The Dominion - Kelly Pflug-Back

Scoring for Information

stephlaw — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:32:45 +0000

Police infiltration tactics viewed as a violation of women's bodies and rights

TORONTO—With the rise of modern technologies, most of us are at least peripherally aware that our lives are becoming increasingly monitored. We casually brush away the uncanny feelings conjured by Google ads culling search terms from our emails, and gently ignore the bubble cameras that watch the perimeters of offices, schools and public spaces in metropolitan areas. But state surveillance penetrates even more intimate aspects of life than your email inbox and your child’s schoolyard.

The use of sexual deception in intelligence gathering is neither new nor uncommon, said Gary T. Marx, professor emeritus from MIT, Harvard University and University of Colorado, and author of Protest and Prejudice and Undercover: Police Surveillance in America.

While agencies generally have rules against sexual deception in intelligence gathering, and will be careful not to document instances of it, supervisors will imply that agents should use sex in order to gain intelligence. The secretive nature of undercover operations presents a roadblock to any kind of future accountability, he said.

“What's the difference between having sex through threat or coercion and having sex through lies?”

Recent stories of police infiltration appearing in the news have drawn this scenario out of the realm of James Bond fantasies and into public discourse.

Eight women in the United Kingdom are currently pursuing a human rights lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police, after they discovered that five of their former romantic partners were undercover agents. These cops were assigned to spy on environmental activists starting in the mid-1980's. At least two of these police spies have fathered children with an activist while undercover, and one of them, Jim Boyling, even married the mother, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

In Canada, allegations have arisen against a police officer who had sexual relations with women in the community he infiltrated during the lead-up to the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, activists in southern Ontario told The Dominion.

Shailagh Keaney, an activist and independent journalist in Ontario who knew the G20 infiltrators, said that gendered biases were at play in the tactics used by infiltrators, as well as in the actions of uniformed police during the protests.

“Women's bodies are perceived as less violent but more violate-able," she said. "Men were generally beaten more brutally [during the G20] but women were routinely strip searched without even having their pockets checked.”

For marginalized women whose communities have historically been harmed by governmental powers, the thought of having been intimate with someone who represents state authority is profoundly violating, said Jen Meunier, who identifies as Algonquin and a womyn of mixed descents. “Sexual consent means being fully aware of the circumstances, being aware of everything that is necessary for your safety.”

Indigenous communities in Canada have understood surveillance and infiltration to be a concrete reality for many decades now, Meunier said.

Rachelle Sauve, a cook and community organizer in Peterborough, Ontario, who knew people who were affected by direct interactions with infiltrators, believes undercover agents strategically take advantage of characteristics that are traditionally stereotyped as being feminine, such as compassion, nurturing and emotional receptivity.

“That, in itself, is gendered violence,” she said. “This is coercion, this is manipulation, and this is rape—the criminalization of dissent is the only reason it is seen as acceptable.”

Like in any war, the women of subordinate groups—such as Muslims, Arabs, activists and Indigenous peoples—find the oppression they already face on the basis of gender exacerbated by their status as targets of state repression.

Sauve views the use of sex in intelligence gathering as part of the broader historical picture of gender violence, often used as a tool of control and domination.

“This contains a certain depth of psychological warfare that is particularly pernicious,” she said. “You can destroy an entire culture by raping its women.”

According to Professor Marx, the role of secrecy is the key structural enabler of sexual misconduct in undercover operations. In addition, cases of infiltration are rarely made public if they do not succeed in gaining grounds for arrests. Most of the people who have had interactions with infiltrators may never find out the individual's true identity.

The best devices for preventing sexual misconduct by police are transparency, pluralism of powers in the state and continual institutional review, Professor Marx said.

Human rights law may be an excellent emerging tool for seeking redress in cases like these, which have no clear precedent. Judiciary law also contains tools for pursuing accountability, such as suing perpetrators for mental harm.

For Meunier and Sauve, the solution for activist communities involves a stronger acknowledgement of the gendered aspects of state repression.

“We need to collectively address gender issues and heal our vulnerabilities all the time—not just when something bad happens."

Kelly Pflug-Back is a poet, writer, student and activist. You can find her newest stuff in upcoming issues of Goblin Fruit, Ideomancer Speculative Fiction and Iconoclast.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Spooks using sex

Reconsidering Reconciliation

Martin Lukacs — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:56:16 +0000

Simpson's offers radical answers to long-standing questions

Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence
Leanne Simpson
Arbeiter Ring: Winnipeg, 2011

In recent years, the topic of reconciliation between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state has been hotly discussed. But what exactly does the word “reconciliation” mean?

So far, our government's answers have been efforts to supposedly hasten land claims processes for unceded territories, and public apologies such as the one Prime Minister Harper offered to survivors of residential schools in 2008, notably referring to the period as a “sad chapter” in national history. But the devastating inequalities still faced by Indigenous people in Canada's legal system, child welfare bureaucracy and social and economic structure raise many questions as to whether such acts have ushered in a new, reconciled relationship. In an age when government policies are still actively harming Indigenous people, is it believable that federal bureaucrats honestly wish for a mutually beneficial reconciliation? Or is the entire concept little more than a tool for whitewashing Canada's dishonorable treatment of First Nations, both past and present?

In Dancing on Our Turtle's Back, activist and scholar Leanne Simpson answers these questions and many others, proposing a definition of reconciliation that is radically different from any offered by the colonial state. Reconciliation, Simpson writes, must be rooted in the political and cultural resurgence of Indigenous peoples: restoring traditions, revitalizing family ties that have been ravaged by residential schools and neo-colonial child welfare policies, practicing sustainable stewardship of the land and building a future where new generations of Indigenous children can assert their identity and self-determination and live free, healthy and joyful lives.

Far from being dry, Simpson's writing is a vital, vibrant and ultimately life-affirming fusion of personal experience and academic analysis, collective narratives of the past and visions for the future. Many sections are directly transcribed from talks with Elders, whereas others, such as the chapter "Breastfeeding and Treaties," are explorations of what children and infants can teach adults about how to have equitable political relations with other people and be respectful of the natural world.

Using examples from her own Nishnaabeg culture, Simpson explains the diverse ways in which resistance, love, mobilization and equality are and always have been inherent to Indigenous lifestyles and philosophies. Traditional Nishnaabeg society, she writes, was defined by principles of non-authoritarian governance and leadership, respect, mutuality and constant progressive change. Even the Nishnaabeg language contains this essence of fluidity, using verbs in a greater capacity than it does nouns. These principles and government structures are not concepts that are lost, she explains, so much as they are concepts that need to be supported and strengthened.

Often speaking from the reference point of parenthood, Simpson places passionate emphasis on how important healthy family dynamics and traditional child-rearing practices are to the future of Indigenous resistance and well-being. To build a cultural and political resurgence, relationships between parents and children must be a microcosm of the larger social structure: non-hierarchical, non-violent, non-coercive and non-condescending. In this way, parenting can be one of the most politically transformative acts: children raised today with positive models of how to relate to others without dominance and coercion will be naturally responsible leaders of tomorrow's resurgence.

Simpson's narrative style is as much a testament to non-hierarchical philosophies as the actual content she explores. In an expressive style reminiscent of some of the most emblematic writers of feminist and Indigenist thought—from bell hooks to Subcomandante Marcos—Simpson defies constructed divisions between the personal and the political, the past and the present, the spiritual and the empirical. Dancing On Our Turtle's Back opens the door to a world where a woman's role as a mother, aunt or daughter is no less revolutionary and political than her role as a front-line activist; where age-old creation stories are no less relevant or critical than yesterday's parliamentary decisions; and where the opinions and thoughts of children are taken no less seriously than those of learned adults. These are fighting words as much as they are loving words, standing as a direct challenge to the empty consumerism, individualism and disconnection from each other and the environment so widely accepted as normal states of being in neo-colonial culture.

The resurgence of Indigenous nations, Simpson asserts, is something that must move “beyond resistance and survival” to a flourishing state of joy, strength and self-sufficiency—a centuries-old process that is and will continue to be carried out with or without the acknowledgment of non-Indigenous social movement theory, the popular support of Canadians or the respect and permission of the settler government.

Kelly Pflug-Back is a writer, poet and activist in Toronto. Check her out at www.kellypflugback.wordpress.com.

Dancing on Our Turtle's Back cover