The Dominion - Sara Falconer

Honouring Unfree Friends

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:31:11 +0000

Prison solidarity for man charged in RBC arson

TORONTO—It’s two days before Christmas, and it's Matthew Morgan-Brown’s birthday. It’s hard for him to celebrate, however; his friend, Roger Clement, is being transferred to Millhaven Institution, where he will begin serving the rest of his three-year, six-month sentence for the firebombing of a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch in Ottawa in May 2010. No one has heard from Clement for over a week, which isn’t unusual during transfers, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Morgan-Brown.

“It’s that time of year,” Morgan-Brown says. “It’s difficult to be separated from family and friends.”

Clement, a 58-year-old retired civil service employee, is well known to local activists from years of social justice organizing. He was sentenced on December 7, 2010, having pled guilty to the RBC arson, as well as breaking windows and ATMs at a different branch in February 2010. It’s an unusually harsh sentence for property damage crimes, given that both the defense and Crown attorneys acknowledged he took great care to eliminate any possible injury to people.

Morgan-Brown’s own arson and mischief charges in the May 18 RBC firebombing were stayed due to lack of evidence. He is now taking an active role in Ottawa Movement Defense (OMD), a group originally formed to support the three people arrested on June 18: himself, Joseph Roger Clement, and Claude Haridge. Haridge, who was never charged with arson but with careless storage and handling of ammunition, had his final day in court postponed in December 2010.

In addition to returning to his job at Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG)-Ottawa and devoting his spare time to OMD, Morgan-Brown says he is grappling with the psychological scars of the arrest and months of uncertainty. “I often put my emotions on hold, and then try to find time to deal with them later,” he says. “It’s just not a skill that I have. I don’t know how to deal with what happened. I know that it was a traumatic experience.

“It was also a learning experience. It was the first time I’d ever been in prison...other than two or three days when I challenged some conditions I’d been given. That was scary in itself, not knowing what was going on, what it would be like. I’d be a lot more prepared if I had to go to prison again.”

Morgan-Brown spent two months inside, including the addition of a 20-day sentence for participating in a Barriere Lake First Nation blockade on Highway 117 in 2008. Algonquins from that impoverished community in north-western Quebec are struggling to protect their land and environmental resources.

Morgan-Brown has long been an active member of Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Movement (IPSM)-Ottawa, a grassroots organization that directly supports Indigenous peoples in diverse struggles for justice. “Not being able to organize was really shitty. It’s very important to me,” says Morgan-Brown, who had limited communications with colleagues due to his bail conditions. “The day they lifted my conditions I started organizing again.”

His number one priority these days is supporting his friend Roger Clement. Morgan-Brown encourages activists to write to Clement and connect with him, as a way of showing support. “[Clement is] quite limited about what he can say,” he says. “I expect that he feels he can’t comment about his politics, which I know are super-important to him.”

One way to honour Clement, Morgan-Brown says, is to learn about and discuss subjects that are important to him. As a communist, he is passionate about the Cuban revolution. “I know that he’d like to see people becoming engaged, learning about different issues,” says Morgan-Brown. “He’d be happy if people were finding out about what’s going on in Cuba now and how to support [the Cuban people].” In this way, supporters can keep Clement involved in everyday organizing and dialogue.

As with writing to any prisoners, it’s extremely important not to speculate about illegal activities, or to act on behalf of a prisoner without their guidance. “He’s got a parole board hearing coming up,” Morgan-Brown cautions.

Complicating matters, the issue of police infiltration in Ottawa activist groups has been a source of rampant rumours. "As far as we know from the disclosure the lawyer saw, and from what we heard in [our] bail hearing, there’s no evidence he was involved in either of the actions Roger pled guilty to,” says Morgan-Brown.

Meanwhile, Morgan-Brown still finds it challenging to speak freely, although a publication ban on the case has finally been lifted. He’s on a relatively short leash, as his charges have only been stayed, not dismissed; the Crown still has a year in which it can reinstate them. “It’s definitely something I’m more mindful of than I usually am,” he says. “Hopefully I can find something positive in it, step back in certain situations where I would usually step forward, and encourage people to take on roles that I enjoy.” An avid public speaker, he is working to help other group members develop those skills.

Morgan-Brown was already familiar with prison issues through his activist work, but witnessing first-hand the ways in which imprisonment is so blatantly tied to race and class, he says, was eye-opening. “So many guys were in there just because they didn’t have the resources to get bail.”

Moving forward, Morgan-Brown aims to link his Indigenous solidarity and prisoner justice work more closely, starting with support for people arrested from Barriere Lake. “There are so many Indigenous people in the criminal justice system, and so many people being arrested for resistance,” he says. “I feel more emotionally connected to prisoners than I did [before], and I hope that Ottawa Movement Defense will find a way of connecting with other people who are supporting political prisoners, and the G8/G20 defendants.”

Sara Falconer is a Toronto-based journalist. She helps publish Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar and is a member of Toronto Anarchist Black Cross, which produces www.4strugglemag.org, a zine of analysis by and for political prisoners.

For more information about supporting Clement and Haridge, visit http://www.exilebooks.org/en/links/ottawa-movement-defense.

Solidarity for friends

A Violation of Algonquin Law

dawn — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:03:08 +0000

First Nations spearhead resistance to uranium mining

TORONTO, ONTARIO–Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwan Algonquins and their neighbours along Sharbot Lake learned in late 2006 that Frontenac Ventures Corporation (FVC) was planning a uranium mining project on the land they live on. They have refused to let that happen, withstanding long days and nights in the freezing cold, on hunger strikes and in prison. It has taken a toll on the communities, but it has also brought them closer together.

The land in question is in North Frontenac Township, southwest of Ottawa, in an area which is the subject of ongoing land claims between the Ontario government and the Algonquin people and their government. Algonquins say the land was never ceded, and that they should have the right to free, prior and informed consent before the Ontario government can sell mining concessions.

FVC, a private company based in Toronto that specializes in uranium mining in Canada, was granted permission to drill hundreds of 200-metre-deep holes for samples of uranium-rich granite, hoping to use the core samples to secure financial backing to develop a mine on the 30,000-acre site.

Paula Sherman, Ardoch Nation co-Chief, says that mining exploration is an affront to traditional Algonquin law, which mandates a healthy relationship with the land. Although FVC's geologists continue to insist that there will be no ill-effects from the process, ecologists maintain that a uranium mine will have dire environmental consequences.

According to MiningWatch Canada, uranium deposits in Ontario are typically so low in quantity – around one per cent – that mining requires removing huge quantities of rock, which is milled. Tonnes of hazardous tailings (waste rock) are left over. Byproducts released into the air during the process include deadly radon gas as well as thorium-230 and radium-226, which continue to be hazardous for thousands of years. Even exploratory drilling can contaminate the water table with radioactive materials.

Hundreds of Ardoch and Shabot First Nations protesters occupied the site of the planned exploratory drilling beginning in summer 2007. Over 150 local settlers also supported the protest from outside the fence, bringing food and other supplies to the camp. Donna Dillman, a 53-year-old grandmother and member of the Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium (CCAMU), went on a 68-day hunger strike at the gates of the barricade in an act of solidarity.

"We have been very lucky in that this is an issue that also impacts non-Algonquin people," Sherman said in an interview with The Dominion in October 2008. "We formed an alliance against this project in November of 2006 and it has been building momentum ever since. We remain strongly committed to this alliance and our partnership with our neighbours in stopping irresponsible development that poses a significant risk to the entire region."

Robert Lovelace, Ardoch co-Chief and Aboriginal Student Councilor at Fleming College in Peterborough, served more than three months in jail after being found guilty of contempt of court for refusing to obey an Ontario court injunction ordering protesters to leave the site. Lovelace was fined $25,000, and Sherman, $15,000. Lovelace was released in May 2008. In their decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal cited deep flaws in the province's antiquated Mining Act.

Sherman explains that their fines were stayed and they were awarded $50,000 by the court for their legal costs, $40,000 to be paid by FVC and $10,000 by Ontario, based on the fact that the province failed to uphold its fiduciary responsibilities to the Aboriginal community.

Not long after the court's decision in the Ardochs’ favour, Dalton McGuinty's government announced that it would be updating the Ontario Mining Act – but refused to include uranium in the public consultations. Provincial authorities have refused to hold an inquiry into the impacts of uranium mining and nuclear power.

"What [the province] says publicly is that they are committed to nuclear power, and that it would be hypocritical for them to be against uranium mining in our province," says Wolfe Erlichman of CCAMU.

"This government is very committed to mining... and the mining lobby is a very powerful group," says Erlichman.

According to the Ontario government, the province is the world's "mine-financing capital," with over 80 per cent of public financing for the global mining industry in 2006 going through the Toronto Stock Exchange.

"We do whatever we can. We tried to raise the issue during the [federal] election, and when they had the sessions to review the Mining Act, we had a big gathering in Kingston," says Erlichman. Around 200 people attended the public session, hoping to remind provincial representatives that 24 municipalities have asked for a moratorium on uranium exploration until environmental concerns and questions around First Nations land have been resolved.

"What they did at these sessions was, they killed us with kindness. They said, you can talk about whatever you want... but of course a ban on uranium mining wasn't on the table," Erlichman says.

The barricades came down in the spring, and there was little change in the situation for several months, aside from the general economic downturn. "The price of uranium has been going down," says Erlichman. "If the price of uranium had stayed high, I think there'd be more interest on the part of the company."

But in September, FVC filed for Leave to Appeal the Appellant Court decision that freed Robert Lovelace and stayed the fines against him and Sherman. In a statement, Lovelace responded, "We welcome the opportunity to argue the issues before the Supreme Court of Canada. Frontenac Ventures must be mad to have kicked this sleeping dog."

"We expect these to move forward and require a lot of work and funds," Sherman says. "We have initiated another fundraising campaign to support our resistance both within the court and in the region.”

To our knowledge, FVC has continued to pursue exploration work against our wishes on our land. All of the offers we have received from Ontario have had preexisting conditions to allow drilling, which we do not support and which we consider to be a violation of Algonquin law."

As of October, it appears the latest recourse may come from provincial law.

"It has recently come to our attention that while FVC was busy participating in our criminalization in the courts, they neglected to renew some of the permits that they had taken out with the province on our lands," Sherman says.

"These lands are no longer covered under the injunction and under Ontario law. FVC has no legal right to be there doing any work. They have appealed to have their permits renewed after the fact, and Ontario has now come to us with an offer to negotiate those permits. Our council met this past weekend and the prior decision to oppose uranium exploration in that area remains in force."

FVC president George White did not respond to calls for comment.

Erlichman admits that the process is frustrating, but not without hope. "It's been two years – there are some of us who have been literally working on this full-time for that long," he says. "They haven't drilled yet. So in one sense it's been a victory. The longer it lasts, the more difficult it becomes for them.

"Sharbot Lake is a fairly populated area as far as mine sites go," he adds. "If you think there's been an uproar now, it's nothing compared to what would happen if they actually announced there was going to be a mine."

Sara Falconer is a member of Toronto ABCF and co-publisher of 4strugglemag and Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar.

Sharbot Lake

Donna Dilman

Justice in Genova

dru — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:24:18 +0000

Police who beat and tortured international activists sentenced

On July 21, 2001, activists attending the G8 demonstrations in Genova, Italy, were attacked in a schoolhouse where they slept, mercilessly beaten by police, and subsequently tortured for days at the hands of guards and doctors.

Two Canadians who were among those beaten say they will never forget those awful nights and days. For them, part of the healing process is acknowledging the brutality at home and continuing to take a stand against it.

"We were travelling in southern and eastern Europe and had met Greek anarchists, Kurdish revolutionaries, Italian activists and squatters," recalls Kara Sievewright, an activist and artist based in Vancouver. "Earlier in our trip we had gone to a large demonstration in Napoli against the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developments (OECD) Global Forum."

She had been traveling with David Cunningham, an organizer with Vancouver's Anti-Poverty Committee and a writer for Direct Action magazine. "We went to Genova to join what was billed as the largest street battle in the history of the anti-globalisation movement," he says. Between 100,000 and 200,000 converged on the city and were met by a heavy-handed response from the Carabiniere, Italy's military police force. Black Bloc members increasingly engaged in direct confrontation with police, and on July 19, 23-year-old Carlos Giuliani, an unarmed Italian protestor, was shot to death by the Carabiniere.

Sievewright and Cunningham were staying at Diaz School, along with activists from Italy, Britain, Poland and Ireland. "It was advertised publicly as the headquarters for the Pink Bloc who openly organised on passive grounds," Cunningham says. "The cops didn't understand the sectarian difference and attacked the Pink as if they were Black Bloc."

Shortly after midnight on July 21, police swarmed into the building, rousing the startled occupants with shouts and blows.

"I remember the people screaming 'polizia, polizia,' and the sound of the riot police banging down the door. I remember looking out the window of the third floor and seeing a wave of shiny blue helmets swelling into the gates and through the doors of the school," says Sievewright. "I remember the shock on the faces of the first medics who were allowed into the building, and I remember the absolute terror and fear of the people who'd been beaten."

"I remember a lot of pacifists who could not believe that it was happening to them," Cunningham adds.

The schoolhouse was dubbed the "Slaughterhouse" by Indymedia reporters and radical press. Pictures circulated of walls and floors smeared with blood, of young men and women being carried unconscious through the front doors. Three activists, including British journalist Mark Covell, were left in comas, and one sustained permanent brain damage. Ninety-three people were arrested, many taken to a temporary detention camp established at Bolzaneto, six miles from Genova.

"I was beaten pretty badly, mostly on my back," Cunningham says. "I had zigzagging bruises on my back in the shape of the batons handles. My head was split open."

Shockingly, some of the worst treatment he received was at the hands of doctors. "I was in some kind of military hospital for two days."

"There, the 'doctors' worked with the police to get information from us. We were not allowed to sleep, as the pigs would smash batons off bed posts."

Afterwards, he was transferred to a men's prison for several days. "In prison we were made to sing fascist songs. Because I would not, I was kicked repeatedly, and put in an isolation cell away from the others. Guards would rush my cell and tell me that they would 'rape my girlfriend' and 'kill me in my sleep.'"

Meanwhile, similar emotional and physical anguish was being visited on the women who were detained, Sievewright says. "I was taken to a hospital for one night because they thought I had a head injury but I was lucky to get away with only major bruising on my legs and arms. The police came to the hospital in the morning, arrested me and took me to the Bolzaneto detention centre. I was there for about 30 hours in a small cell with about 30 other women from the school. Most of them had been there all night and had been forced to stand while sustaining head injuries, broken arms, fingers, noses, teeth, bruising and bleeding. They had been forced to sing fascist songs and threatened with rape. All night we heard screaming and banging. We were told that we were to be raped and tortured."

After days of threats and humiliation, Sievewright and Cunningham were released. "Upon our release from the detention center, a group of Marxist Leninists took us underground for a few days, as we were supposed to be out of the country immediately," Cunningham says. "I believe that there was support from the anarchists in general and the Black Cross in specific."

In the years following the attack, Sievewright and Cunningham traveled back to Italy to testify in a legal case that was organized by a local group under the banner Processi G8. As they struggle to come to terms with what they experienced, their resilience is as evident in their gallows humour as it is in their ongoing commitment to organizing for social justice.

"Though the impact of my experiences in Genova have lessened over the last seven years, I definitely had some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and on occasion it still haunts me. And Genova didn't do much for my love of police officers," Sievewright says dryly. "Witnessing and experiencing political violence in Genova was a big motivator in getting more actively involved in political organizing in Canada."

The experience has shaped Cunningham's activism as well. "Political violence as a threat from the state here in Vancouver is less terrifying, as I believe I have survived the worst that I might be subjected to, given my relative privilege as a white activist in occupied Canada," he says. "Here I've only had [police] throw me through a glass window and later break a rib that pierced my lung!"

On July 15, after a three-year trial, verdicts were handed down by the Italian court. Fifteen officials were given sentences ranging from five months to five years. Thirty others were cleared of charges. Defendants will each receive 10,000 Euros and upwards in damages. The decision is considered an embarrassment to Silvio Berlusconi's right wing government, in power both then and now. In 2005, 29 officers were indicted for grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest for the raid on the on the Diaz School. By 2003, all of the activists arrested that night had been cleared of all charges including resisting arrest.

The commander of the Bolzaneto camp, Biagio Gugliotta, received a five-year sentence. The chief doctor, Giacomo Toccafondi, was given a 14-month sentence, accused of failing to intervene when detainees were sprayed with asphyxiating gas.

"I know that most of the people involved in the case were disappointed in the verdict – only a fraction of the accused were convicted and most of them were given little jail time – but to be honest I was surprised that the police, the officials and the doctors were convicted, sentenced or given any jail time at all," Sievewright admits. "I know that a couple of years or months in prison, that they will likely not even serve, is little compared to the trauma and abuse that they afflicted on the hundreds of people in the detention centre; and it is small compared to the 25 people out of the 300,000, convicted of rioting and property damage who were given a collective total of 110 years of jail.

"But generally throughout the world people in positions of power are rarely brought to justice through the legal system. In Canada there have been numerous cases of people dying in the hands of the police ― Frank Paul, Robert Dziekanski, and most recently the 18-year-old in Montreal [Fredy Alberto Villanueva, killed August 10], to name a few – and in these cases, as in other cases, it is unlikely that the police will even be made to stand trial."

"I feel no closure," Cunningham says simply. "Fascism is on the rise in Europe and is making a resurgence here. Unless a militant force can organize to challenge them in the street, Carlos' death and the brutalities at the Diaz School and detention centres will be remembered in vain, with the current legal cases producing only symbolic legal victories void of any real justice."

G8 Files

Diaz School

"Full Confrontation with the State"

dru — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:39:36 +0000

Vancouver's Anti-Poverty Committee escalates opposition to 2010 Olympics

Vancouver's Anti-Poverty Committee (APC) has been getting a lot of negative media coverage. So why are they more popular with the public than ever?

"Without a doubt, the APC is enjoying more public support now that we're in full confrontation with the state than when we were just complaining about it," says David Cunningham, one of the group's organizers.

"Full confrontation with the state" is hardly an exaggeration. Earlier this year, the group quickly progressed from noisily disrupting Olympic press events to an "eviction campaign," targeting the Vancouver Olympics Committee (VANOC). In May, the dramatic eviction of VANOC member Ken Dobell from his office was front-page news across the province.

When Cunningham was arrested for "uttering threats" related to the evictions, police lured him to an isolated site by pretending to be a journalist with the free daily paper 24 Hours, a tactic that was roundly denounced even in the mainstream press.

"So many people are pissed off at the Olympics that any type of display of anger, most people can sympathize with," he says. "They're finally accepting direct action as a viable political alternative."

It may not exactly be universal support, with a range of virulent blog posts deriding Cunningham as a "lazy bastard" and worse, but there's no denying that these actions have made the social impact of the Olympics a priority issue for the public.

"As far as municipal political parties go in Vancouver, the APC is bigger than any of those groups. We've got more members and we carry more physical presence," says Cunningham.

On October 14, the APC had been planning to march to and occupy one of the many vacant buildings in the Downtown Eastside to draw attention to the role of the Games in the deterioration of already abysmal housing conditions in the neighbourhood. The night before, the advance team of people sent to prepare the building were violently arrested and threatened with tasers and dogs, according to Cunningham.

"With all of the advance propaganda, the police had locked down the Downtown Eastside prior to the demonstration," he says. "We thought we could slip in under the radar and we were wrong."

"It's important to recognize that these are hotel units," he adds. "We don't pretend that these are decent housing, these are just rooms. But given that people are living and literally dying in the alleys behind this building, it's a step up from the gutter."

Six people, ranging in age from from 18 to 64, were arrested and charged with breaking and entering with concealed instruments. The arrests and subsequent protest against police brutality are the subject of the short Burning Fist Media video "They Came in the Night".

The APC is now holding town meetings in various communities across the city to determine their next steps.

"It's common knowledge that the Olympics are socially cleansing not just the Downtown Eastside, but poor communities throughout Vancouver," Cunningham explains. "But that in itself poses a problem to us because now we're in a situation where people have that analysis, so how do we motivate them into direct political action?

"I guess realistically what APC is after is transforming this protest movement into a community of resistance. That's what pragmatically we need to confront the Olympics."

Their day-to-day work with the poor and Indigenous people who will be most affected by the Games is part of that transformation, as are alliances with groups like No One is Illegal and Native Youth Movement. They are working together to organize a large-scale convergence against the Olympics in February 2010.

"First and foremost, this convergence is an anti-colonial showdown," Cunningham explains. "We don't believe it's Vancouver-specific. The colonial juggernaut that is the 2010 Winter Games is something that will affect all of North and South America."

In October, an international delegation of 1,500 Indigenous representatives in Sonora, Mexico, unanimously agreed that the Olympics, as a colonial genocidal institution, posed a great risk to Indigenous cultures. They called for a boycott of the Games and for Indigenous people from around the world to travel to Vancouver for the protest.

It's a bold move on the part of organizers to announce a gathering that is still more than two years away. As the Games creep closer and the level of resistance rises, so too will the heat. Cunningham anticipates direct involvement from CSIS and the military.

"By the time we get to February 2010, it'll just be part of the continuum of protest that's happening now. With that, there's an escalation of surveillance and police repression," he says. "It's our responsibility to continue escalating that resistance into revolution."

"We're pretty clear. We're talking about overthrowing the government. We're not living in revolutionary times, but we have a revolutionary analysis and a revolutionary objective."

Visit apc.resist.ca and www.no2010.com for more information.

Marcos and Mohawks

Dobell Eviction

Genocide Denial and North American Academia

dru — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:56:59 +0000

An interview with Ward Churchill

It might be said that the measure of any decent smear campaign is the level to which the subject's own peers turn against them. If that's the case, Ward Churchill's defamers must be pretty pleased with themselves these days, as people of all political stripes line up to heap scorn on him.

Talking to him, you know this man is anything but defeated. Following his recent dismissal from the University of Colorado, he's taking his polemic show on the road, with stops next week in Ottawa, Toronto and Guelph.

Churchill became a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado in 1990. His name was already well-known in activist circles, following a long stint as a leader of the American Indian Movement, and later as a national spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. His books, from Agents of Repression to Pacifism as Pathology to A Little Matter of Genocide, are eye-opening, rending accounts of history, and staples on the shelves of thousands of people who are committed to social justice.

He gained widespread notoriety in 2005, when the media seized on an essay he had written on September 11, 2001 entitled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." In it, he suggested that American foreign policy was to blame for the attacks. He went on to say that some of those killed in the attacks were not "innocent" victims, but in fact the very people orchestrating and profiting from the imperialist system. He called them "little Eichmanns," a reference to the infamous Nazi bureaucrat.

The essay had appeared on a fairly obscure website, and didn't attract much public attention until 2005, when Churchill was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in New York State. Former Stalinist and current right wing writer David Horowitz, among others, led a campaign against Churchill which quickly picked up steam. Right wing radio host Bob Newman went so far as to argue that he should be executed for treason.

Under considerable pressure, the University of Colorado began investigating claims that Churchill had falsified and plagiarized some of his research. In 2006, a five-person investigative panel announced that it had found evidence of misconduct, but was split as to whether he should be fired, especially given the questionable timing of the allegations.

Eleven professors at the university signed a complaint against the investigation, saying that the committee violated standard scholarly practices and was biased against Churchill. He has continued to deny any misconduct, but was fired in July. He filed a lawsuit against the university, claiming that his dismissal was retaliatory, and contravened his right to freedom of expression. Free speech is constitutionally protected regardless of the popularity of the perspective, he argues.

You'd like to think that academia, if nothing else, is a bastion for bold ideas, a last refuge for unpopular speech.

Significantly, the "roosting chickens" title is a nod to a Malcolm X quote on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, who called it a simple case of "chickens coming home to roost." The comment was undoubtedly received with as much enthusiasm in Malcolm X's time as Churchill's essay has in the years following its publication.

In a lively interview with Newsweek shortly after his dismissal, he refused to apologize for the "little Eichmanns" statement, in characteristically ardent terms:

"I never have any particular regrets about calling things by their right name. And it's about time we stop pretending that Americans are in a completely different analytical category from everyone else in the world, and are somehow exempt from the consequences of their actions."

Churchill is no stranger to unpopular ideas. Many of his writings have focused on the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the US. Inspired in part by resistance to his own work, Churchill's current speaking tour focuses on what he calls "the denial of genocide in American academia."

"If you were making the exact same arguments and using same techniques to deny the holocaust in Germany, you would be guilty of a crime in Canada," he says.

Most deniers of the German holocaust are nuts, fringe types, he explains. "When you're talking about native people exactly the same thing is done, only it's the mainstream of academic discourse."

Churchill makes a convincing argument that the historic and systemic oppression of this continent's Indigenous populations does indeed fit within the official definition of genocide as found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which specifies "...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:"

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

"It's no more acceptable when something is done to victims of one genocide than when it's done to another set of victims," he says. "If the... Zundel types are repugnant--and they are--then the people who would deny the native genocide are just as repugnant."

One of the main differences in this context, he points out, is that European whites were largely successful in their conquest. And the victors, of course, write history.

"If you'd had a Nazi victory in Eastern Europe, the situation of any Jews who survived... would have been quite discernibly different."

At its best, academia can be a space for people of colour and Indigenous peoples to develop their own histories. Churchill presents a different analysis of history, and he doesn't much care if the mass media or his political opponents like it.

Overall, he says, Canadians have been more receptive than Americans to his message. He does as many talks in Canada as he does in the US, despite the much smaller population.

"One suspects it is in part because Canadians - and even progressive Canadians - tend to view their history as rather less genocidal than that of the United States," he muses.

"Canada didn't resort to the same direct killing techniques... but that's hardly an indication that the genocidal policy wasn't effective, just that the techniques employed were different."

He cites articles A and B of the genocide convention--imposing serious physical or mental harm, and inflicting destructive conditions of life.

"Surely in Canada it's clear that native peoples are subjected to various forms of psychological battering, and physical battering in the sense of endemic poverty," he says.

Falling back on the argument that Canada's treatment of the Indigenous population hasn't been as brutal as that of the US doesn't cut it either. "If you're talking about a worse genocide than another genocide, then you're arguing for a 'good' genocide.

"That's part of what I'm about, is calling people on their self-absolutionist stances. Canadians like to pretend that they're qualitatively different than Americans, and they're not."

Likewise, the Canadian myth of a "mosaic" society is deliberately oblivious to systemic racism. "You have to be in a state of extreme denial to be blind to the profundity of racism in society," he adds. "You really have to be a Nazi or a Klansman to come out and celebrate being a racist... At least they're honest. They're relatively easy to deal with. It's the mass of deniers who continue to profit from a racist society which is far more insidious."

"Give me a Klansman any day; at least I know exactly who I'm dealing with."

Churchill's sense of humour comes through again as he turns to the controversy surrounding his 9/11 essay. His favorite moment, he recalls, was reading a headline in a Maoist publication: "Ward Churchill fired for calling little Eichmanns little Eichmanns."

"The only people upset are in fact those who would be encompassed within my meaning of the term little Eichmanns," he says. "I'm not getting it from communities of colour. I'm not getting it from poor people."

With all of the focus on his dismissal from university, there is a risk that people aren't listening to what he has to say about racism and imperialism, and clearly that's what frustrates him most.

"If they can discredit my scholarship they can discredit my analysis, and if they can discredit my analysis they can reinforce the status quo," he fumes.

Some detractors went as far as questioning his Native American heritage. And although there were rumblings that Karl Rove had a direct hand in his targeting, Churchill, who has written extensively about the government's illegal and corrupt Counterintelligence Program (Cointelpro) against civil rights era activists, shrugs them off.

"Cointelpro has been assimilated into the media to the point that you don't actually need intelligence agencies' involvement most of the time," he says.

Still, there's more than a hint of those bad old days in the air, with leftist writers and academics eagerly siding with those who want to dismiss Churchill as a kooky extremist. People like Todd Gitlin--who are considered left, but not too left, get a big share of the media attention surrounding this case.

"Most of my generation has sold out so long ago for so fucking cheap that it gives me generational embarrassment," Churchill says.

He believes that there is still hope for a broad social justice movement, outside of the currently established left. "It's not going to be people who work for the Nation, or the Progressive. It's certainly not going to be any part of the 'responsible left.'"

"We need to constitute an actual left. And that's going to come by and large from the new generation."

As a professor, Churchill was extremely popular with University of Colorado students, who have invited him to teach a "voluntary" class. The course is entitled "ReVisioning American History: Colonization, Genocide, and Formation of the US Settler State."

After years of weathering attacks, Churchill offers advice to budding activists. "Take clear positions and remain consistent and people will come to you. Don't worry about alienating people who are fundamentally sold out... Strip them of their privilege, they're gonna be alienated. I thought that was the goal."

Ward Churchill's speaking schedule:

OTTAWA: October 16, 7 pm
Alumni Auditorium, University of Ottawa
$5-20 sliding scale admission, nobody turned away
Tickets available at Exile Infoshop, OPIRG Carleton, and OPIRG Ottawa

TORONTO: October 17, 7 pm
Rm. 3154, Medical Sciences Building
University of Toronto
Sliding scale of $5-$20
Organised by:
CERTAIN DAYS calendar committee - www.certaindays.org
EXILE INFOSHOP – exilebooks.org
York GSA - www.yugsa.ca

GUELPH: October 18, 7 pm
University Centre, Room 103, University of Guelph
Suggested donation $5-20. Proceeds will go to Indigenous struggles and solidarity work
Space is limited – register in advance to guarantee a seat
OPIRG-Guelph, 519.824.2091, opirgguelphvolunteer@yahoo.ca

Ward Churchill

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