CJAM Pledge Drive!

It's that time of year for CJAM's annual Pledge Drive!  The Pledge Drive is a hugely important event because it raises funds to keep CJAM going and expand our station signal.  That means great shows like Ipso Facto have a place to call home, and you get to hear the things that interest you on the radio! 

Ipso Facto has set ourselves a lofty goal of $300 raised this year, so help us out Windsor Law and donate!  If you can make a pledge, head over to www.cjam.ca or shoot an email to us at Ipso Facto at ipsofactoradio@gmail.com. 

What else do you get for your pledge, besides the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting campus community radio?  Why, there are some great incentives!  A mere $30 gets you a fashionable eco-friendly CJAM shopping bag, a friends of CJAM card (good for discounts at many fine Windsor businesses), and a CD from a selection chosen by the fine folks at CJAM.  The more you donate the more you can get, including t-shirts, hoodies, and stickers! 

So pledge soon, pledge lots, and thank you so much from the team at Ipso Facto!

Ipso Facto OpEd: I am a Person. Hear me roar!

Disclaimer: Ipso Facto editorials represent the views of the author, and do not represent the views of the Ipso Facto editorial board, CJAM 99.1 FM, the University of Windsor, or the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. 

81 years ago 5 women got together and did something that seems almost unthinkable to us today; they forced the government of Canada to recognize that women are persons.    For Emily Murphy, Nellie Mooney McClung, Louise Crummy McKinney, Irene Marryat Parlby and Henrietta Muir Edwards, the fight to have "persons" as it was interpreted in the then British North America Act include women meant being recognized as equals in politics, and in life.  Since then Canadian women use October 20th-dubbed "Person's Day"-to celebrate equality and bring attention to contemporary womens issues.

It may seem strange to some of us now that the personhood of women is even up for discussion.  Women in Canada enjoy equal rights; they have actively particpated in the political sphere for some time and more and more we see women rising to positions of power in the judiciary, in business, and on the world stage.  However, every once and a while a news story comes up that should remind us all that the battle for equality is not yet won.

One such news story is the Col. Russel Williams trial.

I have been following this case since the story broke due to my own morbid curiosity.  Here we have a man who, by all accounts, was outwardly kind and friendly.  A leader at CFB Trenton, he loved his wife and was a good commander.  But the second life he led was one of hate.  The more and more details that come out of the trial the more we find that Col. Williams was a deeply disturbed individual.  His crimes are indescribably horrific (I won't repeat them in full here, as they have been adequately covered in mainstream press).  It were as if this was an episode of "Dexter" rather than a true story that happened not 600 KM from where I now write.

The more I read about his victims the angrier I get.  I have always considered myself to be a peaceful person, but I'll admit that there is a dark part of me that would take a grim sastisfaction in having this pitiful excuse for a human strapped to an electric chair.  He represents to me one of the scariest things a woman would ever have to confront; a man that views females as pure objects, nothing more.

Objectification.  It's a word that's bandied around a lot by feminist scholars without much understanding of what the issue with it is.  In our culture objectification can occur when women are viewed singularly as something to be obtained for sexual and/or domestic pleasure.  It's pervasive in our media images.  Advertisements will often depict models as tied to (figuratively) the object for sale, or as passively gazing at the viewer while the male is active.  The men on "Jersey Shore" go to clubs to find someone DTF (down-to-fuck) barely caring to find out their name and throwing them out of the house if they aren't immediately willing to hop into bed.  I haven't always bought the "media will warp the minds of youth!" argument, but I do believe that when women are continually shown as objects that it can be hugely discouraging and create a systemic belief that this is in fact the case.

And why is this dangerous?  An object is something with no voice, no conscience.  It can be used at will and discarded just as easily.  It can be destroyed and maimed with no thought to any ill effects.  This is how Col. Williams views women.  When Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd begged for their lives, he didn't hear anything.  Because objects don't have lives; they don't have mothers and fathers or siblings and friends who will care that they are gone.  We know that they were people, with hopes and dreams and all that mushy stuff that belongs in a Lifetime movie.  They deserved to have the life they wanted.  But that chance that all people deserve was unmercifully ripped away from them.

Col. Williams represents an extreme.  A wide majority of men do not view women as pure objects.  But the systemic beliefs that we carry thanks to years of gender roles being burned into our brains does affect what we think of ourseleves as woman, and how people view us.

This is why Persons Day is as important as it was 81 years ago when the Privy Council handed down its decision.  Women have come so far, but as long as even one person like Col. Williams is able to exist, we still need to agitate for change.  We need to make sure that womens voices continue to be heard and we need to seriously question the way that women are represented in media and in society.  This is the only way that we can truly honour the memory of so many women, like Comeau and Lloyd, who are killed in acts of sexualized violence, and the many more who continue to bravely live with the physical and psychological scars of sexual assault.  We need to talk, we need to yell, we need scream, and sing and make sure the whole world knows: I am a person.  Hear me roar!

-H.G. Watson

The Blog Round Up: October 9th-18th 2010

First up: sorry that the blog round up is tardy this week!  To make up for it you will be getting two blog round ups to quell your thirst for legal news and tidbits.  Now, on to the fun stuff.

The National Post reports that a police officer dubbed "Officer Bubbles" during the G20 protests in Toronto because of this video, which led a popular YouTube cartoon of him, is suing YouTube for a cool $1.2 million and the identification of the creator of the latter video.  The cartoon has been removed from YouTube until the lawsuit is resolved.  I don't know why he's so mad.  His nickname is soooooo cute!!!

The judge in the Colonel Williams hearing has lifted a ban on laptops and smartphones for journalists who are present at the proceedings, allowing them to update readers live via Twitter and Facebook.  But will the judge be able to keep the sentencing under 140 characters?

 A Boston College School of Law 3L wrote the Dean asking for his money back, sparking the old question; is school a product that we pay for, or does it have more intangible benefits?

Asylum found 10 of the worst law firm ad's out there.  My fav?  The CGI rappers who just want their insurance to pay up (via Precedent Magazine).

And advance polls are open for Windsor municipal elections!  Go vote!

Missed the last episode of Ipso Facto?  As always, find us on www.cjam.ca (you can find us on the program schedule on Wednesday's at 8 AM).

Ipso Facto OpEd: Why I don't drink bottled water

Disclaimer: Ipso Facto editorials represent the views of the author, and do not represent the views of the Ipso Facto editorial board, CJAM 99.1 FM, the University of Windsor, or the University of Windsor Faculty of Law.

I don't drink bottled water.

In my first year at McMaster University I lived on campus and would go through the monthly effort of lugging a giant case of bottled water to my 3rd story dorm room. I went to the gym, and tried to take good care of myself, so I drank a lot of water. I would often refill my bottles at the gym when I ran out, but it never occurred to me to just buy a reusable bottle. Perhaps rumours about Hamilton having dirty water because of its bad record of pollution sunk into my head, or maybe it's just because my family drank bottled water. Regardless, near the end of my first year I made the switch, and I honestly cannot imagine switching back. As long as my tap water is clean and drinkable, why would I pay up to 2000x as much for the same thing (1/3 of bottled water actually comes from the tap)in a bottle that is horrible for the environment?

For my boyfriend, who cares about the way bottled water is filtered, we got a Brita tap filter. It was a little pricey, but we could have opted for the cheaper Brita pitcher.  We didn't because I didn't want to always be the one refilling it. Either way, both options are far cheaper than buying case after case of bottled water, month after month, year after year, landfill after landfill.

Wait a minute, landfill? What about recycling? Well, yes, I do recycle, and always recycled my plastic water bottles. The Brita commercial with the woman drinking a plastic bottle of water in her kitchen full of empty bottles that says Brita filters reduce the amount of water bottles that end up in landfills always seemed odd to me. Does Brita think that bottled water drinkers are non-recyclers? Well, actually, they generally are!  According to The National Post, 86% of plastic water bottles produced do NOT end up in the recycling bin.  Moreover, many that are disposed of properly in the blue bin are not actually recycled at all, and are instead down-cycled.

Recycling means turning something at the end of its use into something else of equal or greater value, such as bottle-to-bottle, which happens with resin code 1 PET plastic, as well as glass and aluminum. But resin code 2 HDPE plastic-which is what most water bottles are made of-may not be able to be truly recycled.  Michael Bloch from the website Green Living Tips says, "These are often downcycled into things like tables, chairs and trash bins and require extra treatment in terms of energy and chemicals to do so. While durable plastic products can be created it takes an awful lot of plastic bottles to create these items. Additionally, the HDPE may be blended into other plastic resin types which then turns them into a "resin code 7" - and that is then the end of the line. Once that product has outlived its usefulness, its next destination will likely be landfill."

Hey, Durham Region! You know that garbage incinerator you're so excited about as THE ONE AND ONLY solution to our waste management issues? Maybe banning the bottle would help lessen the waste load, along with several other suggestions for alternatives to the incinerator that you pretend don't exist, which you can read about here.

So in summary, only 14% of water bottles make it to a recycling plant, and then many of them end their life cycle in a landfill anyway. Considering that the start of their life cycle involves using tonnes of oil to produce the bottles, and a great deal of energy and pollution to manufacture and then ship bottles around the planet, wouldn't we be better off scrapping the whole idea?

What about places where water is unsafe to drink? In that case, the only alternative I can think of to individual water bottles is the giant water bottles for water coolers, but that's not much better. Should you drink unsafe water? No. But why is your water unsafe? The UN General Assembly declared this past July that access to clean drinking water is a human right, and as Canadians we should stand up for our rights. In some poor countries where the water unsuitable for drinking, it is the result of the pollution of bottling companies, including those that manufacture bottled water! Clean water is essential for life, we cannot survive without it, and many people in poor countries do not have access to cures for the diseases that accompany dirty water, such as the rota virus which causes diarrhea and kills approximately 3 million children a year (Singer 2009, p. 86). The companies that manufacture bottled water in poor countries and pollute sources of drinking water then try to sell the water back to people who cannot afford it, but now cannot survive without it.

According to the organization Charity: Water, almost a billion people don't have access to clean, safe drinking water, and while that isn't all (or even mostly) because of the pollution from water bottling plants, if we all stopped buying bottled water and instead donated the money we would have spent money to charities that provide access to clean drinking water for all we could be helping rather than essentially rubbing it in.  Our water IS safe, yet we CHOOSE to buy bottled water even though it is completely unnecessary.

My mom has used reusable shopping bags since my first memory of shopping with her. She works at Metro, and hears every excuse in the book for a) why people think the charge for plastic bags is ridiculous (back in my day...), and b) why they will buy them anyway (if I don’t the bag makers will be out of a job!). However, the fact that grocery stores are even charging (where they don't have to, in Toronto it is the law, in Durham it isn't) shows that times are changing. People are jumping on the reusable shopping bag bandwagon (though the origins of the reusable bags may not always be ideal), and an all-out ban on plastic shopping bags may happen in the near future. What's the difference between plastic bags and plastic water bottles? Well, in short, plastic shopping bags don't make a ginormous profit for gigantic powerful multinational corporations, and bottled water does. However, bottled water sales have declined, and reusable bottle sales are booming! That means there is hope that the public will stop buying into the dirty tap water myth.  Even if they are turning on the tap because of economic crisis related belt tightening, hopefully they won't go back to the bottle when the economy recovers. Also, many regions already have banned plastic water bottles, including Toronto, which is in the tail end of a plan to ban the sale of bottled water on all municipal premises by 2011.

And that’s why I don’t drink bottled water.

If you want to learn more about water issues, check out these helpful links below!

http://blogactionday.change.org/
http://www.charitywater.org/
http://www.insidethebottle.org/
http://www.insidethebottle.org/petition-ban-bottled-water-and-turn-tap-ontario-0
http://www.polarisinstitute.org/water
http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

Sources cited by the author

http://www.canada.com/Toronto+bans+water+bottles/1027243/story.html
http://www.charitywater.org/whywater/
http://www.insidethebottle.org/story-bottled-water-video
http://thethunderbird.ca/2010/04/09/reusable-shopping-bags-arent-as-green-as-they-seem/
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35456&Cr=sanitation&Cr1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203074.html

Singer, Peter (2009). The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty. N.Y.: Random House.

Guest writer Colleen Bain is an environmental studies student based in Durham Region.

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October 13th 2010: Disorientation Jam 2010!

The Ipso Facto team is sure excited about this one.  Tomorrow night we'll be at the Phog Lounge hanging out with some of our favourite musicians, Michael Hargreaves and Efan! Music from local Windsor band Michou.  Proceeds from the event are going to fund Ipso Facto and our friends over at Windsor's Criminal Law and Social Justice society.  We want to make sure we can keep bringing you high quality legal journalism for years to come.

So bring your friends and bring your dancing shoes.  We'll see you tomorrow night!

The Blog Round Up: October 2-8th 2010

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in a 5-4 decision yesterday that section 10(b) of the Canadian Charter-which guarantees the right to counsel-does not include the right to further consultation with legal counsel during the course of police investigation.

The ABA Journal reports that a jobless law grad is glad that he went to law school.  That this is even worthy of a headline is depressing in the extreme.

In more relevant law hiring news, Lawyers Weekly columnist Omar Ha-Redeye discusses the very real issues mature students have finding articling placements.

A Windsor cab-driver is suing the City of Windsor for $2 million for failing to enforce a city by-law that required cabs to have security cameras installed.

If you missed Ipso Facto this week, check out our G20 episode over at CJAM.

And since it's a long weekend, we'll leave you on an uplifting note.  Johnny Depp showed up at a London, England elementary school in character as Captain Jack Sparrow after one of the students requested he come and help mutiny against the teachers.  I wrote my own letter to Johnny Depp that goes "Dear Johnny, please whisk me away to France with you!"  I expect him to respond any day now.

Ipso Facto Feature: G20 Legal Observers

The G20 summit has come and gone and while most Torontonians would like their city to go back to “normal”, many of us who were involved in the protests or affected by them are still reeling from the weekend and trying to make sense of what happened.

For much of the weekend I acted as a volunteer legal observer. I along with over 50 other lawyers, law students, and non-lawyers became the on-street eyes and ears of the legal defence team which was set up by the Movement Defence Committee to support all demonstrators throughout the week.

Our role was three-fold. First, to provide know-your-rights information to demonstrators and distribute the telephone number that could be called in case of arrest.  Second, to gather information about people who were being arrested, such as their name, description, any friends or witnesses, their charge and the name and badge number of the arresting police officer. This information would later be written up in an arrest report and given to the legal defence team who could then start tracking the arrested person through the system and provide legal support. Third, our role was to bear witness to any police brutality or misconduct.

At all times, our solidarity was with the demonstrators without judgment.  Regardless of whether one was a peaceful protestor, a passerby, or a member of the so-called Black Bloc, our job was to support the demonstrators without judgment as to their tactics or strategies of protest.

On Saturday, June 26, there I was with my partner in our bright orange legal observer hats, soaking wet from the rain, walking around Queen’s Park handing out legal information and the arrest number before the big civil society march got underway. People were singing and dancing, making speeches, handing out food, hugging comrades, and getting ready to march in protest of the G20. There were almost no police officers to be found.

As the day went on, I bore witness to unprecedented events in Canadian history: tear gas was used for the first time in Toronto, the largest mass arrests in our nation’s history, traumatizing police brutality, and scenes from a post-apocalyptic movie with the infamous burning police cars and smashed in windows of Queen West and Yonge St.

I was there at Queen and John when a breakaway group first tried to make their push south to the security fence and were met by a line of riot police who promptly and without warning started smashing heads. My partner and I saw protestors quickly emerging from the mess with blood on their face and a woman with a potentially broken arm.

Shortly after that, my partner and I witnessed an arrest of two individuals in an alleyway north of Queen on Spadina. Out of sight from the rest of the protest, a car had been pulled over by three unmarked vans and uniformed and undercover police officers together were arresting two individuals. Four other officers created a barrier wall so that we could not get close enough to get proper descriptions or names of the people. We took notes, describing everything we could.

My experience as a legal observer at the G20 summit came at unique time for me as I transition from being a law student to working as an articling student.  It has helped me meet other progressive law students and lawyers and provided some much needed “real life” experience.

Although the G20 might be officially over, the consequences of that weekend are just starting to emerge.  Calls for a public inquiry into police misconduct and potential class action and civil suits against the police are starting to take shape. In some cases, the presence of legal observers during the protests helped to keep police action in check. In other cases, our presence on those days will allow us to play a positive role in the aftermath.

Guest contributor Robert Tarantino is an alum of the University of Windsor Faculty of Law.  For more of our G20 coverage, check out our feature episode from October 6th 2010 on www.cjam.ca

Photos by Meg Banks.

G20: 3 Months after

For a weekend in June of 2010, Toronto-a city known for being welcoming and friendly-transformed.  Images of police accosting activists and balaclava clad anarchists smashing store window fronts filled TV screens and covered the front pages of Canada's newspapers.  Separated from the chaos outside by a long chain link fence was the G20, in Toronto for thier semi-annual meeting of the largest economic players in the world.

3 months later and we are still no closer to sorting out the confusion that came out of the G20 Toronto weekend.  All the players involved with the G20 have come under fire for their actions and it's become difficult to determine where blame should be directed, or if their should be any blame at all.  Legally, we may be seeing the repercussions of the event for a long time.  Charges against activists are still on-going, the actions of the Toronto Police Force are under review, and the Charter challenges that may arise out of the G20 arrests may impact how Canada deals with mass demonstrations in the future.

This week on Ipso Facto we are going to discuss the legal impact of the G20 with guests Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and with a member of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network.  Join us on Wednesday October 6th, 2010 at 8 AM.

Carl Stychin BONUS Interview

When we interviewed the fantastic Carl Stychin last Wednesday, we had way more material then we had time to air it!  Lucky for you, we've now made available two parts of the interview we were unable to air.  Check out the links below for the bonus content.

Sexual images and the media

Prostitution

The Blog Round Up: September 25th-October 1st

A New York state judge has ruled that private content on social media networking sites like Facebook and MySpace is admissible in court.  OH MY GOD.  People still use MySpace? 

An Ontario Superior Court judge has struck down prostitution laws that made all the activities around prostitution illegal, such as operating a bawdy house.  The federal and provincial governments have already appealed.

In the latest installment of "Windsor Law and the Search for the New Dean", we find out the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has no qualms about installing a new dean should they rule in favour of Professor Emily Carasco.

On Campus Interviews are coming up for law students across Canada.  Sweet Hot Justice has an article on an issue that is pertinent to all of us who may be joining a big law firm next summer; how much cleavage is too much in the workplace? [Link mildly NSFW]

Finally, Windsor is making a bid to be the most bike friendly community in North America.  After driving straight through a pot-hole today, I can't begin to say how much I want this to be a reality (hint: it's a lot).