Letters
January 27th 2011
Re: “Grassroots activists slam Youth for Christ once more” (Jan. 20, page 3)
This letter is in response to Grassroots activists slam Youth for Christ once more, published January 20th 2011.
Aside from the considerable amount of personal offense I have taken to this article as it targets me, my faith and my family, my anger and frustration go much further as the faults found within this article are unending.
Firstly, and above all other reasons, there is the issue of the comparison of the new YFC drop-in centre with the atrocity that was residential schools within Manitoba.
To compare these two, a force-free, safe place to hang out for youth of all ages, genders and races, with schools where people were forced to leave family and culture and in many situations terribly abused or even murdered – is a crime.
This significantly devalues the extent of damage that residential schools have caused. It also implies that both Cabel and one of his sources, Lissie Rappaport, appear to have no knowledge with regard to residential schools and also lack any amount of respect for the hurt that residential schools have caused.
As mentioned above, Lissie Rappaport was interviewed for the article, someone with seemingly no connection to YFC. Interviewing such a person significantly decreases the credibility of this article.
Furthermore, Rappaport drops the names of a number of organizations with no contextualization.
It is completely illegitimate to compare funding for organizations as funding is received for many different reasons, reasons that were not researched and therefore should not be included in printed publications.
This letter appeared in Volume 65, Number 17 of The Uniter, published January 27th 2011.
