PECI students to mark National Day of Remembrance
Administrator | Dec 03, 2016 | Comments 1
PECI senior drama students will mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action of Violence Against Women in two performances this week.
Twenty four students, under the direction of drama teacher Matthew Sheahan, are travelling to the CORE Art Centre in Belleville Monday, Dec. 6 to perform an original dramatic production, ‘Holding Back’. The event is open to the public – 11 a.m. at 223 Pinnacle St.
The ceremony, remembers the L’Ecole Polytechnique tragedy of 1989 when 14 young women were killed at the Montreal school solely because they were women. It also promotes action on ending violence. The National Day of Remembrance was established in 1991 by parliament.
“PECI’s production focuses on domestic violence, gender roles and stereotypes, and positive ways forward for society,” said Sheahan. “The students created 11 stylized scenes and 10 monologues exploring the impact of societal norms on behaviour, relationships and conflict between people and groups.”
This is the sixth group of senior drama students from PECI to travel to Belleville to perform in a memorial ceremony.
The drama class will be remounting the production on Dec. 9th at noon in the drama room for a PECI student and staff audience.
Filed Under: Arts & Culture • Featured Articles • Hastings & Prince Edward District School Board • PECI - It's a Panther Thing
War is a hate crime, and people who make individual war on society, are carrying out nothing less than hate crimes. Those of us who study violence longitudinally recognize that violence works like a contagious social disease that crosses many boundaries when it’s supported by the right cultural conditions. Cultures that openly support the “legitimate use of violence” to solve their socio-economic-political problems internally and externally, like justifying violent war against their enemies, also create a sense of legitimacy for individuals living in that culture, and outside that culture,to use violence against their enemies. The thinking goes:”If its okay for the highest moral authority in the land, ie: our government, to use violence against its enemies, then its okay for individuals to act under that moral authority and use the same means to solve their issues with others.
Whether its a young man who has been living in a dark corner of his mind, or a government that has foolishly created a hostile dark reality with other groups, resorting to violence to solve problems is human madness on all levels.
In Canada we are beginning to see an increase of violence inspired largely by external sources to the south,a spillover from the USA. Last year, President Obama admitted that the US was experiencing about 30,000 gun deaths a year. That’s about the 10 times the death toll of 9/11. It’s more deaths than US soldiers dying in foreign wars. Gun culture (and gun violence) is tolerated in the USA because it supports the war culture, which is central to the economic success of US corporations, and so 30,000 Americans are knowingly sacrificed to the war culture each year.
US weapons smuggled into Canada have been a source of Canadian deaths for many decades. Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa police have been reporting high numbers of gun deaths by illegal weapons coming from the USA. Our border security is blind to these weapons, many of them assault weapons, and so our government has failed to protect us against domestic violence made possible by foreign weapons.