We Are The Movement
Learn more about the people who make up the SJC
Sarah Sauve (she/her)
Where does Sarah call home? Sarah was born in Hull, Quebéc, which is now Gatineau, but as a teen moved to Nova Scotia, then Newfoundland and Labrador, completed grad school in London, England, and has since found her way back to YYT. When asked about her origins, Sarah contemplated, “I think of myself as a bit of a nomad – I really enjoy travel, moving around, and I haven’t stayed in one place for more than a few years in my adult life. Thinking about staying in one place for longer than a few years still kind of makes me uncomfortable (though less than before). I feel like there’s so much I’ll miss out on if I stay in one place.” It is SJC that has given Sarah a sense of belonging here. She considers Newfoundland & Labrador her home “and it’s because of the Co-op” she states. “I feel like I’ve found a community with which I can put down roots.” Sarah’s Life Experiences all Led her Toward Social Justice Work Sarah’s path to social justice started around age 16 when she attended the CISV Canada National Camp, an organization promoting cultural understanding and global leadership. A ten-year commitment to the organization honed Sarah’s ability to organize events on a local, national and international level. The ethos of CISV is to promote self-reflection, communication and the knowledge that people can truly affect change. Sarah recalls her experience of working with youth in China through her work with CISV. The Duke of Edinburgh Award Programme, with its focus on physical fitness, skill, service, and adventurous journeys also cultivated leadership and determination in Sarah; she impressively completed gold, which is not an easy task! Through her multitude of experiences, Sarah ended up completing Grad school in the UK and even sailed partway around the world. All of these life experiences, coupled with her recent membership in the anti-capitalist x activist book club, have influenced Sarah to engage in social justice with great commitment. Sarah reflects, “[The book club] has been instrumental in fundamentally challenging and changing my worldview and, I think, made me a better activist because of my increased understanding of structural issues like capitalism, the prison industrial complex, border imperialism and settler colonialism to name a few, and how they interact.” All Roads Lead to SJCNL Sarah: “It was kind of a no-brainer for me. When I first moved back to NL, I had decided that from then on, I would focus more on myself instead of giving so much of my time to activism – things like Argentinian tango and friendships new and old. Over time, however, I couldn’t keep not doing anything about the global problems I kept coming up against. When a friend brought me to a Green New Drinks event, I knew I’d found my people here. ”Let’s Talk Core Beliefs Sarah: “I identify as a feminist, anti-capitalist, abolitionist, anarchist, white, cis-gendered, highly educated, middle-class, neuro-typical woman. I essentially identify my sources of social privilege, which help frame where I’m coming from.“ Sarah Explains the Facets of her Ideology: Feminism to me means equity between all genders. I’ve also read feminist critique of scientific research which is much more widespread as a politic than just equal access to opportunity, but I haven’t looked into it enough to articulate that particular politic properly. Feminist science is a whole scientific epistemology. Anti-capitalism is taking action against capitalism. Though none of us can really live outside of it, we can do many small things in our everyday life to chip away at it (like reading radical literature, discussing and dreaming different futures with friends, refusing plastic wherever I can, refusing to buy what isn’t necessary). Abolition is about removing prisons, policing and surveillance from our society and in its place, building communities based on care where everyone’s needs are met. It sounds like a utopia, but it really needn’t be. We’ve been tricked into believing that hardship and violence are necessary to a functioning society but we don’t need those things to be happy and safe. Abolition is about building a new future just as much as it is about taking down the prison industrial complex. Alternatives to cops and prisons will be different for each community based on its needs and there will be mistakes made, but we need to try hundreds of different experiments and just do it until we get there. Those are all lessons learned from Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us. Anarchy to me doesn’t mean fire, violence and chaos, as I’ve seen it portrayed in the media my whole life. It means community-based leadership and deep democracy, where we all have a say in what affects us. It’s decentralization and a focus on the local context. Interested in Joining SJC? Sarah feels that “feminism, anti-capitalism, abolition and anarchy are closely related politics and work together to combat systems of oppression and also build a better world. If this sounds at all appealing to you, check out the SJC’s Revolution of Care manifesto. ”Though joining was a no-brainer for Sarah, she recalls, “it took me a while to get used to the SJC’s structure; To understand the difference between the Co-op, the Coalitions, the board and membership. It took me a whole year after being involved to actually become a member; this is even though I’d been working with teams already. Once I got used to the decentralized organizational structure, I started to feel more comfortable and knew that this is where I can build community. This is where I can really both make a difference and put down roots.” What Makes this Work Worth it Despite the Challenges? Sarah: “The relationships I’ve built through my social justice work have been everything. I think it’s because being involved in leadership and social justice work has allowed me to be myself unapologetically, and I’m very open to new people. I’m happy to share all of myself, and I try to be as open and non-judgemental as I can and accept all of someone else. ”Are There Wins? “It’s incredibly rewarding to see the small wins we achieve through our work. An event, protest, march, or campaign might not have the desired effect on the seats of power that we want to influence immediately, but if we’ve brought one more person on board to the Revolution, it’s a win. In Mariame Kaba's book, she states that our ‘losses’ aren’t really losses because we are learning things and building momentum through our organization all the time.” How Does this Fit into the Big Picture? One day, we’ll achieve the big changes we want to see, but we have to keep working at it. ‘Do it with others –nothing worth doing is done alone’” (Mariama Kaba). In addition to reading Mariama Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, Sarah highly recommends that we all read Pollution is Colonialism by Max Liboiron.
Anne Malone (she/her)
Q: Where do you call home? A: I call St. John's, NL home. I have spent a lot of time in Costa Rica but have never had residency there. I love Costa Rica because the country is so environmentally focused and they have a very socialized approach to education and health care. The University of Peace is there and they are in general an incredibly progressive county. Q: Tell us about how your background and life experiences have led you toward social justice work. A: I was always drawn to social justice issues but had never aligned myself with a specific organization. I was part of Project Ploughshares, which formed in the 1970’s and is a group who worked with governments, and civil society, in Canada and abroad, to advance policies and actions to prevent war and armed violence and build peace. For me I connected with them when world peace was an idea in the 1980’s anti-nuclear movement . Then I focused on child rearing and in 2008 I acquired a disability. My sight loss was something that I could not ignore and my status in the world had changed. Opportunities evaporated. I experienced chronic unemployment. That, coupled with all of the barriers, led me to advocate for an accessible urban environment. From there I moved my focus on pedestrian rights and I began to encounter barriers one by one. As my vision decreased, I understood intimately how moving through an urban environment with ease and safety was paramount. Then the next barrier that came with my vision loss was to print media. Through that experience, I learned two things: It was important to advocated for accessibility in our municipalities I realized that many people who have disabilities struggle with poverty because of under employment and lack of government support. They struggle with discriminatory bias and that is significant particularly for people who need assistive technology to read. Those technologies are not free, they are very expensive; for example, a screen reader costs over $2000.00. Having a disability affects everything in your life. It must be noted that people who have disabilities are often caught in a poverty loop. One of the most devastating aspects of sight loss is that barriers to print. We have advancements with computer technology, but for people with sensory disabilities, you need a technology which will enable you to actually access the technology such as the internet. You feel so isolated. Q: Why did you join the SJCNL? A: I joined the SJC when I was connected with Dr Elizabeth Yeoman. In 2012 she was working on a short documentary called ‘Honk If You Want Me Off The Road' which was about the difficulties pedestrians encountered in St. John’s in the winter. And around that time a group emerged at the SJC, called Challenge Car culture, which was advocating for year-round sidewalk accessibility in St. Johns. It was through Elizabeth that I became aware of and joined the SJC. Q: What are your core beliefs and how do they influence how you participate in the SJCNL? A: My core belief is that we live in a world of abundance with very poorly distributed resources. Therefore, my heart always goes to support people who are living with a burden of poverty and the kind of inaccessible connection between poverty, race poverty, gender poverty and disabilities. I began to understand that these things are not coincidences but rather the result of systems and institutions that were constructed to elevate certain groups of people while oppressing other groups of people. I believe that to be morally wrong in every way. Q: What was the moment you realized joining the SJCNL was a good move for you? A: I realized that, I think it was in Dec of 2020, on International Day for Persons with Disabilities, when a large crowd of disabled and non-disabled people gathered on the steps of City Hall and demanded that the city revise a budget that would have reduced public transit in the city… and they met our demand. It worked! It made me and every other disabled person in that gathering feel seen and feel heard. I also realized that as a minority, we tend to think that the people who we have to win over are people in positions of power, but what I learned was, it is far more important to win the solidarity of the voter, not the politician. Because the voter will determine who holds those positions of power. It was pouring rain that evening and watching the Go Buses pull up and the wheelchairs roll out was incredible. It was dark outside, but the steps of City Hall were illuminated with lights from the media . I was gobsmacked. People were telling their personal stories in front of a mic and a camera. This was really happening! I was crying! Had it not been for SJC it would not have happened. Q: Is there anything that we have not asked that you would like to tell us about? A: Next steps in disability awareness could be the acknowledgement of Disability Pride month, which is in July of every year. I would like to see the month of July internationally. I would like to see our community elevated during disability pride month in particular. And I would like to see events that are accessible and public to increase the visibility and amplify the voices and experience of people who have disabilities in our province. Particularly for people who live on the intersections of race and disability and indigeneity in disability and poverty and disability. Q: What makes this work worth it despite the challenges? A: What makes it worth it , is that every step towards our goal is a step. Every statement that is made publicly by a person with a disability is another chink in the armour . Visibility matters, representations matters and being recognized as a member of a community matters. Q. Is there anything that you are reading, watching or listening to that you would recommend to people for SJC learning and sharing? A. I am reading two books right now. One book is called There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness by M. Leona Godin. It is a combination of memoir and the history and culture around blindness. It is written by a woman who experienced loss of her eyesight in her late 20s. It is on the New York Times Best Seller List. It gives so much insight into the invisible struggles of people who live with sight loss. We begin to understand why things are the way they are in the 21st Century, and we begin to understand how the bias that exists today comes from superstitions that formed during the Middle Ages. For example, the term ‘legally blind’ is a throwback to a time when people with disabilities had no other way to support themselves other than to literally beg for alms in public places. To earn the right to do that, people who had invisible disabilities, like blindness, had to appear before a magistrate and undergo certain tests that certified that the disability was valid. If they passed the test, they were declared to be legally entitled to charity and they were now ‘legally blind’. They would wear a licence on a string around their neck. So even though it is antiquated, this is a term that is still used by doctors, organizations and legalized forms. The other book is called Ain't I a Woman? by bell hooks. I got to know her name from my critical disability theory study group. It’s a study of black feminism. Her language is very conversational and very easy to digest. I am having one ‘Eureka!’ movement after another as I read this book. I am also very drawn to black women and women of colour, and I am so inspired and informed by their activism and their advocacy. We owe them a debt of gratitude in helping to inform us of activism in disability justice.