Older coverage of Osborne House

These newspaper stories show a long history of underfunding for shelters that provide services to survivors of domestic violence in Winnipeg.  And in describing the reasons that the entire board chose to resign in December 2004 they also show the ways that power structures have opposed public advocacy for effective programs and education to prevent domestic violence:

Professor notes irony as staff complain of ’emotional abuse’

“That’s because feminists — who link violence towards women to the abuse of power – would have a hard time working in an organization where power isn’t shared.”
“Not all women’s organizations are feminist,” she said.  “There’s bound to be an underlying tension between staff who want the structure to reflect a feminist philosophy and those who don’t.”
“The structure of a shelter like Osborne House is also dictated by its ties to its parent organization, the YW-YMCA” she said.
-Shelter’s growing pains May 15 1993

Violence against women an issue for all of us
I am outraged and saddened to hear about the tragic death of Sandra Chabauty, another woman in our community who was slain. Police have charged her former common-law husband. It is a reminder of the work we are faced with every day and the work ahead of us to continue to break down the isolation and ultimately to eliminate family violence.
“Typical domestic” is a term for society to easily accept the fact that another woman died. It is difficult to comprehend or make sense when there was no pattern of abuse. There was no indication there were problems.
As one of 10 shelters in the province, we know that the police are faced every day with thousands of calls and hundreds of them being domestic violence. We understand it is their responsibility to respond and that response will determine the outcome. At Osborne House we, too, receive hundreds of anonymous calls related to women directly, family members, friends and neighbours that ask the
questions: What do we do? How can we stop the abuse occurring in the home?
We are faced with the reality that abusers do not take responsibility for the violence. Most abusers are not violent outside the home. Abusers control the victim’s entire life. It’s important to know women who leave partners are at the highest risk. Stalking behaviours from the abuser may start to occur. Victims of abuse are most likely to be murdered when attempting to report or leave an abusive relationship. We also need to remember the children, the silent victims, the times they witness the abuse and try to make sense of the dynamics. Women rarely call the police unless they think their children or themselves are in serious danger.
Violence against women and their children is not a “women’s issue”. This is an issue for all of us. We all need to take responsibility. We need to speak up and speak out — to our sister agencies, we need to ask why successful programs such as the Family Violence Intervention Team are cut. We need to speak to all levels of government:  Where do they stand and are they doing enough to eliminate domestic violence? We need to support women and agencies who are taking the lead.
MARGARET MARIN
Executive Director
Osborne House Inc.
Winnipeg
-Letter to the editor, August 25 2004

The program was working
What a shame the city of Winnipeg is scrapping the Family Violence Intervention Team!
This innovative prevention program, partnering police with social workers to intervene in high-risk cases of domestic violence, arose in 2001 in the wake of the 911 inquiry.
According to a recent RESOLVE report, the program has met its goals of supporting victims of domestic violence, linking them to services in the community, lessening the likelihood of further violence and reducing the need to use the already overburdened Family Violence Court and police services.
Front-line workers in shelters such as Osborne House know that the program was working. They know it has helped victims end abusive relationships, access services, feel safer and become empowered to make positive changes in their lives.
-Letter to the Editor from Osborne House Board of Directors
June 4 2004
The inquiry mentioned above relates to the way emergency responders handled 911 calls, available at:  http://www.manitobacourts.mb.ca/pdf/911_report.pdf

The volunteer board of directors of Winnipeg’s largest women’s shelter resigned as a group yesterday, saying the province “bullied, abused and threatened” them and provided insufficient funding.

“This is as a result of a complete breakdown in our relationship with government,” said Ellen Liebl, chairwoman of the Osborne House board. “We feel we can no longer be effective as directors.  We can’t do what we feel is in the best interests of the facility.”

The mass exodus of most of the board — a couple of staff representatives will stay on — raises questions about the Department of Family Services, which has been hit by several recent scandals.
-Shelter Board ‘Bullied’ Dec 16 2004 p1, Dec 16 2004 p2

Manitoba Family Services and Housing department criticized for lack of accountability and funding issues with several organizations.
-Another black eye for housing department Dec 21 2004 p1, Dec 21 2004 p4

Executive Director Margaret Marin muzzled, put on probationary period, takes stress leave.
Board chairwoman, Crown attorney Rekha Malaviya, said yesterday that taking care of the needs of clients remains the priority.
The signs that all was not well with Marin and her political masters were clear earlier this month when Lockport’s Sabrina Darichuk and Kelly Champlin were the victims of an apparent domestic slaying.  Traditionally, Marin would have made a statement on behalf of the shelter. This time, she said she wasn’t able to talk. No statement was ever issued.
-Turmoil persists at women’s shelter, Apr 29 2005 p 25

A strike could force women and children out of the province’s largest shelter for victims of domestic violence.
Officials at the shelter emphasized yesterday that a contingency plan is in place if workers walk off the job.
“Nobody is going to be put out on the street,” said Barbara Judt vice-chair of the Osborne House board. “We will continue to provide services to women and children that need them.”
Employees at the shelter are represented by two unions. The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 2348 represents 47 front line workers which include, counsellors, child-care workers, cleaners and reception. CUPE national representative Mark Kernaghan said they are looking for a wage increase of approximately 40 per cent. He said that would put them on par with workers doing similar jobs with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.  The remaining employees, three supervisors and eight full-time and casual administration staff, are members of the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union Local 160.
-Strike could force women, kids out of shelter June 21 2006 pA4

The staff of Osborne House, the province’s largest women’s shelter, is on the verge of striking over a wage dispute.  ..The salary of an Osborne House worker ranges from $15,698 for a children’s support worker to $25,662 for a counsellor, wages Ellis said are too low, considering the intense nature of the work required at the shelter.
…Last year at Osborne House more than 10,000 individual and group counselling sessions were provided to women and children in need, while the crisis line handled over 9,000 calls.  There were approximately 11,000 overnight stays at the shelter last year.
-Strike stalks province’s largest women’s shelter July 18 2000 pA3

“More space, better facilities and more secure funding are badly needed”, Bertrand said.  -Osborne House Facing a Crisis,  Jan 3 1987

-Plan to close home for battered women called ‘a real catastrophe for this city’ Feb 16 1979 p8

-Osborne House hopes to get out of $$ bind dec 14 1976 dec 14 1976 p12

Letter from YWCA president Jane Jones
-Funding Problems Plague Osborne House Dec 22 1976 p 26

Crisis Housing Moves Location
The association first provided crisis housing as a temporary summer project this year in one wing of Hargrave House, a permanent residence for women operated by the YW. During a two-month period 70 women with 39 children used the crisis facilities made available through a student community service grant from the federal department of secretary of state. On Sept. 2, after the grant expired, the service moved to the YWCA at 447 Webb Plane.
WFP page 25 Womens News November 2 1974

Charles Adler thinks he can tell us what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. really meant to say

So, let me interrupt the recordings of those still-relevant speeches to tell you what MLK really meant to say.  I mean, he’d still be coming to terms with the recent two term president, right?  And he’d be all victim blamey, and perpetuate all of those bizarre ancient stereotypes.  Jokes about shoe shining and melons are totally what MLK would be doing if he hadn’t been assassinated.

Really, this is what a prominent Canadian media host just wrote:

“Those of us growing up in the Martin Luther King era couldn’t imagine that 50 years later, a man with a black face and a black wife and children could sit in the Oval Office in the big chair. Shine the shoes of the man sitting in the big chair in the Oval Office? Yes. But to be the man in the big chair in the Oval Office? No.

But the greatest threat to the American black man comes from his black brothers. I don’t want to pummel your melon with statistics. But I can tell you that a black man today is 10 times more likely to be brutalized by someone who is black than he is by someone who is white.  …

Today I think Martin Luther King would be demanding that many of his fellow black brothers stop blowing that cheque on bullets, booze and bling. He would demand they start doing a better job of supporting their sons and daughters. And he might demand they stop blaming the white man for every single problem faced by black communities and black families.”

from http://www.winnipegsun.com/2013/08/29/dr-king-would-be-appalled-at-todays-truth

So once someone has been dead awhile, I guess it’s OK to just use their name for anything you want, hey?

Something about being a radio call-in talk show host must cause some sort of brain rot.

What makes this even worse is that the conversation going on in other circles these days has debunked even the trope of black-on black crime as a myth.

Short version – white people are also killed by members of their own race, 86% of the time.

“.. crime, in general, is driven by opportunism and proximity;  If African-Americans are more likely to be robbed, or injured, or killed by other African-Americans, it’s because they tend to live in the same neighborhoods as each other. Residential statistics bear this out; blacks are still more likely to live near each other or other minority groups than they are to whites. And of course, the reverse holds as well—whites are much more likely to live near other whites than they are to minorities and African-Americans in particular.”  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/15/the-trayvon-martin-killing-and-the-myth-of-black-on-black-crime.html.

The Veneration of Wealthy Donors

Rich people like philanthropy for a few reasons:

They get to look good

They get to decide where the money goes

No one questions how and why they ended up with all that money in the first place

So it makes sense that the ideology of wealth places so much emphasis on private donors for social goods like health care and education.  It even extends to a prescriptive morality that encourages other, less wealthy, people to attempt to mitigate the systemic inequity of our society with frantic personal efforts of their own.  Aka volunteerism.

This tells it like it is:

“Human beings should not have to depend upon a rich man’s whim for the right to life.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/27/philanthropy-enemy-of-justice

We’ll leave it to international development studies students to write essays about the problems that happen when donations come with strings attached.  Or when politicians pose for a photo op without permission while failing to address the real problem.

Possibly the worst article of all time

The WFP published the worst imaginable personal attack by regular columnist Lindor Reynolds.

I was at this event.  It was a film launch event called “Trying to Exit” hosted by Crossing Communities Art Project.  If I recall correctly the event was promoted as Trying To Exit, with the film’s title as a subtitle.

So, the presentation was already toned down to make it more accessible for a general audience.
For many of the feminists attending, there is nothing inherently wrong with working in the sex trade.  The shame and stigma which society attaches to the work are as much of an issue as the social and economic inequities which leave sex workers with no other option.
But the way the film and event were titled made the material palatable even for people who could see nothing good in sex work.  The girls and women who made and appeared in the film were explaining the things that they had been through in the past, the changes they had made, and were still trying to make in order to get away from the street.

The filmakers introduced the film and spoke afterwards.

As people were leaving I saw the columnist talking to one of the women who’d told her personal story in the film.  The columnist was nodding and listening.  She appeared sympathetic.  But what no one at the time realized she was doing was winning over the trust of a vulnerable person in order to more totally destroy her in print the next day.

The article is just horrid.  But I think the phrase “It could still happen” was the worst.  It is a veiled threat, or an invitation.  Along with the comment about lightning striking down another already marginalized person, Lindor is implying that community members would be justified in committing violence against them.  And coming from a columnist who is aware of the brutal violence and systemic murder that has been happening to sex trade workers, this is atrocious.

Click for the PDF Oct 22 2005 pA5

Warning – this content is abhorrent, but because this is an extreme example of something that happens all of the time, we need to draw attention to it so that it doesn’t happen any longer – It reads:

“TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Tonya is a crack whore.  I’m not supposed to be that blunt about it, of course. I’m supposed to say she’s a sex-trade worker with a drug addiction, which is a fancier way of coming to the same truth.
This intelligent, educated woman performs sex acts in cars and back lanes in order to feed her crack habit. She has a little girl she professes to love but rarely sees because, when mommy is busy whoring, it’s a little hard to handle the bedtime story beat.
Home is now the McLaren Hotel, that charmless Main Street institution with spittle-proof glass protecting the front desk clerk.
Tonya says she’s not a victim. She’s making a choice, and she’ll tell you that straight and true. Her early life was a nightmare of abuse, to be sure, but when she began dancing with the devil crack, she set herself on a certain path. She’s had several chances to become clean but has never been able to follow through.
Tonya’s not looking for your pity.  She’s one of several prostitutes featured in Trying To Exit, a video project that documents experiences on the street. It’s rough and gritty and damned tough to watch, alternately filled with the bravado of a transgendered hooker screaming obscenities and the heartbreak of Tonya using a little doll with blond braids to demonstrate how she was betrayed as a toddler.
But that’s not her excuse. She hasn’t got one, doesn’t need one, shouldn’t have to give one. Tonya, once a promising nursing student, says life is just too hard when she’s straight. So while her little girl stays with her grandmother, she smokes crack and allows men to pay her 20 or 40 bucks for a little bit of her time.
“Most of us want to quit and reunite with our families,” she says. Lightning, by some miracle, doesn’t strike her dead and take me with her.  Her one steadfast rule is no soliciting in school zones.  “I kind of agree with the hooker sweeps in the residential areas,” she says. “I don’t want my daughter walking to school past junked-out hookers.” There is no sense of irony in this mother’s earnest testimonial.
Yesterday afternoon, Tonya was joined at the McDermot Avenue offices of Crossing Communities Art Project, the co-ordinators of the video, by a transgendered prostitute named Ilay-a, once a Sandy Bay resident named Elijah.  The strapping 22-year-old tells much the same story — drugs, sex to pay for the drugs, more drugs.
“The crack gets me through the sex.  “There’s days when I just wish a john would kill me.”
That may still happen. One of her friends, also a transgendered prostitute, was killed last year.  “It was fun when I started,” she says.  “It really was. I loved dressing up, the boots, the PVC outfits. It was fun for about the first two years.”  Then came crack and a relentless series of tricks and abuse. Yesterday, shaking, she estimated she’d been up for three straight days, drugging and whoring.
There are standards, even in this foul world, she’s quick to note. Like Tonya, she’s picky about where she does business.
“I only work in industrial areas,” she says, blinking pink-shadowed lids. “I don’t want to set a bad example for young girls. It ain’t no Pretty Woman, ain’t no Prince Charming out there waiting to take you home.”
I-lay-a also wants to make it clear she’s not looking for pity.  “I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me. I want people to look at me and see what I’m all about. My choice is to sell my ass on the streets. Honest to God, that’s it. I’m not afraid to die.”
If there’s a message in Trying To Exit — other than all these women are damn lucky to still be alive — it’s that this is a world where working girls are seen as sub-human. The prostitutes talk of the things that are thrown at them every night — garbage, rocks, beer bottles, words — and of the men who try to rip them off or hurt them.
It’s stressful and degrading, they say, but the drugs keep them coming back.
I-lay-a dreams of meeting the right man, adopting a baby and settling down. Alexus, also transgendered, considers Oprah a role model. Sandra, a recovered crack addict and a rare success story, wants to finish school, buy a house and feel safe. She’s 18.
They may not want your pity but, oh Lord help us, these women deserve it.
Edith Regier, the gentle soul who is creative director of the outfit that put together the video, says the project taught her compassion.  “In so many ways, we want the same things,” she says. “We want to belong.  We want to feel safe. We want an education.  We want people to understand us.”
And while will it may seem well-nigh impossible to understand a man dressed as a woman offering himself up for sex so she can buy drugs, compassion is something we should all have inside us.
If not for this sad lot, then for whom?
lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca”

(I am unaware of any retraction or apology, only this one letter to the editor:  “Point Was Missed”  Nov 8 2005 pA12)