The Media Co-op

Pictou   Landing   Band   Council

July 8, 2010

PRESS  RELEASE

The Chief and Council of the Pictou Landing First Nation announced today that the Community has taken the first step towards suing the Province of Nova Scotia over the pollution of Boat Harbour. On June 30, 2010 Pictou Landing First Nation’s lawyers, Wickwire Holm, delivered a Notice of Intended Action to the Province. Anyone suing the Province is required to give notice of the intended lawsuit 60 days before the suit is commenced pursuant to s. 18 of the Proceedings Against the Crown Act. The Notice of Intended Action sets out the claims that the Pictou Landing First Nation will make against the Province and will ask the Court to find that the Boat Harbour Treatment Facility creates a nuisance and will ask for an injunction to shut it down. Chief and Council are now in a position to start a lawsuit on August 31, 2010.

In 1967 the Province built an industrial wastewater treatment facility at Boat Harbour adjacent to the Pictou Landing First Nation community. The treatment facility was operated by the Province until 1995 to treat the waste water from the pulp mill at Abercrombie Point. In 1995 operation of the treatment facility was turned over to the owner of the mill under a lease/license agreement with the Province.
This step towards a law suit was taken by Chief and Council after the Province failed to follow through on a commitment contained in a letter dated December 4, 2008 in which it agreed to relocate the treatment facility.

In the letter the Province stated, “To say that the Band has been long suffering would be a masterful understatement of the obvious. It is our unwavering intention to end that suffering as quickly as possible. It should have been done long ago.”

On April 19,2010, after months of inaction by the Dexter Government, lawyers for the Pictou landing First Nation demanded that the Province revoke the license allowing effluent to be dumped into Boat Harbour and set June 30, 2010 as the deadline. On June 16, 2010 Chief and Council instructed the lawyers to proceed with the lawsuit if the license was not revoked by June 30, 2010.

Pictou Landing is prepared to negotiate a solution with the Province but ant such negotiations will now take place alongside the lawsuit.

Breach of the Peace - a delayed communiqué from the Pink Bloc:

This was a solidarity rally with people who had  been arrested during the anti G20 Convergence in Toronto.

In response to comments made by Ashley Fehr of Canadians Advocating Political Participation in the Georgia Straight that both condemned the black bloc and de-invited anyone wearing masks to the rally, a group of about ten people dressed head to toe in pink, wearing pink face masks with with pink flags and a banner that read, 'Solidarity 1073 plus.'

Fehr had retracted the de-invitation before the rally, and claims to have been misquoted, but many people who support direct action, including black bloc, felt the matter still needed to be addressed.

“You’re making us look bad.”
“No, we’re making you look gay!”

The concept of ‘making people look bad’ is a ludicrous rationalization for denouncing any action or group. Excluding illegal activity from resistance movements –even mainstream ones, is outlandish and historically revisionist. While the mass arrests in Toronto led to many ‘normal Canadians’ feeling the impact of the brutality of the Canadian state, it is unacceptable to allow continued resistance to exclude and condemn people who already live outside the protection of Canadian law and policy.

Some of the speakers at this event were people who had been arrested in Toronto. They spoke from a very vulnerable place about abuse and violation they experienced. Also, a bunch of politicians spoke at this event too, while numerous heckles could not be contained Pink Bloc people were holding back a lot of frustration hearing long speeches about Canada, and how police action during the G20 went against Canadian values. For a lot of people --in this instance, trans, queer and Indigenous people- Canada itself is a violation of everyday life and of people's bodies.

"While we can show solidarity with all of the arrestees in Toronto, it is not going to be at the expense of our own resistance movements. We see the breach of the peace in Toronto and celebrate, because for us, peace in Canada exists at our –and many others’- expense" --Pinky Tuscadero

A pamphlet titled, ‘No Dress Codes! No Fashion Police’ was handed out with information on the many reasons people wear masks and briefly touching on the use of direct action in popular liberation movements through history. Also, in the rally before the march, there was lots of discussion and debate between people in the pink bloc and other people attending the rally. Aside from a human troll who pulled the mask off one pink blocker, it was a good example of how diverse elements of resistance movements can –and do- engage with each other in a fruitful manner.
 

• Dominion Stories

Halifax event part of national day of action against Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

On July 27, about 50 people gathered at the North Branch Memorial Library for a panel discussion on migrant justice.  The event was part of a national day of action against Jason Kenney, the federal minister of immigration. Panelists criticized Kenney for a variety of reasons, including immigration policy changes that have occurred under his authority, and statements he has made that activists say overstep his role as minister.

“Jason Kenney has been dubbed the Minister of “Censorship and Deportation” because of his record as one of the most repressive immigration ministers,” explained David Parker who spoke on behalf of No One is Illegal – Halifax,. “There is a growing grassroots movement across the country rising out of schools, neighbourhoods, and workplaces to reject Kenney and his oppressive and racist policies.”

According to NOII-Halifax, under Jason Kenney, 13,000 people were deported last year or approximately 75 per day, and 56 per cent fewer asylum claims were accepted. Kenney was also behind Bill C-11, which establishes a two-tiered immigration system [how?], and removed references to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights from the Canadian citizenship guide.

Panellist Roger Davies came to Canada when he was 23 to resist the draft for the American war on Vietnam.  He spoke to Kenney’s assertion that refugee claims by war resisters from the US are illegitimate, despite two orders passed in the House of Commons supporting the rights of war resisters to stay in Canada.

“[When I came to Canada] a door was open. It was a door that was really welcoming at times. It was a door that made it somewhat easy for many of us to come here, and 50 or 60 000 did come. Since those days that door has been slammed shut,” said Davies.

Judy Haiven, who spoke to Kenney’s pro-Isreal agenda, discussed how Kenney’s policies are based in racist assumptions that attempt to polarize people as good or bad.

“Kenney and his cabinet cronies are big boosters of the idea of good guys and bad guys – people in white hats and people in black hats. Christians, Jews, people of “the Book” who are white and European and western-oriented, they represent the good,” said Haiven.   “And frankly  [according to Kenney] Arabs and Muslims represent the bad.”

Amr Nassrat, an Egyptian Muslim man who has been living in Canada since 2004, says he is one of the black hats.

“I never realized the list of [Kenney’s] injustices was this long,” he said. “It gives me hope in Canada to see you all here.”

“There are many Kenney’s in the immigration system,” says Nassrat, who explains that he has been repeatedly mistreated within the immigration system. “I came here today to tell people there is injustice and to see if there is something I can do for my self and others.”

Currently, there are between 200 000 and 500 000 people living without status in Canada.
 

Greenpeace activists locked themselves to door of Enbridge's head office in Vancouver Wednesday morning in an act of resistance against a pipeline rupture that has released at least three million liters of oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

While their truck containing equipment and supplies was moved onto the sidewalk outside the building, Christine LeClerc and 3 others entered the office on the 6th floor and announced their intentions to conduct a sit in while chaining themselves to the door and temporarily hanging a banner behind them.
 
At the same that this was happening at about 10 AM, other volunteer activists were busy unloading the truck, hanging another banner and building a fake pipeline.  Greenpeace BC director Stephanie Goodwin and Brian Beaudry were meanwhile ensconced in the truck by sheet metal plating covering the inside of all windows. 

Once all the equipment was in place the group staged a mock oil spill while handing out literature and advising those opposed to the idea of the proposed pipeline to write to the Prime Minister and Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel.   "Don't worry folks, it's just an oil spill.  It happens all the time, Enbridge spills 63 times a year.  They're professionals," said Aaron Laurie-Joice, a Greenpeace member. A tar ball from the Gulf of Mexico was symbolically used to write a message on the glass doors the protesters had secured themselves to.

Enbridge staff were rumored to have vacated the office after the lockdown, leaving security and the police to deal with the problem. They also asked security to lock off elevator access to their floor but we were able to gain access shortly before 2 PM for a few pictures until security demanded that we were not allowed on the floor.  Attempts were made throughout the day by Ms Goodwin to reach Pat Daniel and John Carruthers, President of Northern Gateway Pipelines.  The only response was from Mr Daniel's executive assistant to inform them that the CEO was out of town.

 
VPD Chief of Police Jim Chu had put in an appearance at the protest but there was limited police activity throughout the day and it appeared that they would rather just leave it alone rather than hasten the exit of the activists.  Bentall security maintained their vigil both inside and out of not only the Enbridge office but also the main entrance to the building.

Greenpeace Media and PR Officer Raina Delisle indicated no awareness that the police had any immediate intention to arrest anyone, but an unnamed Greenpeace representative was overheard
shortly after 6 PM to be asking those still doing well despite their self imposed chained status for over 8 hours what the police on the 6th floor had to say to them.

Section of pipeline could carry tar sands bitumen through Trailbreaker Pipeline reversal project

MONTREAL - On Tuesday July 27, 2010, a section of pipeline owned by Calgary based pipeline giant Enbridge, ruptured leaking an estimated 3.1 million litres of oil into a nearby creek and threatening the Kalamazoo River and Lake Michigan, further downstream from the spill. Residents of nearby communities were warned to keep away from the spill, and a state of emergency has been declared for the affected region The leak appeared to come from a section of pipeline less than 80 cm wide.

According to a National Energy Board of Canada report to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in June 2005, the Great Lakes region is one of the highest concentration areas for pipeline leaks and breakages in North America. The region is also home to the Enbridge owned Lakehead system, the largest overland pipeline network on the planet.

Activists across Canada have pointed out the danger of pipelines and their susceptibility to leaks and breakages, especially given the unprecedented expansion slated to coincide with a five-fold increase in tar sands production over the next fifteen years. In fact, the section of pipeline that ruptured appears to be part of a pipeline that would feed into Enbridge's eastward delivery project, the Trailbreaker.

The Trailbreaker would use existing pipelines, reversing the flow of many, to transport tar sands bitumen from Fort McMurray to Portland Maine in order to be loaded onto tankers bound for the Gulf Coast of Texas. A segment of the Trailbreaker, from Chicago, Illinois to Sarnia, Ontario, would need to run through the location of this most recent leak, before crossing into Ontario and Quebec. 

For more information on the Trailbreaker, check out this report.

Activists and community members will be gathering in Dunham, QC this summer for a convergence resisting the Trailbreaker project find out more about the Quebec Climate Action Camp.

Contact:  Indigenous Action Movement:  (604) 682-3269, Ext. 7718

CURTIS BRICK, One Year Later, the People’s Inquest

The Indigenous Action Movement is organizing a 2nd gathering to remember one of their fallen. Curtis Brick needlessly and horrifically died on the hottest day on record, in plain view of the public, in Grandview Park , July 29, 2009. The final insult: In their report, the attendants stated they had provided care to Curtis, including placing cool towels on him, and trying to provide liquids to him, when according to witnesses, they had not. Then upon arrival to hospital, it took another hour before Curtis was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. An hour too late.   It is now one year later, and what's being done?

“Our people standing together, is immensely important to break the cycle of, not only racial discrimination, but society’s indifference towards injustice where it concerns our brothers and sisters. Doing our part, may help one of our family members, friends and loved ones, and maybe even ourselves one day.  We should not have a fear of laying there dying on the street only to be seen as “most likely just passed out.” I hope that someone will check on me to see if I’m okay and get medical assistance. I hope for that assistance to be at least considerate, given that they know I have a society behind me that cares.”  Kat Norris, Coast Salish/Nez Perce

On July 29, 2010the community will gather together at Grandview Park in East Vancouver, Commercial Drive and Charles Street, We ask supporters to arrive about 5:00 to help put together the survival packs to hand out.  Drumming, singing, speakers, and a smudging ceremony will take place. Survival packs will be handed out. Survival packs will include:  Bottled water; juice cartons; frybread or sandwiches; mini sun block. Some of Curtis Brick’s friends will be there, & we are inviting any family members as well to share in this dedication and call for an inquest. If you know of family members, please have them contact me at (604) 682-3269 Extension: 7718

City Hall Update:  “As a result of Curtis Brick’s death, (Vancouver City) Council on September 10, 2009, moved: “FURTHER THAT staff undertake a review of existing extreme weather emergency services offered by the City and make recommendations on these services that would further reduce the risk for street homeless and other vulnerable populations, such as homebound senior citizens, in the event of extreme heat or cold events.” This report provides follow up to this motion in the form of a brief review and a proposed Preparedness and Response Plan for 2010.  Full document here: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20100706/documents/rr1.pdf

 “The Creator works in mysterious ways and I am sure that Curtis is pleased that his friends will be better taken care of.  It still means that, as a community, we must continue to do our parts, ensuring that respect is apparent when services providers are at work and to call advocacy and/or call attention to mistreatment or racism.

We will still do the gathering in his honor and to call for a public inquest into his untimely death. We want to educate ourselves as to how we can better help those in need and to ensure that this doesn’t happen ever again.”  Kat

We are just doing our part that his death, the deaths of Frank Paul, who police dragged and dumped outside in freezing weather comatose;  Francis McAllister who ambulance attendance left out only to freeze to death in 2008; the Saskatoon “Starlight Tours” where Neil Stonechild, Lawrence Wegner and so many more who didn’t make it into the news.  We also do this for our young generation today; hopefully many lessons will be learned.”  Kat Norris, Community Contact Line:  (604) 682-3269 Extension:  7718

BACKGROUNDER: Curtis Brick was a homeless man who, through circumstance,ended up on the streets of Vancouver ’s east side. On July 29, 2009, he was spotted by community member Eric Schweig at 9:00 am lying in Grandview Park with his shirt covering his head.  Approximately 4:00 pm, the same day, Eric again saw Curtis laying in the same spot, convulsing and in extreme physical distress. No one had stopped to help. Ambulance was called by staffers of the Vancouver Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services Society, which operates out of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre.

 Witnesses, including the VATJSS staff were stunned at how crude emergency attendants were towards Curtis pushing at his foot, yelling for him to get up, knowing he lay there all day, seeing his darkened tongue and foam at his mouth. They took him away by ambulance, no sirens, the back of the ambulance dark.

** Family friendly event **Everyone welcome to bring food .. clean or new baseball caps, socks, underwear, soaps, shirts.. anything you can think of.. that our people on the street need.  If there are a lot of left over items, we can bring them to the First United Church or the DTES Women's Centre.

• Original Peoples

Anti-fascists confront homophobes at London, Ont. Pride parade

London, Ont. - On Sunday July 25, fifty anti-fascist activists from southern Ontario joined hundreds of Londoners to show their support for the London Pride Parade. By all accounts, the day was a great success; the weather was excellent, the floats were fun and creative, the atmosphere was great – and the fascists were nowhere to be seen.

The latter was a surprise, but certainly a welcome one. After one year’s absence, members of the Northern Alliance (a neo-nazi organization based in London, Ontario), playing on traditional fascist imagery, had promised a “rebirth” of their vile tradition of showing up en masse to disrupt what they refer to as a “parade of perversion”.

Their absence during the previous year’s festivities was widely understood to be the result of a concurrence of demoralizing setbacks: the loss of ideological compatriot Wayne Kellestine - arrested and convicted of multiple-homicide for his role in the slaying of eight members of the Bandidos biker gang – and the embarrassing turnout of their 2008 “protest”, in which their members were outnumbered and openly mocked by a larger contingent of militant counter-protesters.

The Northern Alliance’s intentions to disrupt the parade were first leaked by Dave Ruud, a prominent member of the group, on the forums of a White Supremacist website. The comments were quickly picked up by organizations that monitor the site, and a call out for a convergence of anti-fascist activists was issued by Common Cause’s London branch. Anarchists in London had already been planning on organizing an event to coincide with an international “call to action” issued by Portland anti-racist activists following the shooting of ARA member Luke Querner by suspected fascists on March 27; the prospect of the Northern Alliance’s return offered an ideal opportunity to uphold the spirit of the call while demonstrating solidarity with the city's queer communities.

Joined by activists from Windsor, Guelph, Kitchener/Waterloo, Toronto and Six Nations, locals gathered in Victoria Park and waited for news of the fascists to arrive. With uniformed police watching on from an unmarked van, the group began moving into position upon receiving intelligence that a potential Northern Alliance member had been spotted with a black canvas bag full of signs.

By the time the group arrived, the individual with the signs was gone – and the promised “rebirth” of the hate-protest failed to materialize. Without the presence of any serious adversaries, the activists surrounded members of the Christian Right, using banners to block out their various signs denouncing homosexuality as an abomination against God. They were joined by several local queer activists with hilarious signs of their own, such as “God hates shrimp” and “God hates polyester” – both true, according to the book of Leviticus.

Overall, the action was a great success for anti-fascist activists in southern Ontario, and marks the latest in a series of political defeats for members of the organized far right – following a series of recent victories in Caledonia against supporters of anti-Native bigot Gary McHale. In these times of economic uncertainty, when working class youth are increasingly susceptible to the hateful scapegoating of marginalized communities promoted by white supremacist organizations, it is vitally important that any attempt by fascists to organize is met with an overwhelming and unified response: Not on our watch!

 

This article was originally published on www.linchpin.ca

• London, Ontario

• Dominion Stories

One of the three G20 arrestees remaining in custody has been released from a courtroom in North Toronto tonight, after more than a month in prison.

Amanda Hiscocks, a community organizer in Guelph, is among 17 people facing conspiracy charges stemming from the police crackdown on G20 dissent. She and several other prominent activists were pre-emptively detained in violent, early morning raids on several Toronto homes prior to the demonstrations on June 26th.

She was released on bail totalling $140,000 and has been placed under house arrest with family in Ottawa until trial.

As part of the conditions of her release, Hiscocks is under strict surveillance by her sureties and police, is not allowed access to a cell phone, pager or any other device with wireless connectivity, cannot organize, plan or attend public demonstrations (a breach of her charter rights), have contact with her co-accused or associate with anyone who is a part of No One Is Illegal (NOII), Anti-War at Laurier (AW@L) or the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance (SOAR). 

The details of the proceedings have been placed under a publication ban.

• The Co-op

On 19 July 2010, three days after 28-year-old Loni Edmonds gave birth to her son Andre, a provincial ministry team came into her hospital room to forcibly separate her from her own newborn child. The "team" included a lot of enforcement: two RCMP officers, two hospital security staff, and one medical doctor. Supportive relatives of the parents pleaded with authorities, but they could not stop the snatch.

A member of the Lil'wat Nation who lives in the town of Mount Currie, Edmonds first went to the clinical centre in Pemberton. Even though baby Andre arrived four weeks early, he was otherwise healthy. Health care officials chose to move mother and child to more extensive facilities available at Squamish General Hospital. Shortly after her relocation, and without providing further explanation, an agent of the BC Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) told Edmonds that her baby was going to be taken into foster care on Sunday. 

On that same Sunday, Bill Chu received a telephone call from a distraught relative. Chu, who has a two-decades relationship with the Mount Currie community, immediately contacted the Squamish hospital to ask about the pending apprehension. Hospital staff said they knew of no such plans.

Over the following three days, Chu sought contact with relevant MCFD officials. The Pemberton case officer stuck to generalities and claimed no apprehension would occur without prior steps (family meeting and consultation, exploration of alternative family support, etc.). Another Pemberton official returned multiple calls after two days, but only to say that privacy concerns would prevent any discussion of the case.

After encountering these bureaucratic stone walls, Chu saw no alternative but to issue a press release, which he did with the consent of Andre's parents. Authorities offered him no answers to the following two questions: Why was Loni Edmonds given no written reason for the removal of her child? How did the advance threat of removal fit in with MCFD policy?

On Tuesday July 20 Chu and one other person made a day trip to Mount Currie, to meet the parents of Andre and to talk to acquaintances. He offers this assessment:
 

As one who has known many aboriginals for two decades, I can say the parents' appearance match their claim to be neither on drugs or alcohol. Loni’s aunt also is willing to take Loni and her baby in her home. While her husband Andrew has an unrelated health condition (infrequent seizures) and both parents are not working, the same can be said about most parents within impoverished reserves and Loni should not be denied her right to nurture her baby.

This snatch by MCFD again strikes the fourth generation of the Edmonds family with child apprehension: Edmonds’s grandmother and mother were sent to residential schools, Edmonds herself was put into foster care at the age of 10, and now this baby has been taken away with no due process. In 2007, Edmonds lost four children to MCFD, and then a younger daughter in 2009. Andre makes Edmonds’s sixth apprehended child.

A court hearing is set for 16 September 2010 in Pemberton.

Chu thinks the incentives for the apprehension stand in continuity with the discredited colonial practice of shipping aboriginal children off to residential schools. The result is "similar legacies of abuses, addictions, suicides, and dysfunctional adult lives".

MCFD summarizes the statistics: "As of September 2009, approximately eight per cent of children in British  Columbia and approximately 53 per cent of the 8,677 children in the Ministry’s care were  Aboriginal." The Federation of Aboriginal Foster Parents mentions an alarming rate: "Between 1995-2001 there was a 71.5 per cent increase in the number of on-reserve children with status being placed in foster care." To put this in context, Canada's 2006 census shows the British Columbia "aboriginal identity population" as 196,075 out of 4,074,385, or 4.8 per cent.

Edmonds believes that the government is now paying foster parents about $7000 per month to care for her first four children. A glance at the rates and levels posted by MCFD confirms $5000 as a likely minimum.

The MCFD annual budget shows that the Province of British Columbia spends more than $1 billion a year on "contracts, grants, and payments to families" and more than $300 million on "ministry salaries and benefits." Further breakdown is hard to come by. Official BC budget estimates for 2010-2011 show that almost $750 million goes toward a list of efforts that opens with

service support, direct operating costs and local administration of community-based support services for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children, youth, and families; quality assurance initiatives; establishing new Aboriginal governance structures ...

The 2010-2013 Service Plan for MCFD targets a 6.3% increase (to the 2008/2009 baseline of 53.2%) for

per cent of Aboriginal children having to leave their parental home who receive services delivered by delegated Aboriginal agencies, Aboriginal foster care providers or Aboriginal friends and family.

This means that only slightly over half of those children separated from their own families currently remain in direct contact with their cultural background.

There is clearly a fast-growing big business side to aboriginal foster care, involving a massive chunk of the provincial budget. Who benefits? And how? And why? These macroeconomic and social questions provide the backdrop to the suffering that the state is inflicting on Loni.

There are no overall figures for British Columbia reserve residents who receive a welfare pittance. The Province offers this explanation for its convenient lack of statistics: "LICO [low income cut-offs] data is not available for Indian Reserves as the LICO methodology includes the cost of shelter and aboriginal housing on Indian Reserves is usually provided."

The spendable welfare currently received by both Loni and her husband amounts to a total of less than $500 per month. (Compare this amount of less than $6000 per year with the $7938 average household expenditure for food alone in British Columbia in 2008.) Imagine the care that Loni and Andrew Edmonds themselves could provide for their family if they could receive the resources being paid out to foster care givers.

Seperately, POW has organized in response to ongoing child apprehensions in the DTES and in Vancouver the Downtown Eastside Power of Women has just announced a gathering at the Ministry of Child and Family Development Regional Office: MCFD: KEEP OUR FAMILIES TOGETHER! on Tuesday, August 3, 3:30 – 5:30 pm, 865 Hornby at Smithe. For more information (about the demonstration, POW members can not comment on the Edmonds case) email project@dewc.ca or call 604 681 8480 x 234.

• Original Peoples

Creative responses to G20/Mehserle verdict videos

One minute and eight seconds outside Jules Bistro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuetaYBHUhY&feature=related

A man is screaming Bastards outside the frame. Bastards bastards, air on the mic makes his throat hoarse. The row of circular plastic shields, held outward by the black figures. Their visors are tilted to distort their faces. Beyond their helmets a windows reads Jules Bistro. The figures do not speak. A few shields bob. The camera's eye sinks. A pair of legs, buckles fastened directly above the knees. At 0:11: What'd you take her for. A nightstick hangs at the right edge of the frame, along a leg. At 0:12 a high sound opens, a woman screaming. Between the two black legs you see the thin metal bars of a fence. The bars of the fence look the as the nightstick. A woman is being held over the fence, there is part of her face or is that her arm? A figure bent over her, genderless, its plastic visor down. At 0:13: She did nothing. She just happened to be wearing a mask like you are wearing masks. The legs you are looking between do not move. Two sets of black legs shift. The boots on the legs you are looking between are blunt-nosed and thick-soled. At 0:23 the woman screams: Get off of me. You can see the figure above her move his arm. At 0:28 a man yells Why did you take her why did you take her. The legs move quickly, together and forward. There is less of the woman visible. Six legs move. They could be attached to the same thing. You see that the woman being held against the fence has bare calves.

At 0:33 the crowd begins to chant Shame shame shame shame. At 0:39 the woman is walked away from the fence. You see one of her feet up in a half-kick of struggle, a black shoe with white laces. She is no longer screaming. The frame is now above the heads of the crowd, showing the tilted visors of the police. The frame weaves through the crowd, pursuing the woman who is being taken away. A barrier of police with visors and police. At 0:54: Where they fuck are they taking her where the fuck are they taking her? In the top right hand corner of the frame a slice of the road, four police on horseback. The frame shows the sidewalk beyond the row of police. The woman cannot be seen.

 

Thirty-One Seconds at Queen's Park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-p64RHqi38&feature=related

One brown horse and the rest are dark, nine or ten horses, moving through the park scattered with protestors, a crowd of bright t-shirts and civilian bicycles on the other side of the path. There is no colour on the police riders: the visors reflect the white light of the sky, except for one rider whose visor is tilted up, revealing skin. Visors cover the eyes of the horses. At 0:09 a man yells: You're not intimidating You're dupes. While he shouts a young woman moves across the screen holding a camera, wearing a green tanktop and a black backpack. The horses move at an even gait at the speed of a tall statement being made. An empty pause on the concrete path.  At 0:12 the second group of horses enter, moving faster than the first group. The man with the white loop around his neck -- a plastic lei? -- is already on the path. He wears a black backpack and shorts. Between 0:14 and 0:15 the two dark horses pick up speed. The horse on the makes contact with the man. The man staggers forward, crumpling. The man puts his arms out, dives onto the cement path. You cannot see if hooves hit him or if he dove out of fear, the sound of two lines of black bodies advancing, horses and men. At 0:17 the police rider who hit him circles around him, shifts onto the grass, returns to the path. His helmet angles down. His visor looks like a beak. The man filming this, holding the camera is saying: Whoa whoa whoa. At 0:18 the man is on the path. At 0:19 the man gets up from the path, stumbles onto the grass. The camera moves away from him and follows the horses that continue briskly, curve onto the grass on the other side, At 0:22: Now people are throwing rocks at them and shit. People are pushing their bicycles in front of them to leave. A man walking in red pants and a skyblue shirt stands out to you in the crowd.

 

Nine Minutes and Eleven Seconds in Oakland, California

http://vimeo.com/13217165

you can march it don't matter baby

Reaction to Mehserle Verdict: Oakland, CA: 8 July 2010 from Oriana Bolden on Vimeo.

 

- what's going to happen after tonight?

 

- they're going to kill another black man

 

keep talking keep talking. all that talking ain't doing shit

 

[police were told to be in "retreat mode" until 8 pm]

 

[around 5:30 they back into/over a deaf woman]

 

"want peace? work for justice"

 

[folks worked together to move fencing that was laid on the ground by police...

 

[... partially in hopes that an ambulance could get through]

 

1) we need to put an end to racial profiling, police murders, of black men especially and people of colour in general

 

eventually we need to put a stop to the police altogether. and we need to eradicate them from our communities completely. entirely. they don't even need to exist anymore.

 

we have to eliminate the prison-industrial complex as a viable tactic to use against us. right?    we need to politicize the prisoners and we need to support political prisoners so that when someone does take a political action they're not just locked away into a dungeon

 

the thing about oscar grant was that         we see this case as a piece of evidence that can't be disputed        everyone's out here because they know it happens consistently

 

slavery is illegal unless you're duly convicted of a crime

 

- how far?

 

- off BROADWAY

 

- how far?

 

- unlawful ASSEMBLY

 

- what are you doing to that woman?

 

- ow. let me up

 

officers approaching from every direction        they're now jumping into the crowd        smacking people grabbing them        they cleared the intersection at 14th and        the area they asked to be cleared is cleared

 

in the name of the people of the state of California    or subject to other police actions including the use of force

 

there's a standoff between the cops and the protestors    there are far more cops than protestors at this point

 

they're not being allowed out

 

we have an occupying army. we don’t have a peacekeeping force    they're in attack formation and terrorist formation    we're not able to recognize them they’re not visible when they do shit    poking and hitting people    they're scared shitless of the people of Oakland    we're out here because a young men was murdered by a cop    they need to get roughed up and murdered because they were brown boys        it's not okay that brown children are murdered and they're not worth as much as white children    if you want to keep the peace

Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney is a controversial figure. So it was no surprise that hundreds form the lower mainland took part in a national day of action against the policies that Kenney has put in place, policies that some call racist.

• Video

BURNABY - Participation in the nation-wide day of protest against Minister of "Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism" Jason Kenney. The people's march on July 24 took place around Central Park and Metrotown. Similar actions were held in Montreal, Halifax, Toronto, and Winnipeg.

An interview with Alex Hundert

In the wee hours of June 26th, Alex Hundert awoke to the sound of police breaking down his door with a battering ram. Members of the gang unit entered his home in Toronto with guns drawn, arrested him and his partner, and took them to the now infamous temporary jail set up in an old film studio.

By the time the mass arrests started on Saturday evening, Hundert had already been transferred to the Maplehurst jail in Milton, Ontario. Over the next days, over a thousand G20 arrestees were put behind bars, including 16 more organizers and activists from Southern Ontario and Quebec who continue to face a variety of serious and trumped-up charges.

All of this might seem like a far cry from the life of a self described former "ski bum" who grew up the oldest of two boys in a middle class Toronto home. But Hundert, who was released on bail July 19 and today faces various charges of conspiracy related to G-20 organizing, can trace a line from his early activism right through to today.

While studying at Wilfred Laurier University, Hundert's early forays into organizing were typical of many university students. "I was thrust into situations where these big, very effective organizing efforts, like doing campus fundraisers for popular causes such as AIDS, were happening and we'd get hundreds of people involved. But then everyone one would go home and feel that they'd done their part and everything was okay," he said. "I felt that no matter how much money we raised on a university campus, we were not really contributing anything to the solution."

Doing support at the blockade in Grassy Narrows opened Hundert's eyes to a far more holistic form of activism, and deepened his analysis of capitalism and colonialism. "In Grassy Narrows, I got to see first hand the extent to which many of the things we're told about this country are flagrant lies, and the extent to which the exploitation of resources and labour is synonymous with the destruction of communities," he said.

Judy Da Silva, Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabe (Grassy Narrows First Nations), who has worked closely with Alex since 2006, attributes the growing movement of non-natives in support of Indigenous land rights to the work of Alex and others in Southern Ontario. “Alex Hundert is a patient generous person who works tirelessly on environmental & social issues on behalf of mother earth and her inhabitants,” said Da Silva.  “He has continued to supports us in our struggle to protect our boreal forest from logging and pollution and to raise awareness about our issues to non-natives.”

But instead of being out on the land in Grassy Narrows or elsewhere, Hundert remains under house arrest at his father's home in Toronto. He jokes that he's been reading too much Chomsky, but says being jailed confirmed events he'd been witness to through activism in support of Indigenous struggles.

On the inside, it was other prisoners who helped him do the simple things, like fill out forms and navigate the prison system, which Hundert says is designed to dehumanize prisoners and their communities. But he thinks the attempt of the state to quash dissent through repression will have the opposite effect.

"I think in the long run, its going to have the same effect that cracking down on legitimate dissent and the public voices of communities always has," said Hundert. "The effect is strengthening the resolve of that very voice."
 
Already, people with no interest in political radicalism have been radicalized, said Hundert. "For every person that they are pulling out of the movement, to the extent that they're able to do that through criminalizing and incarcerating us, there are several people to take our place," he said.

Hundert doesn't want a focus on the criminalization of activism to obscure the reasons people are in the streets.

"Whether its remote-controlled airplanes dropping bombs in Pakistan, or whether its the OPP attacking Six Nations land defenders, or whether its the Integrated Security Unit criminalizing so-called anarchists, its all about the attempt to break people's resistance to an imposed order," he said. "It is important to question just how democratic or legitimate that order is, and lots of people know that, and hanging on to that conviction is just as important as being honest about the experience of criminalization."

Though this has been a difficult time for Alex’s friends and allies, they remain firm supporters of his work. "Alex’s family and friends are proud that he is putting his future on the line in service of social justice," said Amy Rossiter, a Professor at York University.

Asked how people can support those still in jail and facing charges, Hundert says beyond giving to the legal defense fund, making space for people to create new alternatives and imagine their own forms of resistance is vital. And although the Crown will appeal Alex's bail conditions next week in a move that could put him back in  jail, he's clear about what steps organizers can take.

"I think the most important thing we can do is to make space for those communities that have been most silenced in shaping the current system to facilitate a process of transformation with their voices, visions, and practices," he said.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Community Center for Social justice, which Hundert helped found, is one example of creating that space. "Once we make space it is a lot harder for them to take it away, and no matter what they do to us, other people can join that community and culture of resistance and fill it with what they want."

• Dominion Stories

On July 7 and 8, 2010, striking members of United Steel Workers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario, voted 75% in favour of a contract that ended a bitter strike against transnational mining giant Vale Inco. The 3300 strikers had been on the picket lines for almost one year (along with members of Local 6200 in Port Colborne, Ontario, who voted in favour by a similar margin).

Despite the immense effort and sacrifices made by workers over the course of the year-long ordeal, the settlement marks a defeat for a local with a reputation for strength in a town with a reputation for solidarity. It is a hard moment for those who are returning to work -- who endured so much and still lost significant ground -- but as the world faces the renewed neo-liberal assault promised by leaders at the recent G20 summit in Toronto, it is important to ask critical questions that might strengthen all of our struggles in the difficult times ahead.

The Strike

Though it was rarely framed this way during the dispute, this strike was all about neo--liberalism. The components of that agenda that are about reorganizing work, tying people's lives ever more tightly to the market, and taking gains away from ordinary people to the benefit of elites were reflected in the company's demands.

As has so often been the case with neo-liberal demands the world over, ordinary people could have chosen to acquiesce, but instead they chose to fight. Yet as has also happened in many places around the world, elites responded to this resistance by inflicting suffering on the bodies of those who resisted. For thousands of working-class families in Sudbury, this meant a year of doing without in significant ways. Some workers lost their homes. Other workers saw their relationships crumble.

It was also clear that the company intended to mount a serious attack on the union. In the earliest days of the strike, a former executive of Inco (as the company was known before being bought by Brazilian transnational Vale in 2006) was quoted anonymously in the Globe & Mail as saying, "They just want to break the union. They want to completely hit the reset button on the entire labour situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past." There were occasions later in the strike where articles in the Canadian business press included in their headlines references to Vale trying to break the union, indicating that the business class in Canada did not take seriously the protestations by Vale spokespeople in those same articles that they were doing no such thing.

The company made skillful use of court injunctions in concert with the sophisticated surveillance, harassment, and legal capabilities of strikebreaking firm AFI to limit the possibility for effective, militant picketing. This was the first time since union recognition in the 1940s that a mining company in Sudbury has attempted to use scab labour to restart production during a strike. Though production remained significantly impaired throughout the strike, speculation was that within another two or three months, Vale would have been able to come close to full production using scabs.

The Deal

Nobody on the union side is happy with the contents of the settlement. It represents, according to one community activist I talked to, "a significant defeat." It contains some improvements over the offer made before the strike in a number of areas, but only very modest ones, and in the overall context of the company winning the substance of all of its major demands.

Though there is a small wage increase over the five-year life of the deal, the nickel price level at which the nickel bonus kicks in has been raised substantially and for the first time there will be a cap on the percentage of a worker's income that can come from the bonus. One rank-and-file worker that I talked to calculated that the new rules around the nickel bonus could lead to him losing as much as $30,000 per year compared to the height of the boom earlier this decade. The company was also successful in imposing new restrictions on seniority rights, greater freedom to contract out some kinds of work to non-union contractors, and a streamlined grievance procedure that will be less fair to workers. As well, all new hires will now be placed on a defined contribution pension plan, rather than the defined benefit plan in which current workers and retirees are enrolled. Some union activists see this is as one step in a larger plan by the company to get all of its current and former employees on the defined contribution scheme.

Beyond the deal itself, the back-to-work protocol has enraged many workers, not the least because it was not made available to them until almost the end of the voting on the deal. The terms include a six week period at the start of the contract in which the union has conceded immense power to the company to restructure the workforce. During this period, most union work can be done by non-union people and the company has great latitude to reassign and transfer workers. Most shockingly, the union has agreed to what one union activist, in only a slight exaggeration, has described as "no grievance procedure whatsoever" for those six weeks.

The company has also persisted in its attempts to weaken mobilizations by the union in future disputes by attacking its ability to protect members who have been active in strike activities. Though the back-to-work protocol called on both sides to drop all legal measures related to the strike, the company appears still to be proceeding with criminal charges against three individual workers and contempt proceedings for alleged violations of the picketing injunction against a number of others, claiming that the protocol only referred to legal actions against the union and its officials. Also, for what appears to be the first time involving a major union in recent Ontario history, nine workers who were fired during the course of the strike were not rehired as part of the deal. While the union has succeeded, with considerable effort, in getting the labour board to hear the cases of these workers and intends to pursue a constitutional case based on freedom of association, the refusal to rehire sets a dangerous precedent for other unions.

Raising Questions

Raising critical questions at such a difficult moment is a risky venture, particularly when they are being raised by someone like myself who is not one of those most directly impacted by the struggle. Yet it is also a moment in which learning from recent victories and defeats is crucial. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney recently predicted a global "age of austerity," which was confirmed by the elite consensus announced at the G20 meetings in Toronto in June. Workers, communities, indigenous nations, women, queers, people living in poverty, the environment -- all will soon be facing reinvigorated neo-liberal assault.

Since the acceptance of Vale's offer I have interviewed a number of (mostly activist) members of Local 6500 as well as community activists who worked in support of the strike -- all of the former and some of the latter requested anonymity as a condition of the interviews. I have added this to the observations and informal conversations I had over the course of the strike. The picture that has emerged is of a struggle that was waged with traditional assumptions and tools in an environment and against an enemy that had changed in significant ways. One of the union activists told me, "We went into a gunfight carrying a pencil and they had laser beams."

At the very least, the loss of this strike at Vale Inco can teach us not to trust old assumptions about resistance in the current environment. And it may also point not just union and community spaces in Sudbury but also those across North America towards some of the questions that we must ask as we brace for what is to come.

Tactics

The dominant tactical orientation of Local 6500 seemed largely drawn from the mainstream traditions of industrial unions, particularly those with a more "business union" orientation, to borrow a label that one long-time community activist applied to the local. The kinds of preparations made by the leadership and their relationship to the other tactics that emerged over the course of the strike imply an assumption of the primacy of picket-line militancy and of a much more marginal role for other kinds of mobilizations.

There are a number of reasons why circumstances today mean that such tactics, which may have worked in decades past, could no longer seal the deal in Sudbury. For one thing, though Inco has long been a corporation with global reach (and a history of atrocious practices in the global South), Vale is simply a much larger company with much deeper pockets. Though the strike did impair production significantly and did cost the company money, the operations in Sudbury (and elsewhere in Canada) are such a small part of the company's empire that the level of harm that one group of workers can inflict by withdrawing their labour remains quite limited.

As well, the evolution of labour law in Ontario creates conditions that favour companies. While much local attention focused on the lack of legislation preventing the use of scabs -- something that was in force in the province briefly in the early 1990s, and has proven effective in other provinces as well -- it is far from the only problem. The combination of injunctions restricting picketing with firms like AFI, which specialize in strikebreaking and the harassment of workers, make the possibility of truly effective picketing even more remote.

Unions, including North America's remaining industrial strongholds, need to recognize that while picket lines are important, they are no longer the one and only site for struggle. As one union activist I talked to put it, "You won't win a strike on the picket line, but you sure can lose a strike on the picket line."

The question becomes how to respond to this reality. What tactics will work? What changes in organizational form, practices, and culture would support more effective tactics? Some of the questions in the following sections point towards some possible avenues for discussion by workers and other activists as we move forward.

Ordinary Members

Over the year that the Steel Workers were on the lines, at least two overlapping but distinct networks of rank-and-file activists emerged, as well as networks among the wives and partners of strikers. One of the worker-based networks was catalyzed as a result of some spaces and resources that came from the international level of the union and the other was a more spontaneous local formation.

These networks experimented with a range of tactics. They drew public attention to scabs. They protested at the hotels where AFI strikebreakers were staying. They successfully campaigned to get the city council to call on the province to pass anti-scab legislation. They rallied repeatedly against provincial and federal politicians, both from the city and farther afield. They mounted fast, short blockades of specific work sites at unexpected intervals. They participated in the G20 labour march. They protested businesses that were crossing the picket lines. Some wives and partners of strikers took on increasingly militant roles, both in some of these actions and in a few autonomously organized actions, as they were not vulnerable to the same threat of consequences as workers.

Discussions about what was effective and what was not still need to happen among the activists in question as the strike is debriefed, but what is clear is that ordinary members applying their energy, knowledge, skills, and willingness to take risks in creative, autonomous ways offered a greatly expanded scope for struggle compared to picket lines alone. There was a great hunger to try new things and to find approaches that might shift public opinion, political positions, and consequences for the company.

There are plenty of indications that much more could be done to make the most of this kind of struggle, whatever specifics workers decide are appropriate in a given instance. It was Gary Kinsman, a long-time activist and a scholar who has worked extensively on the history of Canadian social movements, including some work on Sudbury's labour movement, who described the local historically as a "business union" and also as "top-down" in its organization. One consequence of this is an internal culture that has not always fostered participatory governance or spaces and resources devoted to facilitating social movement-like mobilization of rank-and-file workers, though there have been moments of exception to this.

From the people I talked to, there seems to have been little attention to building this kind of capacity either in general in recent years or specifically in the lead-up to the strike. The international-sponsored training that lead to the formation of one of the networks happened shortly after the beginning of the strike, but from its content appeared to have been designed for use six months to a year before a strike was expected to occur.

During the strike itself, though the union had the information to mount all of the picket lines it needed from the beginning, it did not produce a coordinated means for mobilizing all of its members for other sorts of actions until several months into the strike. As well, at no point does there appear to have been anyone assigned to coordinate the strike-related activities originating from different spaces within the union. Information flow to and among members was another problem that activists identified. Despite the approval and even resources provided by the local leadership for rank-and-file activities at various points, activists I talked to identified a strong and consistent disconnection of the leadership from the activities organized by the rank-and-file networks.

What can be done to build on the experiences of ordinary members who became active in this strike? What can be done to create spaces and resources during non-strike periods that can build an ever-growing base of members with skills, political knowledge, and confidence to engage in the kinds of actions beyond the picket lines that can help unions win? What is the best role for leadership in doing this? What is the best role for rank-and-file networks? For the families of members?

International Links

Another key element in struggles against global companies (or other global institutions) is making links among those who face the same enemy in different places. North American unions are still in the early stages of figuring out how to do that effectively. The international level of the Steel Workers is, by all accounts, deeply involved in trying to make such linkages, and appeared to be doing a lot of that kind of work in relation to this strike. However, the knowledge among both community and union activists I spoke to in Sudbury was often vague on the details of this work. My sense is that a lot of good things were happening, but that, even when a few members of the local were directly involved, most members had little opportunity to learn about what was happening internationally or to get a practical sense of being involved in a global struggle in alliance with sisters and brothers half a world away.

It is also unclear what kind of barriers to effective solidarity might have been created by the choice at the beginning of the strike to politically frame it in strongly nationalist terms -- as Canadian workers and a Canadian community fighting a Brazilian enemy. Official statements after the initial period seemed to pull back somewhat from the blatant nationalism of the earliest period, but never completely, and it continued to exert a powerful influence over at least a segment of the membership. This is, of course, deeply connected to the troubling tendency of much of the broader left in North America to respond to neo-liberalism in nationalist ways.

How can substantive global links be forged among workers? How should international work be integrated into local struggles? What barriers do nationalist politics present for such work, as well as to developing deeper understandings of what neo-liberalism is and how it works?

Local Alliances

In the current strike, there were a number of barriers to effective mobilizations in the broader community in support of the strike. The following section examines those related to the community itself. However, a key one was, as far as many of us in the community could tell, that the union was not terribly interested or able to cultivate such support. In the early months, there were a number of instances of social justice groups (and quite a few more of individual activists) calling the union to ask what they could do, and never hearing back. Individual demonstrations of support were certainly encouraged, whether that was donating money or taking coffee to a picket line or putting a supportive sign in your window, but building relationships of alliance with activists and social justice groups in the community did not seem to be a high priority.

Again, this has some basis in history. Local 6500 does not have a strong record of building relationships of solidarity with social justice and community groups outside of the labour movement. For many community activists in Sudbury, this was epitomized by the decision of Local 6500 during the Days of Action campaign which swept across Ontario in the late 1990s in opposition to the right-wing provincial government of Premier Mike Harris to use its dominance at the Sudbury and District Labour Council to prevent that body from sponsoring the Sudbury Days of Action.

Given the importance of action beyond the picket line for winning against the neo-liberal agenda, how should unions relate to social justice groups in the community? What does reciprocal solidarity look like?

Beyond the Union

While the lack of attention to facilitating community alliances by the local was a significant factor, there was much less there to facilitate than in decades past. As one long-time community activist who requested anonymity sadly told me, this strike "debunked the myth that Sudbury is a union town."

According to Kinsman, "There was a lot of support for the strike, but a lot of it remained incredibly passive and inactive." This may explain why all of the union activists I talked to were moderately positive about the level of support they received in the community, while the community activists were uniformly negative.

Laurie McGauley is another long-time activist in the community, with many years of experience in the feminist movement and other social justice spaces. She said that in January, seven months into the strike, there was still "absolutely no community-lead support initiatives going on. Which is unusual for Sudbury in a big strike like this... It just blew my mind." So she and a few other people called together old contacts and allies, including many with roots in the Women's movement, and put together a group called CANARYS, short for Community Activists Need Answers Regarding Your Safety. For the balance of the strike they held weekly meetings and regular events and protests, often highly theatrical ones, focusing on opposition to scab labour and the danger that under-trained workers posed to the community given the nature of the facilities they were operating. While community response to the group showed a hunger for ways to be more actively in support, no other centres of activity emerged in the community outside of the labour movement.

Even within the labour movement, the response was less vigorous than it could have been. While traditional forms of strike solidarity, like declarations of support and financial donations, began to arrive from other unions from Sudbury and from across the country soon after the strike began -- indeed, many unions were very generous over the course of the year -- it was also many months into the strike before a support committee focused on mobilizing people was formed at the local labour council.

The community activists I talked to offered a number of theories as to why the level of activism in support of the strike was so low in the broader community. Certainly the disinterest or inability of the union to engage with activism in the community was one. Another was the changes in the shape of the local economy -- once upon a time, the mining workforce involved tens of thousands of people, but the local was only 3300 strong at the start of the strike, so the impact on the community was much less.

McGauley also talked about the loss of a culture of activism in the city, which as recently as ten years ago was very vibrant. She noted that the incredible influence of the company, including its generous funding of many local recreational, cultural, and environmental initiatives, meant that many people were hesitant about coming out publicly against Vale. Other community activists pointed towards the material and cultural impacts of neo-liberalism. The former means that more people are having to put more time into making ends meet and so have less time for activism, and the latter tends to push a more atomized and individualistic view of the world that has little space for solidarity, social justice, or social change.

This seems to be consistent with the experience of many other communities across Canada. While there are signs in Canada's largest cities of the beginnings of a modest uptick in social movement activity, at least in specific sectors, this does not seem to have reached much beyond Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.

What must be done to recompose sites of struggle in Sudbury and across the continent? What can we do to reconstitute a culture of activism? What questions do we need to be asking and what conversations do we need to be having to begin preparing for the renewed push for neo-liberalism promised by the G20?

Looking Forward

It is difficult to ask questions arising from a defeat without encouraging pessimism. Some community activists are worried that this defeat for Local 6500 -- an organization with a reputation for strength greater than any sort of people's organization that most of us in North America can dream of belonging to -- might discourage others in Sudbury and others in the larger labour movement from actively resisting when neo-liberalism comes knocking. This is certainly possible. But it does not have to be.

At the most basic level, the company wanted to break the union, break the workers, and it failed. The union lost, but it remains a powerful tool that the workers can use to fight another day.

Another consequence of this struggle was that it created activists. One union militant that I talked to estimated that there was a core of between 200 and 300 activists who were consistently involved throughout the strike. Some of these will not stay involved, of course, but many will. They will become a nucleus of struggle against the company and, potentially, of struggles against neo-liberalism more broadly in the Sudbury community for decades to come. In this way, the strike has left Sudbury stronger.

The strike also presented glimpses of possibility, little moments of anticipation of what might be. One such moment was a mass direct action near the end of the strike. After talks broke down yet again, a segment of the rank-and-file networks put up blockades at the main entrances to two company facilities with several hundred participants that lasted for multiple days. Many members who had not before been active in the strike outside of picket duty saw this as a chance to do something powerful, and they joined in. The company and the police insisted the action was in violation of the picketing injunction, yet the angry strikers, their families, and supporters from the community remained, even with the threat of police intervention. Yes, when senior union leadership intervened to end the action, there was great anger from many of the rank-and-file workers who were participating, and significant demoralization and demobilization afterward. But it was also a taste of the power of ordinary people, of what resistance in a Sudbury of reinvigorated movements might look like.

What if this kind of tactic was begun not in the late days of the strike but early on? What if there was a longstanding culture of activism within the local to draw on, and vibrant, already-existing rank-and-file networks? What if there were strong links to a highly mobilized community? In such circumstances, it is easy to imagine not 300 people but 3000 people willing to be present even in the face of police disapproval, which would have changed the balance of forces significantly. And what if that was coupled to strong bonds with workers overseas? Coordinated action against Vale at multiple sites around the world becomes imaginable.

It is impossible to know in any definitive way what could have turned a defeat into a victory. However, in thinking about the future, it is important to keep in mind that the speculations in the previous paragraph are not just imaginable, but possible. In fact, not only is the capacity to engage in actions like that possible, it may even be necessary as the "age of austerity" descends. The only way to get there is to begin asking questions like those arising from the Vale Inco strike -- questions about how to create participatory organizations; about how to build a movement by creating spaces and using resources such that all of us can grow in confidence, knowledge, and skills, to better act autonomously and creatively; about how to recreate an activist culture in smaller centres across the continent; about how to build real alliances around the world and across different sectors and social locations close to home. Wherever we are, we must begin talking about such things, so that we can move forward together.

This article was orignally published on http://linchpin.ca/

Scott Neigh is a writer, activist, and parent who lives in Sudbury, Ontario, For more of his writing, visit http://scottneigh.blogspot.com.

• Dominion Stories

Photos & captions by Shiri Pasternak; text by Tim McSorley

Early this morning, members of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake (Mitchikanibikok Inik) blockaded the access road leading to their community in northeastern Quebec, about five hours north of Montreal. Primarily using their cars, they successfully stopped a federal elections officer from entering their territory.

The elections officer was sent by the federal government to hold a nominating meeting for band council elections. This meeting would have been a step forward in the federal government's attempt to replace the community's current customary leadership selection process with the federally defined band council process.

On paper, Section 74 of the Indian Act allows the Canadian government to impose an election process on First Nations, but it has been decades since Indian and Northern Affairs last used the provision. Members of the commuinty have denounced the measure, saying it is a politically motivated attempt to remove the their link to the land and to find a way for the federal government to avoid its obligations to the community under signed agreements to do with co-management of resource development on their land.

“We reject the Minister’s unconstitutional attempt to assimilate our leadership selection customs by imposing a foreign regime on us. The community is unanimously in favour of continuing to be governed by our customs,” Marylynn Poucachiche, a community spokesperson, said via a news release this morning. “Because the government has not heeded its constitutional obligations or our community’s wishes, we are turning to peaceful direct action. We will be preventing the nomination meeting from proceeding and are demanding the federal government immediately cease and desist in their attempt to abolish our customs. The government is breaking the law, but through our actions we are protecting it.”

Yesterday, community member Tony Wawatie also spoke to the Assembly of First Nations and gained their unanimous support in opposing the implementation of Section 74 rules on the community and calling on the federal government to rescind it's decision.

According to a release from the community, the federal government plans to hold the elections on September 8. It is unclear whether today's action will delay the vote.

For more information http://www.barrierelakesolidarity.org/

• Original Peoples

We witnessed two elderly women being attacked by the police at the corner of University and College, during the G20 summit in Toronto. We asked them to explain what happened. This is their story.

Surrounded by cops from opposite directions the women found themselves trapped, unable to follow the commands being hurled at them from the police themselves: Move, Move. Move.

The assault they experienced after makes no sense. It remains unexplained and unaccounted for. Thankfully, neither of the women were hurt. This makes for a relatively minor act of police brutality that took place around the summit.

To learn about more experiences, many far more severe (with broken bones, blood; gas and bullets), share your own story, or file a complaint visit:

http://www.g20inquiry.org/

http://ccla.org/our-work/current-issues/g8-and-g20/

Demand a G20 independent public inquiry
http://www.ricktelfer.ca/g20/

Learn more about the activities and issues surrounding the G8/G20 visit:
http://therealg8g20.com/

A great piece for those who weren't there on the streets. We need you to read this:
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/blog/niki-thorne/4208

• Dominion Stories

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Barriere Lake Algonquins set up peaceful blockade to stop unconstitutional attack on their customary government; AFN passes emergency resolution condemning Minister Strahl

Kitiganik, Rapid Lake, Algonquin Territory / - This morning Barriere Lake community members set up a peaceful blockade on the access road to their reserve to prevent an electoral officer from conducting a nomination meeting for Indian Act band elections.

The electoral officer aims to implement the federal government’s plan to abolish Barriere Lake’s traditional leadership selection system by holding nomination meetings for a band election imposed through section 74 of the Indian Act. Barriere Lake is one of the few First Nations in the country who have never been under the Indian Act’s electoral system, continuing instead to operate under a Customary Governance Code that they have used since time immemorial.

At its General Assembly in Winnipeg on Wednesday, the Assembly of First Nations passed an emergency resolution condemning Minister of Indian Affairs Chuck Strahl and demanding that he rescind the section 74 order to impose Indian Act band elections.

“We reject the Minister’s unconstitutional attempt to assimilate our leadership selection customs by imposing a foreign regime on us. The community is unanimously in favour of continuing to be governed by our customs,” says Marylynn Poucachiche, a community spokesperson. “Because the government has not heeded its constitutional obligations or our community’s wishes, we are turning to peaceful direct action. We will be preventing the nomination meeting from proceeding and are demanding the federal government immediately cease and desist in their attempt to abolish our customs. The government is breaking the law, but through our actions we are protecting it.”

Barriere Lake’s inherent right to customary self-government is protected by section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. A May, 2010 report by the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples affirmed that First Nations have the right to maintain control over their internal affairs and be free to pursue their vision of customary government.

“The Canadian government is trying to forcibly assimilate our customs so they can sever our connection to the land, which is at the heart of our governance system,” says Tony Wawatie, another community spokesperson. “They don’t want to deal with a strong leadership, selected by community members who live on the land, that demands that the federal and Quebec governments implement the outstanding agreements regarding the exploitation of our lands and resources.”

Under Barriere Lake’s customary governance code, participation in leadership selections is open only to those band members who live in the traditional territory and have knowledge of and connection to the land. This ensures that people who have a stake in the land and it’s health select leaders. But Indian Act band elections would open voting to individuals on the band registry list who do not live in the community’s territory.

The federal government has slightly delayed the date for the Indian Act band elections, announcing they will try to hold them on September 8, 2010.

-30-

 Media contacts:

Tony Wawatie, community spokesperson: 819 – 860-4121

Marylynn Poucachiche, community spokesperson: 819-441-4923

 

 

For more information: www.barrierelakesolidarity.org

 

 

 

Ableist Police called disabled activist “a pawn”

Eleven peaceful protesters were arrested Wednesday, for the crime of speaking out against cuts to Ontario Works and Ontario Disability which take away food from sick people. Lisa Schofield, an organizer with OCAP (the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) said “it’s clear that they they are using the security budget to police poor communities. The austerity budgets that they are bringing down will be brought with lines of riot police."

In an OCAP press release Anne Abbot said "I went to the demonstration to demand the special diet not be cut and that welfare and ODSP rates be raised 55% for those of us on social assistance. Instead, I was arrested and the police called me "a pawn" because I am disabled. I am not a pawn. Disabled people fight against governments that make and keeps us poor everyday, and we will fight until
we win enough money to eat healthy food and pay our rents," Current welfare rates are $585 a month for a single person, which is not enough to buy food for a previously healthy person, yet alone someone with special dietary needs.

The protest wound through the downtown, stopping at the offices of the provincial Liberals, who cut the special diet without warning. According to the OCAP website, it was to be a short stop to deliver an invoice “demanding full re-payment of benefits taken from people living on social assistance.” A banner was dropped from an office window and people spoke to the assembled crowd below.

Lenny Olin, was working as an interpreter for Ann Abbot, her employer, and was reading out Anne’s speech from the window when the crowd saw her dragged away by police. Ironically, the conclusion of the speech would have been a statement of solidarity with all prisoners.

 The crowd chanted for the release of the prisoners, but to no avail. Several OCAP and allied labour activists, handcuffed, were loaded into a police van. One of those arrested was Ilian Burbano, a long-time community organizer with the Latin American Solidarity Network and the president of CUPE 3393.

 Lenny and Anne however, were not loaded into the van.

“presumably because they didn’t have transportation that was wheelchair accessible.” Lenny said. “I guess in this case the ableist fucked up injustice system worked in our favour. However people with disabilities in general are drastically over-represented in prisons and other types of forcible confinement, such as government run institutions, nursing homes and accessible living facilities." Evoking the use of hospitals as prisons for disabled people, the police at first refused to arrest Ann but threatened to send Ann to a hospital as they were arresting her employee.

 The arrestees were taken to 52 Division, where a small solidarity protest went on all afternoon as people from OCAP, the Latino community and their allies anxiously awaited news from inside. People were shocked to hear that the charges for some were mischief and forcible entry, which were hugely disproportionate to the actions taken. Previously, this sort of protest would have resulted in a trespassing ticket at worst. As Ali Mustafa, standing outside the prison, commented “They set a new precedent now, thanks to the G20.” These events demonstrate that increasingly aggressive policing continues, and that the policies of “g20 land” were not a state of exception but a continued policy.

 OCAP is refusing to capitulate to police intimidation, and is calling for supporters to gather at bail hearings, which will take place July 22nd at 10:30, at college Park courthouse  (south-west corner of Yonge & College).

 

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Activist Speaks out Against Police Brutality at Rally in Vancouver Saturday

I gave this speech at the 'Reclaim Your Rights' rally on Saturday, July 17th.

A few minor changes have been made since then.

To watch this speech, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3U4rShPnNQ

 

Hey everyone, my name is Natalie Gray. I’d like to start by acknowledging that we are gathered here today on unceded occupied Coast Salish Territory.



At the end of June, I went to Toronto to exercise my civil rights and march in active opposition to the G8 and G20 meetings being held there. On Sunday June 27th, I attended a jail solidarity protest that was peaceful. Without warning a line of riot police started moving towards us, and while running away, I was shot twice with rubber bullets, then arrested and incarcerated for 30 hours. I have been charged with obstruction of a peace officer. I have never been more terrified, more dehumanized or more in pain than I was that day. I wish my story were unique.

Over one billion dollars of tax payer's money funded the weekend's tragedy, which was executed by 20,000 police officers and their artillery. Over one thousand demonstrators, media and passersby were indiscriminately incarcerated and subjected to abuses similar and in many cases worse than what I experienced. As demonstrators, we were in the streets to resist the systemic and violent oppression of people here at home and around the world caused by the capitalist, corporate strategies solidified, agreed upon and celebrated by the leaders at the G8 and G20 summits. We got a brief taste this weekend of the very human rights abuses we were there to oppose. Here's my story.


I was at the jail solidarity rally on Sunday June 27th, outside of the detention centre in support of my friends who had been surrounded and arrested in Queen’s Park, the designated protest zone, the day before. Sunday's protest followed the route decided upon by the police, and was proceeding peacefully. A line of riot police formed between us and the detention centre. Without warning, two unmarked minivans screeched to a stop behind the police line. A number of plainclothes men stormed through the line and into the crowd, violently pushing two people into the ground. The people were dragged along the pavement and aggressively thrown into the vans and the vans took off. To all who were there, this appeared to be a strategically orchestrated kidnapping. The small woman who was snatched later became my cellmate. She told me of being choked and sat on by two large men to the verge of unconsciousness. A third man pulled her hair and all three verbally abused her, referring to her as ‘cunt’, ‘bitch’, ‘whore’, and ‘street trash’ on the way to the detention centre. All three refused to identify themselves.


At this point we decided to de-escalate the situation by sitting down. We chanted ‘we are peaceful, how about you’ and clapped our hands. During this time, officers donning helmets, body armour, gas masks, and weapons resembling tear gas guns filled in the line in front of us. Several minutes later, once again without warning, the police line started moving quickly toward us. We stood up and moved backwards, complying with the yells of the officers to get back. Soon thereafter, the riot line parted to let an officer through who was wielding a large, intimidating weapon.

As an asthmatic, I had bought a painter’s respirator from a hardware store to cover my face in case chemical weapons were used during the weekend. I had no idea what the weapon behind us was, so as a precaution, I reached into my bag, took out the mask and put it over my face. Not wanting to have my back to the weapon, I turned to face it while retreating. It was then that I was shot in the sternum. As I went to turn, I was shot again in the elbow, and I immediately hit the ground, falling into the fetal position. I remember simply hoping that someone was on their way to help me, and I knew I couldn't get up by myself.

A person ran back for me and attempted to help me to my feet, but on my way up, the riot line caught up to us and several police shoved me face first into the pavement. They yelled at me to stop resisting and kneeled on top of me. I was terrified, and lost control of my bladder. All I remember was begging them to be gentle because I was hurt. They then dragged me to my feet and walked me to a nearby cruiser, the officer on my left insisting on gripping my arm over the bullet wound.

The first half-hour of my incarceration was spent lying in the fetal position in the cruiser, and being dragged to various places within the compound. They didn't seem to know what to do with me, and I repeatedly asked every officer I saw for medical attention. The first time I was dragged out, they brought me over to a sergeant, and told him I was asking to see a doctor. He said ‘too bad’. I then repeated my request, and was told by the sergeant to ‘suck it up’. Approximately thirty minutes after my arrest, I finally had my vitals checked, and was given acetaminophen. All the detention centre doctors had to offer was acetaminophen or ibuprofen. I was then put on a stretcher in an ambulance. This was when I overheard officers confirming why I had been targeted. It was because I had put the respirator on my face.

It was one hour later that I arrived at the hospital, and was checked for internal bleeding and broken bones. Thankfully I suffered from neither; an hour and a half of internal bleeding could’ve left me dead. I was then brought back to the detention centre, and upon arrival, put in a solitary cell. The detention centre was a series of metal cages in several large, cold, concrete rooms. The solitary cells were in a row against one wall against one wall in the second room, with sheet metal blocking the view on three sides. I was soon brought into a makeshift office and interrogated by three male officers. One of them referred to me as 'sir' immediately after I told him my name, and asked if I preferred to be called 'Natalie' or 'Gray', implying that my physical appearance didn't represent my sex.

Every prisoner I've spoken to experienced some type of verbal abuse at the hands of officers. Based on appearance, the officers categorized and harassed people according to race, gender, sexual orientation, physical capability, gender identity, presumed income and whatever else came to their minds. A person in a cell next to mine was told to 'stop crying, faggot'. A racialized person was told 'we let you into this country and this is what you do?'.  A woman was told she was going to be repeatedly raped while she was in jail. The scope and consistency of the verbal abuse in the detention centre is difficult to articulate.

After being interrogated, I was led to be strip searched. When I repeated several times that I wanted to speak to a lawyer before being strip searched, I was surrounded by approximately eight officers. A male officer referred to me in third person and said, 'I know she'll behave because if she doesn't, she knows we'll be coming in', referring to himself and several other male officers. I was strip searched by four female officers. My search was minor in comparison to that of one woman, who was strip searched by several male officers and had a finger put inside her.

Afterwards, the officers escorted me back to my cell, sporadically moving me to different ones throughout the course of my incarceration. I knew that four hours after my hospital visit, the acetaminophen would wear off and I'd be in severe pain again. So I started asking officers if I'd be treated. I also needed to take my asthma medication. An hour and a half after I started asking to see the physician, I was finally brought to one. Throughout my stay, I would tell the officers my pain medication was about to wear off about twenty minutes in advance. They would wait until I was hunched over, shaking, clutching my arm to my front and crying before bringing me to the physician. I remember hearing a woman asking to see the doctor, and the officers told her to stand up. She told them that she couldn't, that she was too injured to do so. They told her if she couldn't stand up, she couldn't see the doctor, and left her in her cell.

We were occasionally given buns of white bread with a slice of processed cheese in the middle to eat and small styrofoam cups of water to drink . The bathrooms were outhouses without doors that faced the officers. The solitary cells didn't have bathrooms. The floors and benches were concrete, and puddles were common. The officers refused us blankets and warm clothing. I was refused a fresh pair of pants, and spent all 30 hours in the pants I had urinated in. There were fluorescent lights on 24/7. I huddled up in a corner of the cage, and dozed off for a couple minutes around midnight. But I was too hungry, cold and injured to sleep that night, like many other prisoners. I continued throughout the night to try and see the doctor every four hours.

The next morning, I was put in a paddy wagon with several other people and driven to the courthouse. One of them was a black man. He told me that he had been walking through Queen's Park when a police officer called him over. He was then surrounded and beaten by fifteen officers. They kicked him and stomped on his face. When he put his hands over his face, they yelled at him to 'stop resisting'. His jaw had been broken and several of his ribs were cracked. He had been charged with resisting arrest.

I was among the lucky people that were released on bail Monday. My bail was $1000 with a number of conditions. It felt weird to leave my cellmates behind, but they reassured me and hugged me and gave me their family's phone numbers to call from the outside. Most people had been denied their rights to a phone call. I stepped out into the sun and immediately burst into tears. I sat on the ground outside the courthouse with some wonderful people who had brought real food and medical supplies for the people getting out. While I was waiting for my friends to get there, ten police officers surrounded six of us and told us to get off the property. They followed us onto the sidewalk and harassed us until we were well away from the area. I was given a ride to my friend's place where I was staying. As part of my conditions, I was restricted to that apartment and spent a week in there, constantly in fear of a knock at the door and being taken back into police custody.

While most of the 1,000 arrestees have been released, 12 people remain incarcerated. These individuals have been charged with conspiracy, with bails set upwards of $85,000. These political prisoners have been strategically targeted in an attempt to discredit and undermine our grassroots organizations. These people are our friends and our comrades. he systemic brutality and torture that 1,000 human beings were subjected to that weekend leaves no question of who the real criminals are.

They sought to crush our democratic rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. They sought to terrify us out of the streets. They sought to silence our dissent. And they hoped no-one would notice.

Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty and Bill Blair are criminals, and they made one big mistake.

They underestimated us.

We are hurt. We are sad. We are angry.

We are also as passionate, as capable, and as determined as ever before.

This tragedy has enraged us, inspired us, united us.

And we stand here with our parents. We stand here with our siblings. We stand here with our children. We stand here with our friends. We stand here with our lovers. We stand here with our cousins and our neighbours and our coworkers.

We stand to demand answers and hold the criminals responsible.

We stand here to insist on the rights of every human being in this nation.

But we cannot forget those elsewhere. We must insist on our right to flood the streets in solidarity with those around the world whose day-to-day survival is resistance. Whose struggle for clean water, clean air, clean land, self-determination and peace is their way of life. Whose tragedies are a direct result of the illegitimate, criminal choices made by Stephen Harper and the rest of the G8 and G20 thugs. Those whose activism deserves global solidarity.

Our so-called leaders have no idea what they've gotten themselves into.

We're here. We're strong. We resist.
 

 

 

Natalie Gray

www.myspace.com/natthepoet

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