News and Analyses from BASICS Community News Service

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BASICS is newspaper put out by some revolutionaries in Toronto, with a popular and working class orientation.  Would definitely say it's worth checking out... material from the latest issue is going up online, here's a list of some of the pieces:

• OPERATION ‘PROFUNC’: Canada’s Plans to Intern 16,000 Communists, 50,000 Sympathizers - by Steve da Silva
• Development for whom? - by Marco Luciano, Migrante Ontario
• Open Letter - reject Barrick Gold's involvement in Latin American 'leadership' event - by Hassan Reyes, Barrio Nuevo
• Students and Communities Lose out on Access to Campus Space
• French Pension Reforms Imposed, Despite Largest Strikes in 40 Years - by Steve da Silva
• Play Review: Not By Our Tears by R. Cheran  - by Nayani Thiyagarajah

Also, be sure to listen to this important discussion on Radio Basics (November 22, 2010), about Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Canada Today, including a discussion with a victim of a recent Nazi home invasion. Anti-Racist Action member Jason Devine is interviewed about the home invasion he suffered at the hands of neo-Nazis on the night of Nov 7-8, while his four children and wife were in the house. The Nazi thugs beat him and another friend with bats, hammers, and other blunt weapons. Includes a discussion of fascist and anti-fascist politics across Canada and throughout history.


The hardcopy of Issue #24 is coming out in early December. To help with community distribution, please contact them at basics.canada@gmail.com.

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Toronto Anarchist Gathering April 4th!

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All you Torontonians, i hope to see you at the Toronto Anarchist Gathering this coming Saturday, April 4th - i will have a table with my latest titles, all at discounted prices.

Drop by and say hello - and don't feel shy to send me an email now if you'd like me to bring something special for you!

What follows is an edited Callout for the gathering:

****
Toronto Anarchist Gathering
Saturday, April 4th
10-5pm, Steelworkers Hall (25 Cecil St.)
****

click here for a map

It's time for us to gather. To meet up and to stare at each other. To bring together folks who secretly or not so secretly identify with anarchism. It will be a smorgasbord of anarchism-related groups and activities. It will be quick and dirty. And its happening soon.
We're writing to invite you to participate in a day of fun and anarchy at the Toronto Anarchist Gathering on April 4th. This will be a space for a wide variety of anarchist individuals, radical political groups, and anti-authoritarian organizations to come together, meet, greet, educate, skill-share, and hear about each other's projects and plans.

Hopefully this will be an opportunity to educate some people about what anarchism is all about, to encourage people to get involved with some of the organizing and organizations that exist in Toronto, and to provide a space for already-established groups to hear about each other's work.

There will be booktables, group tables, displays and workshops from 11-3. Then from 3-5 there will be a giant go-around so folks can hear what other people are up to.

The Toronto Anarchist Gathering is open to anyone who shares our anti-oppressive perspective against classism, sexism, racism, ableism, colonialism, homophobia, and other hierarchical attitudes, practices and crap.

For more information email torontoanarchistgathering@gmail.com

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[Toronto] The Power of People: Community Responses to Capitalism in Crisis

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Toronto comrades have organized an impressive evening of discussion about the period we have entered - i certainly hope the organizers will be taping or videotaping it to put it online:

The Power of People: Community Responses to Capitalism in Crisis

The current crisis of capitalism is much broader than the current credit crunch, plunging stock and housing markets. This crisis is about our ability to buy food, to afford housing and transit, find work, and access welfare and disability support money. Please join us for an evening of discussion and food. Come hear directly from a diverse panel of community organizers about their experiences and strategies of resistance.

FEATURING:

MAX REMIREAU
organizer with the Miami-based Take Back the Land, a grass-roots group that has been liberating public and foreclosed land and homes since 2006. They are asserting the right of the Black community to control the land upon which they live, work, play, learn and worship.

RICHARD St PIERRE
longtime Quebec activist and a member of the Internationalist Workers Group.

CYNTHIA PALMARIA
organizer with Migrante-Ontario (Toronto), an alliance of Filipino migrants’ organizations whose mission is to continuously uphold and defend the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants and their families, both at home and abroad.

JOHN CLARKE
organizer with OCAP (Toronto), a direct-action anti-poverty organization that mounts campaigns against regressive government policies as they affect poor and working people and provides direct-action advocacy for
individuals.

Hosted by: OCAP
(Ontario Coalition Against Poverty)
and GGAPSS
(Graduate Geography and Planning Students Society of UofT)


MEETING: 3pm; MEAL: 5pm
OISE - AUDITORIUM
252 Bloor St. West
(St. George Subway Station)

By Donation/PWYC

PUBLIC MEETING AND MEAL
SUNDAY MARCH 1ST

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The Global Economic Crisis: What are the Perspectives for the working class?

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Last week there was a public discussion with the left-communist Internationalist Perspective and the Internationalist Workers Group here in Montreal. This coming Saturday, the same kind of public discussion will be happening in Toronto.

Based on the version of this discussion that happened here last Saturday, what we can expect to see covered is an explanation of the financial crisis and description of its scope, and also of the inevitability of such crises under capitalism, ending necessarily in war and misery for the global proletariat. Particular attention was given to the role of "the left-wing of capital" in shoring up and rescuing the capitalist system during these crises.

Saturday January 17, 2009 7PM
OISE - 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto Room 2295

Contact PO Box 47643, Don Mills, ON, M3C 3S7
ip@internationalist-perspective.org

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[Toronto] Let Freedom Ring: Calendar launch - book launch - panel discussion - art show

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i'll be in toronto this weekend:

LET FREEDOM RING
Calendar launch - book launch - panel discussion - art show
Saturday, December 6

Join us for an evening of political prisoner support, prisoner justice, and prison abolition.

6pm - Panel discussion
9pm - Launch party, with bar, snacks, and local DJs
(art will be up all evening)

$5/$15 with calendar

Whippersnapper Gallery
587A College Street, Toronto, ON
_______________________________________________
PANEL DISCUSSION - 6pm

A discussion on political prisoners, prisoner justice and prison abolition, featuring local organizers and statements from U.S. and Canadian prisoners
_______________________________________________
CALENDAR LAUNCH

Certain Days 2009 Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar

42 gorgeous full-colour pages of art & writings, featuring DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), Philly's Pissed, Incite!, Sumoud, Alvaro Luna Hernandez, Inside Books Project, Laura Whitehorn, Robert Seth Hayes, David Gilbert, Herman Bell, Peter Collins, The Cuban Five, Victory Gardens, Common Ground, Native Youth Movement and more!

The calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between organizers in Montreal and Toronto, and three New York state Political Prisoners: Herman Bell, David Gilbert and Robert Seth Hayes.

http://www.certaindays.org
_______________________________________________
BOOK LAUNCH

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners / Edited by Matt Meyer

Let Freedom Ring presents a two-decade sweep of essays, analyses, histories, interviews, resolutions, People's Tribunal verdicts, and poems by and about the scores of U.S. political prisoners and the campaigns to safeguard their rights and secure their freedom.

www.kersplebedeb.com/letfreedomring.html
_______________________________________________
ART SHOW

"Voices from Outside: Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex"

In connection with the historic Critical Resistance 10th anniversary conference Just Seeds Artists Cooperative has produced a print portfolio project that they are donating to prisoner justice organizations across North America. The portfolio consists of 20 prints, each by a different artist, that all either critique the prison-industrial complex or address alternatives to incarceration. One copy of the portfolio is currently touring Canada. It will be exhibited at le Cagibi from November 10 to the 16 inclusive.

www.justseeds.org/blog/2008/10/justseeds_prison_portfolio_pro.html

* Calendar
* Printer-friendly version

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[Toronto] Nov. 8 Launch Party for Certain Days Calendar!

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The Certain Days Freedom for Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War Calendar is having an official launching party in Toronto in a couple of weeks... put it in your agenda now!

(And if you don't live in Toronto, feel free to email me for copies of the calendar - or go here for more about it!)

Toronto Launch Party!

Certain Days: 2008 Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar
Legacy of the Panthers


Friday, November 9, 2007
The Concord Cafe
937 Bloor Street West

$5 or $15 with a calendar

doors at 8 p.m.

with DJs
Nik Red (Afrotransit, CKLN 88.1FM)
Syrus Marcus Ware (Resistance on the Sounddial, CIUT 89.5FM)
Saira Chhibber (Superfly, CHRY 105.5FM)
Haque (Rose from Lal!)

Brought to you by Certain Days, CKLN, and the Prison Book Access Project

BRING BOOKS for the Prison Book Access Project: dictionaries, language books, general fiction, and popular/pulp fiction. Books should be softcover, newer than 1995 and in good condition.

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[Toronto] October 18 Launch for Upping The Anti #5

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Come Celebrate the Launch of Issue Five of
Upping The Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action

Thursday October 18 8:00pm
Smiling Buddha Bar
961 College Street, West of Dovercourt

DJs Miss Ruckus & Big Eva Edna
Raffles and More

Admission $7 with Journal, $5 without


[[[ISSUE FIVE CONTENTS]]]

- Interviews with Sunera Thobani, Gord Hill, and Michael Hardt

- Articles on the Alberta Tar Sands, The Canadian Federation of Students, and the Resistance to the 'War on Terror'

- Roundtable on Political Prisoner Struggles with Ashanti Alston, Robert 'Seth' Hayes, Susan Tipograph, and Sara Falconer

- Reviews and More...


[[[THE WORD ON THE STREET]]]

“Upping the Anti ... positions itself within contemporary social justice struggles, serving as a catalyst and forum for debate ... The journal’s commitment to ‘theory and action’ is demonstrated through its focus on building conceptual tools, its poaching of analytic devices from a multiplicity of academic disciplines and its attention to questions of accessibility.” - The Dominion

"Upping the Anti is an exciting new journal printed in Canada that does one of my favorite things: they argue. ... Putting the toughest arguments to print means we move forward, or at least open the door." - Red Flag Magazine

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Some Initial Thoughts on Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of 'A Few Bad Apples'

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Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of ‘a Few Bad Apples’
by Carol Tator and Frances Henry. Published by University of Toronto Press, 2006

In their book Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of ‘a Few Bad Apples’, authors Carol Tator and Frances Henry – and contributors Charles C. Smith and Maureen Brown – examine four related aspects of racist policing practices. These are (1) how people talk about racist policing; (2) how people talk about “race” and crime; (3) what makes police so prone to racism; and (4) the lived experience of racist policing, both anecdotal and also as it plays out by the numbers, from the perspective of its victims.

Early on, Tator and Henry set themselves an ambitious, and important, goal. In their words, “To describe individual police as racist, or even to blame general systems of social control in society, is to evade the real question: Why does racial profiling occur in modern, industrialized nation-states such as Canada?” (p. 17)

Unfortunately, the method by which they hope to find an answer, and which really sets the tone of the whole book, is a weak one: “discursive analysis”. This involves looking at the ways in which journalists and government and police officials talk (or don’t talk) about crime and race and racism and the stories they tell about Black people and the police, and how all these “narratives” flow from different institutions throughout canadian society, holding up systems of power and privilege for the “elite”. Tator and Henry’s challenge to this power and privilege comes in the form of picking apart bits of these “narratives”, which is what i guess they would call “deconstruction”.

Discourse (what gets said) exists intertwined with ideology (what gets thought), and together these are said to constitute the wellspring of racism in canadian society. As the authors state in their introduction, “Racialization begins with ideology, which is then filtered through the everyday micro-interactions and discourses of police, security officers, judges, journalists and editors, educators, politicians, and bureaucrats, among others.” (pp.8-9)

This kind of argument has a certain appeal to people who do not want to think about political power or radical social change, as it confines the problem to the realm of speech and ideas, which are more comfortable things to challenge than class or the State.

Along with such fuzziness is an unfortunate masculine bias throughout this book, and this regardless of the fact that both Tator and Henry are women. In a quick footnote they state:

Because racial profiling is directed primarily against men, we exclude from our study discussion of racialized female body imagery. However, we recognize the importance of such imagery, especially in regard to the Black women as sexual object in history and in contemporary society. We also note that there are issues surrounding Black homosexual men, although we do not deal with this added dimension

(p. 23, Racial Profiling in Canada)

In this they are simply keeping in step with the overwhelming majority of researchers and activists who study police violence, almost all of whom describe this problem as one which almost only affects men. It is ironic that those who are so able to deconstruct statistics to show police racism and not crime is the cause of so many Black men being stopped, arrested and imprisoned, remain largely uninterested in why Black (and other) women remain “off the books”.

As has been excruciatingly detailed in the recently published book The Color of Violence (South End Press 2006 - soon available from Kersplebedeb), women of colour experience heightened police violence and State repression in a variety of ways that male-dominated movements and methodologies do not see. From being raped by police to having one’s children taken by social services to being physically attacked for defying gender norms and “looking like a man” to being ignored or criminalized when in need of help, women experience a variety of forms of State violence which men are often happy to ignore. This is all the more true for working class women. Especially so for working class women of colour...

While i will examine the problems and implications of “discursive analysis” as well as these sexist distortions in future postings, at the moment i want to focus on where Racial Profiling in Canada rises above its weaknesses and provides information useful to anti-racists in canada.


Learning from the Black Community

From an activist perspective, the two best chapters in this book were those that actually described the reality of racial profiling – and these sections were written by contributing authors Charles C. Smith and Maureen Brown.

It is worth noting that these chapters are each based heavily on studies that Smith and Brown were commissioned to write for the African Canadian Community Coalition on Racial Profiling in 2004.

You see, there were a series of revelations regarding racial profiling that appeared in the Toronto Star starting in late 2002, and these created a sense of crisis in “community-police relations”. The “best parts” of this book were written at the behest of community groups responding to this widespread community hostility to the police. Both of these original reports – In Their Own Voices by Brown and Crisis, Conflict and Accountability by Smith – are available in PDF format online, yet one is unlikely to come across them unless you actually know what to look for, whereas Tator and Henry’s book is available in stores across Canada.

(There is a lesson here. Much of what is most worthwhile in this book was in fact written separately as a result of political developments within the affected communities themselves. However these parts “enter the record”, and certainly i only encountered them, within this context of this academic post-structuralish post-modernish book... not that this is in any way Tator or Henry’s fault – in fact, it says something good about them that they chose to include these pieces – but you know: there most definitely is a lesson here...)

Brown’s In Their Own Voices contains insights and experiences which are essential to understanding the effects of constant racist harassment, documenting the experiences of Black people in Toronto. These testimonies end up giving meaning to any discussion of racial profiling - but for the purposes of this review, and of providing a statistical glimpse at the reality of racial profiling in Canada, Smith’s work is the place to start...


Racist Policing in Canada: Some Numbers

Chapter three (pages 55-91) by Charles C. Smith is entitled “Racial Profiling in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom”, and it aims to provide an overview of statistics and incidents in these three countries. As previously mentioned, it is largely drawn from a study Smith wrote for the African Canadian Community Coalition on Racial Profiling in 2004 – specifically from pages 27-75, the rest of the original report being devoted to official sounding recommendations for remedying matters. (Tator and Henry did well to cut these out.)

What emerges right away from Smith’s work is that all three countries have roughly the same thing going on: Black people getting harassed, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and killed by the police, and in numbers far greater than their actual proportion of the population.

For instance, in the united states:

• In opinion polling, 72 per cent of African Americans between eighteen and thirty-four said they had been stopped by the police because of their race; 37 per cent reported having been stopped more than once, and 15 per cent more than ten times.
• Between January 1995 and June 1996, in Maryland, 732 individuals were detained and searched by the state police. Of these, 75 per cent were African American and 5 per cent were Latino (Morris 2001, 80).
• In Philadelphia, African Americans comprise 79 per cent of those stopped and searched even though they are only 42 per cent of the population;
• In Illinois, Latinos comprise 41 per cent of those stopped and searched even though they are less than 1 per cent of the driving population. Furthermore, one in every 75 African Americans is stopped compared to one in every 163 Whites (Kearney 2001, 62-80)
• In New York City, a review of 175,000 cases indicated that African Americans were stopped six times more often than Whites. Also, even though they were only 25 per cent of the city’s population, African Americans accounted for 50 per cent of all individuals stopped (Bobb 2002, 6).

(pages 59-60, Racial Profiling in Canada)

While in the united kingdom:

The 2001-2002 West Midlands statistics comparing resident populations tell us that 5 Whites, 41 individuals of African descent, and 17 Asians were stopped/searched per 1,000 of each of their cohorts. [...] This is consistent with the national average of racial disproportionality across England and Wales: 13 Whites were stopped per 1,000 of their population, whereas people of African descent were stopped 106 times per 1,000 and Asians 35 per 1,000. Furthermore, stops/searches under CJPOA [the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act – st] indicate that per 1,000 population, 1 White is stopped/searched; 26 individuals of African descent and 7 Asians are similarly treated. In England and Wales this compares respectively as 0,5 per 1,000 for Whites, 5.5 per 1,000 for people of African descent, and 3.5 per cent per 1,000 for Asians; in other words, people of African descent are ‘28 times more likely to be searched and Asian people 18 times more likely to be searched in comparison with their White counterparts’ (Bowling 2003, 9-10)

[...]

Furthermore, people of African descent [in Britain] were subject to:

• more multiple vehicle stops – 14 per cent were stopped five or more times compared to 4 per cent for Whites, 6 per cent of Indians, and 2.7 per cent of Pakistani/Bangladeshis;
• more multiple pedestrian/foot stops – 18 per cent were stopped five or more times compared to 12 per cent of Whites, 10 per cent of Indians, and no Pakistani/Bangladeshis; and
• increased traffic stops/searches – 9 per cent of White people were searched compared to 34 per cent of people of African descent and 14 per cent of Asians (Clancy et al. 2001, 59-71)

(pages 69-70, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Even legislation crafted to target disproportionately white forms of illegal activity ends up being applied unevenly, with an anti-Black bias. So “Afro-Caribbean people are 27 times more likely than White people to be stopped and searched under a special police power designed to tackle ravers and football hooligans” (“Black People 27 Times More Likely to be Stopped,” by Vikram Dodd, Guardian Unlimited 21 April 2003 – quoted on page 68) and “Stops under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1989, which was ‘designed specifically to combat terrorism from the Provisional Irish Republican Army,’ indicate that in 1996-7, 11 per cent of the 43,700 stops in England and Wales were of individuals from subordinated racialized groups. In 1997-8, 7 per cent of those stopped were people of African descent.” (p. 69)

As Smith points out, the UK is “94.1 per cent White, 1.8 per cent people of African descent, 2.9 per cent South Asian and 1.2 per cent Chinese,” which as he says, makes the whole situation “mind boggling.” (p. 71)

By examining the “hit rates” - the number of people who, once stopped, are found to actually by committing a crime - Smith shows that the victims of racial profiling are in fact less likely than others to be committing the crimes they are investigated for. If you think about it for a moment this makes sense: if something other than actual likelihood of having broken the law is motivating police checks, then the total number of those who suffer these checks is likely to include a higher and higher proportion of people “doing nothing wrong”.

Unfortunately, Smith offers little in the way of explanation of these facts, or analysis of the societies within which such racist policing occurs – other than indicating (somewhat tautologically) that they sure are racist. Somewhat strangely, he describes canada, the united states and the united kingdom as being three countries with “vastly different historical developments”. This seems particularly odd from a canadian perspective, seeing as the history of repression and social control here since 1763 is largely a byproduct of american and british developments... but i guess once imperialism and colonialism are wiped from the blackboard, these three imperialist and colonialist countries do suddenly look quite different. This weakness is exacerbated by the rest of Tator and Henry’s book, i’m afraid, but more on that another day...

For obvious reasons i found what Smith had to say about canada to be the most interesting, and it is also certainly the most detailed and historically grounded. That said, a note of caution is in order: Smith’s original study was commissioned for an organization in Ontario, responding to a crisis in “police-community relations” in Toronto. As such it was really just about anti-Black racism in that province. When transplanted into this book on racial profiling “in Canada”, the author was obviously asked to add sections on other realities, but he did so with only mixed results. Whereas he does include some detailed – and harrowing – examples of racist treatment of Indigenous people west of Ontario, that’s about it. A failed attempt to deal with Quebec should have been rejected by the editors, as it seems solely informed by a few superficial articles in the Montreal Gazette and Montreal Mirror, failing to go beyond the threadbare and anecdotal. Nothing at all is provided about Atlantic Canada, Northern Canada, or the experiences of other oppressed communities throughout the country.


Anti-Black Racism in Ontario

Smith begins by refuting the argument that racist policing in Canada is some kind of recent phenomenon. This is of some consequence, as he is trying to argue that despite the major changes in the country’s demographic makeup over the past forty years, present day racism is largely a continuation of past practice.

In regards to Black people in Canada, he reminds us that:

People of African descent have a long history in Canada, one which has been marked by racist laws that have severely impeded African Canadians’ advancement. In early Canada, the enslavement of Blacks was legal, and even after slavery was abolished here, the law forbade Blacks to own land. This included those Blacks who had come to Canada with the British Loyalists during and after the American Revolution. Subsequently, laws were passed so that schools and residential areas were segregated.

(p. 72, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Smith draws on the work of Clayton James Mosher (Discrimination and Denial: Systemic Racism in Ontario’s Legal and Criminal Justice Systems, 1892-1961, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1998), providing the following evidence of racist policing throughout Ontario’s history:

• In six cities in Ontario, including Windsor, Hamilton, London, and Toronto, 12 per cent of all public order charges were against African Canadians, 11 per cent against Aboriginal people, and 2 per cent against Chinese. This was vastly disproportionate to their actual numbers in these cities. Of those charged, African Canadians and Aboriginal people were the most likely to be imprisoned.
• In their efforts to control public order offences, the police in these Ontario cities tended to focus on African Canadians. This led to the use of ‘disorderly-house and other public-morals laws ... to control Black populations.’
• African Canadians were required to appear in court more often than other groups to defend themselves against charges of property crime, and they received longer sentences when convicted.
• African Canadians found in areas where property offences had occurred ‘were often identified as suspects, and the courts often found them guilty on the basis of such limited evidence.’
• The mean sentence length for African Canadians for property offences was 10.51 months, compared to 8.33 for Aboriginal people and 6.26 for Whites.

(p. 73, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Now while i found the above to be “of interest”, i question whether this kind of statistical approach tailored towards proving discrimination is really the most appropriate way to discuss anti-Black racism from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. While racism does run like a thread through Canadian history, adopting such a narrow statistical approach to “race” shorn of class or nation can only be misleading. It leaves unspoken who these Black, Chinese and Aboriginal people were, what was their relationship to the State and capitalism, what were their political and economic trajectories... instead such a statistical account simply gives evidence that racism existed in 19th and 20th century canada, not an especially earth-shaking revelation...

Really, this all begs the question as to why discrimination exists, and who profits from it. As we shall see, some very incomplete and unconvincing answers to these questions are provided elsewhere in this book, Smith’s work clearly being used to contextualize and ground Tator and Henry’s “racist discourse/ideology” argument. So perhaps it is too much that we look for explanations here – instead, let’s stick to the numbers.

Smith draws on recent studies by University of Toronto scholars Phillip Stenning and Scot Wortley, and from the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System as well as the radical grassroots Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, to show that the tradition of anti-Black discrimination carries on into the present.

Quoting Stenning’s 1994 study Police Use of Force and Violence against Members of Visible Minority Groups in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Police and Race Relations) he shows that:

• In responding to ‘minor offenses,’ police drew their weapons when arresting African Canadians more often than with other groups (25 per cent of the time, compared to 6.7 per cent for Whites and 6.7 per cent for ‘others’)
• Rates of police use of force – at the time of arrest as well as after arrest – were significantly higher for African Canadians (33.3 and 31.4 per cent respectively, compared to 25.0 and 25.0 per cent for Whites and 30.8 and 23.1 per cent for ‘others’) (ibid.m II.9-II.24)

(p.74, Racial Profiling in Canada)

i think it is worth mentioning the other finding from Stenning’s study, which made it into Smith’s report to the ACCCRP but not this book:

• [African Canadians were ] sworn at more often by police (58.8% v. 38.3% for Whites and 43.6% for Others) and subject to racial epithets more often as well with 31.4% indicating they had been subject to racially derogatory remarks from police officers v. 5% for Others

(p. 68, Crisis Conflict and Accountability)

Certainly these findings explain much.

The already predictably tragic consequences of this police violence are aggravated by the fact that Black people are more likely to find themselves stopped by police in the first place. Drawing on findings in Wortley’s 1997 paper “The Usual Suspects: Race, Police Stops and Perceptions of Criminal Injustice” (presented to the 48th Annual Conference of the American Society of Criminology in Chicago), Smith tells us that:

• 28.1 per cent of African Canadians reported having been stopped by police, compared to 18.2 per cent of Whites and 14.6 per cent of Chinese Canadians;
• 16.8 per cent of African Canadians reported having been stopped twice by police, compared to 8.0 per cent of Whites and 4.7 per cent of Chinese Canadians;
• 11.7 per cent of African Canadians reported having been stopped by police ‘unfairly’ in the past two years, compared to 2.1 per cent of Whites and 2.2 per cent of Chinese Canadians;
• 42.7 per cent of African-Canadian males reported having been stopped by the police in the past two years, compared to 22.1 per cent of Whites and Asians; and
• 28.7 per cent of African-Canadian males reported having been stopped twice in the past two years, compared to 9.9 per cent of Whites and Asians (ibid., 18-19)

(p. 75, Racial Profiling in Canada)

So Black people are twice as likely as whites to be stopped by police. Once they are stopped, they are more likely to be subjected to (often racist) insults. When these situations degenerate into an arrest, Black people are more likely to be subject to violence, and with tragic concsequences, they are four times more likely to find the cops drawing their guns on them.

Is it any wonder that so many Black people end up getting shot by police? And given all the racism leading up to the shot being fired, is the classic excuse that “It just went off by accident” really enough to say that race is not a factor in these police murders?

Even though the majority of police stops may not end in death, the sorting of people into different racial streams continues in many different ways. Drawing on findings of the 1995 Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System, Smith shows that:

• The police stop African Canadians (especially African-Canadian males) twice as often as Whites.
• Whites are less likely to be detained before trial than African Canadians (23 per cent against 30 per cent), especially for drug charges (10 per cent against 31 per cent).
• Between 1986-7 and 1992-3, incarcerations of African Canadians for drug trafficking rose by 1,164 per cent, from 25 per cent of 524 admissions to 60 per cent of 2,616 admissions. This compares to a 151 per cent increase for Whites during the same period.
• With regard to drug charges, White accused were released more often than African Canadians. Also, African Canadians were denied bail more often, and the conviction rate was higher for African Canadian men: 69 per cent, compared to 57 per cent for White men.
• In the six years leading up to 1993, the African-Canadian population of Ontario increased by 36 per cent; over the same period, the number of African-Canadian prisoners admitted to Ontario correctional facilities increased by 204 per cent! The numbers of White prisoners admitted increased by only 23 per cent.

(p.75, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Finally, in regards to Black people in Ontario, Smith reminds us of the findings of the Toronto Star’s 2002 series on racial profiling:

• Although only 8.1 per cent of Toronto’s populations African Canadians accounted for 34 per cent of drivers charged with out-of-sight violations.
• African Canadians were overrepresented by 4.2 times for out-of-sight driving offences, by 3.8 times for cocaine possession and by 2.1 times for simple drug possession.
• Though Whites comprised 63.8 per cent of those charged with simple drug possession (more than ten thousand cases), Whites were released at the scene 76.5 per cent of the time, compared to 61.8 per cent for African Canadians.
• After being taken into custody, African Canadians were held for court appearance 15.5 per cent of the time, compared to 7.3 per cent for Whites;
• For cocaine possession (more than two thousand cases), 41.5 per cent of African Canadians were released at the scene, compared to 63 per cent of Whites.
• African Canadians comprised 27 per cent of all violent charges, even though they were only 8.1 per cent of the population.
• In 51 Division [in Toronto - st], 40 per cent of African Canadians charged with one count of cocaine possession were held for bail hearings, compared to 20 per cent of Whites.
• African Canadians were overrepresented at police divisions with low African-Canadian populations. For example, they were four times overrepresented in out-of-sight traffic offences at 42 Division and seven times overrepresented at 52 Division [in Toronto - st], even though these divisions do not have significant number of African-Canadian residents. These data supported the African-Canadian community’s anecdotes that they were being singled out by police (Rankin et al. 2002).

(p. 90, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Such a plethora of numbers and statistics can be alienating and discouraging to read, both because of the reality they represent and because most of us find long lists of numbers somewhat mind-numbing. Truth be told, they do a poor job at conveying any of the real life results of racist police harassment (for that, see Brown’s In Their Own Voices!). Yet i found this section to be so useful, and worth quoting at such length, because these figures clearly establish two of the characteristics of racial profiling: that it is a mass phenomenon affecting most if not all members of targeted communities, and that it is diffuse, occurring everywhere and anywhere and yet much more often on the level of (for instance) harassment and intimidation than murder. Furthermore, by establishing this context empirically Smith helps us to counter the deniability of almost any single incident of racial profiling when it is viewed in isolation.


Racist Treatment of Indigenous People in the Canadian Prairies and West Coast

The colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line, the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations. In the colonies it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression.

- Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

The statistics and experiences of Indigenous people in Canada are harrowing. As i mentioned above, this section of Smith’s chapter was obviously written separately from his work for the ACCCRP, and for someone like me who is ignorant and not from “out west”, it seemed a good overview of how the Indigenous relationship to colonial police plays out, in terms of harassment, imprisonment and murder.

For instance:

According to Corrections Canada’s own statistics, Aboriginal adults are incarcerated over six times more often than anyone else. A one-day ‘snapshot’ of all offenders in this country’s correctional facilities by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics conducted in 1996 (see Hylton 2002, 140) showed that although Aboriginal people are 2 per cent of the adult population of Canada, they account for 17 per cent of federal inmates. In Saskatchewan, Aboriginal people were being incarcerated at almost ten times the overall provincial rate; they were 76 per cent of that province’s inmate population. In Manitoba, 61 per cent of inmates were Aboriginals; in Alberta, it was over 35 per cent. Another shocking statistic: in Saskatchewan, 70 per cent of sixteen-year-old Treaty Indian males can expect to be incarcerated at least once by the time they reach twenty.

(p. 81, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Understand that: in Saskatchewan seven out of ten sixteen year old Indigenous guys will be imprisoned at some point before their twentieth birthday. In a province where 25% of the youth are Indigenous, this is a particularly horrendous level of racist mass incarceration, of a kind more commonly associated with the united states than with canada...

(For more on the nature of colonial imprisonment in canada, i suggest readers check out Prison Justice dot ca’s Facts and Stats page)

Of course, this kind of mass incarceration is one result of a highly focused sort of police repression. Another result of this highly focused repression is plain old murder, as white police officers partake in the time honored canadian tradition of killing Indigenous people just for the hell of it. Smith continues:

In recent years, several Aboriginal men have been found frozen to death in Saskatoon following police interventions. In November 1990 the body of an Aboriginal teenager named Neil Stonechild was found frozen in a field just outside the city. The injuries and marks on his body were probably caused by handcuffs. A friend reported that he last saw Stonechild bleeding in the back of a police car, screaming that the police were going to kill him. [...]

In January 2000, the body of Lloyd Dusthom was found frozen to death outside his locked apartment after he had been seen in police custody. That same month, the frozen body of Rodney Naistus was found on the outskirts of Saskatoon near the Queen Elizabeth II Power Station. Five days later, Lawrence Wegner, a social work student, was last seen alive banging on the doors of relatives’ homes in Saskatoon. Later testimony would indicate that he ran away when the police were called. His frozen body was later found near the power plant. After Wegner’s body was found, another man, Darrell Night, came forward. Night reported that he had been dropped off by the police south of the city on a bitterly cold night but had managed to get to a nearby power station for help. These deadly excursions became known among Aboriginal people as ‘starlight tours.’ Two Saskatoon police officers were found guilty of unlawful confinement in the Night case and were sentenced to eight months in jail (ibid.).

(pp. 81-2, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Nor are such police murders of Indigenous people confined to Saskatchewan:

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2005, Aboriginal leaders demanded answers after the police shot and killed two young aboriginal men within a few weeks of each other. In January in Norway House, an RCMP officer shot and killed Dennis St-Paul after trying to arrest him for parole violations. The following month, Matthew Dumas, eighteen, was fatally injured when the police fired two shots during what they referred to as a ‘scuffle’.

(p. 83, Racial Profiling in Canada)

Similarly:

In Vancouver, a public inquiry was called by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs as well as the B.C. Police Complaints Commissioner in the matter of Frank Paul, who froze to death in 1998 after police dumped him in an alley. In 2000, the Vancouver Police department suspended one of the officers involved in Paul’s death for two days; another officer received a one-day suspension. When rumours began to circulate that [Vancouver] police were dumping ‘drunks and troublemakers’ in remote areas, police chief Jamie Graham defended the provision in the Criminal Code that allows police to remove citizens to other parts of the city for breaching the peace: ‘It’s a good law. It’s a good tool for police officers to quell those disturbances that require people to be removed from certain areas’ (Carmichael 2004)

(p. 83, Racial Profiling in Canada)

All of which is horrific, and Smith provides activists with some valuable information here; and yet... the great levels of structural violence we’re talking remain unexplained. Or should i say, unconvincingly explained. A section on “Public Perception and the Media” and a gushingly naive section on the court system seem to suggest that for Black and Indigenous people, it is simply white people’s racism that it to blame for the discrimination they suffer. Not racism as in “capitalism in inherently racist” or “the State is white supremacist”, but structural racism reinterpreted in its most timid and narrow sense, namely that the courts and law enforcement agencies are staffed by prejudiced white folks, and changing this (partly through education and mainly through hiring and promoting more people from racialized communities) is the best way to end racist policing. This is Tator and Henry’s argument throughout the book.

But colonialism and white supremacy are more than just irrational grudges or malicious prejudice, they’re actual ways of building an economy and government. What i mean is: “discrimination” is an essential feature of capitalism. Which is why you can’t have an unracist capitalism, even though there are no rules as to which group might end up suffering racist subjugation. As radical intellectual J. Sakai has pointed out, “‘Class’ without race in North America is an abstraction. And vice-versa. Those who do not get this are always just led around by the nose, the manipulated without a clue - and it is true that many don't want any more from life than this.”

The quote by Frantz Fanon that began this section is not from anywhere in Smith’s chapter, or elsewhere in this book. (The two times the revolutionary theorist gets mentioned, it’s all about that “White gaze”, making him sound like a pomo academic.) For colonialism remains the elephant in the room here... clearly present, but we’re not gonna talk about it...

Perhaps this is why, unlike his discussion of anti-Black racism, Smith’s section on anti-Indigenous racism lacks any attempt to provide historical background. This makes perfect sense, for to do so would be to strain the meaning of “racism” beyond recognition, as what we are talking about is centuries of national oppression and military conflict, woven together in a unique yet unmistakable tapestry of genocide. That this resulted in, and was reinforced by, racism, certainly does not mean that it can be reduced to racism alone!

After all, it wasn’t “racial profiling” that all the children in residential schools were Indigenous, any more than it was “racial profiling” that only Indigenous people were subject to pass laws in Canada (these were the laws South Africa copied for its apartheid system). It was a national thing, a military thing... police and prisons being important weapons in the ongoing colonization of the First Nations. Not colonization as a consequence of “discourse”, but of policy. And not of policy passively reflecting ideology or “bad ideas”, but policy with a clear and conscious goal: the destruction of Indigenous sovereignty and the genocidal reduction of Indigenous peoples to a tiny minority within the Canadian mosaic.

The oppression of Black people in North America also has a national dimension, but it is true that within Canada this is far less obvious than in the united states. Certainly the neo-colonial immigration policies of the past forty years have created new (though not better) realities for the historically oppressed Black communities in this country, with a majority of Black people being first or second generation immigrants. While racist discourse and ideology – and policing! – certainly play an important part in ensuring that these immigrant communities will be oppressed, the racial segmentation of the canadian economy seems to me to be a central piece of the puzzle.

Specifically: since Canada abandoned it’s “whites first” immigration policies in 1967, there has been an increasing trend to reconfiguring the country’s class structure along new racist lines. Proletarian immigrant communities from Third World countries are being formed and forced into the areas of greatest exploitation. At times this may represent a continuation of the exploitation suffered by Canada’s historic Black communities – i don’t know this, but i’m open to believing it – but in other instances (i.e. the Filipino and Arab communities) these people are being forced into new proletarian communities with specific characteristics and trajectories of their own.

This is important, as i would argue that these colonial and class imperatives – the war on Indigenous sovereignty and the proletarianization of Third World immigrant communities – form the not-so-hidden foundations upon which the new 21st century canadian capitalism is being built. As such, they also form the backstory to canadian racism today, the missing element explaining the connection between people across this country who suffer from “targeted policing”.

So the long history of canadian racism is not insignificant, but on its own it falls short of explaining the ongoing reality of racist oppression. Rather than simply reflecting grand-dad’s bigotry, canadian racist ideology is an expression of today’s racist canadian class structure, and the ongoing canadian dependence on colonialism.

Is this nitpicking?

Well, it all depends.

Given that a central feature of racial profiling is its deniability, the mere act of documenting all this crap is certainly worthwhile. So regardless of possible political differences, i obviously find Smith’s work worth discussing – and recommending as a source of information.

In a sense am not sure how much of what i am getting at is a fair judgment. i mean Smith only wrote one chapter of this book, and not every chapter of a book has to contain both facts and explanation. So perhaps i am holding him unfairly responsibly for Tator and Henry's exclusive reliance on “discursive analysis” and the like... but whoever is to blame it must be said that by not engaging in any kind of economic or political analysis of the communities which suffer racist abuse - or the classes which profit from this violence - Smith (or perhaps just Tator and Henry) incorrectly cuts the world of speech and ideas loose from the realities of class and power.

Admittedly, the “semi-autonomous nature of ideology” is not clearcut, or easy to stuff in a box. It would be foolish to mimic certain ultraleftists and ascribe any and all racist abuses to economic imperatives. Furthermore, ideology and discourse can have real effects, including material effects. Given the petit bourgeois class origin of many immigrants – who find themselves once in Canada working in the shittiest working class jobs, often part-time, casual or under the table, hardly ever unionized – one could make the argument that discourse and ideology, combined with the racist policing practices they encourage, together push immigrant communities into a proletarian position. Perhaps.

However, even though that may be one part of what is going on, it would be a mistake to not see that Canadian immigration policies are based on the need for certain kinds of labour which most Canadians are privileged enough to be able to refuse.

Let me give one galling example.

Over the past twenty years over 100,000 women from the Philippines have come to Canada under this country’s Live-In Caregiver Program. These women, many of whom have trained professionally as nurses in the Philippines, must work for 24 months of their first three years in Canada as “live-in caregivers”, meaning that they must reside in their employers’ home during this period. The work they do can fall under many categories: childcare, healthcare, homecare and more. While they receive a wage calculated on a 40-hour workweek, given that they are always “at work” they suffer from all the joys of highly flexibilized labour. Plus all the joys of being a highly gendered and atomized workforce, with employer-employee relations marked by inconsistency and paternalism. Needless to say, sexual and other forms of abuse are prevalent.

In previous generations, the work that these women do would have mainly been done by Canadian women, either paid or unpaid, as wives, daughters, mothers, nuns or "domestics". But changes in gender relations and in the Canadian economy have created a new international “demand”, just as capitalist development of the Philippines countryside pushes people off the land and creates a convenient "supply".

Once these women have worked all of their required (indentured) months, most of them join the Filipino working class communities that are growing in major cities across Canada.

So certain processes are maintaining Third World women, even those with university degrees, in a subservient relationship to First World citizens. How is this “proletarization” being accomplished? are Filipinos being proletarianized as a result of “discourse”? or “ideology”? or the Philippines’ Labour Export Program combined with Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program? or a bit of all the above?

To return to the point at hand: across Canada the past years have seen a number of cases of anti-Filipino violence, including racial profiling. In one particularly horrific incident, on May 24th 2004 Toronto undercover police shot and killed Jeffrey Reodica, a Filipino teenager who at the time was running away from them.

Chances are Reodica was killed because he was Filipino - but my point is that the reason why being Filipino might be enough to get you shot by the police is because the Filipino community is at this point working class – and one role of the police is to discipline, control and intimidate working class people, especially working class youth. That some people get killed as a result of this process is one of those things that the white middle class can live with.

So once and again: am i nitpicking?

How we understand the relationship between racism and capitalism will have important long-term consequences as to what kind of political work we engage in, who we work with and what we work for. This is true whether we are organizing around police brutality or so-called hate groups or gentrification... or anything else for that matter!

In regards to racial profiling, concentrating on the interplay between racist policing, colonialism and Canada’s racialized class structure provides us with an entirely different set of solutions, and alliances, than a view which confines racism to the personal realm of malice, speech and ideas.

Firstly, it lays the basis for an alliance with other people who are victimized by the police, as class runs like a thread (or chain) connecting and revealing the various different groups who are targeted for such abuse. Without forgetting the fact that racism and national oppression are important factors in many cases of police abuse, there are sections of the white working class which also suffer targeted police violence. Not only semi-criminalized groups like prostitutes and street people, but also those sections which for whatever reason have reaped scant benefit from the general imperialist bonanza. These sections are likely the least committed to the pro-capitalist politics which infect most white society - including most white workers - and as such constitute a potential base of support for our politics. (A base that those of us who are white should pay particular attention to...)

Secondly, while warding off the lure of easy (and doomed) solutions like electing social-democrats or hiring Black cops, integrating class into our analysis can lead us to the most reliable avenue of social change, namely mobilization of the oppressed in their own interests and on their own behalf. Rhetoric aside, the ability to relate one’s work around a particular issue (i.e. racist treatment by police) to other parts of your life (i.e. economic discrimination and super-exploitation) is a skill that strengthens one’s position on all fronts. Middle class people might object that adding class to the mix makes things too complicated, or constitutes too big a challenge – but for working class people, for the vast majority of people who suffer at the hands of the police, class already is part of the mix. Acknowledging this can only help us actually take up the work that needs be done.

Finally, and conversely, anti-police work will sharpen our class analysis, as the reality of police oppression can help bring people’s actual position (and their communities’ position) within capitalism into greater focus than simple income analysis. It also deepens our ability to understand colonialism, as the police remain the frontline occupation troops on Indigenous land across this continent.

**********

This has been a very long review – and of just one chapter! My thoughts on this matter are not crystal clear, but i’m working on it – i'm hoping some of you will help me out and let me know where you think i’ve gone wrong...

i have obviously taken the liberty to use Smith’s work to broach several subjects well beyond the scope of Tator and Henry’s book. If i have been somewhat critical, it is because this question is one which is important, and prone to easy confusion, but i should point out that “on its own merits” as a “progressive” study included in a fairly liberal anti-racist book, Smith’s work remains an ok contribution.

Though remember – you can read much of it online for free!

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[Toronto] May 1st: Upping the Anti #4 Launch Party

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*Please forward*

Upping the Anti Launch Party

*Celebrate MayDay with Upping the Anti! *

Join us to celebrate the release of Issue 4!
on Tuesday May 1
8:30PM
Smiling Buddha Bar
961 College Street (west of Dovercourt)

Admission: $7 with journal ($5 without journal)

• Premier viewing of Shway Shway Video Excerpts from a Trip to Lebanon by Sarolta Camp.
• With DJing from DJ Miss Ruckus and Big Eva Edna
• And Speaker: Robin Isaacs: Robin Issacs is a long-time queer anarchist who has lived in Toronto for the past 30 years. He has been involved with activists projects such as the anarchist publication 'Kick It Over," the 1988 "Survival Gathering" in Toronto, Anti-Racist Action, Queer Nation, AIDS ACTION NOW!, Limp Fist and the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists.

Come and celebrate the launch of the highly anticipated fourth issue of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.

The Contents of Issue 4 include:

• Letters to the Editor
• Editorial: Becoming the Enemy They Deserve - Organizational Questions for a New “New Left”
• Interview with Robin Isaacs: Living my Life
• Interview with John Holloway: Against and Beyond the State
• Interview with Dan Irving: Trans Politics and Anti-Capitalism
• Richard Day: Walking Away from Failure
• Carmelle Wolfson & Lesley Wood: Two Dispatches from the World Social Forum
• Tom Keefer: Six Nations and the Politics of Solidarity
• Prison Abolition Roundtable with Peter Collins, Emily Aspinwall, Filis Iverson, Sonia Marino, Julia Sudbury, Kim Pate, and Patricia Monture
• Vancouver Housing Roundtable with Kat Norris, Jill Chettiar, Anna Hunter, and Cecily Nicholson
• Book Review by Erica Meiners on Angela Davis, Julia Sudbury, and Karlene Faith
• Book Review by Kimiko Inouye on bell hooks and Amelia Mesa-Bains "Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism".
• Book Review by Scott Clarke on Sheila Wilmot's "Taking Responsibility Taking Direction: White Anti-Racism in Canada"

There will be drinks, dancing, speeches, raffles and good fun with local Toronto DJ's spinning some good tunes.

For more information about the journal and the launch, please go to http://auto_sol.tao.ca
To download the poster for this event, just click here!

See you there!

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Protests in Montreal and Toronto on February 28th, 2007

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In case it you didn't notice it in the long post i just forwarded:

On Wednesday, February 28th, to mark the oe year anniversary of the Six Nations Reclamation at Kanenhstaton:

In Montreal, supporters will rally at the federal government buildings located downtown at noon. Speakers from various Haudenosaunee territories will join us in the speak-out.

MONTREAL SPEAK OUT & RALLY
Wednesday, February 28th 12PM
Complex Guy-Favreau
200 Réné-Lévèsque O.
(métro Place des Arts)

Bring noisemakers and banners of solidarity!

Should you wish to get involved in the organizing or mobilization for the Montreal Rally and Speak-Out, please contact 6nationssolidarite@gmail.com

*******************************

In Toronto, supporters will gather at the provincial government buildings, seat of the Liberal government and of the Lieutenant Governor, the Queen's representative in Ontario. All are welcome to speak out in support of Six Nations.

TORONTO SPEAK OUT & RALLY
Wednesday, February 28th 12 PM
Queen's Park (Front Lawn)

Bring noisemakers and banners of solidarity!

Should you wish to get involved, please contact ocap@tao.ca

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[Toronto] December 18th Demonstration to Free Trevor Miller!

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--------------------
FREE TREVOR MILLER:
FAMILY AND SUPPORTERS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE IN TORONTO:
SIX NATIONS MOHAWK POLITICAL PRISONER REMAINS BEHIND BARS
---------------------------------------------------------

Demonstration
Monday, December 18th, 2006
7:30 AM onwards
720 Bay Street
(Just north of Gerrard St.)
--------------------

On Monday, December 18, 2006, family members, friends, and supporters of Trevor Miller, a Six Nations Mohawk of the Turtle Clan, will gather at the Attorney General of Ontario's Head Office, to call for the immediate release of the indigenous political prisoner, held in a Hamilton jail for more than four months.

After being arrested near Grassy Narrows for charges related to the Six Nations Land Reclamation adjacent to Caledonia in southern Ontario, Trevor, 31, has been denied bail and no trial date has been set.  This week, he was again ordered to remain in custody by none other than Justice T. David Marshall, an Ontario Superior Court judge who issued the injunction against the Six Nations Reclamation of the "Douglas Creek Estate", leading to an OPP raid, and whose continued efforts to suspend the on-going negotiations between the Six Nations peoples and the Canadian government were sharply overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal yesterday.

In the recent court appearance, Trevor asserted that he is not a Canadian citizen, but a Mohawk and a member of the Six Nations, clarifying that the Ontario court has no jurisdiction over him. He asked to be allowed to leave with his people and maintained that he was being held against the terms of the two row wampum.  Stuart Myiow, of the Traditional Mohawk Council, requested that Miller be released to the traditional Council
which will guarantee his appearance at all forthcoming court hearings. (There is precedent for this as the Traditional Mohawk Council has intervened in previous court hearings and had prisoners released to them.)

In light of the continued detention of Trevor, preventing him from being with his three children, family members will travel from Six Nations to gather with friends and supporters outside the Attorney General's office on Monday, to demand Trevor's release and his right to be governed by the laws of his people.

Demonstration
Monday, December 18th, 2006
7:30 AM onwards
720 Bay Street
(Just north of Gerrard St.)

Media contact person: Trudi Miller, Trevor's mother, 519.717.3674

--------------------

just in case anyone missed this in my last post...

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[Toronto] December 6th: Societal Indifference, Is It Costing Native Women Their Lives?

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The following activities tomorrow in Toronto:

Free Public Forum:

Societal Indifference: Is It Costing Native Women Their Lives?

Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006
8:00-10:00 pm

following the Candlelight Vigil (see below)

Location:

St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts,
27 Front Street East,
2 blocks east of
Union Stn. Toronto

To download printable flyer click here!

Young Indigenous women are at least five times more likely than all other women to die as the result of violence. Hundreds of native women have been murdered or disappeared and their stories are only now being told. A few police forces and the Canadian government have taken some steps but statistics suggest a lot more needs to be done.

Consider this: 32 women - many of them Native - disappeared or died on a 500-mile stretch of road in Western Canada dubbed the Highway of Tears. Many of these crimes were not investigated and most are unsolved.

And this: Of the 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver's downtown eastside almost half were native. A British Columbia pig farmer is charged with the murder of 26 of these women. Jury selection begins in December and the trial is expected to get underway in January.

Join us for an art exhibit, a film showing and a panel discussion of the racial and social dimensions in the murders of native women and their treatment by the police, the courts, the media and a society that is slow to demand action.

What can you expect:

• Walk the Talk shoe exhibit (see below for more detail)


• film showing of The Heart Has Its Own Memory

Engaging speakers:

• Dawn Lavell-Harvard: Wikwemikong First Nation, President of the Ontario Native Women's Association


• Audrey Huntley: filmmaker of The Heart Has Its Own Memory and Go Home Baby Girl; member of No More Silence Network.


• Sherene Razack: A Professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.

Moderator: Naomi Clarke, Producer of Contact, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).

Presented by the St. Lawrence Centre FORUM, the Native Women's Association of Canada and Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in cooperation with Women Won't Forget and the Women Abuse Council of Toronto.


Women Won't Forget Candlelight Vigil to Remember all Women Murdered by Men
Gather at Philosopher's Walk on Wed. Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. (S/W corner Bloor & Avenue Rd, enter off Bloor St.) All women, men and children are welcome to attend.

WALK THE TALK to End Violence Against Women & Children is an exhibit of shoes symbolising the women and children killed this year in Ontario. The exhibit will be on display the night of the FORUM. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. For more information contact Margo Kennedy at the Woman Abuse Council of Toronto at 416-603-5800 x3214

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[Toronto] October 14th First Nations Solidarity Event

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================================
FIRST NATIONS SOVEREIGNTY:
AN OCAP COMMUNITY EVENT
================================

SPEAKERS: Andrea Curly, Youngblood, Nahnda Hill
Six Nations of the Grand River Territory

Shawn Brant
Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

FILMS: ‘Day Zero’ (footage from the April 20 O.P.P. raid)
By John Jeeks and Nahnda Hill

'Mohawk Smokes' by Folkard Fritz and Audrey Huntley
'Letters from Caledonia/Six Nations'
By Audrey Huntley, Sarah Kapoor

and Musical Guests

================================
WHEN: Saturday, October 14, 2006
5pm Movies and Meal
7pm Speakers

WHERE: PARC (Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre)
1499 Queen Street West
(1 Block west of Lansdowne)
================================

COST: Pay What You Can (donations will be accepted)

Accessible space. Childcare will be available.

================================

Now in the eighth month, the people of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee
(Iroquois) Confederacy continue to remain steadfast in their reclamation of
the ‘Douglas Creek Estates’, land that is part of the Haldimand Tract, sold
to developers even though it was contested. The site, renamed ‘Kahnestaton’
or ‘The Sacred Place’, stands as a symbol of resistance by First Nations
people, an assertion of sovereignty and self-government. The Six Nations
peoples’ reclamation of Kahnestaton is an act of strength, one which
reveals the failure of the Canadian government’s land claims process,
and demands that respect for First Nations’ land and treaty rights is not a
debate - it is essential.

Negotiations between the government of Canada and the people of Six Nations
also continue, a process that actually recognizes the traditional,
hereditary system of government created by the people of the Haudenosaunee
Confederacy. This system has been upheld by a community that is home to one
of the longest-standing democratic governance structures in all of Turtle
Island/North America.

Early on in the reclamation, the Mohawks of Tyendinaga, took action to
support the reclamation when it was under attack by the Ontario Provincial
Police. Blocking rail lines that run through their Territory, the
Tyendinaga Mohawks jammed up more than $100 million worth of cargo and
forced more than 6,000 passengers to be diverted. This rail blockade was
held until the Canadian government gave assurance that the place of the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy at the negotiation table would be recognized.

The community of Tyendinaga, located near Belleville, has itself been
targeted for ‘illegal’ cigarette sales, and for the peoples’ determination
to keep foreign police forces off their land and out of their lives. A new
longhouse has nearly been completed, where no such governance building has
stood for over 50 years.


The long history of colonization on which this country has been
built--theft of natural resources and land, genocidal assimilation
policies, marginalization and impoverishment of First Nations peoples--has
been resisted at every step by the refusal of indigenous communities to
accept such criminal treatment. The stand being taken by the people of Six
Nations and of Tyendinaga, whether through land reclamation, building
alternative economic prosperity, assertion of indigenous governance
structures, resistance to colonial policing, is evidence of the struggle
and victories in the battle for First Nations’ sovereignty.


Join us on October 14th, to hear directly from representatives of both Six
Nations and Tyendinaga, speaking about their communities and their strength.

FIRST NATIONS SOVEREIGNTY:
AN OCAP COMMUNITY EVENT

SPEAKERS: Andrea Curly, Youngblood, Nahnda Hill
Six Nations of the Grand River Territory

Shawn Brant
Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory

FILMS: ‘Day Zero’ (footage from the April 20 O.P.P. raid)
By John Jeeks and Nahnda Hill

'Mohawk Smokes' by Folkard Fritz and Audrey Huntley
'Letters from Caledonia/Six Nations'
By Audrey Huntley, Sarah Kapoor

and Musical Guests

WHEN: Saturday, October 14, 2006
5pm Movies and Meal
7pm Speakers

WHERE: PARC (Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre)
1499 Queen Street West
(1 Block west of Lansdowne)

COST: Pay What You Can (donations will be accepted)

Accessible space. Childcare will be provided.

For more information, contact OCAP at ocap@tao.ca or 416.925.6939

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[Toronto] Demonstrate in Support of Six Nations' Struggle for Land and Sovereignty

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-----------------------------------------------------------------
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25: ONTARIO COURT OF APPEAL TO RULE ON MARSHALL DECISION

COME OUT IN SUPPORT OF FIRST NATIONS' STRUGGLE FOR LAND AND SOVEREIGNTY

GATHERING IN SUPPORT OF SIX NATIONS AND GRASSY NARROWS
------------------------------------------------------------------

Please join us:
Monday, September 25, 2006:
Queen’s Park
12 noon

Speakers will include:
Chrissy Swain, Grassy Narrows
Zainab Amadahy, Indigenous Caucus of the Coalition in Support of
Indigenous Sovereignty

WHY MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25th?

On Monday, September 25th, the Ontario Court of Appeal will revisit the ruling made by Justice Donald Marshall on August 8, 2006. In his ruling, Marshall stated that the government should refuse to negotiate with native leaders until court orders are respected, all contempt charges laid in the early spring are enforced, and the land reclamation has ended. As part of his order, Marshall stated an injunction obtained by Henco Industries in March would not be dissolved until people were removed from the site, part of ‘Douglas Creek Estates’.

The Attorney General of Ontario promptly filed for an appeal of Marshall’s decision. On August 22nd, the Ontario Court of Appeal stayed the decision, pending a full appeal. On Monday, this appeal of Marshall’s order will be heard. The proceedings are scheduled for two days, and a decision is expected on Tuesday, September 26

During the August 22nd court proceedings, a three-judge panel of the appeal court did rule that a contempt order against the people of Six Nations reclaiming the land now called Kanonhstaton (The Protected Place) ran out on July 5, when the province bought the Caledonia property from Henco Industries Limited.

“The province owns Douglas Creek Estates,” the panel wrote. “It doesn’t claim the protesters are on its property unlawfully. It is content to let them remain. We see no reason why they should not be permitted to do so.” The judges rejected Ontario Superior Court Justice David Marshall’s opinion that people had to be evicted from the site, in order to restore the rule of law in Caledonia.

The aboriginal protesters occupying a disputed land development site on the edge of Caledonia “are not there unlawfully,” a lawyer for the province told the Ontario Court of Appeal in August. The negotiations, which began again on September 11th, went ahead without fear that any party to them—the federal and Ontario governments, the elected chiefs of the Six Nations or the traditional band council—would be found in contempt of court.
In fact, the Court of Appeal found in August that the court order arising from the judgment, signed by Judge Marshall, made no mention of the negotiations.

“As events turn out, what Justice Marshall said is nothing more than an expression of his opinion,” said Chief Justice Dennis O’Connor. “There is no legal effect.” But lawyers for Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General wanted the Appeals Court to stay the order anyway, to clear up any confusion over the ruling.

The court proceedings on Monday will finally resolve what impact, if any, the Marshall decision can have on the people of Six Nations and the talks that continue between representatives of their Nation and Canada. Come and stand with us on Monday, to show our support for the continued and resilient resistance of the Six Nations people. Come out to show your recognition for the demand of the Onkwenonweh people that: “In order to resolve the outstanding land issues concerning Onkwehonweh Territories including the Haldimand Tract, full negotiations with the Six Nations people, on a nation-to-nation basis, must continue”.

Please join us:
Monday, September 25, 2006:
Queen’s Park
12 noon

Speakers will include:
Chrissy Swain, Grassy Narrows
Zainab Amadahy, Indigenous Caucus

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