‘Racial Justice Awards Evening’ celebrates anti-racism motion
By Lincoln DePradine
The City Alliance on Race Relations (UARR) gathered final Friday for its “Racial Justice Awards Evening’’. And, the continued Center East battle involving Israel and Hamas was not distant within the minds of UARR leaders, who solely final month issued a press release condemning the “exponential rise of discrimination in opposition to Palestinian, Muslim, Arab and Jewish communities throughout Canada’’; and likewise denouncing the “current violent and hateful assaults in opposition to Jewish faculties and locations of worship’’.
The UARR, in its assertion, additionally mentioned that everybody “ought to all be involved when the security and wellbeing of Jewish communities is threatened as they train their rights to freedom of worship, and freedom to visibly categorical their non secular affiliation and id. An assault on one in all us, as we train these rights, is an assault on us all’’.
The UARR, established in 1975, is a non-profit charitable group offering academic packages and analysis that it says are “essential in addressing racism in society’’; and, with a mission to “promote a steady and wholesome multiracial surroundings locally’’.
“As we strategy our fiftieth yr, we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and our elders within the work that they’ve accomplished to attempt to combat for social justice,’’ UARR President Nigel Barriffe mentioned in an interview on the “Awards Evening’’ in Scarborough.
“With a lot loss and grief that we see on the earth proper now, I feel it makes City Alliance on Race Relations’ work much more related and much more necessary,’’ mentioned Barriffe. “It reinforces the necessity to proceed to combat for a extra simply and sustainable world, the place kids, irrespective of who they’re – whether or not they’re Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, Black, homosexual, straight – that our kids can inherit a world that’s higher than which we discovered it.’’
9 awards had been offered to organizations and people who, in response to UARR, had been being acknowledged for his or her “unbelievable, necessary work of racial justice advocates throughout Canada’’, including that the award recipients’ “tireless work is an inspiration to all’’.
“Tonight’s occasion is about celebrating the anti-racism motion,’’ UARR Government Director Neethan Shan informed The Caribbean Digicam. “Completely different people and organizations have been doing wonderful work in several fields, whether or not it’s training, labour, media, well being. We’re honouring these people and organizations which might be doing the onerous work, preventing racism. And so, via celebrating that, we’re additionally encouraging others to proceed to do the work.’’
“Brokers of Change’’ awards – two of them – had been made, together with one recognizing the late metropolis councillor Dr. Beverley Noel Salmon, who died in July. The opposite was for Audi Dharmalingam, a former social employee and founding UARR member.
The UARR additionally offered plaques to the 2023 graduates of its Range Youth Fellowship (DYF). The group, as properly, launched a “DYF Alumni Community’’.
Greater than 100 younger folks have participated in DYF, mentioned Shan.
“We’re now bringing them again as an alumni community to attach with each other,’’ he defined. “The fellowship occurs at totally different ranges of presidency, notably at Toronto metropolis corridor.’’
DYF, a paid part-time management growth program, affords younger folks placements at Toronto metropolis councillors’ places of work.
The intention, say UARR officers, is to create “direct hyperlinks between elected officers and passionate youth leaders, whereas additionally supporting their skilled growth via offering them with tailored coaching, skilled mentors and guided assist’’.
The return of the awards’ occasion, which UARR was compelled to cancel throughout the interval of the COVID-19 pandemic, was “fantastic’’ and “intergenerational’’, with the presence of youth and aged neighborhood activists together with grandmothers, mentioned Barriffe.
