One Woman Against China - Part Two
Dorothy Pride was always active in the field of human rights. In the 1970's, she showed up at the deportation hearings of Leonard Pelletier. Pelletier was the Sioux First Nations man who fled to Canada in the mid-1970's to escape criminal charges of killing two F.B.I. agents. In the end he was sent back to the U.S. and is still in prison there. Pride also helped a United Church minister who was thrown out of the church after he uncovered the crimes committed in the residential schools.
When Pride went to see another United Church minister about this case, the minister told her, "No I won't help you or this man. You want to destroy the United Church and I won't let that happen."
Pride got old helping people in prison. Yet she would never criticize Canada, the U.S. or any democratic country. "Democracy is too precious to criticize," she said. So when the U.S. invaded Iraq or when Israeli soldiers shot and killed Palestinians, Pride remained silent. She seemed to ignore or had not even heard what Christopher Lasch once said in effect. "Communists kill people inside their countries. Capitalist democracies kill people outside their borders." If the word 'tyrants' is used in place of 'communists' Lasch's statement is still true.
As Pride aged her politics moved firmly to the right. She told a man who defended feminism, "Feminists are crazy and you John are a bleeding heart liberal who always defends the underdog." The underdog, John replied, is sometimes right. Pride also thought that all First Nations reserves should be sold off. She supported austerity in Europe even though the austerity measures imposed hunger and suffering on tens of millions of Europeans. She spoke glowingly of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he considered cutting off al trade links with China.
Meanwhile in the 1990's and later, Canada's economy worked well but only for the rich. Homeless people piled up in the streets. Public education continued to decay while Dorothy's grandchildren went to private schools. Governments gave massive subsidies to energy companies while firmly holding down the wages of nearly all government workers. The free trade deals that Canada signed in the 1980's and 1990's gave multinational firms the right to take over massive amounts of the Canadian economy. Welfare benefits were pitiful and most jobs that were created were often part time with no pensions or medical benefits.
"I don't call the working class 'a proletariat' now," one economist said. "I call it a 'precariat' because working people are now living very precarious lives." Somehow Dorothy Pride didn't seem to see any of these things. Now in the 21st century she focused her energies on mainly denouncing China. She refused to denounce any democratic country, even her own.
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