LAWG Permeated

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My involvement with LAWG is relatively small. Being a new Canadian back then, I got to hear the stories more than being part of creating the stories. It was ’89 when Joe and I came to Canada. We moved in with Jeffcott, who was living in Bob and Fran’s house on the east side in Toronto. Living with Jeffcott and being with Joe, LAWG was just part of what it meant to live in that household together, and what it meant to be coming into Canada, to hear about this group and all these people I’d heard about and in some cases knew, like Suzanne Dudziak, whom we’d been close to in Nicaragua. For somebody who was new to Canada, LAWG seemed to permeate everywhere. I was welcomed into LAWG, but by then, things were at a different stage, and it was in the waning period.
 

Creating the Gender Committee

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We decided to start the Gender Committee, which was really important to me because I had seen how gender issues and feminism had been put on the back burner  during those last year’s of the Sandinist revolution. Everything was to be dedicated to the class struggle, to the fight against imperialism, and defending the country in the face of US aggression – and the women’s movement was told to take a backseat. My own feminism had taken a backseat during those years in Nicaragua. So we formed a committee of women, many who were grad students, who were looking at what does it mean to bring a gender perspective to this work.

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Something Very ‘Canadian’ About LAWG

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I’ve been trying to think – coming from the US –would you see this kind of thing happening in the States? One of the things that struck me was how closely connected people in the solidarity movement seemed to be, whether in the ngo’s or LAWG contacts, or people engaged with the churches, people all knew each other. While in the States, the population is so much bigger, and there are so many churches, and so many organizations it’s harder to be connected. Where, here, I was just so struck by those connections. I think there’s something almost Canadian about that. I’m not sure it could happen in that same way in the States. Maybe it exists, but I can’t imagine it.