#9102 - Mar 1991

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Digital Archiving Completed by the Ethnography Lab, A University of Toronto Anthropology Initiative and Produced in Collaboration with David Perlman/Wholenote Media Inc between July-December 2015. --=- ~ 6 TALKING DRUM The Kensington Market Drum, March 1991 TALKTNG - -RVM • y Y Y Y 1' Y Y .. Y l.,.l/111/llf ••••••••••••••••• LAST TIME WE REPORTED ~~'--;-~~r~~--·· -~~~"'-. ~ ... c;;- - -_..,_ \~ . Talking Drum Some 'people are wondering out loud what DRUM will and won't publish (see letters: who censors who? ) We're wondering too . But some things are clearer than a month ago ~ For instance, DRUM IS NOT "NONPARTISAN". The Leslieville Times and the Midtown Voice and the Beach Metro are nonpartisan (it says so right inside). DRUM is something else. We sometimes disagree with things people say in our pages. Sometimes it's an article, sometimes an advertiser. Sometimes rt's all of us disagreeing, sometimes it's not. Opinions it:J a piece are those of the person taking credit for the piece. Where no-one is credited, the responsibility's Drum's. DRUM is a "Kensington people's paper"- which is to say *mostly meant to provide a forum for people \1\fhO live or work in the Kensington market area (see maps page 1 0) *mostly made by Kensington people. We think it's important to reflect · the Market's diversity. We don't think it's ok to preach hate. We accept that we have a responsibility to make it clear when something that's in here is the opinion of Drum. And when it's not. DRUM is multipartisan. We believe it's our responsibility to indicate when something's been edited or censored. And not to edit or censor without the knowledge and consent of the writer. We believe that people have a right to ask that a piece be published exactly as submitted or not at all. If you are mentioned you should assume that you have a right to reply. - We have the right to accept or reject any piece. Responsibility for exercising this right lies with the publisher and the editorial collective. Drum is a publication of KensinQton Market lJrum, 24 Bellevue Avenue, Toronto, MST 2N4 Drum is published monthly. Phone or fOx (4 16) 599-DRUM for information on deadlines. Drum is distributed free door to door between Queen and Colleae, Beverly and Euctid; from College north.to Hoibcird between Spodino and Bothun!. And it is available at the commer· ciol outlets tiS!ed in the mop guide, as well os at selected outlets across Metro. For schook and study groups, up to 1 00 copies of Drum ore available, free of charge if you collect. .c Drum is available by subscription, outside our door to door distribution area. The cost is S 18 a year. Bock isstm are available. Items in Drum credited to individuok ore in the copyright of those indivi~uals. Points of view in such items ore those of the writer, not necessarily Drum's. THAT there would be a benefit for DRUM upstairs at the Silver Dollar, February 24 And another at the Santa Fe May 16. Stay tuned. THAT some would come just for a shot at the fabulous door prizes Rick; your dogfood is waiting. THAT a shootout on Dundas December 27 had people scared Now there's a feeling beyond fear-6 dead and life f?Oes on? Where did these children learn the culture of the gun? THAT a de.toxification centre for women at Claremont and Dundas would open as scheduled in April Is no news good news? _THAT a co-op was being proposed for western hospital's Leonard street lot See for yourself, April 17 (story, page 3) That there would be major changes to Kensington garbage schedules come mid-February _ See Easy as 1 ,2,3,4, page 4 That an "east market report" containing many recommendations for the market would be submitted to the Feb 13 meeting of the task force It was brought back for . further discussion to the March 20 meeting (seep. 5 for text). It will be discussed by task force members privately the first Wednesday in April, a_fter which it comes back to a full task force meeting April 24. That the chicken packers at 541/2 Kensington were applying to expand No joy from the city. Seep. 4 G-ST RALLY !9'1 ••••••••••••••••••••••••• Letters to DRUM 24 Bellevue Avenue, Toronto, M5T 2N4 Who Is Censoring Who? We are writing in reference to the piece that appeared in the last issue of the Drum called "Cisco's list of drink personalities" by Cisco. We were shocked and angered to see that the Drum, a paper put together by people that quite clearly have a vision for the Market, a vision of a none orp or ate-de vel opme n t Market built on mutual support and respect, would choose to print a piece that so effectively targeted and insulted so many of the 9ifferent people that make up the 'Kensington Community'. The statements, such as "Tequila .. .for criminals who call themselves refugees," "No-name-brand ... for welfare families with no personality", "Vodka (Screwdriver, Caesar, etc) ... for discreet, horny women" and "Carlsberg ... for faggots", to name only a few, are racist, sexist, classist and homophobic. Our main concern is. that the Drum clarify its editorial policy. Obviously, the Drurp cannot claim to be 'non-partisan'. It has made choices in the past about whose voices it thinks should be heard and who they support on a variety of issues. Although we recognize the Drum is in a very difficult position of trying to accurately represent the Market community and yet also trying to promote social responsibility, an editorial policy is still possible. Firstly,. the concern that all Market residents should find the Drum accessible to their voice is a genuine one, but translates into simple liberalism when confronted with the question of people who try to promote race or gender hatred in the paper. These voices are all too forcefully represented constantly in our society, in the government, in institutions and in the mainstream media. The simple fact is, that by allowing these voices space in the paper, you ultimately discourage others (who are the objects of that hatred) from seeing a place for themselves in the Drum. Racism, sexism, and other oppressions silence _and exclude people. So it becomes necessary to choose between printing the voices of racists (for instance) or the many other voices of the culturally diverse Market community. If you get few negative responses to the printing of Cisco's 'article.' this may illustrate exactly that point. Secondly, the question of censorship. By defining-an editorial policy which clearly refuses to print hate literature, you are not censoring the voices of those people. You are merely refusing to collaborate with them by putting your labour and your collective efforts into publishing their material. That's primarily why we are concerned about the printing of Cisco's article without editorial comment. Since our labour helped produce the paper, it concerns us that th_e final product so clearly contradicts and insults our own values. That's not to say that we expect to agree with every opinion expressed, only that we expect a paper to be responsible as far as basic human rights and dignity are concerned. Ultimately, although you are trying to be accountable to 'the community', that community has many diverse elements and you can't be equally accountable to, say, queer bas hers and the Market's lesbian and gay population, so you have to choose who you are going to be accountable to and how. continued on page 7
Digital Archiving Completed by the Ethnography Lab, A University of Toronto Anthropology Initiative and Produced in Collaboration with David Perlman/Wholenote Media Inc between July-December 2015. The Kensington Market Drum, March 1991 "' ••••••••••••••••••••••••• Letters to DRUM Letters continued from Letters, page 6 No editorial policy can hope to foresee the complex questions you'll be forced to face with each issue, with ·each article. We understand the difficulties that you are facing and are pleased to know that you take these questions very seriously. But in the future we feel very strongly that the Drum needs to both develop a policy of either not printing material that promotes racism, classism, sexism and homophobia, or if the Drum chooses :1 to run it, there must be clear editorial opinions attached so that the Drum be account '1 able for what it thinks are 1 the merits of such material to the Market •I Blackbird Design Collec_tive Reform Party's Triple E To the editor: The Reform Party is a Western-based political party. It is a party of common-sense and innovation, taking aim at the tired practices of the political hacks in power now. The Reform Party offers an alternative to the nausea created by the Big Three . A sampling of our policies follows: -greater accountability of MPs through recall procedures, basically the firing of incompetent MPs by their constituents; and MPs would have to swear 11 allegiance to the Queen and their constituents; ~ -a "triple E" Senate, meaning an elected Senate, an .e..qual Senate through equal provincial territorial representation so that no one province could dominate ·another; and an effective Senate that would work to safeguard regional iqterests, things that you and I care deeply about; -voters' initiatives, where if a percentage of eligible voters sign a petition to the Chief - ,1 Elecloral Officer, that issue would be part of the ballot in the next federal election. These are just some of the changes that the Reform Party proposes. Currently, .the Reform Party is examining the possibility of expansion east into Ontario and out to the Maritimes. They will vote on whether to become a truly nationa.:,tparty in Saskatchewan inAprill991. We,intheOntario Reform movement, are working towards this unique opportunity by sharing the Reform word with aU concerned citizens. I hope that interested readers of yournewspaper will write me for more information on other Reform positions and issues. I would be glad to tell them about it. My address is 273 Highfield Road, Toronto ONTM4L2V4. Yours sincerely, Jeff Young TALKING DRUM may be posted or hand delivered to Kensington Market Drum, Letters. 24 Bellevue Av.e, Toronto Ontaro MST 2N4. Or you can fax your letters (but you have to phone ahead to 599-DRUM). Letters will be published in full where space permits. Letters edited for length will be noted. Bush's Oil Holdings Drum: In solidarity with your exposure of the CBC newscaster Nash in February's Drum, I have slapped together some information I recently learned from here and there: -5,000 Egyptian women have been sent to the Gulf to "service" male American soldiers, - the Israeli cabinet drew up plans in December to conduct mass deportation, or "transfer, of as many as 200,000 Plaestinians to Jordan, - the Pentagon claims 15 percent, or 85,000, of Iraqi soldiers are dead or wounded; refugees say 150,000 to 400,000 civilians are dead or wounded, - Iraq made about half a dozen peace offers before the war, the first on Aug. 12, the last on Jan. 14 when Perez de Cuellar met with Saddam Bussein; after that one, de Cuellar wrongly told the world Iraq was stubborn on the issue of withdrawal (The Nation, March4), - Kuwaiti internal security chief General Fahd Ahmed Al Fahd and minister of interior Salein Sabah Al-Salem Al Sabah met with CIA director William Webster at CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia, on Nov. 14, 1989 to plan a campaign of economic warfare against Iraq, - on July 26, 1990, one week before the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. State Dept. kiJ)ed a Voice of America .editorial criticizing Iraq for massing thousands of troops on the Kuwaiti border, - amount Socal Oil (now Chevron Corp.) paid for tights to all of Saudi oil in 1933:50,000 pounds (with an extra 5,000 pounds a month in rent), - George Bush Jr. has rights to all offshore oil off Bahrain, - in January, the Turkish army, driven by fears of a Kurdish insurrection in Iraq sparking the. same among Turkey's 9 million Kurds, razed 141 Kurdish villages, displacing 3,000 Kurds with bombing attacks; U.S. bombers have bombed Iraqi Kurdish villages (In These Times, Feb 13-19), - number of Yemenis expelled from Saudi Arabia over their country's opposition to the war: 500,000; hundreds have been tortured, according to Amnesty, - number of human-rights violations since October on Kahnawake, according to chief Joe Norton: 200 to 400 (no UN resolutions; no oil). Fuck, this war drives me totally nuts. Alex Roslin, Troops Out Coalition, McGill University, Montreal Marks Takes Schwam to Task Dear Editor: I was amused to read Allan Schwam's gratuitous attack on me in your Letters section recently. Schwam attacks me as having been, "bitterly opposed to the principles of citizen participation in the democratic process." Schwam's real complaint about Liz Amer is that she refuses to be pressured or manipulated by Schwam's rent-a-crowds. Schwam's attempts to hijack the democratic process span many years, and the pathetic modus operandi is always tbe same: get a few of your friends over for a beer, fax out a press release saying a new group of concerned citizens has spontaneously blossomed, then bully and threaten politicians who refuse to say "Yes, Sir !" Schwam has evidently improved his little game somewhat, by having City Council offer the "task force" a veneer of respectability. Schwam is blind to the contradiction that "task force" is defined as, "a group of people formed TEM PORARILY to solve a PAR TICULAR problem" while KMA TF, having (by its own accounts) conquered most of the known world, is now desperately searching out some brave new raison d'etre to rationalise its continued existence. The rest of us work a little more openly and honestly, forming genuinely non-partisan citizens' groups-as I did while Schwam was still in diapers, and . municipal politics were still untainted by party politicians and ideologues like Schwam. Cordially yours, June Marks. (former Controller City of Toronto) by Kate Burt McNeil Cucumber Wee~s, Again I. The cucumber weeds will bloom again since their demise last year there's been a war in the Gulf and a war in the market. The war in the Market most immediately disturbs me. However, the cucumber weeds will bloom again. A left wing friend said "Lithuania was asking for trouble." Curiously, I cried. Visions of torn bodies and desperate people invade my consciousness. The first pictures, unedited (a warning they may be disturbing brought my glasses to my eyes) shows the invasion of Lithuania by the soviets. Could my friend be right? Does that make killing an acceptable means to a better end? He accuses me of not responding as passionately to pictures of the slaughters that have occured recently in the middle east and other "hot spots". He suggests the American propaganda machine has controlled the media so that my response is assured. II. Landlord/tenant matters are at a standstill. Stalemate. Loggerheads. The basement has been pronounced officially uninhabitable. Its "not impervious to water," and lacks sufficient height. The furnace is supposed to be fully enclosed. It's not. The three "homeless" people who occasionally slept down there have found other places to stay. Still I wait to hear the knock of the basement police coming to check that no one is stupid enough to live down there. When I first saw the room in the back two years ago Feb. 20, I envisioned the raft bed, a design by Curved Space, a furniture store I once worked in. The very top of the line was a 10X10 8 inch high density foam covered in sturdy stainproof material and surrounded on all sides by a huge bolster. Shelves to the ceiling with TV set and VCRan entertainment centre. Here's the rub. Judge Hawkins heard testimony from us all, and decided Noam was the tenant and the landlord's youngest daughter was not. So if the landlord choseto charge her daughter nothing for the use of the front room, it simply meant that Noam and I would splitthe rent ofthe whole house. Now the youngest daughter is long gone, and they can't rent the front room, except for nothing. III. 1985, and it was spring thaw. The river had spilled over into the plumbing and we were cautioned nottodrink the water out of the tap. "There's always a bottle in the fridge." The day was warm and long. At last, ready to sleep for a few hours before the journey back to Toronto. An irresistible thirst drove me to the kitchen. The bottle that was "always there" was not! What the heck-how bad could it be? I poured and quickly downed a long cold glass of murky green water. Hours later I lay in St. Michaels Hospital emergency with "Poisoned in Sudbury" written · next to my name on the board. 1991, and my second visit to Sudbury was prompted when a friend suggested a few days away from the Market's maelstrom would do me good. The blizzard hit at the same time the cold I'd evaded for weeks invaded my head. Boarded the bus at Dundas station. It rolled out of the bay at 1:05 am January 15 (The deadline). From the driver "just bear with me folks this bus doesn't have a generator, we'll have to detour for another bus"!! Didn't seem out of line considering the way everything seemed to be going .... IV. My 21 year old son Charlie joined the American Airforce before the wall fell and all things changed. He was in it for education and great deals at the PX's of the world. I watched with more interest than usual from Mid America somewhere Charles assured me that his job would keep him out of the fray . Nevertheless I watched all the coverage I could. The remote clickclicked frantically in my attempts to compare the coverage on all main stations. All I could think of was boy did they ever work on this one. They left no media stone unturned. Michelle Landsberg'scolumn in The Star says it for me, go out of your way to find it. v. The rooms upstairs are eerily empty. Because of disturbing effects of the attempted lockout Noam was not going to be allowed to return to Ryerson. He wrote a successful begging letter. Still it wa:s clear that the distractions in the Market, the inexorable push of the landlord to get us out, took their toll. Noam continues his brilliant film career in BC. Our loss. I have decided that I will not live another winter in these unnacceptablecqnditions. I will use the cucumber weeds and the flowers and the bees to help me decide what my next move will be. My fear is- will anyone in the Market want to rent to me? 7
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#9102 - Mar 1991

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