WTC In Action

In collaboration with the YWCA City Shift, SFU's Public Square, and SFU's Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies we hosted a panel discussion with 17 candidates running for City Council. The questions that candidates answered were based on the feedback we had heard in our community engagement process for the Hot Pink Paper Campaign. Questions covered topics like affordable housing, community safety, disability justice, the climate emergency, and Truth and Reconciliation.

Our community organizer, Diana Kamau, presented a workshop at Minerva's Face of Leadership - Inclusive Leadership Forum this past month. She broke down the meaning of intersectionality, the history of the term, and how it can be practically applied to leadership.

Our Executive Director, Ash Peplow Ball, and Project Coordinator, Clara Prager, presented a clinic on how local governments can advance the TRC Calls to Action along with Barclay Pitkethly, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of the City of Mission, and Janet Wark, a City Councillor from the District of Chetwynd. Read the summary of the event here. 

Campaign lead, Mahtab Laghaei, appears on CBC On the Coast with Gloria Macarenko, RedEye Radio, and CJSF IntraVenus to talk about the Hot Pink Paper Campaign and the upcoming municipal election. 

After a year of community engagement with local organizations and individuals of equity seeking genders through in-person sessions, a community survey, and focus groups we developed 8 policy asks around the most pressing issues. We sent these 8 asks to the candidates from the top 10 municipal parties and asked them to committ to implementing these policies if elected. On the steps of City Hall we explained our eight policy asks and launched the report card that shows where candidates stand. 

We came together for our first in-person event since 2019 for a film screening at SFU of Running With My Girls, a documentary about the power of grassroots activism in local government to celebrate WTC's over a decade of advocacy. 

Our co-chair Trudi Goels has a conversation with Gloria Macarenko on CBC's On the Coast about our need for improving the public hearing process, what we can all do to get involved in municipal politics, and what's coming up next for WTC's Hot Pink Paper Campaign. Listen here.

Leading up to the 7th/8th & Arbutus land use application public hearings, we sent a letter to the mayor and councillors urging them to use a 'point of order' to create a more equitable public hearing process that would direct all harmful comments speculating about future tenants and draw the conversation back to land use.