Lesbian war resister Skyler James optimistic about refugee hearings

I have a new piece up on the Xtra.ca website, which is another piece that was sewn up with another story from another writer. The first half of the story is all Neil McKinnon's, while the second half, under the subtitle "Conservatives issue directive branding deserters as criminals" was entirely mine.

In all honesty, I'm a little disappointed by the way this rolled out because I wrote the story as a stand-alone a week ago, and it didn't make it up onto the site until today. As well, a few bits of context were cut, such as the fact that the directive states not only that desertion is a crime in Canada, but in many other countries as well. I had hoped that this could have gone up a week ago, the day after the directive was announced, so that we could have had a more timely article about it, which would have previewed Neil's piece this week. But, then again, these things aren't in my hands, and as a freelancer, I'm forced to deal with these things as they happen.