Choose better
2024 11 23 | journal
There's a farmer in BC named Gagan who's spent the past several months organising farmers' markets on his and others' land where they charge nothing for people to sell their produce and almost everything is sold at cheaper than store prices. There's free food as well, and he recently did an event with the Potato Ty guy who gives away free potatoes that grocery stores won't buy.
There's a whole bunch of other things Gagan's been up to to make use of his land and provide opportunities of all kinds to locals and farmers. This guy's really putting it out there. Every time I see people like him, or Mohammad who runs a company that makes reusable period and other products, or Gurdeep in the Yukon who helped keep us all going during lockdowns and after with his bhangra, it warms my cold, dead GenX heart.
I love this. I love this for Canada.
Every time I hear someone make distasteful commentary about POTGM (or POC, however you prefer) who've immigrated here, and the ones who were born here on whose land we sit, I feel sick, I get angry, and I feel sad. Canada's exceptionalism has this idea that we're a cultural mosaic, inclusive, welcoming - and we could really be that. We could. Racism is a choice. You choose to be that. You could choose to be otherwise.