Dear Mr. Eby,
As a woman who has continued to be silenced, ignored, and deliberately destabilized as I speak to governments, churches, and para-church organizations about the harm that their policies are doing to children, and to vulnerable people and families, I share this information publicly as we approach Truth and Reconciliation Day, in Canada.
Today, is Friday, September 27, 2024. It is currently 07:26 PST. I have been lying awake for several hours thinking deeply as usual about what merely I can do to motivate the community, we, the people, to move forward with using our power to actually create a healing equitable culture, in British Columbia, in Canada, and across the world. I opened social media to try to give my mind a break from the heaviness of the matter that has long been simmering in my mind, and the article below from the UBC Indian Residential School and Dialogue Centre (https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/Detail/objects/11902#) was the first thing that I saw. I cannot ignore the synchronicity of this.
Survivors have spoken their truth, at Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, and other events hosted by government, churches, and other Eurocentric-centred para-church organizations. Yet none of these power and wealth hoarding bodies are truly doing anything to move forward with creating the restoration and healing that will result in progress through reconciliation. In fact, historically and continually, they have silenced and attempted to assimilate or harm speakers who have attempted to shine light on the continuing atrocities of racism and other forms of oppressive discrimination.
They claim to have conversations about these issues that continue to deeply affect the mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and financial wellness of Indigenous and other colonized and oppressed global majority and other marginalized communities.
Yet, the conversations are still centred around the comfort and upward mobility of the colonizing minority, while the voices of the affected are silenced, as marginalized global majority speakers for progressive reform are muzzled, discredited, and effectively institutionalized through insidious smear campaigns.
And therefore I must be more resolutely vocal henceforth. Today, I begin to share my story. Who will actively stand with me to both listen and speak for progressive equity? I shall be silenced no more.
September 28, 2024
This morning I awoke and read an email, purportedly mass sent yesterday morning, from the Premier of British Columbia, David Eby, leader of the NDP. Mr. Eby was asking me, and every other British Columbian, including BIPOC families, to help him win the biggest fight of his life. He wants us to help him win this coming election, to support him in his quest to be a champion for all, and especially for the most vulnerable of us.
Mr. Eby shared his story, showed us where it all started, told us that he was an advocate for the downtrodden unhoused on Vancouver’s Eastside. Mr. Eby says that “[he has]… always believed if something’s not right, you speak up. If somebody needs help, you help them.
And right now, [he needs our] help” to get elected. He paints Mr. Rustad as a conspiracy theorist who would gut vital socioeconomic policies, and ignore the needs of every day British Columbians, and I agree.
I agree that we cannot afford to elect to leadership anyone who elevates narratives of division. We cannot afford to elect anyone who consciously subscribes to an elitist hierarchical system which relegates a large percentage of humans to the category of collateral damage who live or die in support of the hoarding of money, influence, and control by a few.
We cannot afford to elect to leadership anyone who directly or indirectly pits members of British Columbian communities against each other with direct or indirect assertions that British Columbia is being economically and culturally destabilized by “newcomers “ or ungrateful Natives.
Such a narrative is grounded in the very government initiated and sanctioned atrocities from which we say we seek to heal through official Truth and Reconciliation processes.
Therefore I agree that this quest for leadership is one with which we need to to help Mr. Eby. But then what?
Can we trust Mr. Eby to actually listen to those of us who speak up when we see something wrong? Can we trust Mr. Eby to lead us to action as a community empowered to work respectfully and effectively together? Can we trust Mr. Eby to build a team which helps us all to thrive by facilitating ways for us to help each other when we need help?
I wish that I could confidently trust Mr. Eby to do any of those things when he seems to continue to refuse to listen to all British Columbians, especially the most vulnerable of us, especially those of us who work with the most vulnerable, and who have been enduring personal suffering as we attempt to serve the very demographic which Mr. Eby says started it all for him.
We are less than forty-eight hours away from the celebration or observance of Truth and Reconciliation Day, and in the City of Chilliwack, where I live, homelessness and economic poverty is at an all-time high. I specifically stipulate economic poverty because there is infinite wealth of love, diversity, innovation, and creativity in the Chilliwack community.
As a queer, single, BIPOC mother, it has been my experience that Mr. Eby’s NDP does not listen to nor welcome most who speak up when they see something wrong, and they certainly have not in my experience welcomed or supported those who take action to mitigate and/or prevent damage, and promote growth and healing in the most vulnerable in our communities.
As Truth and Reconciliation Day approaches, Indigenous and BIPOC children are still grossly overrepresented in the Child Welfare system and in the lowest socioeconomic bracket in BC.
And as a foster parent who served under the NDP government for nine years, and who was penalized and fired specifically for speaking up and for helping when help was needed, as a mother whose children adopted through MCFD, have been abandoned by Mr. Eby’s NDP and left to come to harm, and neither served nor protected by the RCMP under Mr. Eby’s NDP, as an independent community worker whose initiative to inspire the community to stand with vulnerable, traumatized women and children was ignored and undermined by Mr. Eby’s NDP, and as a person who now has a disability and who continues to valiantly fight to stand when left to flounder by Mr. Eby’s NDP, I ask, if with my vote I give you the opportunity to lead, what good will it do for those of us who are consistently systemically disenfranchised, much like those on whose backs, in your email, you wish to stand to encourage us to choose you as leader of ALL the people of British Columbia?
To be honest, Mr. Eby, the only reason that I would consider you for leadership is because you clearly have some sort of vision, and some sort of wisdom which lead you to align with Kelli Paddon, who listens and is therefore able to take proactive action when she sees that something is not right. When someone needs help, she helps as much as she is able. She sees something in you that makes you worthy of leadership. Given the poor lived experience that I and many others according to statistics have had under your leadership Mr. Eby, what can you say to us that will build our confidence in your ability to do better.
Truthfully, what will you do to promote healing, restoration, and reconciliation which are key components of the recipe for building prosperous, successful, healthy communities in BC?
Because, Mr. Eby, in BC, this is my current reality: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/gms5MctmPY5XvZov/?
Nurturing Kindred 