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Our Vision: Text Save Our Oxfam Centre Letter by Phyllis Artis At the first meeting of Save the Oxfam Centre (SOS) April 3, 2012, we were invited to speak about our involvement in the St. John’s Oxfam Centre and what it means to us. Since that meeting someone asked on our website: How did it begin? I said a few words at the meeting on both: where we started and what Oxfam means to me. Here I will repeat and add to what I said at that time. I hope it and all other letters sent to this site will be read carefully by Robert Fox, who we hope to see tonight, and to the National Board of Oxfam Canada. This is my Oxfam story as I remember it today. Phyllis ------------- I’ve been involved with Oxfam since 1970. I was living in England at the time, where my husband and I were on leave from Memorial. He was doing a graduate degree and I was caring for our two young children. Television pictures of starving babies in Biafra moved me to take part in my first Oxfam initiative, an appeal to collect ‘Blankets for Biafra.' In 1973, back home in St. John’s, I joined a small Oxfam Committee, which up till then had focused mainly on fundraising for famines and other disasters overseas. Around the world Oxfam continues to raise money for overseas relief, but in St. John’s and elsewhere in Canada, Oxfam was becoming more interested in the root causes of poverty, and in particular its links with oppression. We wanted to work to promote long-term changes and not stop at charity. We, the St. John’s Oxfam Committee, decided we needed a permanent base in the city for our meetings, staff, resources and expansion of our activities. We found a shabby downtown building used to store furnace parts, persuaded a sympathetic businessman to buy it for us, signed a mortgage (using our own homes as collateral), and proceeded on weekends and holidays to dig out the filthy, oily cellar space, tear down walls, clean, paint, install shelves, scrounge, and spend endless hours writing grant applications, and developing linkages with schools, churches, unions, university, arts organizations, and other Oxfam groups in Atlantic Canada, and more. Upstairs at the Oxfam Centre we created offices and a comfortable meeting room. I remember many gatherings there. I especially remember Friday afternoon study sessions on Paulo Freire’s, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, maybe other texts too, but the discussions on Freire provided a frame of reference for many of our discussions of education, development and political activism. According to Freire ‘If [leaders] are truly committed to liberation, their action and reflection cannot proceed without the action and reflection of [the people].’ Leaders must be followers, and followers must be leaders; similarly with teachers and learners, thinkers and doers, those who donate funds and those who receive the funds. We must act together through dialogue, and avoid the dichotomies in language and living that reflect the prescriptive methods of the dominant elites. These ideas helped shape our projects, and my thinking ever after. Downstairs we opened a store for fair-trade crafts (though we called them something else then), a lending library, free books and pamphlets on development (vital resources before the internet) and some books and magazines for sale. Our idea was to educate the public; find outlets and fair prices for crafts produced in co-ops around the world; encourage the public to drop in and learn about us and our work; attract volunteers, and bring in some income to help sustain our Oxfam Centre at 382 Duckworth St. Financially I don’t think the Oxfam shop was ever very successful, but it made us visible in the city: a welcoming space where people could drop in to learn more about Oxfam and 'third-world' countries, and where any activist groups without a home could meet. Throughout my years on various St. John's Oxfam Committee boards and committees we had amazing, inspirational, well-informed, dedicated staff. First we hired Rich Fuchs and Anne Manuel, recent graduates of Memorial, to do administration, outreach and education, and shortly after that Sean McCutcheon to research the illnesses of miners in St. Lawrence. And then we brought in (after much letter-writing and red tape) Juan Ruz, a refugee from Chile who fled for his life after Allende’s assassination. We provided room and board for Juan and very modest salaries for Juan and the other three staff members. We were a mixed group: students, professors, retirees, artists, unemployed, some from this province and some from elsewhere, old and young, a few with a lifelong record of social activism and others with little or no experience of this kind. We came from differing cultural, religious, political, economic and ethnic backgrounds. Of the active members from my earliest days, the movers, shakers and visionaries who made things happen, the first to come to mind are Rosemary and John Williams and David Thompson, and shortly after that Frances Ennis, Lorraine Michael, Dorothy Inglis, Lois Saunders, Tony Berger, Rod Singaraya and Keith Storey. We partnered with schools, university, community groups, unions and more; we invited guest lectures, organized workshops, and protested with placards in front of banks with investments in South Africa; we boycotted South African wine and we invited a South African friend living in St. John’s to report on his impressions of life under Apartheid when he returned from a family visit to South Africa. We elected representatives from the St. John’s Oxfam Committee to sit on Oxfam Canada’s Regional and National boards, and to travel to the UK for training in building emergency shelters for disaster relief. We had heated debates on funding priorities, ways of increasing awareness of injustice in the world, and ways of addressing these injustices, of contradictions between the principles we believed in and the ways we raised our children and conducted our lives. We were always short of money but we had enough determined, hardworking, optimistic volunteers and staff to keep the centre alive as a vibrant force in the community. And we debated everything. Was it ethical for Oxfam Canada to use the funds it raised, in part from impecunious Newfoundlanders, to pay what seemed to us exorbitant consulting fees to Mel Watkins to help negotiate land claims for the Dene Nation? Should we accept the offer of a local author of bestselling booklets of Newfoundland humour to organize a fundraising drive for us? (We liked him but had mixed reactions to his sense of humour). How could those of us who taught in schools and universities engage students in a Freirian dialogue about inequities around us without engaging in ‘the prescriptive methods of the dominant elites'? I believe the debates and dialogue did much to keep the organization alive and growing over the decades. We also plotted, planned, lobbied, and did whatever had to be done, from meetings at the Centre that extended late into the night, to the hard physical labour of operating the Centre and programs. We learned to think globally as we as tried to act locally. And we had fun. We cooked and ate together, played soccer, took care of each other's kids, worked on a quilt one winter (though I’m not sure we ever finished it). In short we developed a community that is still strong. . . and growing. Of course individuals have come and gone. I am less active in Oxfam now than I used to be. But many of my close friendships date from that Oxfam group of the 70s. Although all my biological family live elsewhere, I decided to retire here in part because of the Oxfam community that provides opportunities to live and work and dialogue with people who share so much of my history and so many of my values. I continue to participate in many of Oxfam's public meetings, celebrations, and fundraising events, and am always made to feel welcome, a part of this extraordinary community. I have been a substantial monthly donor to Oxfam Shareplan (or its predecessor) for over thirty years, I contribute to special fundraising events conducted by Oxfam at other times, and most of my Christmas gifts are now from Oxfam's Gifts Unwrapped. I have willed a portion of my estate to Oxfam. For decades the extraordinarily dedicated, brilliant team of Linda Ross and Bill Hynd led the way at the St. John's Oxfam Centre, keeping oldtimers informed and involved, while opening doors to new volunteers and new projects here and overseas, providing opportunities for the community to get together to raise funds, celebrate, mourn, demonstrate, and act in a thousand ways to promote social justice at home and abroad. Then Linda moved on and Bill seemed to take on the double load without missing a step. I will never know where he finds the energy, efficiency, compassion, intelligence, insight and unflappable good humour to accomplish all he does. But I will be forever grateful to him for carrying on, in spite of what seems to me callous and most undialogic, undemocratic treatment from the National Board and staff at Oxfam Canada. He is an inspiration to all of us. It is unthinkable that the St. John's Oxfam Centre, which we bought and developed, with our own bucks and blood, should be sold summarily, and Bill Hynd fired, without consultation with local staff, board or community. It is also unthinkable that anyone in this province who has supported Oxfam in the past will ever do so again if this threat is carried out. Our Vision: Text

Our Roots Our Roots: Welcome The climate crisis is here. Every day animals go extinct, more land is flooded or becomes too dry to grow crops, storms grow bigger, wildfires become stronger, and the ice caps are melting under our feet. The problem feels insurmountable but humans created this problem—and it’s up to us to fix it. The Social Justice Co-operative NL formed in 2013 to continue the 50+ year tradition of speaking out for social justice, connecting the local with the global, and working with like-minded agencies for common social change goals. Oxfam Canada set up a regional office in St. John’s in 1964 at the instigation of a group of local activists and with staff members dedicated to build support and connections between projects in developing countries and our own communities. Oxfam Canada focused on the needs and concerns of communities in the developing world. Increasingly this was challenged by NL people and communities demanding that Oxfam recognise the links between the struggles of communities in NL and in the so-called “developing world”. Spurred by questions and demands from the local grassroots, the local Oxfam office on Duckworth Street became the hub of activism and progressive thinking. The crucial ingredients of success were dynamic and well informed staff, strong support from the national office and an activist community in support. Faced with funding cuts and a Conservative government, Oxfam Canada closed down most of its regional offices and ceased their focus on the connections between local and global issues. The activist group in St. John’s argued vociferously against this change , while also pointing out that the building on Duckworth St had been bought and maintained by the community and should remain a community resource. The Social Justice Cooperative of NL was formed to take over the building and to continue what we saw as the most important work of Oxfam in NL - its focus on the urgent need for social justice for everyone and on the connections between local and global. The particular form of the SJC came about because of the Harper era strictures and limitations on the political work of “charities”. While it makes us somewhat of an “oddball” in the context of the formal structures of the Federation of Cooperatives, our membership in the Federation helps us to think seriously about what “cooperation” means in terms of equality and justice for everyone. Since 2019, the SJC has been leading a campaign to address the climate crisis in Newfoundland and Labrador by connecting with activists and organizing a wide range of actions with a vision of anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and international worker solidarity. In the past few years, we have done important groundwork to build a movement in our province around social and environmental justice by building strong and respectful partnerships with allied organizations, and creating space for new people to get involved and champion causes. By organizing around a broad issue like climate change, we have integrated many related issues into a cohesive vision for how to transform our province into a more environmentally and socially just place. A key aspect of our strategy is to let members lead our work and use our staff to support them. This has created space for volunteers to pursue their passions and take initiative organizing events or action teams. We are always looking for more people to get involved and if you would like to learn more about our work, please reach out at socialjusticecoopnl@gmail.com . To strengthen our base and independence from government, we are also seeking individuals to donate to support our work. Please consider becoming a financial ally and supporting our Resources for Revolution campaign here . Our Roots: Text The climate crisis is not an easy problem and will need a multi-pronged solution to fix, but as this pandemic has shown, we can do hard things. By working together, we can overcome anything. Our Roots: Text

Social Justice Co-operative NL The Social Justice Co-operative of Newfoundland and Labrador works to address issues of social, economic, and political inequality at home and abroad. Read About Us Home: Welcome New Year, New Blog! We're greeting the new year with a new blog to help free our communication with you from the shackles of major social media platforms. For the time being, we're still there and we'll cross post our blog there. But if you'd like to cut out the middle man, please give our blog a follow. Check it out below, and click on our username to navigate to our profile & follow. Go to Blog Community Update on Theft in SJCNL Fund The Revolution! Independent donors like you allow us an uncompromising political voice! We have accomplished a lot over the past couple of years but we need financial resources to bring about a Revolution of Care. The Social Justice Co-operative does not take money from corporations or governments for our activism and operations. To maintain our independence, we depend on grassroots funding from people like you. Please consider funding our work, be that as a one-time donation, or as a monthly donor, to help us keep momentum going by sponsoring our work. Donate

UPDATE: time changed to 7:30 - 9:30 pm NDT so as to not overlap with the Nakba Day Vigil, which is from 6:00 - 7:00 pm NDT at the Colonial Building More info here: https://palestineactionyyt.ca/events/nakba-day-vigil-2025 We are pleased to invite you to a fun little hang! Arts & crafts night on May 15th from 7:30 - 9:30 pm NDT at St. Mark's Anglican Church Parish Hall, 203 Logy Bay Road. The space is wheelchair accessible and on a bus route. The washrooms are gendered but we put up gender neutral signs when we are there. There will be some light snacks, tea, and coffee. Come join us to kick back, relax, hang out, make something if you want, and just get some laid back community connection time in! We will have supplies for painting, and encourage you to bring anything else you may want to pick away while we gather. Email SocialJusticeCoopNL@gmail.com with any questions, concerns, access needs, etc.

Please join us for a Special Membership Meeting on Wednesday, May 14 from 7-9pm NT / 6:30-8:30pm AT to  review the following agenda item: Election of Audit Team For our Special Members Meeting to go ahead, we need 15 members present. Please consider joining us for this important meeting that will strengthen our financial practices and policies. Election of Audit Team As part of our commitment to accountability and transparency, the SJCNL is inviting three members to open our books and do a deep dive into our finances. The Audit Team will play a pivotal role in our organization’s ability to operate next year and adds an important layer of trust in our pursuit for a Revolution of Care! As a team member, you will review our treasurer’s reports, bank statements, and financial oversight policies to ensure accuracy and compliance. This project is expected to take 20 hours and must be completed for the Annual General Meeting that is tentatively set for September 2025. We encourage members of all levels of experience and knowledge to sign up. We will onboard you and trust that every member of our organization has the ability to perform this financial review. Help us resist capitalism and build communities of care by joining the SJCNL Audit Team! Please note you must be a member of the SJC to be on the Audit Team. Email SocialJusticeCoopNL@gmail.com for the call invite or find it in our latest newsletter!

Hello, and welcome to our April Social Justice Newsletter . We're glad you're here! Below you'll find a mix of meetings, events, and news from the SJC or the groups and people we work alongside . If you'd like to get this in your email , you can join our newsletter by submitting your email in the box at the bottom of our website homepage. If you'd like to submit content use this form to do so. AxA Book Club Short Story Series Our next reading for Monday, April 14 ( 7pm NT / 530pm ET ) is two short stories ! 1. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin (5pg) Click here to read Le Guin: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf 2. The Ones Who Stay and Fight by N.K. Jemisin  (8pg) Click here to read Jemisin: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/ Meetings are held online via Signal . Please email socialjusticecoopnl@gmail.com to join the group chat! Monthly General Meeting of the SJC The next Monthly General Meeting of the SJC is scheduled for Wednesday April 16 from 7:00 - 9:00 PM NDT online. Email socialjusticecoopnl@gmail.com for the invite . Meeting principles : bit.ly/sjc-meeting-guide Meeting accessibility : bit.ly/sjc-access On the agenda so far this month is: Creating Community Communication Tools ! Come chat about how we can support communications for the social justice community , to make it easier to know where we wanna be and when! Email us if you'd like to propose a topic for the agenda. Tea with Lea Join our friendly neighbourhood staff member Lea Movelle for Tea every other Thursday from 4 - 5 PM NDT online . And informal space to hang out, chat, ask questions, give feedback, etc.! Next Tea time is Thurs Apr 17 . Email SJCNLstaff@gmail.com for the invite . Upcoming dates : Apr 17, May 1, May 15, May 29, June 12 Just Transition All Candidates Town Hall The Youth Climate Corps Campaign, Neighbours United Defend Our Island Team, Mercy Center for Ecology and Justice, Fridays for Future St John's, along with supporters and friends invite you to join us for an All Candidates Town Hall on the theme of a Just Transition ! Location: Foran-Greene Room, St. John's City Hall, 10 New Gower, St. John's and online - all registrants will receive a virtual invite. Date: Tuesday April 22nd Time: 7:00 - 9:30 PM NDT or 6:30 - 9:00 PM ADT The purpose of this gathering is to bring all potential federal, provincial, and municipal election candidates, young people, and the general public together to engage on issues of a Just Transition away from fossil fuels, and the vision for a Youth Climate Corps as part of a bold new climate action plan, empowering young people to help their communities face the impacts of climate crises. We invite anyone considering or intending to run in the upcoming federal, provincial, and municipal elections to avail of this important opportunity to engage with constituents. Young people across so-called Canada are urging the government to invest $1 billion in Budget 2025 , creating 20,000 full-time Youth Climate Corps positions at a $25/hour living wage to support climate resilience and kickstart a Just Transition . We envision a YCC that would empower young people and communities by providing a federal jobs guarantee for anyone 35 and under . We envision a program that would turn no one away and place young people in 2 year work training placements doing well paid, dignified local climate work, rooted in justice and led by Indigenous nations and municipalities. To learn more about the YCC vision visit goodgreenjobsforall.ca If you're a young person looking to connect with candidates around issues of a Just Transition, Youth Unemployment, and Climate Action we hope you will join us. Perhaps you are a candidate looking to connect with young constituents? We've got you covered! Or, maybe you're a young person considering a run in an upcoming election! Event better! Or perhaps you have young people in your life who you care about & want a better future for, we hope you will join us too! There will be guest speakers and circle discussions so everyone has a chance to express themselves. Candidates will be given some time to respond . Depending on how many candidates attend, we may ask for parties to select one candidate to respond on behalf of the party. Register to stay in the loop about further details in the lead up to the Town Hall & to receive the link to join online here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/just-transition-nl-all-candidates Help spread the word by sharing this opportunity widely using the link above or the short link bit.ly/Just-Transition-NL Guest speakers: Jude Benoit Kassie Drodge Domé Lombeida Megs Scott Dan Smith Seth Klein Lea Movelle Free Palestine Rally The next Free Palestine Rally is scheduled for Saturday April 26th starting at 2:00 PM NDT at Harbourside Park in St. John's . Free Palestine rallies generally occur on the last Saturday of each month , except in extenuating circumstances like unsafe weather in which case they are postponed. Organized by Palestine Action YYT . Stay tuned to their instagram for updates & details: https://www.instagram.com/palestine_action_yyt/ SJC Social - Arts & Craft Night Thursday, May 15 7:00 - 9:00 PM NDT St. Mark's Anglican Church Parish Hall 203 Logy Bay Road, St. John's Come join the SJC for an arts & crafts social! We will have supplies for painting & collaging. Please feel welcome to bring anything else you'd like to work on. We'll have a few snacks but feel welcome to bring something to share if you'd like - no obligation to do so! Call for Volunteers for the SJC Audit Team As part of our commitment to accountability and transparency , the SJCNL is inviting three members to open our books and do a deep dive into our finances . The Audit Team  will play a pivotal role in our organization’s ability to operate next year  and adds an  important layer of trust  in our pursuit for a Revolution of Care ! As a team member, you will review our treasurer’s reports, bank statements, and financial oversight policies  to ensure accuracy and compliance. This project is expected to take 20 hours  and must be completed for the Annual General Meeting that is tentatively set for September 2025 . We encourage members of all levels of experience  and knowledge to sign up. We will onboard you and trust that every member of our organization has the ability to perform this financial review. Help us resist capitalism  and build communities of care  by joining the SJCNL Audit Team ! Email socialjusticecoopnl@gmail.com   for more information.