I'm going to post this again because I really think it needs to be the focal point.
This is not about Harper or Trudeau or any thing political.
This is about what it truly means Canadian and how critically important it is to remain business as usual after something like this.
David Moscrop and Amanda Watson: The shootings in Ottawa won't change this country
Canada Day fireworks on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, July 1, 2013. Amanda Watson and David Moscrop argue that Canada should not change its traditions or culture in response to Wednesday's attack.
Over morning coffee in Pacific Daylight Time, breaking accounts from Parliament Hill interrupted traffic and weather on The Early Edition and social media accounts of an attack flooded the Internet. It was shocking news. Residents of Canada are unaccustomed to hearing about shooting attacks on our capital.
In real time, people watched and listened as events unfolded, and before the attack was even over, they speculated why it had happened, how it had happened, and who was responsible. Rightly, many of us were alarmed.
One of the core functions of the state is to protect those within its borders. In Canada, every person should be able to live and go about their business each day assuming that they will be safe. While there is evidence that some people’s lives are less secure than others, before Wednesday’s shootings, many of us assumed we would wake up in the morning and go to bed at night without physical threat. The same is still true today. Wednesday’s attack, whatever it was, whoever perpetrated it, changes very little about how we conceive of the security of the state and its inhabitants as it relates to political violence — whether or not we conceive of this violence as “terrorism.”
At least it should change very little. What happens next remains to be seen. The day of the shooting saw a fast, coordinated, and generally effective response from law enforcement in Ottawa. It saw those in the streets and the buildings of downtown Ottawa remain, by and large, quite calm. In a lot of ways, it was a model of how a security apparatus and a population should respond to an emergency like this. But the true test of Canada’s resilience in the face of political violence starts now, and it rests on the question: What next?
We can feel shocked. We can feel saddened. We can feel angry. We can be concerned about the physical safety of those who work the Hill. We can mourn the loss of human life. We can entertain all of these responses, just as we can and should entertain them for everyone who lives and works under unsafe conditions, and there are many of these workers in Canada.
RELATED
Full coverage of the Parliament precinct shootings
Our representatives and staffers might not feel the same in their offices. Visitors may stop making light of their open access to Centre Block. Surely, the lives of the family and friends of the fallen soldier will never be the same. These things are different.
We can consider improved, though limited, safety protocols for Parliament and the downtown community, just as we can reconsider access to deadly weapons, especially in the context of the destruction of records in the federal long-gun registry.
At the same time, in this moment, we might also proceed by targeting common, persistent, and significant risks to residents. Because what continues to change people’s lives are, for example, preventable accidents, circulatory diseases, and cancer. More broadly are the threats of environmental insecurity, income inequality, corporate unaccountability, police violence against poor and racialized communities, systemic racial, religious and sexual discrimination, past and ongoing colonialism, and the persistent acts of domestic violence that terrorize daily lives.
These insidious threats might not stun the collective with the same wrenching force as a public act of violence, but they are most urgent.
There are things that must not change. This attack must not be made an excuse to justify further acts of violence: physical, social, political, cultural. It must not be treated as an opportunity to overhaul the security system of the country in an attempt to guard against any perceived foreign or domestic threat, to reshape our foreign policy, to mount cameras in every nook and cranny, to try to redefine what it means to live in a safe city, province, or country. It might not seem like it, but this is a time for nuance and careful evaluation — a time to check our gut feelings and practise restraint. It is not a time for overreaction.
It doesn’t make sense to overreact, because we have been here before. This is not the first time we have “lost our innocence.” Conflict has always, unfortunately, been part of the history of this country. The colonization that birthed this country. The Plains of Abraham. The assassination of D’Arcy McGee. Two World Wars. Residential schools. The FLQ Crisis. The École Polytechnique massacre. The Air India bombing. The Oka Crisis. The war in Afghanistan. The looming battle with ISIL.
Neither heroes nor mass securitization will spare us from the threat of violence: nothing ever has. A careful, measured response to the changing nature of domestic and foreign threats can reduce the probability that any of us will be the victim of political violence, but nothing will fully eliminate that ancient and ever-present threat.
If anything at the macro level should change — that is, aside from introducing reasonable changes to the security of Parliament — it should be our investment in social provisions that mitigate common risk. Rather than calling for looser gun laws — many, in the name of vigilante justice, have already done so — or stricter immigration controls — again, predictably, this dialogue emerged before anyone even knew who carried out this attack — or any other measure to induce some vague feeling of “safety,” we should use the evidence we already have to improve health and safety through social and political programmatic changes. We know that social determinants of health like income and income distribution, employment and labour standards, social exclusion, aboriginal status, disability, and access to health and education services inform who is at risk.
There is a purposeful response that does not escalate violence or intensify intersections of discrimination and exclusion and securitization.
Photos that capture the image of a dying soldier being given mouth-to-mouth or terrified politicians barricading themselves inside a room are processed viscerally. They’re felt in the gut and they’re felt hard. But let’s not forget the images of hundreds of people practising yoga on the lawn of Parliament. Or of a crowd of Canadians gathered on the Hill for a light show. Or a small, huddled group taking in the Centennial Flame on a crisp fall evening. The former images are profound, but rare; the latter are the norm, and whatever we do next, we must struggle to ensure that they remain so without giving in to the temptation of mass overreaction.
Amanda Watson is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. David Moscrop is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia.
David Moscrop and Amanda Watson: The shootings in Ottawa won’t change this country | Ottawa Citizen
I am going to assume this thread won't get much exposure because of the nature of the astroturfing on this board from people like spaminator and Boomer.
That being said, this is the only one I expect to make and I will update it regularly with appropriate articles on the subject.
This is not about Harper or Trudeau or any thing political.
This is about what it truly means Canadian and how critically important it is to remain business as usual after something like this.
David Moscrop and Amanda Watson: The shootings in Ottawa won't change this country
Canada Day fireworks on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, July 1, 2013. Amanda Watson and David Moscrop argue that Canada should not change its traditions or culture in response to Wednesday's attack.
Over morning coffee in Pacific Daylight Time, breaking accounts from Parliament Hill interrupted traffic and weather on The Early Edition and social media accounts of an attack flooded the Internet. It was shocking news. Residents of Canada are unaccustomed to hearing about shooting attacks on our capital.
In real time, people watched and listened as events unfolded, and before the attack was even over, they speculated why it had happened, how it had happened, and who was responsible. Rightly, many of us were alarmed.
One of the core functions of the state is to protect those within its borders. In Canada, every person should be able to live and go about their business each day assuming that they will be safe. While there is evidence that some people’s lives are less secure than others, before Wednesday’s shootings, many of us assumed we would wake up in the morning and go to bed at night without physical threat. The same is still true today. Wednesday’s attack, whatever it was, whoever perpetrated it, changes very little about how we conceive of the security of the state and its inhabitants as it relates to political violence — whether or not we conceive of this violence as “terrorism.”
At least it should change very little. What happens next remains to be seen. The day of the shooting saw a fast, coordinated, and generally effective response from law enforcement in Ottawa. It saw those in the streets and the buildings of downtown Ottawa remain, by and large, quite calm. In a lot of ways, it was a model of how a security apparatus and a population should respond to an emergency like this. But the true test of Canada’s resilience in the face of political violence starts now, and it rests on the question: What next?
We can feel shocked. We can feel saddened. We can feel angry. We can be concerned about the physical safety of those who work the Hill. We can mourn the loss of human life. We can entertain all of these responses, just as we can and should entertain them for everyone who lives and works under unsafe conditions, and there are many of these workers in Canada.
RELATED
Full coverage of the Parliament precinct shootings
Our representatives and staffers might not feel the same in their offices. Visitors may stop making light of their open access to Centre Block. Surely, the lives of the family and friends of the fallen soldier will never be the same. These things are different.
We can consider improved, though limited, safety protocols for Parliament and the downtown community, just as we can reconsider access to deadly weapons, especially in the context of the destruction of records in the federal long-gun registry.
At the same time, in this moment, we might also proceed by targeting common, persistent, and significant risks to residents. Because what continues to change people’s lives are, for example, preventable accidents, circulatory diseases, and cancer. More broadly are the threats of environmental insecurity, income inequality, corporate unaccountability, police violence against poor and racialized communities, systemic racial, religious and sexual discrimination, past and ongoing colonialism, and the persistent acts of domestic violence that terrorize daily lives.
These insidious threats might not stun the collective with the same wrenching force as a public act of violence, but they are most urgent.
There are things that must not change. This attack must not be made an excuse to justify further acts of violence: physical, social, political, cultural. It must not be treated as an opportunity to overhaul the security system of the country in an attempt to guard against any perceived foreign or domestic threat, to reshape our foreign policy, to mount cameras in every nook and cranny, to try to redefine what it means to live in a safe city, province, or country. It might not seem like it, but this is a time for nuance and careful evaluation — a time to check our gut feelings and practise restraint. It is not a time for overreaction.
It doesn’t make sense to overreact, because we have been here before. This is not the first time we have “lost our innocence.” Conflict has always, unfortunately, been part of the history of this country. The colonization that birthed this country. The Plains of Abraham. The assassination of D’Arcy McGee. Two World Wars. Residential schools. The FLQ Crisis. The École Polytechnique massacre. The Air India bombing. The Oka Crisis. The war in Afghanistan. The looming battle with ISIL.
Neither heroes nor mass securitization will spare us from the threat of violence: nothing ever has. A careful, measured response to the changing nature of domestic and foreign threats can reduce the probability that any of us will be the victim of political violence, but nothing will fully eliminate that ancient and ever-present threat.
If anything at the macro level should change — that is, aside from introducing reasonable changes to the security of Parliament — it should be our investment in social provisions that mitigate common risk. Rather than calling for looser gun laws — many, in the name of vigilante justice, have already done so — or stricter immigration controls — again, predictably, this dialogue emerged before anyone even knew who carried out this attack — or any other measure to induce some vague feeling of “safety,” we should use the evidence we already have to improve health and safety through social and political programmatic changes. We know that social determinants of health like income and income distribution, employment and labour standards, social exclusion, aboriginal status, disability, and access to health and education services inform who is at risk.
There is a purposeful response that does not escalate violence or intensify intersections of discrimination and exclusion and securitization.
Photos that capture the image of a dying soldier being given mouth-to-mouth or terrified politicians barricading themselves inside a room are processed viscerally. They’re felt in the gut and they’re felt hard. But let’s not forget the images of hundreds of people practising yoga on the lawn of Parliament. Or of a crowd of Canadians gathered on the Hill for a light show. Or a small, huddled group taking in the Centennial Flame on a crisp fall evening. The former images are profound, but rare; the latter are the norm, and whatever we do next, we must struggle to ensure that they remain so without giving in to the temptation of mass overreaction.
Amanda Watson is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. David Moscrop is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia.
David Moscrop and Amanda Watson: The shootings in Ottawa won’t change this country | Ottawa Citizen
I am going to assume this thread won't get much exposure because of the nature of the astroturfing on this board from people like spaminator and Boomer.
That being said, this is the only one I expect to make and I will update it regularly with appropriate articles on the subject.
