Justice and my fight for it!

So, if you know me, I have this thing for justice and ensuring it occurs. I believe this is largely due to the fact that my own life carried so little of it and I often fell prey to the hands of injustice. And as such it annoys me, irritates me and infuriates me. And it isn't simply my own injustices, it is many that I hear about. I think of one dear friend whose entire family is struggling to cope with injustice at the hands of our medical system. However,  due to their confidentiality, I will not disclose who they are.

Rather, I speak of my own injustice. I guess this came to a forefront, back in August of 2011 when I was refused a rental house due to family status. Essentially what that means, is that they told me, after they had assured me that I was first in line and likely to get the house, that they rented the house to someone that DID NOT have children. Yes, you read that right. DID NOT have children.

So at that point, I acted. I was granted both a radio interview and a television interview. While on the radio, I met an individual from the Human Rights Clinic who encouraged me to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal. This is essentially the same as a court proceeding.

The second injustice I encountered was with my current rental and their refusal to bring the rental up to liveable standards, of which I have since done myself, hoping to recoup the cost.

The third injustice was during the end of last year when a miscommunication happened between student loans and myself. Despite many phone communications, student loans chose to start debiting my account collecting money and then pinning me for interest after I stopped payment. Well, being a single mom, barely enough to pay bills, feed and clothe my children 650.00 coming out of my account certainly was not what I needed. And in fact, that was money I had set aside for Christmas. As you can well imagine, Christmas proved to be very difficult.

Well I don't tend to take things sitting down. I filed the Human Rights Tribunal case. Today I found out that my complaint has been screened and accepted. GOOD NEWS!!!! What does this mean? Well,  potentially I get an advocate (I am applying for one as we speak) who will represent me and fight for my case. The nuts and bolts of what that means is, I can be awarded monetary recompense for damages, as well as the difference in current rent and what would have been my rent for the period of the lease which in this case was a year.

Current rent, well that didn't amount to much except a token amount for the cost of paint.

Student loans: Well after numerous phone calls and speaking to managers and supervisors who would not listen to me, I phoned my MP's office. Today, they got back to me. My MP has called NSLC and they have returned the debited amount to my account as well as waived the accumulated interest.

I am also in contact with my MLA who will be ensuring that the same occurs with my BC student loans.

Why do I write all this? Well, I have been intensely criticized for my desire to see justice done. I have been lectured, I have had support withdrawn and I have been told that I need to smarten up and grow up and swallow the injustices. I sought a new place to rent, in order to provide a safer living environment for my children. I was told at that point to suck it up and swallow it and live in a shithole because by becoming a single mom, this is what I brought to my children. And this from family.

So I guess I write this to say/show that despite all that, justice can prevail. If done with a right heart, God will honor that and bring justice. It wasn't easy by no means an easy road, especially then to be lectured (when my family lectures that really means a derogatory yell fest). But I stayed true to what I thought was right and so far, justice appears to being served.