A task force begun in the wake of a racially-motivated attack last summer is putting a call out to the community to stand up against discrimination and racism.
The Pembina Valley Antiracism Action Team has released a public letter (see Letters, Pg. 7) with several actions people can take to foster an environment of inclusion and respect.
The team is a coalition of 30 community leaders across eight municipalities who have been meeting the last several months to come up with a concerted plan to battle racism in the Pembina Valley.
“There was quite a bit of shock when we all heard, rather unexpectedly, about the assault that happened in Winkler,” shared Elaine Burton Saindon, who heads up the Pembina Valley Local Immigration Partnership (PVLIP) and is one of the founders of the action team.
The June incident saw a man physically assaulted in a residential area of Winkler. His turban was torn off his head and his attackers reportedly hurled racial slurs at him during the assault. Three men were charged.
The incident left community leaders wondering what could be done to battle the anti-immigrant viewpoints that fueled it—sentiments that have been on the rise of late, Burton Saindon said.
“So we reached out to other colleagues and stakeholders to ask if there was interest in having a conversation about how do we respond to something like this. Twenty-five people showed up.”
They represent local immigration and social support services, municipalities, law enforcement agencies, faith groups, school divisions, businesses, health care agencies, and other like community groups.
“We all came to the conclusion that saying nothing is still saying something,” Burton Saindon said, noting that while a public statement condemning the attack was issued last summer, the group felt more is needed long-term to really get to the root of this issue.
They’ve been working on that plan ever since, and are now asking the community to help them with the first steps of rolling it out.
“It’s a call to action,” Burton Saindon explained of the “Speak Up Pembina Valley” campaign, which urges residents, businesses, and other organizations to reach out and connect to newcomers to ensure they feel welcome here, to speak up publicly to condemn discriminatory actions you see or hear of occurring, to establish safe reporting mechanisms for staff and volunteers for when incidents occur, and to remember our shared roots as a community made up of people from many different backgrounds and cultures.
“Silence can be mistaken for acceptance,” the action team collectively stresses. “We need everyone to speak up and act, so our towns remain welcoming and safe for all.”
Burton Saindon shared that the action team has applied for federal grant funding they hope will allow them to further refine anti-racism efforts in the Pembina Valley. They should receive word about whether they’ll get it or not this spring.
In the meantime, they intend to do what they can with limited resources, including this awareness campaign and potentially hosting public forums to dialogue with newcomers and longtime Canadians alike.
PVLIP also has resources on its website (pvlip.ca) designed to help community members support diversity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging for everyone.
“We need to pull together”
Steve Reynolds is the executive director of Regional Connections Immigrant Services and one of the founders of the action team alongside Burton Saindon and Tash Olfert from Pembina Valley Victim Services. He says racism in our community comes in many forms, some of them overt and some much more subtle.
“It’s a mix of both … some incidents have been very direct, like derogatory name calling and stuff that’s being said to people and how people are being treated that’s very clearly directed to their culture, their ethnicity or where they’re from, or just that they’re an immigrant.
“It happens in the workplace and in community spaces. It’s been at coffeeshops and parks and in schools between kids, at youth events. Definitely everywhere and the whole range.”
“I would say people are getting more brazen about it,” observed Burton Saindon, noting that’s certainly not unique to our area. “It’s everywhere in Canada, not just us. But what we’ve seen locally is that we’ve never had this kind of escalation at this level, people being more vocal … they’re expressing thought processes that they typically in the past maybe would have just kept internally or around their kitchen table. That’s what we’re starting to see.
“At the end of the day, it’s bullying. We need to pull together against it.”
