

As Always, best wishes,

F. Stanley Boyd

The Problem -- The Color Line

In Centennial year, 1967, Rev. W. P. Oliver wrote these words which define the problem of what was then called: “The Color line.”

“It is quite obvious that the problem has not changed. The problem has been as it was through nearly 300 years of [Nova Scotia] history. From the days when the Negro La Liberte [roamed] on Cape Sable, the racial problem in this Province or on this continent has had two main strands, closely intertwined.

The first is the Negro’s struggle to move from the stagnant unhealthful eddies of slavery, ignorance, exploitation, disfranchisement and the social restrictions of a racial brand into the mainstream of Canadian Life; into total acceptance, in absolute equality at all levels and in all areas of common life.

The second strand of the problem, equally painful, has been the white man's struggle to retain the psychic .and material advantages of racial prejudice and discrimination, without surrendering a political creed, which unmistakably affirms the equality of all men and [women], [including the Negro], under God and the interdependence of all men as the children of God.

Progress has been slow and often frustrating but the struggle has one advantage which may prove decisive. That is, the struggle of minorities moves with, and not against, the nation's political and religious aspirations.

..."we will notice that in the war of 1939-46 Negro Nova Scotians were commissioned and served in all branches of the services. Thus, the armed services broke the color bar”

- Rev. W.P. Oliver, 1967.

This sets out the main purpose of The Negro Citizen which is to define this problem in it many forms.

I publish this on Rememberance Day, a day some chose to remember those who have fallen in war to protect the rights we cherish as citizens of our great nation, Canada.