ANOTHER VIEWPOINT (LawNow - June/July 2006)

In this issue we say a special thank you to Marsha Mildon who has been the

editor of LawNow at various stages of its development for a total of 15 years.

Marsha and I met over 30 years ago when we were both working on projects in

Edmonton’s inner city. Our common interest in advancing social justice through

the provision of a variety of legal services became a bond that has lasted through

our professional lives.

LG: Marsha can you give our readers some insight into what led to your concern for

social justice and the law?

MM: I’ve mentioned my father before in my editorials. He was a preacher and a

probation officer and those two vocations informed each other. So I learned

from him around the supper table that love is the basis of justice and that

justice requires love.

LG: Is there anything particular that he did or said that you remember as significant?

MM: Well, as a probation officer, he was constantly going out and buying groceries

for the families of his clients, and occasionally bringing homeless

probationers to our house to stay until he could get them placed.

But the thing that he was most proud of was that he was the first probation

officer to succeed in placing a woman convicted of manslaughter of her

common law husband on probation.

LG: The battered women’s defence?

MM: More or less, but 1950s style. He argued that the woman was a good

mother, always kept food on the table, kept her children going to school —

she basically would do anything for her children.

When her common law husband started beating up both her and the kids,

she threw him out. So when he came back drunk later, she grabbed a

kitchen knife and stabbed him to death. My dad argued in his pre-sentence

report that she was protecting her children and should be given the opportunity

to stay with her children.

LG: So your thinking about abused women began to be formed through this experience

of your father’s.

MM: About abused women, but also about the role of society. When the court

did put her on probation, my dad’s instructions to his female probation

officer were to get the woman involved in society at a better level. So the

probation officer and probationer began to go to the YW, taking crafts and

public speaking and all kinds of courses. The woman did wonderfully well

and ended up teaching at the Y.

I think the most important thing I learned from that whole episode was

that people can’t have justice unless they are also included in society in

meaningful ways. If the woman had been left on her own to carry on with

her kids, she might well have met another abusive man and the pattern

repeated. But because the society of the YW was inclusive and accepted her as a valuable contributor, she too had a stake in maintaining justice.

And that social inclusion strikes me now as one of the kinds of love in

the equation love is justice; justice is love.

LG: And when you came to Edmonton you carried on your father’s tradition. I

remember you working with the women’s emergency shelter, the native women

in the gaols, and with housing co-ops.

MM: Well, it wasn’t entirely my father’s thinking that influenced me. I left

home quite early — one of the Hippie generation — and lived in

Vancouver for a while. There were many times there when I found

myself homeless, and slept on the pews of some of those big downtown

churches that left their front doors open in those days. And those were

still the days when they used one of the sections of the vagrancy laws to

arrest prostitutes… You had to have at least ten dollars, an address

where you supposedly lived, and a reason for being on the street. I didn’t

even know why the police kept stopping me when I’d walk around the

street at night — I had a cocker spaniel always with me. As I learned

later, prostitutes would “walk the dog” to have that legitmate reason. So

I had my own experiences of being treated as if I was on the wrong side

of the law.

A bit later I often drove back and forth across the country in my

Camaro – and I would get stopped by the police and have to get out

and have the car searched two or three times a day. My age, long hair,

fast car all brought hassles. So I had more than a few experiences of the

arbitrary exercise of authority.

These experiences of injustice added an intense and personal layer to the

things I had learned from my father about justice and love. Reasonably

enough, by the time I moved to Edmonton, I gravitated to those activities

— like the women’s shelter, the native women’s group at the Fort

Saskatchewan gaol, and the housing co-operatives — that were trying to

build a more inclusive, just and loving society.

At the same time, simply trying to make progress with these projects

taught me that I really needed to know the law in order to make things

happen; that to build a society where everyone experiences equality

before the law, we need to define the justice as love and then work to

make the law reflect that equation.

LG: At some point you moved from that more ‘out-front’ community development

approach to making things happen to writing: legal guides, handbooks for

administering co-ops, and your first stint as Editor for our magazine that was

then called Resource News. Was there some reason for that change in your

activities?

MM: Throughout my life I have been involved in one way or another with

civil society; by that I mean all the organizations and groups of people

who aren’t government, military, or market corporations, but are nonprofits,

groups like the YW, the not-for-profit housing co-ops, the

community leagues and parents groups at schools — the civilian sector.

But in my twenties when I was working actively in community development,

I didn’t really have a strong enough inner sense of self to go out

every single day and fight for justice over the long term. But writing had

always been a passion of mine, so what I could do well, day after day,

was research and write the background material, the information

guides, mock trials for classrooms that would provide the tools for those

on the front lines.

Because of my background, I felt passionately that not only did people

need to know specific bits of law, but we needed to understand the principles

— like the rule of law — that are the foundation of a predictable

society. So I wrote non-fiction; I wrote plays; I even wrote mystery

novels that in one way or another had love, justice, and civil society as

the three foundations of a stable and just society.

LG: But now you seem to be moving away from writing?

MM: I’m a lot older and have gained a lot of personal insight and strength

since my twenties. I also started visiting and then volunteering with

children in the third world. And I have become passionate about the

need to provide some kind of net under the unstable poverty-based

societies in which they live.

I’ve worked with street kids in urban centres and with children who live

in small but intact villages. My sense is that although some have the love

of a close relative, the difficulties of survival are so great and the abuse of

women and children so prevalent, that they are growing up in chaos.

I’ve walked down city streets with local teachers where the lack of love,

justice, and civil society leaves one in terror. These women teachers, for

example, won’t even go to the market except in pairs because the likelihood

of rape is so high — and without civil society organizations to

stand up for them, no one will ever complain.

So my journey at this point seems to be pulling me back toward

working on the front lines with women and children. I’m not certain

exactly what I will do or where I will end up — though I have one invitation

to start a school in a village that teaches things beyond the public

school curriculum. For example, children and women who have been

abused need to be able to reclaim their bodies and learning dance or

gymnastics or other sports is one very helpful approach. For example,

learning the stories and traditions of their villages along with traditional

jobs such as weaving and agriculture gives them both a sense of self-con

fidence and survival skills. Teaching health and sexual health to young

girls especially is a matter of love and justice.

So one way or another, my journey will probably be moving toward

more front line work, with women and children, helping to build civil

society, justice, and love… probably through various kinds of education.

LG: Well, Marsha, I know that being editor of LawNow has been a labour of love

for you these many years. As publisher, colleague, and friend, I’d like to thank

you for the commitment you have made to seeing the magazine find its place in

advancing the cause of social justice in Canada. This is not, of course, “good

bye”, but I do want to mark this change in editorial leadership of LawNow. All

of us associated with LawNow wish you all the best and look forward to hearing

more from you on your work with women and kids in some of the most justice challenged

situations in the world.