The Dominion - 69

Issue #69

dru — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:45:10 +0000

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August 2010

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Whose Woods These Are

Moira Peters — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:08:00 +0000

Land defenders celebrate a year since Hanlon Creek occupation

OCCUPIED NEUTRAL TERRITORY (GUELPH)—The struggle to defend the Hanlon Creek Wetland Complex (HCWC) against developers and the city of Guelph has been ongoing for close to a decade. Last summer, from July 27 to August 15, this struggle culminated in a 19-day defensive land occupation just south of Guelph, and resulted in a $5 million Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) suit against five people—myself among them. We were charged with conspiracy, interference with economic relations inducing breach of contract, trespass, nuisance, and intimidation. The Court recognized our struggle by awarding us an injunction against development, which strengthened a popular direct-action campaign to stop development and challenge the city's policies of greenfield development (development of a green space ecosystem, as opposed to redevelopment) and sprawl.

What drove people to stand against the city to prevent development around the HCWC forest? Here is a look at some features of the land that have motivated us. Perhaps you will recognize some of these features in the land around you.

The Struggle to defend the HCWC did not end with the May 2009 occupation. On May 7, 2010, a protest and disruption was held outside of Carson Reids Homes, Astrid J. Clos, Van Harten Surveyors and Guelph City Hall. The three companies are major contributors to sprawling developments in and around Guelph. On May 25, 2010,   City Hall approved a $3 million contract with Capital Paving, a Guelph-based aggregate company, for clearing, grading and servicing one-quarter of the Hanlon Creek site formerly occupied by land defenders. As engines start on the HCWC, a new chapter in the struggle to defend the land and halt the sprawl begins...

Matthew Lowell is rooted in occupied Neutral Territory.

Hanlon Creek Essay

Hanlon Creek Essay 1

Hanlon Creek Essay 2

Hanlon Creek Essay 3

Hanlon Creek Essay 4

Hanlon Creek Essay 6

Hanlon Creek Essay 7

Hanlon Creek Essay 7.5

Hanlon Creek Essay 8

Hanlon Creek Essay 9

Can There Be a Salmon People Without Wild Salmon?

Moira Peters — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:19:48 +0000

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—On May 8, 2010, thousands of people flowed across the lawns of BC's legislature in Victoria to protest open-net salmon farming, which Indigenous communities and others are blaming for catastrophic declines in the wild salmon population.

Calling for wild salmon to take priority over farmed salmon, a contingent led by First Nations set off on April 23 from Sointula, at the north end of Vancouver Farms, and walked for two weeks to Victoria.

Two local dailies, The Vancouver Sun and The Province, both gave a figure of about 1,000 at the legislature, while The Globe and Mail estimated 4,000, but Alexander Morton, one of the organizers of the “Get Out Migration” march, counted many more.

“The Parliament lawns reportedly hold 20,000 people and looking out over the sea of people less than one-third of the lawn was visible,” said Morton.

The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest were historically referred to as the Salmon People—their communities, stales, and culture thrived in unison with the salmon, which provided sustenance for humans and much of the ecosystem.

But the increasing number of commercial fish farms, which raise salmon in open-net cages in the ocean, poses a threat to First Nations.

Farmed salmon have been blamed for increasing parasitic sea lice and causing viral epidemics among wild salmon.

“The fish farms operating in our territories are killing wild salmon, the lifeblood of all life that reside in our territories and the lifeblood of our culture,” said Bob Chamberlin, Chief of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation (KAFN) on northeastern Vancouver Island, near Alert Bay.

In a February 18, 2010 press release, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) stated, “The UBCIC has long-held the opinion that salmon fish farms has proven to have had a lethal and irreversibly toxic impact on indigenous runs of wild salmon. Especially where there is a concentration of fish farms in waters used by juvenile salmon exposed to the high concentrations of sea-lice from these fish farms.”

During the Vancouver Olympics, the UBCIC Executive joined 45 people who participated in a fast that supported the Musgamagw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council’s (MTTC) opposition to fish farm tenures in the Broughton Archipelago, in northwest Vancouver Island. They fasted for 29 hours, one hour each for the 29 salmon farms operating in the traditional territory of coastal MTTC.

The UBCIC took aim at Norway, home to most of BC's salmon-farming corporations.

“Norway voted to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was an historical vote and to Indigenous peoples it is regarded as a solemn commitment to universal human rights,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo. “Companies headquartered in countries who voted to adopt the Declaration, such as Norway, should apply the standards of the Declaration in all of their relationships with Indigenous Peoples domestically and internationally.”

“Norwegian-owned salmon farms operating in our traditional territorial waters are killing wild salmon and strangling the lifeblood of our whole culture,” said Chief Chamberlin.

The plight of the salmon has been linked with the poor health of the First Nations. In 1997, Chief Simon Lucas of the BC Aboriginal Fisheries Commission issued a warning about the negative impact of salmon farming on wild salmon.

“The issue for us is about home, about how we're dying,” he said. “If you affect in any way the clams and the other marine life, you're going to affect us.”

In The Salmon People: The Story of Canada's West Coast Salmon Fishing Industry, author Hugh W. McKervill writes about the integral role salmon play in Indigenous cultures of the North Pacific Coast.

“The people of the North Pacific Coast were and still are 'The Salmon People,'” he writes. The capture of first salmon is celebrated as if the salmon were an “honoured guest of the rank of a visiting chief.” But colonists changed the Indigenous peoples' relationship with salmon.

"Native peoples controlled their fisheries through right of use and exclusion that predated non-Native interference," writes University of British Columbia law professor Douglas C. Harris. "The Native's claim was a moral and ultimately legal claim, based not only on efficient management or material need but also on a sense of right that originated within their cultures.”

But the moral and legal claim of the Indigenous peoples was not triumphant.

“After 1894, no part of the Native fishery was exempt under Canadian law from state regulation; in this sense the legal capture of the resource was complete,” Harris writes.

Harris describes the law as an instrument of cultural domination used by colonial powers to take and justify control of other territories and peoples.

More recently, First Nations have begun attempting to use the law to their advantage, to stop salmon farming.

On February 4, 2010, KAFN filed a class-action lawsuit against the BC government’s regulation of open net-cage salmon farms.

Chief Chamberlin said the lawsuit was a last resort.

“We have been patient and respectful, attending countless meetings while damage continues to be inflicted on the wild salmon by open net-cage salmon farms,” he said. “Wild salmon stocks throughout the entire Broughton are in a sustained and serious decline; some salmon runs may become extinct and never be replaced. The salmon have existed here as long as we have, and it is essential to the survival of our distinct aboriginal culture that plentiful stocks of wild salmon survive.”

Harris told The Dominion that the KAFN civil suit says much about the status quo.

“The fact that this dispute is being deliberated, argued, and decided in a Canadian court is revealing of the longer ongoing colonial control,” Harris said.

Turning to the BC courts might be interpreted as recognition of colonial jurisdiction, Harris said. With an independent court option closed to First Nations, weighing the survival of wild salmon against Indigenous rights becomes a “strategic decision.”

Among the crowd of wild salmon advocates gathered at Centennial Square behind Victoria City Hall—prior to the final march to the Parliament Buildings—was John Haughen of the Nlaka'pamux Nation.

“[Legal action] is the only tool we have since we've been allowed to hire lawyers and use the courts,” he said.

Deata Taylor of the Dzawada'eneuw First Nation on Kingcombe Inlet supports Chief Chamberlin's lawsuit. She does not, however, recognize the jurisdiction of the BC courts in First Nation territories.

“We should decide whether fish farms should be in our territories,” she said.

For more than a decade, a broad coalition of groups has been advocating a solution. In 1997, the Salmon Aquaculture Review alliance—whose members included First Nations, environmental groups, fishers unions, and legal advocacy groups—called for replacing net-pens with closed containment systems. These systems are closed off from and do not disrupt natural ocean environments.

Not all First Nations eschew salmon farming.

In 1987, Larry Greba of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans started aquaculture work for the Kitasoo/Xai'xais Nation on Klemtu Island in the Broughton Archipelago. He noted a collapse in commercial salmon fishing in the late 1980s, which caused the Kitasoo/Xaixais to turn to salmon farming and form a partnership with Marine Harvest. The Kitasoo/Xai'xais retained control over the development of the aquaculture sites so they could ensure a sustainable operation.

Greba focused on the economic impact for the community.

“The current situation for Kitasoo economically from salmon farming are 60 full time jobs, of which 18 are year round at the farm and 42 are with fish harvesting/transport and processing for 7–9 months per year at the processing plant in Klemtu,” he wrote in an email. “Total annual wages are about $1.5M to Kitasoo members and when the plant is operating the band has about a 60 per cent employment rate.”

When the plant is not operating, Greba says the employment dropped to about 40 per cent, but he added this was ameliorated by a long, steady processing season that qualified most workers for unemployment benefits.

Even the formerly anti-salmon farming Ahousaht First Nation on eastern Vancouver Island have switched sides and are engaging in salmon farming to create economic opportunities in a sustainable manner.

On May 5, 2010, the “Get Out Migration” marchers arrived at Nanaimo's Maffeo Sutton Park. Chief Doug White of the Snuneymuxw First Nation described the sacred relationship of his people to the salmon, the tradition of the salmon ceremony and the revered salmon petroglyph.

“The Snuneymuxw worldview ... is one that has salmon at the center,” White said.

White stated that the 1854 Douglas Treaty, signed by British Columbia's first governor with some First Nations, ceded Indigenous rights to some land but also recognized the way of life of the Snuneymuxw people, including the Snuneymuxw’s relationship to salmon and the right of engagement.

Morton criticized Norway and its multinational aquaculture.

“For 20 years, Norwegians have done this [salmon farming]. It is time to admit it was a mistake.” Salmon farms need to be pulled out of the seas, she said. She called on people to be firm with the government.

“Salmon are dying because of politics.”

People from the Pacific Northwest First Nations have long been the Salmon People. However, the multitude that turned out in Victoria on May 7, 2010, demonstrates that Salmon People comprise a broad swath of society—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

Kim Petersen is the Original Peoples editor with The Dominion.

Salmon rock

A Dark Anniversary

Tim McSorley — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:30:05 +0000

Abousfian Abdelrazik marks one year back in Canada, languishes under UN watch list

MONTREAL—“There are certain anniversaries that should never take place. The lack of action by the Harper government is unacceptable. Why is Abousfian still waiting for his name to be cleared?” asks Mary Foster, an organizer with the Abousfian Abdelrazik support committee "Project Fly Home."

On June 4, 2009, Federal Court Judge Rossel Zinn issued a stern ruling that Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon had been acting in bad faith and that the Canadian government would need to bring Abdelrazik back to Canada from Sudan. One year later, Abdelrazik continues to wait for his name to be removed from the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267 "Consolidated List," colloquially known as the Al-Qaeda and Taliban Terrorist List, or, for short, the "1267 List." Being on the list impedes Abdelrazik from functioning in the most basic of ways.

Abdelrazik recently sat down at a busy coffee shop in downtown Montreal to speak with The Dominion about what he has dubbed "living in a prison without walls."

A victorious grassroots movement brought Abdelrazik home last fall after six years of forced exile and imprisonment in Sudan. Abdelrazik tried to establish the cornerstones of a regular life—reconnect with family; find an apartment; see what work was available; and get through administrative tasks such as opening a bank account.

“It was very confusing and shameful how I was treated. Less than a week after depositing a small amount in my new account, I was contacted by Caisse Desjardins and told my account had been frozen and that they were unsure as to why but that there was nothing they could do. So no pension and no money and what I am supposed to do?” Abdelrazik asks quietly.

His legal team quickly learned that the reason behind the freeze was that he is still on the 1267 List. Beyond the complete asset freeze, Abdelrazik is also subjected to a total flight ban, and it is illegal for any employer to hire him or for him to receive social assistance, making it difficult to cover his and his children’s basic expenses. Listed individuals face vague allegations; they have no right to a hearing before they are placed on the list; and they are provided with no evidence to support the claims against them. In response, Project Fly Home launched a “Break the Silence” campaign to have him de-listed and to create a surge of popular support.

“Once again it is Lawrence Cannon and his department who have the ability to take me off the list. They refuse to tell me why I am on it, and why they have not worked to take me off of it,” Abdelrazik explains.

Break the Silence has been gaining momentum, with major unions and labour federations such as the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Canadian section of the International Machinists and most recently the Canadian Association of University Teachers publicly endorsing the initiative and agreeing to hire Abdelrazik for short term contracts. Despite large labour organizations engaging in acts of civil disobedience, Cannon continues to reject responsibility for de-listing Abdelrazik and claims it is up to Abdelrazik himself to get off the list. So far there have been no legal repercussions for unions and organizations actively working to oppose the sanctions against Abdelrazik.

While individuals can apply to be de-listed, says Foster, the process is highly politicized and nearly impossible to get through without state support. But the Canadian government could lift the sanctions itself. “Cabinet could immediately pass an Order in Council to modify or repeal the regulations which implement the 1267 regime in Canada,” Foster explains.

The Dominion received no response from Cannon or Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) by the time of print, but on May 18, Canwest Global quoted Cannon as saying: “All I can say is that in the past I tried to make sure that Mr. Abdelrazik had the support he needed to be removed from the UN list. That attempt, unfortunately, failed.”

A precedent backs Abdelrazik’s assertion that the responsibility for de-listing falls upon Cannon and the Department of Foreign Affairs. On June 3, 2002, on a recommendation from the then-Liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs, the regulations implementing the 1267 regime in Canada were modified to exempt Liban Hussein, an Ottawa citizen who was arrested November 7, 2001, at the request of the United States. The US accused him of supporting terrorism. The exemption effectively ended the sanctions against the only Canadian on the list at the time, and his name was subsequently removed from the Security Council’s 1267 List.

In the first week of June, Abdelrazik’s legal team filed to the Federal Court of Canada a challenge against the United Nations 1267 List. Comparable challenges have been filed in Switzerland and Belgium; both countries saw their federal courts strike down the 1267 regime as unconstitutional and undemocratic. “It is quite risky for countries to put people on the 1267 List because it will undoubtedly be challenged in the high courts because it is so starkly against basic due process,” says Foster.

In his judgment that forced the Canadian government to bring Abdelrazik back to Canada, Federal Court Judge Zinn wrote, "I add my name to those who view the 1267 Committee regime as a denial of basic legal remedies and as untenable under the principles of international human rights. There is nothing in the listing or de-listing procedure that recognizes the principles of natural justice or that provides for basic procedural fairness...It can hardly be said that the 1267 Committee process meets the requirement of independence and impartiality when, as appears may be the case involving Mr. Abdelrazik, the nation requesting the listing is one of the members of the body that decides whether to list or, equally as important, to de-list a person. The accuser is also the judge."

University of Ottawa Law Professor Amir Attaran has been closely following the case of Abdelrazik and cautions against putting the responsibility solely on the Canadian government. “While Canada’s almost certainly illegal error has been to follow an unjust UN system, the deeper problem lies with the UN, which created and administers the 1267 sanctions system, and which oddly believes it is consistent with human rights law. It is time to call into question the belief, too frequent and trusting on the political left, that the UN are good guys. They are not: Abdelrazik’s unjust persecution amply proves it.”

The 1267 List was established as a sanctions regime measure “to deter terrorism” by the United Nations Security Council in 1999 after the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the list was broadened to target Al Qaeda as well as the Taliban. The resolution has been widely understood to be serving a political agenda to target countries the United States deems problematic. However, it seems to have evolved to become a tool numerous states are using to stifle political dissent and internal sovereignty movements, including Russia against Chechnyans and India against members of the Khalistan movement.

When asked what he would like to see happen next, Abdelrazik smiles softly and with quiet determination states, “The government could revoke the regulations entirely. This step would send a clear signal to the United Nations Security Council that Canada will no longer participate in this unjust regime and will let me continue on with my life. Until then we will continue with the campaign.”

Amy Miller is a media maker and community organizer who resides in Montreal.

Fly home

Don't Rape, Part I

Kaley — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:28:54 +0000

Society teaches 'Don’t get raped' rather than 'Don’t rape'

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

HALIFAX—Jenna never wants to see her purple semi-formal dress again. She loves it, but she is reminded of that night in early April when someone slipped what she suspects was Ketamine into her drink.

When she finished class at 4 pm that day, Jenna rushed to her friend’s place to get ready. She wore her mom’s sparkly earrings and bracelet, black kitten heels and the silky, knee-length dress. It was the end-of-the-year celebration she’d been waiting for—a chance to blow off some steam with her friends and classmates at Dalhousie.

She remembers everything about that night—feeling happy, dancing to bad music with her friends at The Palace—up to a point. It’s as if the rest of the evening didn’t happen. She woke up in her bed feeling nauseous and hung over. She stepped into the shower and felt bruises on her chest. It took her the rest of the day to piece together what happened. When she did, she felt embarrassed. She recalled blurry flashbacks of a man in her room, on the third floor of her house. He was white, but she doesn’t remember anything else about him, only that he sat there in her computer chair, looking at her from across the room. Jenna asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t.

At the hospital, nurses confirmed her suspicions with a rape kit. They gave her a list of side effects associated with Ketamine, a “date rape” drug. Her symptoms fit perfectly. The police took her pretty purple dress for DNA evidence.

We tell women to cover their drinks, to dress conservatively, and to walk home in groups—never alone at night. While Jenna still thinks those are great ideas, she says they didn’t work for her. She covered her drink as often as she could that night, and she stuck with her friends. Jenna worries no-one is looking at the big picture. It’s not her fault she was raped; she doesn’t take responsibility. Instead, she blames the man who raped her. Too often the media, the police, our parents and even our friends are quicker to point out flaws in sexual assault survivors’ actions.

"Don’t get raped"

Section 271(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada defines “simple sexual assault” as: Any attack of a sexual nature in which force is used. No physical injury is necessary to prove that an offence has occurred. When prosecuted as an indictable offence, this form of sexual assault carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Nova Scotia has the highest rate of sexual assaults in the country—double the national average, according to a 2009 report by the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. A 2006 Halifax Regional Police report shows that on average one sexual offence is reported per day in Halifax. However, a 2005 Juristat report showed only eight per cent of sexual assaults are reported in Nova Scotia.

This year in Halifax the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre declared May Sexual Assault Awareness Month. On May 20, at Province House, politicians and community members spoke out publicly against sexual assault.

Avalon’s mission is to shift responsibility from the survivor to the attacker by educating the public.

The centre defines sexual assault as: “Any form of sexual activity that has been forced by one person upon another. Without consent, it is sexual assault. Sexual assault can happen between people of the same or opposite sex. It includes any unwanted act of a sexual nature such as kissing, fondling, oral sex, intercourse or other forms of penetration, either vaginal or anal.”

Before we begin our interview, Jackie Stevens, the Avalon Co-ordinator of Community Education, closes her door, as she usually does when someone comes into her office. When a woman, or sometimes a man, sits in the comfy chair beside her desk, Stevens—wearing electric-blue cat-eye glasses—doesn’t judge or offer advice. Instead she gives the person plenty of information so he or she can make an educated decision.

Too often the people who sit in that chair blame themselves.

“If I hadn’t trusted that person, if I hadn’t gone out drinking with my friends, this wouldn’t have happened to me,” the sexual assault survivors tell Stevens.

Rather than automatically thinking that way, she says society needs to see that an attacker has chosen to take advantage of someone who is vulnerable.

When Stevens reads articles about drunk driving, the police are quoted telling people to stop drinking and driving. But when she reads articles about sexual assault, there is no warning telling would-be attackers not to rape. Instead, the authorities tell potential victims to take precautions.

She doesn’t claim to see every article, but yellowing copies of the Chronicle Herald are piled alongside today’s issue in a bin behind her.

In a Metro News article from March 19, 2010, Dalhousie University spokesperson Billy Comeau told students to “be aware of their surroundings and to take all precautions when they are out travelling” in response to a man grabbing a 19-year-old female student from behind in Halifax’s South End. In a Chronicle Herald article from May 14, 2010, a prosecutor told parents to “watch what their children are doing, both online and within the proximity of their house and outside the house,” in response to a Halifax woman allegedly luring a girl over the Internet and sexually assaulting her.

“Rather than always putting out the messages of ‘don’t walk alone’ or ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t talk to strangers’—all of those things—we need to say ‘don’t sexually assault,’” Stevens declares.

As a result of these misplaced messages, we say, "She shouldn’t have been walking home alone late at night," or, "She shouldn’t have worn a short skirt," rather than, "He shouldn’t have raped her."

The way a woman dresses or acts does not cause or prevent sexual assault; an attacker rapes someone because they want to exert power and control over him or her. The attacker is solely responsible for the crime. However, this responsibility is lost in translation through the police, the courts and the media.

Eighty-four per cent of people over the age of 15 who are sexually assaulted are women, according to the 2009 Status of Women Canada report. More than 90 per cent of those accused are men.

Sexual assault is a social problem, Stevens says, with lingering patriarchal structures* at the root of offenses by men toward women.

“There’s a lot of perception of sexual assault as an isolated incident that happens to certain people and it’s perceived as a very individual issue. The Avalon Centre takes the approach that sexual assault is a social issue and that the root causes are based in patriarchy, violence, oppression and inequality. Sexual violence is just one form of how that inequality and power imbalance is played out.”

Stevens says sexual assault and violence against women is interconnected with sexism and other forms of oppression such as racism, homophobia, and discrimination based on disability, gender identity, cultural background and lifestyle choices.

“Often times people who do experience sexual violence may be targeted for very specific reasons because of their vulnerability,” she says.

Jane Doe*, a local activist who also works at the Dalhousie Women’s Centre, wouldn’t be considered pushy if she were a man. Her voice is louder than the average woman’s. Her tone is aggressive.

“If I’m too confident, I’m a bitch,” she says.

Doe agrees that the root causes of male to female sexual assault are male privilege and the imbalance of power.

“Women weren’t legally human beings until 1920. If you’re property up until 1920, what role did sexual assault play in the world? Zero. There’s no such thing as rape—only for women. The pressure was on women to not allow men to ‘ruin’ them because women’s value and worth was placed in their virginity, their purity, so they could sell their sexuality to a man as property.”

As a result of historical imbalances, she says young men often feel entitled to “get drunk and get laid,” especially in a university atmosphere.

One in five male university students surveyed in a 2006 StatsCan study said forced intercourse was alright “if he spends money on her,” “if he’s stoned or drunk,” or “if they have been dating for a long time.”

One in five Canadian women surveyed in a Juristat report said they had unwanted sex with a man because they were overwhelmed by the man’s continued arguments and pressure.

“If we can change the response and how we think about sexual assault then we will change the rates of sexual assaults because it becomes less natural, less normalized; there’s more public scrutiny and judgment around it,” Doe says. “The problem is, it’s very much a part of male culture.”

*According to Avalon, “patriarchy” refers to “the current societal framework, the structure of which has historically kept men in positions of power and authority in society, and has encouraged the domination of other nations, races and cultures of people for economic and political gain.” In the not-so-distant past, women were placed in inferior roles and their sexual, financial and personal autonomy were suppressed. That framework still lingers today; women are still not equal to men.

*Name has been changed.

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op. This story was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

June in Review, Part II

Tim McSorley — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 05:07:12 +0000

G8/G20 was confronted, Toronto police lied, millions in Europe strike, and US oil rigs nationalized

The People's Summit, featuring over 100 workshops on everything from "Economics of the Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement" to "Activism in the Attawapiskat Nation," was held in Toronto from June 18-20. The open summit offered an alternative to the G8 and G20 meetings and cost the equivalent of six seconds of the G8/20 Summits, which were billed "the most expensive 72 hours in Canadian history."

Community groups and grassroots organizations, via the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, organized themed days of resistance in the buildup to the G8/G20 convergence. Thousands of people attended films, speeches and marches, rallying around environmental justice, anti-poverty, disAbility rights, queer rights, migrant justice and Indigenous sovereignty. Organizers consistently drew links between different types of oppression and how the G8/G20 represents "the rich and the few."

Students declared the University of Toronto a "bunker for global capitalism" after the university closed key campus services and evicted students leading up to and during the G20 Summit, but permitted to remain open the Munk School of Global Affairs, established through a $35 million donation from Peter Munk, founder and chairman of Barrick Gold.

Overnight between June 26 and 27, several organizers were detained or arrested before any actions took place. "I’m extremely angry, I’m extremely disgusted that this is what our money, our tax dollars, are going to do to put armed thugs on the streets of every intersection of Toronto to target community organizers, the people who are out on the streets to talk about poverty, to talk about racism, to talk about homelessness," said organizer Farrah Miranda who was thrown into an unmarked car and driven around the city for 40 minutes before being dropped again on a street corner.

The Ontario government announced the enactment of Public Works Protection Act around the G20 security fence, allowing police to search and request ID of anyone within five metres of the fence, and to arrest anyone who refused to comply. The change in law ostensibly came into effect without any public notice or announcement, resulting in at least one arrest where the man had no idea he had broken the law.

On June 29th, it was revealed that the Toronto Police Service had lied and that the law was never actually enacted.

Police attacked a jail solidarity rally at the temporary detention centre at the Toronto Film Studios, charging the crowd and trampling on protesters sitting on the street. Hundreds of people were also arbitrarily detained for several hours in a rain storm in downtown Toronto.

Included in the hundreds of people arrested during and after the G20 Summit were a deaf man who failed to obey police orders he could not hear, a TTC employee on his way to work, and a graffiti artist charged with wearing a mask with intent when police found an air filter mask in her backpack.

Over the course of the G8 and G20 summits, journalists working both for mainstream and independent media outlets faced significant police repression. Several journalists from the Alternative Media Centre were detained illegally, arrested, and/or had their equipment confiscated, including independent journalist Amy Miller, who was detained at the Toronto Film Studios and was subjected to threats of gang rape by police. The Canadian Association of Journalists and the International Press Institute have both come out against the actions of the police towards journalists.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair was caught misleading reporters when displaying so called "weapons" seized during G20 raids, searches, and arrests. The stock included a crossbow seized in an unrelated incident, and chainmail armor and padded arrows seized from a man on his way to a role-playing game. Police had claimed that protesters had planned to set the arrows on fire and shoot them.

The G20's final communique instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. Critics say this burden will fall disproportionately on those who can least afford it, including students, people living in poverty and pensioners.

Millions of workers went on strike in Italy, Greece and France to oppose proposed "austerity plans" which would cut social spending and impact wages.

New studies of European and OECD countries in the British Medical Journal found that cuts to social welfare programs result in increased mortality rates, in some cases more so than cuts made directly to health care spending.

The Vancouver School Board has put 11 public schools on the chopping block as it faces an $18 million budget shortfall.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney appointed the CEO of Goldman Sachs’ Canadian subsidiary as a special advisor to the central bank to give advice on regulatory reform. Goldman Sachs has been accused of having profited from the current economic crisis, and received the largest pay out of any bank from AIG's bailout fund, totaling $12.9 billion. One prominent economist described the appointment as "the fox guarding the henhouse."

UK Prime Minister David Cameron apologized for Bloody Sunday. In 1972 British soldiers opened fire on a crowd of 10,000 people who gathered in Northern Ireland to protest the practice of detention without trial. Fourteen people were killed.

Stephen Harper apologized for the 1985 Air India bombing, where Canadian failure to apprehend the bombers and to protect witnesses was found by an inquiry to be "inexcusable." Three hundred thirty-three people were killed.

An 11-year-old explained to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Indigenous people continue to suffer from Canada's residential schools program. Harper apologized for residential schools last June. One hundred and fifty thousand people were forced to attend the schools.

Venezuela nationalised a fleet of idle oil rigs owned by Oklahoma-based Helmerich and Payne.

The Guatemalan government decided to suspend mining operations at Goldcorp's Marlin mine, but Goldcorp CEO Chuck Jeannes criticized the decision and said mining at Marlin will continue. Indigenous Guatemalans who have been fighting the mine say they have received threats that there will be consequences for defending their rights.

A Canadian documentarian has successfully sued former Canadian ambassador to Guatemala Kenneth Cook for slander.

The Braidwood inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski, who died after being tasered by RCMP officers, found the officers were not justified in their use of the stun weapon. The report prompted a special prosecutor appointed by the BC government to call on the federal government to reverse its previous decision not to press charges against the officers involved.

A 27-year-old resident of a group home in Collingwood, Ontario, was killed when police used a taser to subdue him. An 87-year-old woman sued the town of El Reno, Oklahoma, after being tasered by police.

Violence in Kyrgyzstan between Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks resulted in rape and violence, primarily against ethnic Uzbek women and children, at alarming rates. The UN suspects the violence was deliberately incited for political reasons. The death toll could be as high as 2,000.

Circumpolar Inuit confronted the European Commission's head of international relations in Greenland over the EU's ban on sealskin.

New Brunswick energy company Irving Oil pulled out of tidal power research in the Bay of Fundy citing concerns over the commercial viability of tidal power technology.

Environmental activists gathered in Vancouver to protest the construction of the Raven Underground Coal Project in the Comox Valley, located on Vancouver Island. Activists claim this mine, the first of its kind proposed in 25 years, would threaten the island's watershed and local air quality.

Toronto PRIDE Grand Marshals and Honoured Dykes returned their awards and gave PRIDE Toronto a "shame" award for banning the term "Israeli apartheid" from PRIDE activities and marches. PRIDE Toronto reversed the ban.

A South African doctor has invented a new rape deterrent which she distributed during the World Cup. The female condom has "teeth-like hooks" and, once attached to the penis, can only be removed by a doctor. Twenty-eight per cent of South African men say they have raped a woman or girl.

SATAWU, the security workers union in South Africa, blamed FIFA for the strikes during the World Cup tournament, saying, "This is an attack on the working class and the poor by capitalist forces who do not respect the national pride of the country, and who have put their narrow profit interests first."

Everything is OK

Marlin Mine 1

Indelible

Moira Peters — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 05:33:26 +0000

Heather Meek.Indelible.jpg

Three Weeks in the West Bank

hillarybain — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:48:24 +0000

Resistance, destruction, life in Palestine

WEST BANK—In the wake of the Conservative government funding cuts to NGOs critical of Israel, independent journalist David Parker travelled to the West Bank in April to learn more about the reality of life in Palestine.

Israel maintains a three-year long siege on Gaza, and continues to actively colonize the West Bank, displacing Palestinians, stealing land, and enforcing a matrix of control.

David Parker is Spoken Word Coordinator at CKDU 88.1 in Halifax.

Bil'in

Hebron

Sheikh Jarrah

Beit Hanoun

Al-Walaje

South Hebron Hills

Gilo

Silwan

"There Is No Neutral"

Tim McSorley — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:59:17 +0000

Striking Vale Inco workers push for local politicians, residents to back anti-scab legislation

SUDBURY—As the longest strike in Sudbury’s history rolls on, United Steelworkers union organizers are calling for an end to the use of replacement workers, blaming the practice for prolonging the strike.

“If there was anti-scab legislation in place, this strike would’ve been over months ago," Bernie Arsenault told The Dominion. Arsenault, a member of Steelworkers Local 6500, added that the use of replacement workers is new in the experience of the Steelworkers.

Three-thousand three-hundred Steelworkers from locals 6500 in Sudbury and 6200 in Port Colborne have been on strike against mining giant Vale Inco since July 13, 2009, in what has become the longest strike in the history of all three parties. Central issues in the contract bargaining process are pension plans, workers’ nickel bonuses, seniority transfer rights, the contracting out of jobs and the reinstatement of nine activists who were fired during the course of the strike.

To increase pressure, United Steelworkers Local 6500 declared May “anti-scab month,” distributing flyers to homes around the Sudbury area appealing to citizens to support proposed provincial anti-replacement worker legislation.

The Steelworkers union also convinced Sudbury city council to adopt a symbolic motion in support of anti-replacement worker legislation. At the end of May, 10 months and one week into the strike, the Local 6500 held a rally in front of Sudbury Member of Provincial Parliament Rick Bartolucci’s office, calling on him to end his neutrality on the subject of replacement workers.

“When you sit on the fence, your backside is facing somebody, and I think we all know who that somebody is,” rally organizer Jamie West said through a megaphone. “There is no neutral. When you’re silent, when you refuse to take a stand and you hold office, you automatically take the side that has the most money.”

A release from Bartolucci’s office stated "Mr. Bartolucci has and will continue to oppose the use of replacement workers.” Yet Bartolucci remained silent when the anti-replacement worker bill passed its first reading in provincial parliament.

Such legislation existed for a brief period in the 1990s after being introduced by Bob Rae's NDP government, but was scrapped by Mike Harris' Conservatives.

A group called CANARYS (Community Activists Need Answers Regarding Your Safety) formed in response to the strike, and has supported the push to end the practice of hiring replacement workers.

“Of course the scabs have a huge effect on the Sudbury community, from dividing the community to the implications that they will have on safety,” explains Laurie McGauley, a founder of CANARYS and long-time community activist.

“A lot of work has gone into making things safer at the mine over the decades, and the union has been intrinsic to this" continued McGauley. "Now we have people coming from other communities, who are not trained and who do not have experience with the mine, operating without a union that has experience in a mine, which is a very dangerous operation."

McGauley’s concern over safety mixes with her sobering vision of what a defeat of the strike could mean: “If [Vale Inco] manages to break this strike, that would have huge repercussions for all workers in Ontario, all over North America, because it would be a signal to everybody that replacement workers can be used to bust a union. To bust a historically-strong union like [United Steelworkers Local] 6500 is a huge symbolic loss for all unions in Canada as well as in north America.”

The proposed anti-replacement worker bill is expected to go through its second reading in November. In the meantime, intermittent talks between Vale Inco and Steelworker Locals 6500 and 6200 continue.

Shailagh Keaney is a writer and gardener living in occupied Atikameksheng Anishinawbek territory.

Steelworkers rally in Sudbury

Steelworker calls on Bartolucci

Double Punishment for Villanueva

dru — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:14:58 +0000

MONTREAL—In August of 2008, 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva was playing dice in a parking lot in Montreal North when he was shot and killed by police officer Jean-Loup Lapointe. Two other youth were also shot, but survived.

All three were unarmed youth of colour. The killing has been described as emblematic of racial profiling at its most violent by community members, as well as by community groups, including Montreal-Nord Republik (a group of residents that formed, after the the killing of Villanueva, to denoounce racial profiling and economic marginalization), and Head & Hands (a non-profit youth service centre based in Montreal's NDG).

In 2010, the tragedy faced by the Villanueva family got worse. Having lost one son, Lilian Villanueva is now facing the possibility of being forcibly separated from another.

Dany Villanueva, who was an eyewitness to the killing of his brother, is slated to be deported to Honduras, a country in which he has not resided since 1998, when he was 12.

“They have already taken the life of my youngest son....now they want to take away my other son!” a tearful Lilian told the audience at Montreal's Forum Against Police Violence and Impunity in January 2010. Lilian had to struggle for a coroner’s inquest into her younger son's death. Now she is fighting her surviving son's deportation.

Fredy's killing, and the community response that it sparked, have exposed what some describe as the fault-lines of systemic discrimination in the forms of racial profiling, police impunity and a two-tiered immigration system.

Alexandre Popovic, a spokesperson with the Coalition Against Police Abuse and Repression, says the timing of Dany's deportation order is suspicious.

“It is hard for me to believe that the way that they dealt with Dany Villanueva’s file is not related to the public inquiry [into Fredy’s death]. It’s hard for me to believe that the people at the CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] are making those decisions, at those specific dates, without having in mind the coroner’s inquest,” he says.

The Villanueva family led a long struggle for a coroner’s inquest, which they hope will uncover details surrounding Fredy’s death, and which is set to continue through the summer months.

Though their initial strategy was calling for Jean-Loup Lapointe to be put on trial for murder, or at least for a public inquiry with legal repercussions, it was difficult for the family to win any sort inquest into Fredy's death, and the current investigation represents a modest victory in the family's search for justice.

The role of the inquest, by definition, is to investigate and reveal to the public the details surrounding the death of the unarmed 18-year-old, and to put forth recommendations to avoid such situations in the future. It does not, however, have the judicial power of a criminal investigation, which Montreal-Nord Republik, among others, have said is warranted, given the details of the case.

Dany was charged with robbery in the spring of 2006 and served the full sentence for his crime that same year. More than three years later, in August of 2009, and while the Villanueva family was in the final stages of securing the coroner’s inquest, Dany received a letter informing him of his upcoming deportation. Popovic points out that Dany’s appearance before the immigration board closely coincided with the dates of his witness testimony for the coroner’s inquest about his brother's death, much to his family's distress.

Popovic believes the city's lawyers, who are defending the police, are unjustly using this highly-publicized immigration issue to shift the blame away from Lapointe, the police officer who fired on the three youth in the park. It is Lapointe whose actions are under scrutiny in the coroner’s inquest. While the city of Montreal planned to pay for the legal fees of the police, the Quebec government, the body responsible for the inquest, initially refused to cover the legal fees for any witnesses, the family, or the victims of the shootings. The government's position changed after witnesses threatened to boycott the proceedings.

In December 2009, the inquest revealed that Lapointe’s partner at the scene, Stephanie Pilotte, did not feel that her life was in danger when the shots were fired. Lapointe had previously testified that shooting at the three youth was necessary because he felt his life to be in danger.

The defence lawyers' strategy, says Popovic, has been to attempt to shift that police culpability onto Dany.

“The police lawyers are using, or attempting to use, the coroner’s inquest to criminalize Dany Villanueva. They are the ones who are questioning Dany Villaneuva the most. Their agenda is very clear: first they want to convince the coroner that the whole thing is the fault of Dany.”

Popovic says this is explicit in the proceedings at the coroner’s inquest. He points out that Pierre-Yves Boisvert, a lawyer for the city of Montreal, has stated that Dany is responsible for the death of his brother.

“The city will argue Fredy Villanueva is the victim of his own behaviour and the behaviour of his brother and his friends,” Boisvert said in a statement at the inquest.

By painting Dany as a criminal, Boisvert’s arguments in the inquest attempted to simultaneously justify Fredy's death and Dany’s deportation.

“He has an immigration order against him and Canada Border Services want to send him back to Honduras, a nice country, probably, but one he doesn't feel like going to,” said Bosivert.

As a result of this strategy, Dany has been painted unsympathetically as a gangster and a criminal by much of the corporate media. Numerous articles in the Quebec media kept Dany’s supposed criminality as their focus during the time of his testimony for the inquest this April. The Montreal Gazette ran an article with the headline “Dany Villaneuva was in a gang,” under which they printed photos taken from a hip hop website to show that the colour of Dany’s touque suggested gang membership. These photos were also used by Boisvert at the coroner’s inquest.

Popovic decries this media sensationalism, which places Dany under enormous pressure to defend his own character during his testimony, where his only focus should be his provision of an eye-witness description of the shooting incident in which his younger brother was killed by police.

Dany Villaneuva's pending deportation has also drawn attention to a phenomenon known as “double punishment.” The term was coined to describe the use of the immigration system to mete out additional penalties to non-citizens convicted of crimes, after having already subjected them to the punishments defined by court rulings. Migrant justice advocates call it a de facto two-tiered justice system.

Jared Will, a Montreal-based immigration lawyer, explains: “Non-citizens who are convicted of crimes often face punishment not only in the form of the sentence they get in the criminal courts, but also in the form of their loss of immigration status and deportation from the country.”

Dany’s case is an example of this practice. Having already served a sentence for his crime in 2006, Dany is now facing a second punishment for the same crime by being deported to his native Honduras, which would mean leaving behind the rest of his family in Montreal, who all have citizenship status.

Will stresses that double punishment is an issue that brings together aspects of racial profiling and the criminalization of migrant communities.

“The problem of racial profiling in the targeting of youth of colour has a disproportionate effect on migrant communities,” says Will.

Increasing documentation shows that racial profiling, especially of youth, is a harsh reality in Montreal, most recently documented by the Quebec Human Rights Commission. Montreal-Nord, St. Michel, Cote-des-Neiges, Notre Dame de Grace and Parc-Extension are the neighborhoods with some of the highest concentrations of immigrants in Montreal, as well as some of the highest populations of people of colour.

“When police target those in racialized communities there is a double fear for those who are refugee claimants and permanent residents,” says Will.
“Obviously the targeting of those communities has the effect of bringing a lot more people into immigration proceedings.”

Will says racial profiling increases the numbers of migrant youth in the justice system, and due to the de facto two-tiered nature of the legal system, it also places their fate in the hands of the immigration system.

A growing grassroots campaign in support of Dany Villanueva brings a broader analysis to and a rejection of the practice of double punishment. A solidarity statement drafted by Montreal-Nord Republik, No One Is Illegal-Montreal, Solidarity Across Borders, and the Coalition Against Police Repression and Abuse lists two demands: “An immediate end to all removal proceedings against Dany Villanueva, and that his permanent resident status is restored; and an end to the double punishment against migrants with criminal records.”

Organizers who have endorsed the statement are working to accrue the support of community organizations, human rights groups, and unions.

Though Dany’s deportation has been officially announced, the campaign in solidarity with the Villanueva family’s quest for justice continues. An appeal has been filed by Dany’s lawyer Stephen Handfield to overturn the decision. In the meantime, supporters of the family are asking for assistance in the campaign, calling for people to endorse the solidarity statement, and also to attend the on-going coroner’s inquest, which is open to the public.

To support the Villanueva family, send endorsements of this campaign to solidaritesansfrontieres@gmail.com, and condemn Dany Villanueva’s deportation order and double punishment by letter, fax, or phone to both the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the Minister of Public Safety. Support the Villlanueva family by filling the courts during the course of the coroner's inquest and during Dany’s appeal. Dates can be found here.

Robyn Maynard is a journalist, writer and activist based in Montreal, and a member of No One Is Illegal-Montreal. She is active in various struggles against racial profiling, police violence and impunity.

Rally for Dany Villanueva

Canadian Reflections on the Cochabamba Climate Summit

Cameron Fenton — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:06:25 +0000

TORONTO—Last month, representatives from around the globe gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia for the first World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Called by Bolivian President Evo Morales in the wake of last winter’s Copenhagen United Nations Summit, he called “the peoples of the world, social movements and Mother Earth's defenders,” to gather for a People’s Summit. The conference captured popular sentiment, ballooning from an expected 5,000 participants to well over 30,000 from over 140 countries. This compares with around 40,000 participants to the Copenhagen summit, although "civil society" only made up half that number—making it the largest gathering of non-governmental voices on climate change.

High-level delegations also came from Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Cuba, with representatives of 40 other governments present. Crucially, however, talks were led by those in attendance, not by governments. This was a sharp distinction from any UN processes, where civil society and Indigenous Peoples must often fight to be heard, let alone have their input respected. This meant that those voices had not only the opportunity to talk climate justice; they had the ability to challenge the terms of the traditional climate debate and put forth radically different solutions.

These are reflections from Canadians who attended the summit in various capacities.

****

I was invited to sit as Secretary of the Indigenous Peoples Working Group, one of 17 distinct working groups. In all of the working groups, we built upon an online discussion process that had started weeks before, and involved people who couldn’t make it to the conference. In all the working groups, Indigenous peoples from South America were prominent, which gave a particular flavour to the documents and discussions.

This was evident in the discussions that pushed for a return to principles of "living well," granting rights to nature, and building upon long-ranging debates about interculturalism—beyond laissez-faire liberal multiculturalism—while ensuring that these ideas found a receptive audience in the global climate justice community.

After prolonged debate on the various issues, our job as secretaries was to come up with a final text from each working group. Eventually, the results of each working group were consolidated into one final text, which was presented to a crowd of tens of thousands on the final day of the conference.

Indigenous peoples called for transnational corporations to be banned from Indigenous lands, while calling for the universal application of the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, not only as a protective measure for the climate, but also against the negative impacts of any climate "mitigation" projects, such as biofuels or mega-dams, which have already devastated many Indigenous communities. Indigenous groups also made a call for people to "live well" instead of seeking unimpeded economic growth.

 In the end, the participants made a call to developed countries to reduce emissions by 50 per cent within the next decade, while paying off the ecological debt owed to the countries and peoples most impacted by climate change.

Also noteworthy was the development of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, which attempts to articulate a new class of rights towards the non-human world. This compliments the proposal to form an International Climate Justice Tribunal that would be empowered to prosecute countries and companies who violate environmental agreements.

Key ideas articulated in this Universal Declaration, already forwarded to the UN by the Bolivian government, include granting Mother Earth and her dependent beings the rights to life, to water, to be free of contamination and genetic modification, while laying out complimentary obligations for humanity.

Participants also issued a rejection of carbon markets as a neo-liberal means of avoiding real emissions cuts, while privatizing the planet. Understanding these projects as a way to impose devastating mega-projects on many local communities, they soundly condemned the UN proposals on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) as another mechanism that threatens to privatize and rob Indigenous peoples of their land, while letting developed countries off the hook.  

Despite all the powerful words, the conference still faced a number of challenges, starting with an unruly volcano in Europe that kept many participants from attending. Timelines were short, resources were sparse, and sufficiently large meeting rooms far too uncommon. Three presidents even had to stay home because of domestic issues, leaving only Morales, Hugo Chavez and Esteban Lazo Hernandez, vice-president of Cuba, to attend.

The challenges internationally stemmed from the lack of attention paid to the conference by the international press, except to an out-of-context statement by Morales on the potential effects of growth hormones in poultry on male sexuality, for which he was ridiculed to no end. Otherwise, the conference was a media black hole outside of South America, with Canadian press not even showing up to a joint press conference organized in Ottawa during the conference.

In the long term, the challenge will be to use the momentum and strategies fostered at this conference to build and strengthen local movements worldwide, and force real change in government and non-governmental institutions. The other challenge is to translate and communicate the conclusions of this historic conference into local contexts and strategies. Here in Canada, reports have taken place and are planned for different communities. But it will not be enough—movements and organizations in Canada and abroad must make the space for the voices from the South to inform and lead.

The mobilization towards the G8/G20 in Toronto and the US Social Forum in Detroit cannot miss this important opportunity to advance the case for climate justice and build the connections between peoples and movements to challenge Canadian governments and corporations. With only six months remaining until the Cancun Climate Conference, we have a chance to see if we’ve learned anything since Copenhagen.

—Ben Powless

When I think back to Cochabamba, there’s one afternoon I remember. Surrounded by Indigenous families, it was very different from any conference I’d been to before, where the only "civil society" present are representatives from NGOs, civil servants and union leaders. The vast majority of people in Cochabamba were community members—individuals and families whose livelihoods are deeply threatened by the climate crisis. They weren’t speaking about someone else’s struggle, but their own—a vast contrast from the typical climate conference, and this influenced the type of discussions that were had. What I learned in those few hours was far more valuable than anything a scientific report could tell me.

In Cochabamba, I heard story after story of people’s direct knowledge and experience with climate change—droughts have ruined harvests for poor farmers; floods have displaced families; melting glaciers have led to extreme water shortages in major cities—it was all right in their backyards. People were telling their own stories as evidence of how climate change has exacerbated poverty, illness and displacement for their communities. As I listened to people’s interventions, I realized how different the discourse in Canada is. Our arguments for climate action are mostly based on science and scary predictions about a looming future, because many of us are not personally impacted by the climate crisis yet. We use numbers and statistics as evidence that we have an unprecedented crisis on our hands, but we just end up confusing Canadians along the way.

There was also a common thread in people’s stories that afternoon—of the extreme air, land and water pollution, health impacts, and military presence of mining industries forcefully setting up shop in their communities. The connection between the extractive industries and the creation of the climate crisis was seamless, as were the links to the global capitalist system, which has allowed unregulated resource extraction to ravage the people's land, their health, their way of life and their self-determination as Indigenous peoples—all this in the name of unfettered profit for the global North.

That afternoon I realized, maybe we—the Canadian climate movement—have been asking ourselves the wrong questions. We have been so focused on how to "fix" climate change that we haven’t spent enough time asking ourselves, what caused such an unprecedented catastrophe to begin with? Is the way that we frame the issues and solutions in Canada only validating the existing capitalist system that has caused the climate crisis? Are we even educated enough to know the difference between false solutions that perpetuate human inequality and ecological destruction, and the real, just solutions expressed in the People’s Declaration from Cochabamba? How often do we talk about the depth of systematic change that is needed to overcome this crisis?

It is time that the climate movement in Canada better aligns itself with the demands of the growing resistance in the global South.

The Climate Change Accountability Act has passed its third reading—an amazing victory—but the hard work comes as we determine how Canada will achieve these targets. Moving forward, we have to question how each of our actions and strategies fit into a larger struggle—restructuring our relationships, our jobs, our economy and our production and consumption of goods. Each small victory should be one step closer to transforming the overarching systems we wish to change. Each victory should bring us one step closer to the paradigm shift that we envision as a movement. If we are committed to climate justice, then we are committing ourselves to challenging current global systems that continue to exploit, oppress and kill. We are committed to standing in solidarity with communities on the front lines of this struggle. We are committed to spreading the real solutions articulated in the People’s Declaration with our families, our peers, our communities and our politicians. The world has spoken in Cochabamba and it’s time to heed the call.

As we mobilize toward the Toronto G20 this month, followed by the UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, in November, we will see if the voices of the global civil society, so beautifully articulated in the People’s Declaration, will be heard by the world’s biggest powers and polluters.

—Kimia Ghomeshi

Kimia Ghomeshi is an Iranian-Canadian based in Toronto. She works as the G20 Campaign Co-ordinator for the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition.

Ben Powless is a student at Carleton University in Ottawa, and works as a climate justice campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network in Ottawa.

Cochabamba, Evo and Hugo

Cochabamba, Closing

Gaming the Budget

Tim McSorley — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 05:08:41 +0000

Full cost of Olympic security even higher than we thought

TORONTO—The amount the Canadian military spent on its portion of securing the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was more than double the publicly stated cost of $212 million, indicate files obtained by The Dominion.

Initially, the Department of National Defence (DND) only publicly stated the much lower "incremental costs" of its Olympics operation, know as Operation Podium. Incremental costs do not include the salaries and other expenses the military says they would have spent anyways. When taking the “full costs” into account—including salaries for members of the Canadian Armed Forces—the number jumps much higher.

“The number we're going with is $212 million, that's the incremental cost,” said Lieutenant-Colonel John Blakeley. “The incremental costs are the additional costs.” He did not disclose the full cost of Operation Podium during the interview, but according to data on governmental websites, the full costs for Operation Podium reached nearly $470 million.

If the entirety of DND expenses are taken into account, the overall security budget for the Winter Games breaches the $1 billion mark, well above the government's 2002 budget of $175 million. “Incremental costs are basically the costs excluding salaries,” said Steven Staples, a military analyst and president of the Rideau Institute. He explained it is usual for the military to use the incremental cost instead of the full cost when publicly stating budget figures.

“This is an old argument back and forth—should you be using full costs? Should you be using incremental costs? We often use full costs here [at the Rideau Institute] because you can't do missions without people, but the military is trying to diminish the apparent cost. They go with incremental and they say 'well, we would have [to pay] these troops anyway,'” said Staples. “In our work we tend to use both.”

A chart published on the website of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff in March 2010 listed cost estimates for the Canadian Forces operation to secure the Olympics Games. Full DND cost was listed as $471 million in the 2009/10 fiscal year. The chart also listed the publicly stated Incremental DND cost which came to $216 million in the 2009/10 fiscal year.

Blakeley said that if the Canadian Forces were paying soldiers regardless of where they were deployed, their salaries should not be included in the cost of operations.

“I think you do need to look at the full cost,” counters Staples. “Wouldn't it be great if we could buy cars from General Motors and not pay for the labour that was involved in building [them] and only pay for the steel and rubber and plastic? But we don't. We have to pay for the whole cost.”

“Generally if you want to do more military missions, you need to recruit more troops and pay for them. That is a cost associated with doing those missions, and should be included,” said Staples. “Similarly if you weren't doing many missions I don't think you would have these troops hanging around, in fact you would let them go back into the economy just like any major company does.”

The budget for Olympic security released in February 2009 totaled $900 million. This figure only budgeted $212 million for the Department of National Defence. There was no indication that this was only the incremental cost. By including DND full costs the total reaches $1.15 billion.

It has become increasingly difficult for Canadians to keep track of the ever-changing budgets, even four months after the Games.

“I guess I believed that $900 [million] was the full number, but it changed so often I have a hard time being surprised that it's more, which is horrible because we should be outraged and shocked that it went so far over budget and that we can't believe these numbers,” said Myka Tucker-Abramson, a Vancouver resident who opposed the Games.

This revelation comes as questions arise over the cost of securing the three-day G8 and G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto. The government originally released a $179 million security budget for the two meetings. Known as Operation Cadence, the Canadian Forces operation to secure the summits has an estimated budget of $72 million in incremental costs, as published on the website of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. In late May the government released a new security figure of $933 million. When the full cost of Operation Cadence is taken into account, as opposed to the incremental costs, this figure is pushed to over a billion dollars.

Following public outcry and pressure from opposition parties over this massive increase, Auditor General Sheila Fraser says she will investigate the G8/G20 budget. No such investigation is being held for the cost of Olympic security.

“It seemed like the budget was limitless, that any Olympic project, be it security or infrastructure, could use as much as it wanted,” remarked Tucker-Abramson. “Given the recent cuts to public education, health centres on the Downtown East Side [of Vancouver] and all the cuts that women's centres and other vital social services have faced due to unavailable funds, the money budgeted for security was shameful.”

Tim Groves is an investigative researcher and journalist based in Toronto.

Olympic budget burning up

June In Review, Part I

Cameron Fenton — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:00:55 +0000

Indian act imposed, mining companies blockaded, kite-flying banned

The Mohawk Council of Kanesatake rejected a proposed niobium mine in the Seigneury of Lake of Two Mountains outside Montreal on land held by the Mohawks through Aboriginal title and treaty rights. The project, owned by Niocan Inc., was recently presented to the Quebec government for approval. A ruling is expected soon.

Officials in the United States delayed the approval of a draft environmental impact assessment for the Keystone XL pipeline project, which aims to move massive amounts of tar sands bitumen from Alberta, through the Northwestern US, and into Texas. Although no reason for the delay was given, environmentalists have raised concerns about the pipeline breaking in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

Five workers at a Syncrude's Mildred Lake tar sands operation in Northern Alberta were hospitalized with "significant burn injuries" following a fire at the facility. Four of the five were contractors and one was a Syncrude employee.

Members of the Barriere Lake Algonquin community and solidarity activists have launched a campaign against the imposition on their community of Section 74 of the Indian Act by the Federal Government. Section 74, which has not been forcibly enacted since 1924, would allow Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl to impose an electoral system on the Indigenous community, which currently uses a traditional selection system.

In Winnipeg, hundreds of government employees took the streets to protest the provincial government's inaction on problems in the provincial corrections system, including overcrowding in prisons and a backlog of casework that currently sees almost 70 per cent of prisoners awaiting trial.

In Salt Lake City, a pipeline owned by oil giant Chevron burst, spilling over 400 barrels of oil into a nearby creek.

At least 10 people were injured in Colombia when riot police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up a protest against Calgary-based oil company Gran Tiera Energy, which produces 14,000 barrels of oil each day through its holdings in the Putamayo region.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup began in South Africa, drawing criticism that the tournament allows for the criminalization of the poor, and serves as a "neo-liberal trojan horse"—complete with $9.5 billion in state deficit spending. Over 300 security employees who rallied at a soccer stadium in Durban to protest low wages and poor working conditions were attacked by local police using tear gas and rubber bullets.

Hearings began in Alberta over the construction of a tar sands upgrader in the town of Fort Saskatchewan by French oil company Total. The hearings were guarded by armed Alberta sheriffs, as wells as private security hired by Total.

Patrick Daniel, CEO of Enbridge Inc., was met with protests in Edmonton for receiving an honourary law degree from the University of Alberta. Enbridge is one of the largest oil pipeline companies in the world, responsible for the Northern Gateway and Trailbreaker pipeline projects, which would bring tar sands bitumen to the west and east coasts of North America, respectively.

Toronto played host to Canada's first ever Veggie-Pride Parade to celebrate and promote vegetarianism and veganism. Similar events have taken place in New York, LA and Rome.

International outcry about the Israeli assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla continued, with thousands of people gathering in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Vancouver and Halifax to denounce the attack which included the killing of Turkish activists, to and send a message of solidarity to the Palestinian people. Israel announced it would establish a comission to investigate the attack—Canada will serve as one of two external observers. Initially the Canadian government released a press statement saying Canada was "Concerned by Israel’s Decision to Set up Independent Public Commission Concerning Flotilla Incident." The statement was retracted less than 30 minutes later and changed to, "Canada Welcomes Israel's Decision."

Israel's claim that soldiers acted in self-defense has been questioned further after the release of raw footage from aboard the Mavi Marmara.

In Ottawa, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl accepted a "charter of forgiveness" from a group identified by the CBC as "members of Canada's aboriginal community." The presentation was the highlight of the Forgiven: Catch the Dream conference, a project of the Ottawa-based Gathering Nations International Ministry, run by former Grand Council of Crees of Quebec deputy chief Kenny Blacksmith. According to one report, Blacksmith rented the Ottawa Civic centre for the conference in order to publicly accept Stephen Harper's 2008 apology for the Residential School program, and did so without the support of a majority of Indigenous communities in Canada. The conference website includes links to sign both a "we are sorry" or "we forgive" statement, presumably for non-Indigenous and Indigenous people respectively. To date, 738 people have said they are sorry, and 138 have accepted the apology.

Innu communities in Quebec and Labrador established a blockade to prevent mining operations owned by New Millennium Capital and Labrador Iron Mines Holdings from going ahead without prior, informed consent. The blockade has been supported by the Innu Strategic Alliance, which represents around 12,000 people in the region of Northern Quebec and Labrador, Innu traditional territory known as Nitassinan.

Dr Carlos Castresana, head of the United Nations Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, resigned his position, and called for the removal of newly-appointed Attorney General Conrad Reyes on charges of corruption and links to organized crime. A few days later, four decapitated heads were found in Guatemala City with attached messages targeting the Ministry of the Interior and the prison system, adding to fears that Castresana's resignation would open the door for increased violence and impunity, harkening back to the government-sponsored terror campaigns of the 1980s.

The United States announced the discovery of more than $1 trillion worth of minerals in Afghanistan, including gold, copper, zinc, cobalt and lithium. Sources claim that the development and extraction of these resources could become the backbone of the local economy. Others have pointed out that the US has known about these reserves since at least 2007.

Ethnic violence escalated in Kyrgystan, where reports claim that upwards of 100 ethnic Uzbeks have been killed in the violence, with more than 75,000 crossing the border into neighbouring Uzbekistan. Russia—which, along with the United States, has a military base in the country—has declined requests from the interim Kyrgyz government for troops to intervene and stop the violence.

A Mexican teenager was shot and killed by United States border patrol on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande which divides the two nations. This comes shortly after a promise from US President Barak Obama to increase military presence along the border, and a report from a CIA operative that the US has Special Forces operatives working in Mexico.

Transport Canada announced strong restrictions on air traffic over Toronto during the G8 and G20 summits. Included are prohibitions on gliding and hang gliding, rocket launches and flying kites.

Canadian counter-terrorism officials sent a public appeal to help them find a southern Ontario resident who had purchased one tonne of fertilizer, which law enforcement believed could be used for bomb construction. Police later found the suspect using the fertilizer in what they described as a "gardening incident."

Innu Blockade

Halifax Flotilla Rally

Toronto's Communities Prepare for the G8 and G20 Summits

Moira Peters — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 05:19:06 +0000

G20 has no business meeting; local solutions better address global problems

TORONTO—The leaders of the 19 richest economies, as well as their central bank governors, the IMF, the World Bank, and the EU will be in Toronto June 26-27, 2010. That is nearly 20,000 delegates, 15,000 armed police, 2,000 media personnel and over $1.1 billion in security budget all descending to make it a very hot June weekend indeed. Annual Queer Pride festivities that include massive marches and parties have been rescheduled but the tourists will be here, as will thousands of protesters, activists and delegates. The real question, though, is: will Toronto’s residents and long-term social movements join the resistance?

The answer is clear for Sabrina Gopaul, an organizer with LIFEmovement and Jane and Finch Action Against Poverty: “Our people are hungry, they are jobless, we have few schools and lesser social services—all these attacks are a direct result of the G20 policies and we will protest against them. We have real community solutions on how to take care of each other, have good food, create economic opportunities and we will make sure that those are seen, heard and shared.”

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The first G6 summit took place in 1975. The attendees were France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. This was during the oil crisis when oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia increased the price of oil in an unsettled global economy, causing tremors in the hallways of power across Europe and North America. Canada joined the G6 in 1976 and Russia joined in 1997.

The G8 leaders have always had at the top of the agenda international trade and managing relations between the once-colonizers and the colonized (the developed and the underdeveloped worlds). In asserting their desire for national security, G8 countries place access to energy and other strategic resources at the forefront of discussions. At G8 summits, ad hoc consensus is reached on myriad issues that never make the public communiques. The decisions that emerge after the G8 meetings—some formally in the Summit Declarations, and many others as a result of side-conversations—impact how the world lives and works.

The first G20 summit, held in 1999, was initially a meeting of the central bank governors and financial ministers of emerging powers and the G8, firmly entrenched within the IMF-World Bank alliance (the so-called Bretton Woods’ sisters). The G20 is comprised of the G8 as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Korea, Turkey and the EU. In November 2008, under the weight of another financial crisis, George Bush hosted the first full G20 summit, where leaders of G20 countries joined their finance ministers and central bank governors along with representatives from the IMF and World Bank. The G20’s policy focus is maintaining global financial stability and the ongoing economic, military and financial dominance of the richest states and their corporations.

“The G8 is saving the banks, while ignoring lives,” said David McNally, Professor of Political Science at York University, noting the group’s failure to meet the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit aid commitments. “Two years after promising $20 billion to deal with the world food crisis—a pittance compared to what they have put into banks—the G8 has delivered only one-tenth of what it pledged."

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Resistance to the G8/G20 has been manifold and diverse. Organizations such as Make Poverty History and the Ottawa-based “At the Table Campaign” have tried to influence the G8, hoping it could be lobbied to take grassroots concerns into account.

Stephen Lewis, in a recent statement, called on summit leaders to live up to their UN Millennium Goals and the promise to halve poverty by 2015. Lewis said, “this is an historic moment for Canada. We are in a position to lead the world in resolving one of the great moral issues of our time.”

“We’re calling for a breakthrough plan to tackle climate change,” said Zoe Caron, of WWF-Canada in a media release announcing the launch of the “At the Table” campaign. “The choice is clear for the G8 this June: lead us forward in this transformation to a clean green economy.”

Others disagree, insisting that the G20 has no business meeting.

“The G20 and G8 are meetings of the very people promoting war and environmental destruction around the world. They push people out of their homes and off their land, force many to migrate and to work in dangerous, temp jobs,” said Mohan Mishra of No One Is Illegal-Toronto, a group involved in planning demonstrations in June 2010. “These people should not be meeting to make undemocratic decisions about our lives. People in our communities know what we need and are working to make sure that we create the world we wish to live in, the G20 leaders are simply in the way.”

Though much of the debate in the corporate media has focused on security threats, fences, the relocation of weddings, and consistently typecasting the mobilizations as the protesters pitted against the cops, conversations on the ground are markedly different. Lesley Wood is an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and a sociologist who has studied large mobilizations for over a decade. Wood noted that “since Seattle in 2001 when the anti-globalization movement had its coming-out party, many have questioned the lack of participation of community groups and ongoing campaigns in large mobilizations. People doing anti-police-brutality work, organizing in housing, growing food, fighting for childcare have sometimes struggled to connect their local struggles with one-time circuses that come through their city.” Wood believes that Toronto is seeing a coalescing of social movements and as June 2010 comes closer, participation from community groups in Toronto has greatly increased.

“Having seen the bruised faces of our mothers; the broken legs of our youth; the public humiliation of our neighbours; summer curfews and the militarization of our schools, our communities are constantly reminded that law enforcement does not solve crime; it sustains it—just like military efforts around the world do not create peace; they destroy it,” said Greg Walsh, an anti-police-brutality activist in the Jane and Finch community who sees resistance to the G20 as part of his everyday work.

Considering that the G8/G20 Summits are taking place on traditional Anishinaabe territory and Mississauga lands, and that the G8/G20 leaders assert neo-colonial relations on most of the six billion people of the world, much of the organizing for the convergence is under an anti-colonial umbrella.

Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network and part of Defenders of the Land, a group organizing a Day of Action for Indigenous Sovereignty, explained: “Here in Canada, Indigenous people have been dealing with the effects of globalization and neo-liberal economic policies for some time, all of which have had a tremendously negative effect on our sovereignty and ecology. This can best be described through the crown jewel of US energy and security policy, the Alberta tar sands. Access to the tar sands is being enabled by massive free-trade-driven development such as the Pacific gateway initiative and the Atlantic gateway initiative, both of which mean the development of super ports, highways, pipelines, railways providing the transportation of resources such as the synthetic crude much easier to be accessed by G8 members, most specifically the United States. The effects of these kinds of development have devastating impacts on Indigenous people across the continent of North America.”

Unlike many of the convergences of the past, this June might just see a real community-based mobilization against the G8/G20 that puts forwards its own campaigns for local lives while pushing for global transformation. A real grounded local/global movement is emerging in Canada.

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Voices from Toronto’s mobilizers

Kole Kilibarda from the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, which is fighting to build a local and global boycott and divestment campaign against the government of Israel:

“Whether it was the G8’s complacency during Israel’s brutal 33-day war on the people of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, or its enthusiastic support for the more recent slaughter in Gaza in January 2009, the G8 has repeatedly shown its willingness to continue criminalizing any expression of Palestinian self-determination while financing, arming and applauding the apartheid state of Israel.”

Pragash Pio, a Tamil community organizer and Canadian HART activist in Toronto:

“Our local issues are connected to global ones. Many people in our community are sending money home to assist their families, rebuild homes and lives and as a result [are] impoverishing themselves. Things like the War on Terror paradigm which is really a war on racialized and diaspora people is interfering with everyday lives here and elsewhere. People understand that it’s not just local levels of apartheid—the G8/G20 is the coordinating committee of global apartheid, they make us refugees, they attack us, they are the systemic side of injustice and must be resisted.”

Kimia Ghomeshi, National Youth Climate and G20 Organizer at the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition:

“The G8/G20 are indebted to the global south, displaced migrants and Indigenous peoples everywhere for creating and furthering the climate crisis. This is a global catastrophe that will not go away through mere lifestyle changes like riding bikes or changing light bulbs. It requires a complete transformation away from the global capitalist system that justifies the ravaging of our lands and exploitation of our communities.”

Sultana Jahangir, of the South Asian Women’s Rights Organization based in Victoria Park in Scarborough, and who is organizing contingents to join the rallies:

“International capitalism displaces people from all over the world by economical, military and environmental aggression. In Bangladesh three million people [have been] displace[d] and our homeland has become the biggest human exporter in 2009. [The] Canadian government traffic[s] and displace[s] people to exploit them. They bring migrant women and totally marginalize them. They are forced to live in margin[s] of society in either low paid job[s] or as baby machines. We immigrant women demand the rich to stop marginaliz[ing] us, and demand...childcare, health, education, housing and all services.”

Andrew Mindszenthy, a member of DAMN 2025, a radical cross-disability coalition that is mobilizing against the G8/G20:

“Canada segregates disabled people with more than pervasive physical barriers: we are impoverished by Canada’s ‘social assistance'; denied at its international borders; confined in its institutions and prisons; ostracized by social isolation; and largely excluded even from social movements. DAMN 2025 is allying with other oppressed groups to resist the G8/G20's agenda of making the rich richer on the backs of poor people around the world.”

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A People’s Summit is planned from June 18-20, 2010, which will be a social forum-style conference bringing together community groups, NGOs, labour unions, faith groups and others to educate and be agitated.

Following the People’s Summit, actions and demonstrations organized by different networks are taking place across Toronto. These include a demonstration for Indigenous Sovereignty and Self-Determination on June 24, a massive mobilization by community groups on June 25 calling for “Justice For Our Communities.”

A labour march and major anti-colonial, anti-capitalist actions are also planned on June 26 and 27. Details of all events can be found on Toronto Community Mobilization Network’s website which is the body coordinating and supporting many of the actions taking place between June 21-27, 2010.

To learn more about the G8 and G20, visit g20.torontomobilize.org, g8.utoronto.ca and g20.utoronto.ca.

Syed Hussan is a community organizer involved in building a people's convergence during the G8/G20 through the Toronto Community Mobilization Network and the June 25 Justice for Our Communities demonstration.

Growing resistance to G20

justice for our communities

Recovering from the Heart Attack

Moira Peters — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:31:10 +0000

Arrestees fighting off Olympic side-effects in court

VANCOUVER—Although the Olympics' closing ceremonies were three months ago, for those who opposed the two-week spectacle, the Vancouver 2010 Games have not yet left town.

Guillaume Pascal was arrested and accused of involvement in the February 13 Heart Attack Demonstration. "Two cops say that I instructed people to smash the windows of the RBC [Royal Bank of Canada]," he said. "VPD [Vancouver Police Department] said that they caught the ringleader of the action when they arrested me."

The Heart Attack was a demonstration meant to clog the roads leading through Vancouver to Whistler where many of the sports events were taking place. 300 masked people walked through downtown Vancouver, vandalizing symbols of the Olympics and capitalism. Olympic sponsors' advertisements on city buses were spray-painted; newspaper boxes of the Province and Canwest newspapers were overturned and the windows of the Hudson's Bay Company were smashed. The group was dispersed finally by riot police in the West End.

Pascal was arrested two days after the Heart Attack demonstration, after his residence and vehicle were constantly monitored by the police.

"VISU [Vancouver Integrated Security Unit] really dropped the ball on keeping the peace," said Pascal, who believes he was arrested because security agencies needed to save face after property was damaged during the Heart Attack. "They spent eight times the amount [on security] as the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, and needed a scapegoat for their incompetence in letting the Heart Attack take place."

"The Heart Attack ended the violent protests, and that had a lot to do with the response of the police," said Deputy Chief Constable Steve Sweeney at a March 17 Olympic security debriefing. "The public came over to our favour," he said about support for police conduct during the Heart Attack.

But few saw footage of police conduct during the February 13 demo. Police were brutal in arresting protesters, and even detained people peacefully walking to a prison vigil later that day.

"There were no charges made against me," said Sozan Savehilaghi, who marched with a pink-wigged, coverall-wearing group calling itself the Olympic Cleanup Crew. She was detained for video-taping arrests during the Heart Attack. "I was never read my rights or told why I was being detained. There were just lots of empty threats."

Savehilaghi was one of 27 protesters arrested during the Olympics, according to Solidarity with Anti-Olympic Convergence Arrestees (SACA)—a group formed to bring together arrestees and supporters to raise funds for the formers' defence. Ten of the arrestees were charged, of whom two are still fighting charges in court.

SACA member Ed Durgan was arrested February 13 near Pigeon Park, fifteen blocks away from where the Heart Attack demo ended. He was arrested for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk after questioning a group of police, whom he believed were harassing someone sleeping on a bench near the park.

"I was nearly deported. We had to fight for me to stay since they were going to revoke my student visa," said Durgan. "They put effort into intimidating me because I was a high-profile activist. But [the detainees] realized we'd all been arrested for political purposes, and wanted to stick together and fight these charges." Durgan said SACA goes beyond fundraising, and is considering legal action against the police for harassment.

Fundraising for SACA is tricky in Vancouver, where recently a benefit rock gig at the Pitt Pub at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was cancelled by the Alma Mater Society (AMS).

"AMS is claiming that the policy is that only student groups can book events on-campus," said SACA organizer Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, "which makes no sense because off-campus groups"—such as the Red Cross and Vancouver General Hospital—"work with student groups to book space at UBC all the time."

Despite UBC AMS' actions, there is support for SACA. The launch of the Dominion's G20 special issue on May 14 at the Vancouver Media Co-op included a solidarity statement with SACA. A dance party at the Secret Location on the same night included a silent auction for SACA.

Pascal's case is still going through court. "And there are other things like finding a job, that is hard after this," he said. "Marginalizing someone into being a 'terrorist' stops him from ever being able to live normally."

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and communications graduate student researching media representation of marginalized people. He is a collective member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Olympic Cleanup Crew

Main & Hastings Cop Shop