Grant-Cummings
Avia Ustanny, Freelance Writer
JOAN GRANT-CUMMINGS is back home and today she is talking about simple things. About hygiene, water, about empowering women, and about the "light which will go on" when women make the connection between their everyday decisions and their status in society.
Though quiet in her reflections, do not be mislead. Grant-Cummings is a career soldier, skilled at in-your-face confrontations and media blitzing in the cause of her battles.
This is the woman who, using her warlike abilities at lobbying during four years as president of Canada's largest community-based women's organisation the National Action Committee on the Status of Women won for that body many victories. Skilled at front-line agitation, she knows how to bind together the power of women in the grass roots and wield it like a mighty club to create change.
Now, after racking up many firsts as a women's rights activist, Mrs. Grant-Cummings has returned to Jamaica with her family to live a much quieter life as co-ordinator of the coalition for Community Participation in Governance.
She has turned to the trenches in her own island, to do humdrum but equally important work with disadvantaged women. Her choice to concentrate on grass roots was informed by the experience in Canada, she says.
In Canada, Grant-Cummings' outstanding work as a lobbying executive with the NAC and with the Women's Health in Women's Hands Health Centre created significant social changes and also won her much recognition. In 1999 she was the recipient of the Black Action Defence Committee Annual Award as an "invaluable contributor" to the African-Canadian community and to society in general.
In the beginning, at the Jamaica Canadian Association, where she first volunteered to help immigrants, she was also given the President's Award as the Most Outstanding Volunteer in 1985, the very first year in which she signed up.
Women of Distinction award
In 2000 she was the recipient of the Women of Distinction award presented by Bell Canada while serving as the first Black president of the prestigious NAC.
The St. Hugh's old girl told Oultook that her activism really began at the University of Ottawa where she went to do Biology, but even before then, the "whole thing of not backing down and confronting things was an attitude learnt in high school. Our teachers encouraged us to look at the world in diverse ways, always with a sense of self reinforced. Many of them were members of Black and women's liberation movements," Grant-Cummings recalls.
Still, when she was ready to enter the University of Ottawa to train for a career, the path was not so clear. A good biology student, she recalls that she was always being encouraged to do medicine, but she was "not convinced". At the University of Ottawa activism began out of the need to secure equal rights and treatment for Black students. As an executive member of the African Caribbean Students Association (ACSA) of students, she experienced first-hand the power of organisation and united action.
ACSA was successful in improving conditions for Caribbean and African students.
Joan returned to Jamaica to teach for a short while as Biology teacher and guidance counsellor and it was then that the path which she would take became clearer. Working with many young ladies who were affected by incest, she decided to return to Canada acquire the skills to improve the condition of women.
Back in Toronto, Canada, in 1985, she signed up as a volunteer for the Jamaica Canadian Association, the oldest Jamaican association in the country. This was to prove to be the baptism of fire for the young activist. The situation of coloured migrants in the 80s was the focus of intense lobbying and Joan soon found herself at the centre of it.
Paramount was the situation of migrant domestics who were being discriminated against by labour laws and employers. They were experiencing racial and sexual harassment and other issues, including payments withheld. When, after three years migrants would apply for their permanent papers, in many cases employers would withhold their recommendations. A number of the migrants were also undocumented workers who had been robbed by "immigration consultants".
Grant soon became involved in the primary lobbies, interviewing migrants and pushing with her colleagues in the JCA for laws to be changed and be more equitable for Caribbean and African blacks, as well as Phillipinos, Africans, Asians and other migrants.
Also, as a member of the JCA youth organisation, she lobbied for youth in the areas of education, good health care and black empowerment. JCA youth also had an international agenda, renaming themselves Ujamaa in solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement.
As a result of JCA work, the laws which discriminated against workers without formal training were changed to recognise the value of experience. They also secured changes which made it no longer necessary for women to hide the fact that they had children. Pay scales below minimum wage were also adjusted and laws relating to bringing in children aged over 18, children who were married and parents were also adjusted.
Educated migrants
The JCA also addressed the issue of educated migrants who still needed to get "Canadian experience" in order to work in their own fields, battling for accreditation and testing for access to jobs. This battle continues, but the debate for change was, at least, begun.
While at JCA, the perfect job fell into Joan's lap. The Toronto Immigrant's Women Health Centre was in need of a counsellor and the young woman, now Joan Grant-Cummings because she had got married to a colleague at the JCA, was interviewed and accepted for the job. Soon, more opportunities for activism presented themselves.
She recalls, "Women would come in for pap smears, but their real issues were violence in their homes, their immigrant status, their access to education and housing." The health centre provided a connection between women "on the ground" and women at the provincial level.
Grant-Cummings, as a result of her intervention on behalf of these women, was asked to sit on the steering committee created to form the first comprehensive health centre. This group was successful in obtaining ministry funding and in ensuring that the focus would be on immigrant women, the old and disabled and also the young and disadvantaged. These were the most vulnerable groups.
Soon, seconded to the health centre to work in health promotion, Grant-Cummings found that the granting of approval for the health centre was the beginning of sorrows. Right then, she experienced the first political fight of her life, as women from the white established fought for control of the fully funded health centre.
The minority interest only won out when women from the grass roots staged sit-ins, attracting round-the-clock media attention until the establishment whites ran away. Grant-Cummings became the first executive director and poured four years of effort into "Women's Health in Women's Hands." Today, its spa-like ambience is a personal joy. "They (women) come in and rest before doing what they have to do," Joan boasts, stating that the centre was designed by one of Canada's best architects and that it is painted in bright Caribbean colours.
She recalls, at that point in her life, feeling ready to come home to Jamaica, but her reputation dictated otherwise. her credible work on issues of race, women, immigrants and disability rights drew the attention of those who felt that a black presence was necessary on that giant among organisations the National Action Committee on women's affairs.
The race issue was ablaze in NAC at this time, as support had been withdrawn from the organisation when its first non-white president, an Asian woman was elected.
President in 1996
Grant-Cummings knew it would not be easy. She first secured the position of treasurer, producing for the first time monthly accounts and projections for NAC. Working with contacts at the JCA, the women's centre, the province level and the general grass roots, she acquired the backing to become president in 1996. For the black woman, it was a historic moment.
The Toronto Star of Monday June 17, 1996: "Canada's biggest women's group overwhelmingly endorsed a Toronto health worker to succeed Sunero Thobani as president during an emotional changing of the guard yesterday.... Grant-Cummings is black and her decisive victory is seen as a victory for the action committee's commitment to fight racism, not only in Canadian society as whole, but also within the organisation..."
Her tenure as president was a roller-coaster ride of challenges, as many white donors withdrew their financial support. The response of NAC was to rely more on the grass roots for support, a strategy that was successful.
Reflecting on her experiences, Grant-Cummings told Outlook, "Many of us who migrate do not bother to become politically involved so we do not see the negatives. In Canada, corruption also exists on a mega scale. Once you are embroiled in the politics of a country you will see it differently. In Canada, the issues are white supremacy and racism. That is even more draining than fighting crime and violence, because it goes to your very spirit."
Now back in the island with her educator husband and son Kiri, she states, "the big issue for us was coming back to spend time with our Jamaican family. We wanted Kiri to grow up in a country which was, politically, a black majority. We wanted him to experience and understand inequalities from a world perspective and especially from the South, not just the North."
The family's income is much less now, but she says, "I have always learnt that having money is not fundamentally the thing. Yes, I had a good job, but money did not buy me time with my family. It does not compensate for the health cost that you never recover."
Mrs. Grant-Cummings says that she has returned to the grass roots to do what her heart as always desired to counsel women and empower them to create the necessary change in their lives. In the grass roots is where she wants to be for the next few years.
"I never indulge in 'woe is me' conversations. I am concentrating on the drudge work which is what is going to create the change. This is what builds communities and nations."
The grassroot agenda is pressing. "When a community has its own water supply, when women begin to think about the gender impact of keeping their child home from school, when they know the consequences of washing their hands with water and soap a million dollars cannot compensate for the feeling when the light bulb goes off and people make the connection.
"This is what real policy should be built on grass roots research," she says. This kind of ground-level "drudgery", she says, is also what will create real change.
