By Mick Lowe
The name of an expectant Sudbury mother who died last year while under house arrest for welfare fraud lives on - in a struggle against social service cuts thousands of miles from the Nickel Capital.
 |
|
bottom
Kimberly Rogers |
A militant anti-poverty group in Victoria calling itself ?The Kimberly Rogers Womyn?s Brigade? made headlines in the B.C. capital last week when a dozen or so of its members occupied the offices of Liberal MLA Jeff Bray.
A clash between riot-equipped police and 100 or so supporters of the Brigade resulted in the use of pepper spray and 16 arrests, the Victoria Times Colonist reported.
At a solidarity demonstration on Saturday, Victoria labour activist Carlos Flores, paid ?special tribute? to the 12-women who occupied the MLAs office.
?Every community, every neighbourhood, every municipality should have a. . .Kimberly Rogers Womyn?s Brigade.? he said.
The Liberal B.C. government of Gordon Campbell has embarked on a program of severe spending and tax cuts reminiscent of the Conservative Ontario government of Mike Harris.
Rogers? body was found in her Sudbury apartment last August, when she was several months into her sentence of house arrest for welfare fraud.
She was eight months pregnant. Her badly decomposed body was discovered during one of the most oppressive heatwaves Sudbury has been through in a decade.
Rogers pleaded guilty to accepting $13,000 in student loans while continuing to receive welfare benefits.
An inquest into her death, which is expected to draw national attention, will be held in Sudbury starting Oct. 7.
