Immigration patterns are reflected in Facebook data on popular foods and drinks

2022/02/11 Leave a comment

Not surprising but nevertheless interesting:

Researchers have developed a novel strategy for using Facebook data to measure cultural similarity between countries, revealing associations between immigration patterns and people’s food and drink interests. Carolina Vieira of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 9, 2022.

Migration may play a key role in shaping cultural similarities between countries. However, its influence is difficult to study, partly due to the challenge of quantifying culture. Typically, researchers have relied on surveys to compare different countries’ cultures, but surveys are associated with several difficulties, such as their cost, the possibility of bias in their construction, and the difficulty of applying them to a large number of countries.

To complement survey data, Vieira and colleagues have now developed a new analytical method based on earlier evidence that and drink preferences may be a proxy for cultural similarities between countries. The new method employs data on the top 50 food and drink preferences for any given country as captured by the Facebook Advertising Platform.

To demonstrate the new method, the researchers applied it to 16 countries, finding that food and drink interests generally reflect immigration patterns. In most countries, including the U.S., preferences for foreign food and drink align with top foods and drinks in the countries from which most immigrants came. Countries with fewer immigrants, such as Indonesia, Japan, Russia, and Turkey, stand apart from the others, showing more idiosyncrasy in their preferences for foreign foods and drinks.

The findings align well with earlier survey data, and they highlight asymmetry between countries; for instance, the top 50 foods and drinks from Mexico are more popular in the U.S. than the top 50 U.S. foods and drinks are in Mexico, reflecting a greater degree of immigration from Mexico to the U.S. than vice versa.

Overall, the researchers say, this study suggests that immigrants indeed help shape the culture of their destination country. Future research could refine the new method outlined in this study or repurpose it to examine and compare other interests beyond food and drink.

The authors add: “We analyze data from Facebook users about their food and drink preferences to measure the cultural similarity between 16 countries. When compared with official migration data, we observe that countries with more immigrants show a higher cultural similarity between the origin and destination .”

Source: Immigration patterns are reflected in Facebook data on popular foods and drinks

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Immigration Canada’s backlog stands at 1.8 million people, but there are signs of improvement [citizenship numbers]

2022/02/11 Leave a comment

But not for citizenship :

Citizenship backlog has grown by 20,000 persons

IRCC reported the backlog for citizenship applicants was standing at about 468,000 on December 31, 2021. On October 31 of last year, there were around 448,000 citizenship applications in the inventory. In 61 days, the citizenship backlog grew by 20,000 applicants.

In its email to CIC News, a spokesperson from IRCC said in all of 2021, Canada processed more than 206,000 citizenship applications. Compared to 2020 when IRCC processed 80,000 citizenship applications.

Source: Immigration Canada’s backlog stands at 1.8 million people, but there are signs of improvement

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Most Black nurses in Ontario deal with racism. This task force of nurses has a way forward

2022/02/10 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Nurse practitioner Corsita Garraway still thinks about a patient she had years ago who lost her foot.

She was an older, Black woman who had been in the hospital due to complications with diabetes and developed gangrene. But it went overlooked until the only solution was to amputate.

Gangrene often turns the skin black, but Garraway said others caring for this woman must not have been able to identify it on her dark skin. “People didn’t recognize that the blackness of her foot was a blackness of her foot that shouldn’t have been there,” Garraway told the Star.

She knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the patient’s room because of the smell — the off scent was a signal to her right away that something was amiss. And when she went over and touched her foot gently, the patient screamed.

She can only guess how these three issues — the smell of decaying flesh, the discoloration and the pain — had gone unnoticed for so long.

Garraway was a registered practical nurse at the time so there were certain tasks other degree-holding health-care providers were meant to conduct. She eventually got her master’s degree and is now doing a PhD because she wanted to be able to provide more care for her patients.

After more than 30 years working in nursing, she’s seen anti-Black racism affect both her patients, and nurses.

“I feel like people just don’t always take the time when they see us,” Garraway said.

Now as co-chair of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario’s (RNAO) Black Nurses Task Force, Garraway and a group of 17 Black nurses and students are hoping to bring change to the field in the province.

The task force will release a report of its work so far Tuesday morning, which includes 19 specific recommendations for change in the industry. They’re aimed at post-secondary education, workplace leadership, the province, policy-makers and allies working in the field, to name a few.

The report’s recommendations are backed by a survey of 205 Black nurses and nursing students in Ontario.

About 88 per cent of respondents said they’ve experienced racism or discrimination of some kind in the field.

Almost 63 per cent of Black nurses and nursing students said their mental health was moderately or strongly affected by dealing with systemic discrimination and racial microaggressions.

Among the changes the task force wants to see are mandatory anti-racism education and training for all nurses, more Black nurses on committees and boards, changes in hiring practices, and mentorship and financial support for Black nurses.

“The whiteness of our profession is blinding,” RNAO president Doris Grinspun told the Star, noting that the lack of diversity is especially pronounced the further you move from the bedside to leadership and policy-makers.

“We miss out on the talent, we miss out on the expertise. We all bring expertise that is a mix of what you study and what you live,” Grinspun said. “We miss out as a system, as a society.”

As a white woman, Grinspun has wanted to make sure RNAO is there to provide resources, but that Black nurses take the lead.

Past RNAO president Angela Cooper Brathwaite was brought on as co-chair along with Garraway.

Cooper Brathwaite has spent her long career in Newfoundland, Manitoba and Ontario working as a nurse, midwife, managing departments and teaching in colleges and universities.

But the area where she dealt with the most friction was in teaching.

In her second year of teaching in the ’80s, Cooper Brathwaite said all of her course content disappeared from her filing cabinet days before classes were to start.

When she raised the issue with administration, someone suggested maybe a student took her lesson plans. But Cooper Brathwaite said that wasn’t likely. Students had freely borrowed her notes and returned them and also didn’t have access to her office.

She remembers college administration didn’t spend much time investigating the incident, but she couldn’t shake the thought that one of her colleagues was behind it.

Cooper Brathwaite still teaches part time at Ontario universities, but the experience early on soured her from taking full-time positions when they were offered.

But having Black professors in the field is exactly what kept student Ola Abanta Thomas Obewu on the nursing path.

Thomas Obewu quickly realized bedside nursing wasn’t for her, but seeing no examples of Black women venturing into other areas of the field was discouraging. She thought she’d have a more realistic go of it in medical school.

But then she got a Black nursing instructor. And later, she joined RNAO’s task force and saw more paths she could take as a Black woman in the field.

“I saw researchers, PhD holders, people who were the chief nursing officer in their hospital,” Thomas Obewu said. “Just that connection alone made me realize I could be like those people.”

Source: Most Black nurses in Ontario deal with racism. This task force of nurses has a way forward

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Chinese widow once ensnared in major Canada money laundering case seeks Canadian citizenship

2022/02/10 Leave a comment

While not convicted (charges were stayed), takes a certain amount of chutzpah to apply:

Caixuan “Summer” Qin and her now-deceased husband once stood accused by the Canadian government of running an underground bank that allegedly laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for transnational organised crime groups, catering to wealthy Chinese gamblers and international drug gangs.

But Qin and her husband Jian Jun Zhu, who was shot dead in a Vancouver restaurant in 2020, were never tried or convicted. Canadian prosecutors stayed money laundering and other related charges in November 2018 after the identity of an informant was mistakenly revealed in evidentiary disclosure to the couple’s defence lawyers.

Now, it’s Qin who is taking the Canadian government to court, fighting its demand for alleged unpaid taxes, and claiming that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had wrongfully delayed processing her bid for Canadian citizenship.

Source: Chinese widow once ensnared in major Canada money laundering case seeks Canadian citizenship

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Australia: ‘We’re being used as tools’: Multicultural groups reject support for religious discrimination bill

2022/02/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Some multicultural groups have vehemently rejected any support for the religious discrimination bill as debate continues in parliament in the first sitting week of the year.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison used multiculturalism in an argument to sway MPs to vote in favour of the bill during Question Time on Tuesday.

“If those in this chamber want to speak about multiculturalism and how great a multicultural society it is, then they must acknowledge the role of faith and culture in this country,” Mr Morrison said.

But Nyadol Nyuon, director of Sir Zelman Cowen Centre and chair of Harmony Alliance, said it was “insulting” to use multicultural communities to aid the bill’s progress.

“Multicultural communities did not ask for this bill,” she told SBS News.

She said those who did campaign for the bill were people from “mainstream religions and mainstream politicians, insisting that this is a big problem that needs to be resolved through the institution of the law”.

“Let’s put the blame where it belongs, instead of shifting it and making multicultural communities look like we are would rather see other Australians suffer to protect our sensibilities.”

The religious discrimination bill has stoked great divisions within parliament, including within the Coalition as Liberal MP Bridget Archer refused to vote in favour of the proposed law.

The bill seeks to enshrine stronger protections to make statements of belief made on religious grounds, as well as giving employers of religious-based institutions the right to preference hiring people of their own faith.

But while Mr Morrison has ultimately won the backing of his party, his comments in parliament have angered those who represent multicultural communities, such as Ms Nyadol.

“[Mr Morrison] is trying to create this false choice by conflating multiculturalism with almost, to some degree, religious bigotry, and I think that’s incorrect. You can support multiculturalism and support equal rights for all citizens,” she said.

“We’re being used as tools in these political debates.”

Mohammad Al-Khafaji, who is the president of Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA), described Mr Morrison’s parallels as “simplistic”.

“The view that all cultural communities have religion or faith, that’s a simple way of looking at multiculturalism and we’re a very complex nation,” he told SBS News.

Mr Al-Khafaji explained the priority for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) is that “they want to make sure everybody is protected”.

He agreed with Ms Nyadol, saying the religious discrimination bill disenfranchises those from CALD backgrounds rather than empowers them.

“[The bill] allows … more dominant, religious groups, who are more established here in Australia to vilify others who are new and emerging in Australia,” he said.

Mr Al-Khafaji has questioned the bill’s practical benefits, as he witnesses the divisions the debate has stoked between people of faith and multicultural communities.

“What we have at the moment is a bit of a class warfare between and it’s driving a wedge between communities. I guess my question is: what is the problem that we’re trying to resolve?”

The Australian GBLTIQ Multicultural Association (AGMC) said it’s “disappointed” the bill will likely be passed.

The organisation stands firm in its view the bill is divisive, particularly for people from CALD backgrounds who are LGBTIQ+.

“Every day LGBTIQ+ people of faith need to make difficult choices between their LGBTIQ+ identities and their religious and cultural communities,” AGMC president Giancarlo de Vera said.

“We have a right to live as full human beings, who are proud of our faith traditions as well as being queer.

“This bill forces [us] to make a choice we shouldn’t have to make.”

Ms Nyuon and Mr Al-Khafaji both agreed that Australia’s multicultural societies are diverse, and must include those from faith backgrounds who do support the bill.

Some include the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN), the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and the Australian Bahá’í Community.

In their submissions supporting the bill, they cited the necessity to practice their religious values freely without fear of religious discrimination after facing vilification for their beliefs in the past.

The Australian Bahá’í Community said its support for the bill “draws on our practical experience helping to defend the members of the Bahá’í Faith in Iran and elsewhere whose rights to freedom of religion or belief and practise of their beliefs have been violated”.
Meanwhile, Islamic-based organisations such as AMAN want the bill amended to include a vilification clause – not adequately covered under anti-discrimination laws – to counter high rates of Islamophobic abuse targeted towards Muslims in Australia.
“People of faith must not vilify others … and this protection must extend both ways … federal vilification protection will protect all Australians based on religious belief and activity nationwide,” it says.

Source: ‘We’re being used as tools’: Multicultural groups reject support for religious discrimination bill

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

U.K. Immigration Bill Threatens Millions Of Ethnic Minority Britons’ #Citizenship Rights

2022/02/10 2 Comments

More on the implications of the draft legislation:

A bill to dramatically reform the U.K.’s immigration system is currently under consideration in the country’s parliament. Within the bill is a clause that could cause the grave deprivation of the citizenship rights of minority-ethnic Britons.

The Nationality and Borders Bill was introduced by Home Secretary Priti Patel, who is responsible for immigration in the U.K. Commonly referred to as the ‘anti-refugee’ bill, it has generated considerable controversy among immigration lawyers, experts and activists for its sweeping changes to the immigration rules, many of which would make the process of seeking asylum in the U.K. considerably more difficult and dangerous.

Less well known than the asylum part of the bill, however, is a clause that would give the Home Office greater powers to strip Britons of their citizenship, without warning or notice. The Home Office does already have the power to remove citizenship, for a variety of reasons, and has done so several hundred times in the last few decades.

Perhaps most well known of these are the cases of U.K.-born Shamima Begum and Jack Letts. Both were stripped of their British citizenship after travelling to Syria, allegedly to join ISIS. British law, as well as multiple international human rights conventions, prohibit rendering someone stateless. This was not an issue in Letts’ case, as he already possessed Canadian citizenship through his father, and therefore would not be made stateless by losing his British citizenship.

Begum’s case was more complicated, however. Born in the U.K. to Bangladeshi parents, Begum had only British citizenship. Nonetheless, the U.K. government argued she could gain Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents, despite Bangladesh’s assertion that she did not have Bangladeshi citizenship, would be denied it if she applied, and would be refused entry into the country.

In effect Begum was vulnerable to being made stateless simply because she had an identifiable minority ethnic background. This episode revealed that people born to first-, second-, or even third-generation immigrants do not enjoy the same security of citizenship as those with longer roots in the country. Such a situation in essence creates two classes of citizenship. People with ethnic minority backgrounds can be stripped of their citizenship under the auspices of maybe being eligible for citizenship elsewhere, while white ethnic Britons’ citizenship rights remain intact.

Clause 9 of the new Nationality and Borders bill aggravates this situation by making the process opaque to those who are affected by it. It would give the government the right to strip Britons of their citizenship without giving them notice. This means someone may become stateless without even knowing it, and miss the opportunity to appeal their deprivation.

There are around six million people in the U.K. with an ethnic minority background that could, should the Nationality and Borders Bill become law, be rendered stateless without their even knowing it.

“I received my British citizenship last summer, after almost 14 years of being an asylum seeker & refugee” wrote one prominent refugee advocate on Twitter. “But now due to the (Nationality and Borders Bill) I am not safe, the Home Secretary can revoke & take it away at her discretion.”

A plethora of legal experts, NGOs, activists and campaign groups have urged the government to drop Clause 9. They argue that without notification or knowledge that they need to appeal a citizenship deprivation, millions of ethnic minority Britons could be made stateless under the spurious claim that they may be eligible for another citizenship elsewhere.

“(Clause 9) is a very damaging piece of legislation which I hope, as the bill goes through its various stages, will be eliminated” said Alf Dubs, a member of the U.K.’s House of Lords and former child refugee while speaking with IMIX. “We cannot allow people to be made stateless. Surely citizenship is our right and not a privilege, and that’s something we have to defend very firmly.”

An official petition on the government website to remove the clause received over 300,000 signatures, well past the threshold where the government is obliged to respond. The response, however, was steadfast.

“This clause is (…) necessary to avoid the situation where we could never deprive a person of their British citizenship just because it is not practicable, or not possible, to communicate with them” reads the Home Office reply. “Preserving the ability to make decisions in this way is vitally important to preserve the integrity of the U.K. immigration system and to protect the security of the U.K. from those who would wish to do us harm.”

The Home Office asserts Clause 9 will not affect a person’s right to appeal their citizenship deprivation. There is, however, a contradiction inherent in that statement, neatly summed up by Dan Sohege, a specialist in international refugee law:

“How exactly can someone appeal the removal of their citizenship if they don’t know that their citizenship has been removed?”

Source: U.K. Immigration Bill Threatens Millions Of Ethnic Minority Britons’ Citizenship Rights

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration, Revocation Tagged with ,

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 9 February Update

2022/02/10 Leave a comment

It will be interesting to see the effects of the decisions by Alberta and Saskatchewan to relax or end restrictions over the next few weeks will in terms of infections, deaths and hospitalizations. Probably not as disastrous as “best summer ever” but likely not with consequences.

Vaccinations: Some minor shifts but general convergence among provinces and countries. Canadians fully vaccinated 81 percent, compared to Japan 79.1 percent, UK 72.7 percent and USA 64.9 percent.

Immigration source countries are also converging: China fully vaccinated 87.9 percent (numbers have not budged over past two weeks), India 53.9 percent, Nigeria 2.7 percent (the outlier, unchanged), Pakistan 40.6 percent, Philippines 55.6 percent.

Trendline Charts:

Infections: Signs of omicron and other variants plateauing.

Deaths: Quebec uptick appears to be plateauing.

Vaccinations: No major change but Alberta and Prairies continue to be laggards compared to other provinces. Ironic given they are among the first to relax and end restrictions.

Weekly

Infections: Sweden ahead of California, Australia ahead of Quebec, Canadian North ahead of Prairies.

Deaths: No relative change.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

The ‘Genocide Games’ Disruptors Giving Hell to Beijing

2022/02/09 Leave a comment

Creative, even if drowned out by the cheerleading media and others:

With the 2022 Winter Olympics well underway in Beijing, a coalition of activists from around the world is vowing to keep up its pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Chinese government throughout the two weeks of the competition, which they’ve dubbed the “Genocide Games.”

The organizers, many of them women in their early twenties and thirties, have launched a series of events to run on each day until the end of the Games on Feb. 20. “During the month of February we will be continuing our campaign against Beijing 2022, shining a spotlight on China’s egregious human rights abuses,” Pema Doma, Campaigns Director for Students for a Free Tibet, told The Daily Beast. “Together we’ll continue to challenge Chinese propaganda at Beijing 2022.”

One of their main programs is the #IWillNotWatch campaign, heavily promoted on social media to discourage viewers around the world from watching the Olympics “and to counter Beijing’s propaganda show,” Zumretay Arkin, Program and Advocacy Manager for the World Uighur Congress in Munich, told The Daily Beast.

On Feb. 4, as Beijing was airing its glitzy Opening Ceremony, the coalition live-streamed Beijing 2022: The Alternative Opening Ceremony, where several young Tibetans, Uighurs, and Hongkongers convened to spotlight China’s human rights abuses.

NBC’s broadcast of the opening ceremony attracted just 14 million TV viewers, making it one of the least-viewed opening ceremonies in the history of the Olympics, according to statistics from NBC Sports. This marked a stark decline of about 43 percent from the 23.8 million viewers who watched the Opening Ceremony for the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in 2018.

The day before the ceremony, activists stepped up their pressure with a series of demonstrations in 65 cities around the world to protest what they called “the IOC’s failure to hold China accountable for their serious and worsening human rights abuses.”

At a protest in San Francisco, a Tibetan monk clad in a maroon robe walked at the front of the march holding a portrait of the Dalai Lama as he led some 100 marchers south across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Chinese Consulate in downtown San Francisco. Behind him, several Uighurs waved the flag of the East Turkestan independence movement, which is unofficially used by activists to represent China’s Xinjiang Province. Others carried placards that read, “No Rights, No Games,” and “No More Shame Games.” Another showed a skier standing in front of an Army tank, a reference to the iconic photo of the Tank Man, a Chinese citizen who used his body to stop a column of tanks rolling down a Beijing street in 1989 during an anti-democracy crackdown.

As the March wound its way through the streets of San Francisco, bystanders stopped to take photos and to applaud the protesters. Dozens of drivers beeped their horns and leaned out of their cars to shout support.

When China won the Summer Olympics in 2008, rights activists expressed concerns about the country’s dismal human rights record. In response, China and the IOC argued that the Games would actually improve human rights and rule of law in China.

Activists say that the opposite happened. China, encouraged by the legitimacy given to it by its successful hosting of the 2008 Games, stepped up its suppression of human rights.

Since 2008, an estimated 160 Tibetans have self-immolated in protest against China’s increasingly abusive policies in Tibet, which Freedom House has ranked the least free place on earth, tied with Syria. In Xinjiang, as many as 1 million Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people, have been thrown into brutal prison camps, which the Chinese refer to as “re-education schools.” Hong Kong has also faced a severe crackdown against democracy, with prominent politicians, activists and journalists arrested, and civic organizations shut down.

“The Chinese government has felt emboldened since 2008,” says Chemi Lhamo, a 25-year-old Canadian-Tibetan activist in an interview with The Daily Beast. “It got the message from the international community that it was okay with China’s abuses, that the world will turn a blind eye to this.”

This time around, no one is predicting that the Olympics will democratize the country. Touting an authoritarian one-party rule as an alternative to Western-style democracy, China has risen to become an economic, technological and military powerhouse. Chinese leader Xi Jinping still wants to be legitimized by holding the Olympics, but he sees no need to placate the international community.

“How in the world does it make sense for China to host the Games when it has such a brutal record?” said Lhamo. “Things have not gotten better—they’ve gotten worse.”

Activists representing disparate peoples in China began to strategize immediately after China was awarded the Winter Games. In October 2020, a delegation representing 160 human rights groups had a virtual meeting with the IOC hoping to convince the body to either cancel or relocate the Winter Olympics. The meeting didn’t go well, some of those who attended the meeting told The Daily Beast.

“The conversation was tense, and they were not very respectful of the activists,” says Frances Hui, the 21-year-old director of We The Hongkongers, who took part in the meeting. “Each of us shared our own firsthand, heartfelt experiences. I couldn’t believe it when they told us the Olympics was simply about people from around the world playing sports.”

Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer who also took part in the meeting, says the IOC responded with the same excuse that was given in 1936 when Nazi Germany was awarded the Games: politics and sports should be kept apart. “The IOC refuses to listen,” he told The Daily Beast. “Human rights are getting worse and there is growing evidence of that. The IOC is clear about what’s happening in China. But it doesn’t care.”

The activists decided to call for a full boycott of the Games, which they conceded would be an uphill battle. An alliance of some 200 groups began to write letters, organize petitions, and stage protests around the world. Campaigners representing Tibetan, Uighur, Hongkonger and Chinese activists urged international corporations to stop their sponsorship of the Winter Olympics, but these pleas fell on deaf ears. Leading world corporations feared offending Beijing and risking one of the world’s biggest markets.

Allianz, the insurance and financial services giant, one of 13 international corporate sponsors, is believed to be the only sponsor that agreed to meet with campaigners. Company officials politely listened to speakers and promised to discuss the issue in-house. But there was no further response, even after activists staged a sit-in and chained themselves to the door of the Allianz building in Berlin last month.

Some of the protests leading up to the Games have even led to arrests. In October last year, Greek police detained 18-year-old Tibetan student Tsela Zoksang and Hong Kong activist Joey Siu, after the two climbed the scaffolding at the Acropolis, where they waved the Tibetan flag and the flag of the “Hong Kong revolution” and shouted “Boycott Beijing 2022” and “Free Tibet.” The following day, demonstrators disrupted the official torch lighting ceremony at the Temple of Hera in Ancient Olympia, where the torch is traditionally lit just before being carried across the globe to the site of the Olympics. The protesters unfurled a Tibetan flag and a banner that read, “No Genocide Games,” before Greek police shoved them to the ground.

The following month, Lhamo and several other activists carried a mock black coffin bearing the Olympic Rings to the IOC headquarters. “We held a mock funeral for the IOC because the three values of the Olympics—excellence, friendship and respect—are dead; the IOC clearly doesn’t care about them,” said Lhamo. “The only friendship I see is with the Chinese government.”

Days after the mock funeral, protesters camped outside the White House for 57 hours, urging President Joe Biden to take action against the Games. On Dec. 7, Biden announced a diplomatic boycott of the Games, citing human rights abuses, but stopped short of prohibiting American athletes from taking part. Britain, Australia, Japan and Canada followed up with similar announcements.

Activists took credit for the diplomatic boycott.

“I do see this as a result of our ‘NoBeijing2022’ Campaign,” says Siu, one of the activists who was detained in Greece. “We held protests all over the globe. We had activists sleeping outside the White House. This was a direct result of our collective efforts.”

In the months leading up to the opening ceremony, the coalition began to reach out to Olympic athletes to tell them about the human rights situation in China in hopes of convincing some to withdraw from the competition, or to at least make a political statement at the Games.

“Athletes should never have been put in a situation where they need to choose between legitimizing genocide or human rights,” says Hui, the We The Hongkongers director. “But this is the reality: Beijing 2022 is not the opportunity Olympic athletes were promised and Thomas Bach and the IOC have failed the athletes by putting them in this situation.”

Anticipating that athletes might make such statements, Beijing issued a threat. “Any behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against the Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment,” warned Yang Shu, deputy director of Beijing’s Olympic organizing committee.

Then, just days before the opening ceremony, several athletes from different countries announced anonymously that they would boycott the Opening Ceremony to show solidarity with the victims of human rights abuses, the Washington Post reported. The athletes said they would not explain their absence until after the games to avoid being punished. According to Students for a Free Tibet, some 150 of Team USA’s 224 athletes walked in the Opening Ceremony, while less than half of Team Canada participated.

The organizers say they’re disappointed they failed to achieve their goal of bringing about a boycott of the games, but they remain optimistic. “There have been huge changes since we launched this movement,” says Hui. “People are now much more aware of the situation in China. A lot of people now know about the human rights abuses there.”

Lhamo says the coalition has no choice but to continue their protests against Beijing 2022. “We have to continue to raise our voices for the people back home because the oppression is not going to go away,” she told The Daily Beast. “It’s only going to get worse.”

Source: The ‘Genocide Games’ Disruptors Giving Hell to Beijing

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Kaplan-Myrth: Health-care workers have your backs. Please protect us too

2022/02/09 Leave a comment

From our family doctor:
Those of us who have been the recipients of harassment and intimidation over the last two years — who have experienced the overlap between antivax/antimask rhetoric and anti-semitism, racism, homophobia and misogyny — were overcome by a sense of foreboding as trucks rolled into downtown Ottawa more than a week ago. These events, now spreading to the rest of Canada, are a warning to us all.By now everyone has seen the photos of Nazi and confederate flags on the backs of trucks. Residents of downtown Ottawa are powerless against trucks honking their horns all night, diesel fumes wafting into their windows. Food was taken from the Shepherds of Good Hope shelter. Women survivors of violence, traumatized, cried out for help, unable to safely walk outside the Cornerstone shelter. An employee at a local business was physically assaulted. LGBTQ community members were confronted with transphobic placards; a shop window with a rainbow flag was broken. In a virtual townhall meeting led by Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden, the chat was disrupted at one point because of anti-Black, racist comments.

The mayor has declared that downtown Ottawa is “under siege,” in a state of “emergency.” As the hate spreads across the country, health-care workers in Toronto and Vancouver were warned not to dress in scrubs in the streets, to avoid being a target for hate. In response, Dr. Lisa Salamon-Switzman, an emergency room physician in Toronto, posted on Twitter that she would wear her scrubs, that as a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she would not cower from those espousing hate.

Source: Kaplan-Myrth: Health-care workers have your backs. Please protect us too

Filed under Other Tagged with , , ,

Immigrants. The working poor. Essential workers. Third doses lag in Toronto’s most vulnerable areas; Let’s celebrate Toronto’s vaccine success story

2022/02/09 Leave a comment

Not that surprising as they lagged with earlier doses as well.

Throughout the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Torontonians have watched as neighbourhoods home to those experiencing some of the harshest outcomes of the pandemic have had among the lowest vaccination rates. 

Now, as public health and community organizations work on the ground to improve third-dose uptake, new data from the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at University Health Network lays bare the stark demographic differences between the Toronto neighbourhoods with the highest rates of third-dose vaccination and those with the lowest. 

What it shows in granular detail is that many of our most vulnerable citizens — immigrants, the working poor and essential workers in trades and manufacturing — live in areas where third-dose vaccinations just aren’t happening anywhere near the rates seen in some of Toronto’s richest and least-racialized neighbourhoods. 

For example, 71 per cent of the population is racialized in the bottom 20 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods ranked by third-dose uptake. That compares to just 24 per cent in the top 20 per cent of neighbourhoods with the highest rates of third-dose vaccination. 

Similarly, the percentage of the population that meets low-income thresholds in the areas with the lowest third-dose vaccination rates is nearly double that in neighbourhoods with the most administered. 

“It doesn’t need to be this way. There was great success in narrowing the access gap for the rollout of Dose 1. It can be done again. We can’t afford not to,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, executive director of the Gattuso Centre.

“If we don’t address the pathologies of poverty, if we don’t shift more public investment into these neglected neighbourhoods, we will continue to see worse health outcomes and wider health disparities than we’ve ever seen.”

The Gattuso Centre’s analysis also shows that neighbourhoods with the lowest third-dose uptake have higher proportions of essential workers in manufacturing, utilities, trades, transport and equipment operation — sectors that don’t conform to regular nine-to-five workdays and that are not conducive to allowing workers to take time off to get vaccinated during clinic hours.

Indeed, the percentage of the population working in manufacturing and utilities is 10 times higher in areas with the lowest rates of third-dose vaccination than in those with the highest rates. Likewise, the percentage of people employed in the trades, transport and equipment operation is more than four times higher in the bottom 20 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods by third-dose vaccination than in the highest 20 per cent. 

“If racialized community members are getting their third doses at a third of the rate compared to non-racialized communities, we need to make specific, targeted interventions that are going to provide information in a culturally appropriate and safe way for these communities,” said Michelle Westin, senior analyst for planning, quality and risk at Black Creek Community Health Centre who has been leading mobile vaccination clinics in northwest Toronto.

“We need to be having ambassadors that are representative of these communities to help build that trust. We have to have vaccinators that are representative of these racialized communities. We need to make sure that vaccinations are accessible to people who are low income, so ensuring that they are in spaces that they can get to easily, assist with providing transportation if needed, ensuring that hours of the clinic work with folks that are having to work different hours of the day and multiple jobs,” she added.

The city of Toronto has been waging a three-pillared operation to get shots into arms in the neighbourhoods with the lowest uptakes. This includes hyperlocal clinics in malls, transit stations, workplaces and schools; outreach around these clinics through 155 community agencies and more than 400 neighbourhood vaccine ambassadors; and a get-out-the-vote style campaign, dubbed “VaxTO,” using text messages, phone calls, emails and town halls to get information out.

“We know that when we announced our target to reach 90 per cent of residents for their first dose, people told us it was impossible in a city as large and diverse as ours. We proved that it was possible when you commit to equity and you don’t stop,” said Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of the Toronto Board of Health. “You literally have to go door-to-door, building-by-building in every language with trusted local leaders. It’s not quick because tackling inequity is never quick. But it works.”

To date, 60 per cent of eligible residents in Toronto have received a third dose. 

But there is still a long way to go. The Gattuso Centre found that the gap between the neighbourhoods with the most and least third dose-uptake has widened substantially over the past seven weeks. In Kingsway South, for example, 68 per cent of eligible residents have received a third dose, compared to just 27 per cent in Mount Olive-Silverstone-Jamestown — a gap of 41 percentage points.

“The gap is striking, especially given what we’ve learned throughout the pandemic. We’ve seen real success in earlier stages of the vaccine rollout when community leadership has been supported with the resources and focus to ensure there is true access. It obliterated many notions of vaccine hesitancy early on,” Boozary said.

“But if we stray from that, we will continue to see this widening of a gap and it will not be recoverable if we do not ensure that those same investments and resources and supports are there for everyone.”

Luwam Ogbaselassie, implementation lead with the Gattuso Centre who has been supporting the vaccination effort in the Humber River-Black Creek region, said the involvement of community leadership is key to narrowing the third-dose uptake gap. 

“Wherever there are resources being allocated towards vaccines, it should be guided by community leaders around how best to structure those clinics and how best to reach the people who have been the hardest to reach and continue to be the hardest to reach,” she said, noting that she has seen first-hand the meaningful impact of community ambassadors who live in the same buildings and in the same neighbourhoods as those who may harbour mistrust of the health care system. 

“I’ve always said as a hospital partner, we bring the vaccines, we bring the clinical teams, but we look to our community partners to guide us on how to set up the clinics, how to engage with people who live in the community.

“Community leadership makes all the difference.

Source: Immigrants. The working poor. Essential workers. Third doses lag in Toronto’s most vulnerable areas

On a more positive note:

It’s a snowy Thursday afternoon in Toronto and the vaccination clinic at the Woodbine Mall is getting ready to welcome its first visitors of the day. The news is full of the demonstrations in Ottawa against pandemic restrictions. Similar protests are about to come to Toronto. But at the clinic, the mood is purposeful, unruffled, even buoyant.

Nurses sit at tables filling syringes with vaccine and loading them into trays. Helpers lay out colouring sheets to amuse kids coming in for their jab. One greeter brandishes a little Canadian flag that she waves to show visitors when a booth is free.

As opening time approaches, operations manager Simone Richards gathers everyone for the daily huddle, a combination of pep talk, check-in session and revival meeting. Smiling behind her mask, she warns the group: “We are running low on teddy bears.” The local police station donated a pile of the toys to soothe nervous kids and there are only a few left.

After singing a rousing Happy Birthday for their clinical manager Arturo Villasan, staffers put their hands in, like athletes before a game, for a go-team cheer – except that, pandemic style, their hands don’t actually touch. Then they open the doors to let people through. They get hundreds a day, most of them happy to get the protection offered by the vaccines against COVID-19.

The scene at the Woodbine clinic tells a different story than you see in the headlines. In a week in which all the oxygen was consumed by noisy and sometimes obnoxious protesters, it is worthwhile to remember that most Canadians don’t feel their rights are being trampled by a despotic government. Most believe in vaccines and are eager to get jabbed. Most wear their masks and obey the rules on gathering and distancing. Though it will disappoint the Russell Brands of the world, Canada is not in revolt. Quietly, capably mustering all the available tools of technology, science and human collaboration, the country is getting on with the task of combating a deadly and insidious virus.

Toronto’s vaccination campaign, the biggest in its history, is an impressive success story. More than 6.5 million doses have been administered. Ninety per cent of residents 12 and older have one dose and 87 per cent two. Sixty percent of eligible residents have a booster, the result of a stepped-up Team Toronto drive to meet the threat from the Omicron variant. More than half of kids have one dose and a quarter have two.

To inoculate all those people in a city of 180 languages, dozens of cultural groups and scores of neighbourhoods has been a staggering task. To reach the hesitant, the disadvantaged and the disengaged, the city has hired hundreds of community ambassadors and translators to get the word out. It has dispatched mobile clinics from one end of the city to the other. It has bombarded residents with text messages, robocalls and flyers.

On the same afternoon that Ms. Richards and her team were greeting visitors to their big clinic in a Hudson’s Bay store at Woodbine, workers were going door to door in a Parkdale seniors’ building and soothing nervous kids at a Mount Olive school. At a small clinic in a mall at Jane and Finch streets, they don’t just wait for people to walk in. They recently persuaded the busy lady at the local roti joint to sit for a vaccination right in her shop. Every vaccination counts.

Leading me on a clinic tour, Joe Cressy, a city councillor who is chair of the city’s board of health, called it a brilliant example of breaking down silos and bringing everyone together in a common cause: pharmacies, hospitals, public-health workers; community and neighbourhood associations; cops and firefighters; care homes and schools.

Though we hear a lot these days about conflict and anger, what really stands out is the way all these groups are working arm in arm. As Mayor John Tory puts it, “the city has been united.”

Of course, it’s taking a while. It’s only natural that people are frustrated with the persistence of this virus and the annoying, limiting measures put in place to control it. If some believe that governments are to blame for much of the misery, they have a perfect right to say so, as long as they do it peacefully and lawfully. But while thousands are taking to the streets, hundreds of thousands of others are still lining up to get their shots and do their bit to quell the virus.

Ms. Richards and her Woodbine crew are standing ready to help them, with kindness, efficiency and good cheer. More teddy bears are coming.

Source: Let’s celebrate Toronto’s vaccine success story

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →