Meredith's Blog

The Coordinated Arts Program Conference held today provided thoughtful and inspiring ideas on contentious contemporary topics. From Kiki Jang’s ‘Musical Imagery: Music in Your Head’ to Kiran Kazani’s ‘Humanitarian Aid Vs. Political and Corporate Gain’, the variety of responses was astounding. A trend noted in many of the panels was that of effecting change, be it through the Occupy movement or in greater agency for the sex workers of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Suzanne Ross’ lecture entitled ‘Global Perspectives of Sex Wokers: A Legacy of Racism and Sexism’ aimed to do just that. Another trend between Ross’ work and the entire conference was the disparities in agency of people who are contrary to societal norms. This includes people such as sex workers, members of the Occupy Movement, or even second generation international students facing constant discrimination, as seen in Dionne Brand’s ‘What We All Long For’.  Suzanne Collins noted in her lecture that ‘non-white women were non-human and at the bottom of the colonial hierarchy’, and identifies more broad discrimination in her point that sex workers are dehumanized through labels such as being disposable, dirty and unattractive.

As Tess Cohen in ‘Lenses Onto the Occupy Movement’ noted, these acts are not always a success. As articles such as this one suggest,  the Occupy Movement of Vancouver was a failed one because of police intervention. However, BC Supreme Court Justice Anne Mackenzie did not help the police remove the protesters permanently, rather simply provided the injunction to the police to remove them from land maintained by the city of Vancouver.

And as my term paper substantiates, the police have been most successful in negating this marginalization of certain societal groups. This has been achieved through their humanizing of sex workers and drug addicts of the Downtown East Side. This has been done through films such as ‘Through A Blue Lens’, ‘Tears For April’ and a television show called ‘The Beat’.  In these two contrasting pieces of evidence, however, it can clearly be seen that the police pick and choose the groups with limited agency which they support, and as such we must take their actions with a pinch of salt. Had police not done anything to reduce the negative perceptions of the residents of the Downtown Eastside, the majority of public would continue to maintain their discriminatory view towards the residents. Collins goes on to state that the sex workers themselves have also been fighting for their cause, however, with ‘health centres and savings groups’, which provides a sense of community that Collins argues is one of the only ways sex workers can improve their situation.

This concept of those who are discriminated against being the catalysts for their improved agency has been a current which has run through our entire blogging experience. In the case of What Is The What, Valentino Achak Deng drew attention to his cause himself, with the help of famous author Dave Eggers. Similarly in Diamond Grill, Fred Wah is able to use his credibility as a writer to highlight the plight of Chinese immigrants to Canada during the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 and the history surrounding this time. Authenticity attracts public support in these examples, and so by continuing to educate people accurately about the stories of these marginalized groups, their causes will in turn be helped more, which is a crucial element to a more fair and just world.