Our March newsletter is being brought to you by our National Coordinator Alley McDonald.

This March we want to highlight VOW's petition to stop arming Israel; Peace Awards Nominations; VOW's NGO CSW/NY Parallel Event; Youth Nuclear Disarmament Webinar; International Women's Day Events; and so much more happening this month!

Be sure to scroll all the way down for upcoming events, calls to action, and recommended resources!

VOW's work of peace, anti-war and demilitarization merits your support! Make a donation. Even better, join our growing number of Monthly Peace Partners. Consider $5 or $50 or any amount in between. Become a Peace Partner today!

This initiative was launched on Jan 18th with more than 250 people hunger striking that day, including 2 MPs, Niki Ashton and Elizabeth May. The goal of the hunger strike is to stop arms shipments to Israel. Could you participate in the rotating hunger strike?  The instructions provide an action letter to send to government decision makers, phone numbers and hashtags for posting on social media. 

VOW Co-Chair Lyn Adamson is participating weekly. Here's her tweet. Please retweet! and join the strike if you can.

• Sid Shniad, Member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada
  • https://www.ijvcanada.org
• Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, Principal author of 
  • Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation
  • https://refusingtobeenemiesthebook.wordpress.com/
• Gera and Jennah Hanafy and Hamza Alhanay, Members of Kootenay Muslim Association
• Children's Voice for Change
• Randy Janzen, Former Chair of Mir Center for Peace
• Hannah Hadikin, Co-Chair of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
  • https://vowpeace.org/

Event admission:

-Adults ($20)

-Students ($10)

-Ages 12 and under (Free)

All proceeds will be forwarded to PCRF following expenses.

The event will be video-recorded and live-streamed on Zoom for those

who can not attend.

For more information, to donate to PCRF, or to join the event by Zoom, email: fundraisergaza@gmail.com

Learn more about PCRF at: https://www.pcrf.net/

Register in advance: http://tinyurl.com/3ewseedf

Join us on Sunday, March 3rd from 4:00-5:30 pm ET for a webinar with panelists Rooj Ali, Molly Hurley and Sarah Rohleder who will discuss their experiences and important outcomes of the Youth-Parliament Nuclear Summit in Ottawa and the Second Meeting of States Parties for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the Nuclear Ban week events in New York. Organized by the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. Register in advance

Canadian Voice of Women joins in the world-wide call for an end to the persecution of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange facing a 175-year prison term in the United States if extradited by Britain. In a letter today to President Joe Biden, sent jointly with The Centre for Free Expression, VOW called on the American President to drop his government’s pursuit of Mr. Assange. Copies of the letter have also been sent to U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, and the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, David L. Cohen.

Rana regularly mentors youth and women to take leadership roles in community activities and causes and has worked with politicians at the municipal, provincial and federal level. Rana speaks on various subjects, including the Ivany report, feminism, racism and Islamaphobia. She has published articles on some of these subjects as well. 

In her work with the United for One Association, Rana helped raise $200,000 for Syrian refugees. With the Caring Human Association, she helps provide food and other items for the homeless and low-income families. She’s also part of Diverse Voices for Change Halifax, which aims to increase the number of diverse women who are actively engaged in local government decision-making.

She’s a strong leader and a voice for social justice causes. Rana dedicates her time to giving back in her community, which she is grateful to be a part of.

Follow Rana's courageous peace leadership on social media:

Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/5a9cke45

Instagram: @ranazamanactivist

Got feminist and queer stuff? Posters, buttons, news clippings, iconic letters or documents that tell a story about lesbian, feminist LGBTQ2S+, queer organising and community? Bring it over to our Scan-athon and we'll help you scan and digitise it! Join us after the screening of Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World for a scan-a-thon at 720 Bathurst, CSI Annex Front Porch.

We are a group of activist academics who live and breathe queer/feminist archives. We've also invited queer & feminist archivists to talk about what they do and how best to archive your stuff.

We will donate materials to the Rise Up! A digital archive of feminist activism and potentially other grassroots and community archives. We invite community members to bring a range of small materials including posters, buttons, meeting minutes, flyers, programs, photographs, t-shirts, mugs, etc. Our priorities include the materials of those historically marginalized and erased from the archive including racialized, Indigenous, and immigrant communities, disabled, mad and poor people. We also welcome any materials that attest to lost lesbian spaces and community hubs for queer, feminist, and anti-racist organizing from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Free and Wheelchair Accessible Event!

Our route will start at OISE (252 Bloor St W), go east on Bloor to Yonge, go south on Yonge to Gerrard, go east on Gerrard to Church, go south on Church to TMU Student Centre (55 Gould St).

This exhibit is a statement, a gathering of voices, and a tapestry of stories that demand to be heard. Engage with compelling pieces that resonate with the spirit of resistance from Kashmir to Palestine. Share this, bring a friend, and be part of the conversation.

Mark your calendars! The NGO CSW68 Forum will be taking place on March 10th-22nd 2024!

Check their webpage periodically for more information as it becomes available. The best way to stay up-to-date on NGO CSW68 Forum updates is to join our mailing list.

Click here to register for the forum to access the virtual portal. This will allow you to attend all of the incredible events happening each day from New York, and around the world!

Jonathan Kuttab is an international human rights attorney and author who lives in East Jerusalem. He was the head of the legal committee that negotiated the Cairo Agreement of 1994 between Israel and the PLO. He is the co-founder of several important organizations that are committed to human rights protection or non-violent action: the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, Sabeel in Jerusalem and North America, and Non-violence International, with its headquarters in Philadelphia. He is also President of Holy Land Trust. He is the author of Beyond the Two-State Solution.

Zoom Registration: https://tinyurl.com/2wf9t9ae

In-Person Eventbrite Registration: https://tinyurl.com/sabw8ea6

Join Author/Activist Rivera Sun for: People Power Peace: How Civil Society Stops War, a virtual talk on how everyday people have halted and prevented violent conflicts around the world. Contrary to common view, wars are not always won or prevented by military or even diplomacy. Sometimes, determined and passionate societies halt them - or keep them from breaking out in the first place. Rivera will share stories from around the world, some better known - like the Women of Liberia Mass Action For Peace - others less well known, but equally powerful. She will also lift up moments amidst broader struggles where nonviolent action kept armed factions from descending into civil war. Rivera has rolled up her sleeves and carried out systematic research collecting stories from every continent on the history of nonviolent strategies challenging war. The result is a compelling presentation that offers a powerful and comprehensive picture on how everyday people have stopped war. This talk will be interactive, with lots of time for Q&A.

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Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89694011949?pwd=eTZHUG1sVEorNll1Zi8yZHNsL1pzdz09

Meeting ID: 896 9401 1949
Passcode: 406572

A new series of Socialist Action webcasts. Speakers Shatha Mamood of the Palestine Youth Movement, Yves Engler of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, and Tamara Lorincz of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace.

Organized by Socialist Action: socialistactioncanada@gmail.com

Don't let Gaza starve. Take Action.

On top of the 30 000 who have been killed directly by Israeli forces, Palestinians are increasingly perishing from starvation.

On February 29 more than 100 people were massacred by Israeli forces and at least 700 others wounded in northern Gaza as they waited for food aid to be delivered.

If Israel continues to block food from entering Gaza far more will die from hunger and related diseases.

Egypt, Jordan and France have already sought to bypass Israel’s blockade by airdropping assistance.

Please take a minute to answer the call from Palestinians to the international community to enable humanitarian aid to reach northern Gaza by emailing Canadian international development minister Ahmed Hussen and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Despite the catastrophic health and environmental consequences, the threat of nuclear weapons has persisted with the tragic war in Ukraine, with nuclear weapon tests, NATO’s nuclear weapons exercises, and nuclear weapons modernization.

Please take a minute to write to party leaders calling on the Canadian government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The VOW chapter in Fredericton was founded in 1967 by Norah Toole and Kay Bedell. Norah had been involved with Voice of Women for Peace at the national level starting in 1960, continuing an interest in peace and community service begun in the 1940s with a women’s study group on international affairs and this became the Fredericton Council of Women. Norah also cofounded, in 1946, with Marion Gabriel, the Indian-non-Indian Goodwill Association. In 1984 Norah was awarded the Governor General's Persons award for her work for women's rights and for peace. She was an active member of VOW until her death in 1990.

Brigid Grant, Norah's daughter, joined the Fredericton Chapter at its inception, and went on to become a member of the National Board, until her death in 2023. Brigid, over many years, worked for peace as an advocate and artist as well an activist, including volunteering as an observer witness to the conflict between the Canadian Department of Fisheries and local Indigenous fishers at Esgenoôpetitj (Burnt Church). In 2005 she was awarded the Fredericton YMCA Peace Medallion, a now national program of awards which was first awarded in Fredericton, inspired by Jim and Kay Bedell, who walked from New Brunswick to New York to raise awareness of the 1982 United Nations Disarmament Conference.

A donation to honour both Norah and Brigid has been given to VOW National. Many other Fredericton women were active in the organization, but for a long time, the Grant-Toole house on George Street was the “nerve” centre of the organization.

A retrospective show of Brigid's art will be up at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton art centre galleries from May 3 to June 13th, 2024, and a celebration of her life will happen on May 22nd in the auditorium of the same building (Memorial Hall). 

Speaker: Richard Sandbrook

Professor Emeritus of Political Science at U of T and Vice-President of Science for Peace

Sandbrook identifies the impasse in reformist and radical approaches to resolving the climate crisis. He proposes a radical-reformist paradigm that might dissolve the impasse by offering a just, viable and feasible pathway to climate stability.

@Scienceforpeace.org

For March, in which Japan has the presidency of the UN Security Council, the MAP provides recommendations on the situations in Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine and South Sudan.

Join author Yves Engler on Mondays for a weekly news roundup and interactive discussion about Canada’s role abroad. This weekly session will delve into the latest developments on subjects ranging from military affairs and Canada’s role in Ukraine to its contribution to Palestinian dispossession and exploitation of African resources. Join Yves for a critical take on Canada’s foreign policy. Questions, comments and criticisms are all welcome.

Mondays 6PM EST

On 20 July, Secretary-General António Guterres presented to Member States his Policy Brief on A New Agenda for Peace, which outlines his vision for multilateral efforts for peace and security, based on international law, for a world in transition. It outlines an extensive and ambitious set of recommendations that recognize the inter-linked nature of many of the challenges we face.

Be sure to renew your membership and donate to support our important work building a culture of peace in Canada and so that we can continue to hire youth throughout the year. Make a donation today!