Personally, I have not faced much discrimination in life. But people around me have faced plenty of it and I have enough empathy and sense of community to care when others are discriminated against and to not find it boring. Instead, I see it as a call to action, to talk about and to do something to change it.

I had mixed feelings over the election in the US. I was so thrilled to see a black man elected President, demonstrating that many racial barriers have been overcome. But on the same historic day, several US states passed legislation that restricted the rights of gay people. Discrimination is still alive and we need to continue talking and fighting for change.

The story from 40 years ago of a mother being thrown off the bus for bottle feeding her baby is indeed ironic. I wonder would she have been given the same treatment if she had been breastfeeding discreetly?

The issue centered around social decorum and eating in public vehicles; it ultimately required a change in statutes to allow mothers to feed their babies on the bus.

This piece brings to mind the fact that many people still feel that breastfeeding should not be done in public establishments. They believe that mothers should go to the restroom to feed their babies. Would you eat in the bathroom?

Just like they did in Ottawa 40 years ago and again last weekend with Motrin, the groundswell of public debate can cause changes to made. Now the rights of mothers to breastfeed in any public place are protected in most places, save perhaps on some airplanes, here in North America.

The real irony is that in 1968, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were concerned with much more pressing issues of discrimination. It wasn’t about eating on a bus, but the mere right to sit inside that was at stake.

As they say, we have come a long way. With the election of President Obama and laws protecting a mother’s right to breastfeed in public.

Perhaps that is why someone found this piece boring. They have no real memories of discrimination of any kind.