Mindless Ramblings of a Wool Playing Man

So much of carding, spinning and even weaving requires me to use only a small portion (of whatever is left) of my brain. I have to pay a bit of attention to what I am doing but most of the work is really about not getting in the way of my muscles that, through hours and hours of practice, have been trained to the activity. That leaves a portion of my brain to wander around investigating the little corners of my mind where useless fact and thoughts have been long buried. I have been carding this morning, listening to The Band's "The Last Waltz".

Carding is a boring but necessary process. It takes the wool fibres that are tangled and aligns them all in the same general direction while at the same time getting rid of most of the bits and pieces of vegetable matter that is still in the wool. I can spend hours and hours standing in front of the machine, slowly cranking the handle and feeding in the wool.

There is lots of time to think of other things; I am never too sure what triggers thoughts or how I reach the conclusions I do. Occasionally I try to back track the thought process but more often than not I get lost down some byway or other. Today my mind wandered to facial tissue (most of us in Canada just call it Kleenex but that is a brand name - not a generic descriptor of a product). I started to think about Kleenex because I have been sneezing a lot lately - sometime six or seven times in a row. After the bout of sneezing my nose runs. Maybe it is allergies or something. I, for most of the winter, have being using some old handkerchiefs as opposed to Kleenex to blow my nose. I think most of handkerchiefs are linen. A few of them have been washed so many times that they are quite soft. After my morning bout of sneezing I started to wonder how many boxes of facial tissues we use in Canada each year - especially in the cold and flu season. My mind then wander over to the section in my brain reserved for environmental issues and wondered how many trees were cut down each year so that we could blow our noses on disposal tissues.

I could not find any statistic on Canadian use but a blog entitled Green Groundswell suggests that "255,360,000,000 disposable facial tissues" are used in the USA every year. That is a lot of paper! While each sheet uses only an impossibly small percentage of a tree - it has got to add up.

I wonder how many people who are protesting clear cuts - blow their noses using facial tissues?

My mind then wandered to other environmental concerns - specifically dental floss. Dental floss is made from petroleum products (nylon). There is not a lot of scientific date on the use of dental floss but most of the sites suggest that in North America, we purchase about 4,828,032 kms of dental floss a year (Evergreen). That is enough dental floss to go around the earth 120 times! All of that tough, almost indestructible thread ends up either in landfills or even worse in our sewers.

I wonder if people who think that we should  start to live in a world without carbon based products such as petroleum floss?

As I said - carding gives me lots of time to think - unfortunately it is seldom about things that are very useful.

Justice and Reconciliation Are Not the Same Thing - part two

It with some sense of optimism that I note that the family of Colten Boushie have already met with two federal ministers in Ottawa and will be meeting the Prime Minister today (Tuesday). The fact that they can summon the energy to face members of a government who have not done nearly enough to address the issues of racism within our legal system is remarkable. I am not too sure if I would have been able to do what they have done. I also find it somewhat reassuring that the three ministers have responded so quickly to the request to meet with Colten Boushie's family. But I hope the family's expectations for rapid or even any changes in Canada's legal system have not been raised too high. Because I do not think that changes are likely - at least not in the short term.

One of their requests appears to have been that there are changes made as to how juries are selected. It being argued that that jury should have had some Indigenous members; that the lawyer for the defence should not have had the ability to prevent individuals who appeared to be of an Indigenous background from being in the jury. It is not clear in reading many of the available reports whether or not the defence lawyer did use any of his twelve peremptory challenges to dismiss prospective jurors who appeared to have an Indigenous heritage.  But if he did,  the defence lawyer was doing his job -   any defence lawyer who did not do everything possible to have his client found not guilty (including ensuring there is the most favourable jury possible) would rightly be accused of mal practice. Both the defence and the prosecution have the same right to reject potential jurors.( A number of years ago I was called for jury duty. The accused had been charged with some dealing in drugs. I was excused as soon as the crown attorney saw me. I have always assumed it was because I had long hair and a healthy beard). 

 

 Other countries have done away with peremptory challenges and on the surface this would appear to address the issue. But I believe to do so would be a "knee jerk" reaction to a long standing, systemic situation - and potentially allow us to avoid dealing with the real problems. Such a political decision would be based on the premise that (1) all of the jury were racists,(2) that if there had been two or three Indigenous members of the jury, the outcome would have been different and (3) that the purpose of any trial is to ensure that the victim and their life story should be relevant to the prosecution's case.

 

 There is no way of ever knowing what or how the jury processed the information they heard at trial; we will never know what they talked about during those hours locked away in from public view. We do not know if the debate was tinged with constant racist comments or if their decisions was based solely on legal points. To assume that that if, in the future, that there always be a few Indigenous members of a jury whenever the victim is Indigenous would place an immense and unfair burden on those members. They would be expected to represent their race, not justice.  It would come perilously close to tokenism. 

 

 Finally, in spite of the many victim rights groups who have argued that their rights are ignored in trials - trials are not about the victim, their rights or the past 150 years of abuse. We have a legal system that insist that the accused has the right to a fair and unbiased trial (which of course may almost never happen when Indigenous persons are accused). Rightly or wrongly, a trial is not the place to discuss all of the multitude of examples of cultural genocide perpetuated upon the Indigenous people. While the trial may have been a form of proof that they system is at best dysfunctional in terms of justice being served, I think there are other solutions that (1) would be less cumbersome to enact and (2) be more meaningful in terms of engaging all communities.

 

 I think that the easiest way of ensuring that juries would be more racially diverse would be to ensure that the jury pool is expanded. Quite simply every jury pool needs to reflect the racial diversity of the area. At the same time, the government would need to invest sufficient resources to educate all members of the community of their responsibilities in serving as jury members.

 

 I am delighted that the Prime Minister and two of his cabinet have met with the Boushie family. I would like to belief that they have done so with the absolute belief that to start to eradicate racism, that things need to change in all facets of our society. I need to believe that while the wheels of government and real justice may grind exceedingly slow - that the small changes to the system can start immediately. It is not enough to promise to change some things in the future, or that we will have more studies. We need to and can start to change things right now to make all aspect of our lives more inclusive. It is not enough to appear to be more just - we must be.