Just Cause is an initiative to promote awareness in the justice community about the need for blood and blood products.

Chances are that at least one person among your family, friends, neighbours and colleagues has received blood or blood products. This September you’re encouraged to make a donation of blood in honour of that family member, friend, neighbour or colleague. Your donation will help up to three people, and will be appreciated by the recipients and by the people who love them.

You can donate blood at 777 William Avenue six days a week and at mobile clinics hosted throughout Manitoba. Clinic hours and information on donor eligibility are available online at www.bloodservices.ca and by phone at 1 888 2 DONATE.

When you donate blood this September, please add your name to the sign-in sheet at the clinic in support of the Just Cause blood drive. You can also ask the staff at Canadian Blood Services for an “In Honour” card to let someone you care about know that you’ve made a donation on their behalf.

(Manitoba Justice’s participation in Just Cause is being co-ordinated by Mary McGunigal of Civil Legal Services SOA. She can be reached at 945-2834 or mary.mcgunigal@gov.mb.ca.)

Transcript of Nikki Giovanni's Convocation address
Delivered April 17, 2007



Professor Nikki Giovanni speaks

at Convocation, April 17, 2007.
We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.