By: Donna Kennedy-Glans The Arab Spring has moved into its next season: Arab Summer. In the natural world, summer is the time for flowering blossoms to progress their journey to mature fruit. Yet, this summer, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t feel a few pangs of apprehension about what these citizen-led revolutions will yield, [...]
Why I stepped down as Bridges’ ED
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011May 2nd was auspicious. Canada elected a Conservative majority government, and I handed over the leadership reins of Bridges Social Development to a young engineer, Lindsay Mitchell. Bridges is a small Calgary-based voluntary organization that I founded in 2002 in response to an invitation from the President of Yemen and community leaders in that country—Yemen [...]
Yemeni women: President is degrading us
Saturday, April 16th, 2011By: Hakim Almasmari and Mohammed Jamjoom, CNN Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) — Thousands of Yemeni women marched toward the attorney general’s office in the capital Saturday demanding legal action for what they called the president’s attacks on their morality. Similar demonstrations took place in other cities as well fueled by President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s comments the day [...]
Trusting the pathways to democracy in the Arab world
Monday, April 11th, 2011“Religion is a growing force in the Arab awakening. Westerners should hold their nerve and trust democracy.” As a westerner, and a person of faith, I agree with this cautiously optimistic approach. The Arab revolutions are in full swing. In Tunisia and Egypt, there is hope of free elections. In Yemen, Libya and Syria, [...]
Moving through despair …to hope again
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011Yemen implodes while Libya explodes. Yemeni citizens stare down snipers and beg their political leaders to engage, with respect. Libyan citizens have no such hope; their salvation is in the hands of outsiders. And, in Japan, citizens stoically stand in the face of Nature’s fury—a tsunami and then earthquakes, and now, man-poisoned food and water [...]
Yemenis launch social media video live from ground today in Ottawa, Sanaa, Calgary, & Aden
Monday, March 21st, 2011OTTAWA, March 21 /CNW/ – Yemen Rights Monitor, an effort of Yemenis and Canadians to circumvent Yemeni government bans on media coverage of attacks, launches officially today : www.yemenrightsmonitor.com. With more local correspondents than Al-Jazeera on the ground in Yemen, many Yemeni users use faceboook to blog news, videos and photos on YemenRightsMonitor with latest on [...]
Alberta’s connection to Yemen
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011Yemenis seeking democratic change in their country are turning to Alberta corporate executive and founder of the Bridges NGO Donna Kennedy-Glans. She’s helping them set up social networking sites to connect safely to like-minded Yemenis. View Full Post. Source:
Global Citizens: Our Power Narrative is Changing!
Sunday, February 20th, 2011The world just witnessed ‘unstoppable populist movements’ in Tunisia and then Egypt. Not surprisingly, this narrative is being framed as one of social justice; citizens at the grassroots finding their voices and toppling established institutions and privileged, elite decision-makers. Yet, as we’re now discovering in places like Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, this speaking truth [...]
The voices of women in Yemen
Monday, January 31st, 2011These last few days have been surreal—flashbacks to 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. I’m channel surfing: jumping from BBC to CNN to CBC to Al Jazeera… hoping that some pundit, somewhere, can predict the future for Yemenis or Egyptians. Experts describe this situation as the attempt by Pandora to shove all the ills of [...]
Yemen Sets Terms of a War on Al Qaeda
Saturday, December 4th, 2010By: Scott Shane | New York Times One Obama administration security official after another was visiting to talk about terrorism, and Yemen’s redoubtable president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, seemed to be savoring his newfound leverage. The Americans are “hot-blooded and hasty when you need us,” Mr. Saleh chided one visitor, Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism [...]