The Dominion - 83

Issue #83

Tim McSorley — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:55:20 +0000

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July/August 2012

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Canada Boosts Police Power in Mexico

Tim McSorley — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:45:35 +0000

Ottawa's role in the permanent war against the people of Mexico

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO—The music is loud and the bar is well stocked. I sit timidly with a can of beer, eyes on the entrance. This was a happening nightclub before Juarez was transformed into a war zone. My companion, Julian Cardona, who used to shoot photos for the society pages of a local newspaper, describes what it used to be like here: Hummers triple-parked on the sidewalk, hundred-dollar tips, well-dressed Texans waiting behind velvet ropes to get in. Not anymore. The night I visited, the place was near empty, waitresses busy with their iPhones, a wandering cigarette vendor calling out to make a sale.

It was Cardona's idea to go to the nightclub; he said it would help me understand the city better. His career has taken an unexpected turn because of the violence: these days, instead of shooting for the society pages, he shoots crime scenes in one of the world’s most violent cities.

Ciudad Juarez, a city that boomed with the introduction of maquiladoras, has long been a city with high levels of violence. The murders of women through the 1990s gained international attention. For each dead woman, there were nine murdered men.

But when Juarez transformed into the focal point of Mexico’s war against drug traffickers, things in the city began to change beyond recognition. President Felipe Calderon launched a militarized war on drug traffickers at the beginning of his term in December 2006. At the end of March 2008, thousands of soldiers and federal police officers arrived in Ciudad Juarez as part of a surge against drug traffickers. After the police and troops arrived, the murder rate skyrocketed, violence increased, and kidnappings spiked. Ciudad Juarez became synonymous with everything that is wrong in Mexico.

But what’s happening in Mexico and in Juarez isn’t happening in isolation. On the one hand, drug consumption in Canada and the US fuels much of the demand that keeps the cartels in business. On the other, Canada and the US have increased their support for the Mexican police and army, even as their role in cities like Juarez is coming under intense criticism. This relationship was highlighted in March when defence ministers from all three countries held trilateral meetings for the first time.

"What we've seen here in [Ciudad Juarez] is that the city was militarized on the last day of March of 2008, when federal forces arrived here, thousands of troops from the army and the federal police," said Carlos Yeffim Fong, an activist and student who lives in Ciudad Juarez. At the peak of the militarization of Juarez, between 2009 and 2010, 5,000 federal police and 5,000 soldiers were in the city.

"Generally, before the soldiers came, there was an average of two murders a day, and when the soldiers arrived, that number began to rise, to five, and later to 10," recounted Fong on a cool November afternoon at the campus of the state-funded Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). "We've seen various cases where the army and federal police killed minors, as well as police and soldiers directly involved in robbery."

Locals also link federal police, known in Mexico as Federales, to kidnapping.

"When the wave of kidnappings grew, it was because of the arrival of the federal police," said Leobardo Alvarado, who runs the alternative news outlet JuarezDialoga. "Of course, it hasn't been proven that it has to do with that, but yes there are many documented cases where there were people linked to the federal police who committed these crimes."

The involvement of police in illegal activities is nothing new. "Mexican police, indeed, are widely reported to be involved in the trade of drugs, actively through assistance or passively through corruption," wrote Mathieu Deflem, a professor at the University of South Carolina, in 2001. But over the past ten years, the level of police involvement in the drug trade has deepened.

"There's always been a really close line, or, well, they're the same," said Cardona, who has lived in Juarez for over 30 years. "The police and the entire state apparatus, all of the institutions of the state, have always been the guarantors of the drug trade."

I interviewed Cardona on the patio of a Starbucks, the only establishment in Juarez that still dares to open its outdoor seating area. Our table faced a Wal-Mart, built over top of what was once a bullfighting arena. Every so often, we'd see a police car make a slow loop through the parking lot, lights flashing.

Police involvement in the drug trade intensified with the growth of Mexico's internal drug market, whose expansion has to do in part with increased border controls introduced after September 11, 2001. "Just 10 years ago, there was a lot of narcotrafico in Mexico but Mexicans themselves weren’t consuming the drugs," said Dr William I Robinson, professor and author of A Theory of Global Capitalism. "Now there’s millions of Mexicans that are addicted to drugs, and that are consumers of drugs also, and that’s because of those changes at the border and the changes in the velocity of drugs moving through Mexico."

As local drug markets grew, according to Cardona, police began to move drugs themselves, to execute people and even to move bodies in patrol cars, all of which meant they earned more money. Instead of wiping out these behaviors, the militarization of the city seems to have exacerbated them. "What happens is that when the Federales arrive in Juarez, and the army, is that they basically displace local state or municipal police from their markets," said Cardona.

Not everyone agrees on what exactly pushed Ciudad Juarez onto the map as a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world. The mainstream media claimed the violence stemmed from a turf war between the Sinaloa Cartel and La Linea, the armed wing of the Juarez Cartel, which they claim police and soldiers helped to quell. Upon careful examination, this narrative is constructed in the media using official sources such as unnamed officials and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The residents of Juarez I spoke to, however, place the blame squarely at the hands of the police and the army.

According to Molly Molloy, a librarian at New Mexico State University who tracks the violence in Mexico, close to 95,000 people have been murdered in the country since the beginning of Calderon's term. In Juarez alone, more than 10,000 people have been murdered since 2008. Officials often state the dead were involved in the drug trade, but murders are rarely investigated.

"Most of the killings are between people, well, the people who died were unarmed," said Dr. Hector Padilla, a professor at the UACJ, with a dry chuckle. "The majority are people who were in transit, or who were working, or in their homes and someone arrives and pluck," he said, making a gun with his fingers and pulling the trigger.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre puts the number of internally displaced people at 160,000, though other studies show the number could be much higher. In addition, more than 5,000 people have been disappeared since 2006, and the number of federal prisoners has quintupled to more than 18,000, 40 per cent of whom are in pre-trial detention.

Images of gun-fighting, seized drugs and arrests are regularly reported on the evening news, while blogs disseminate torture-kill videos and grisly images of massacres and corpses cut into pieces.

Since the war on drugs was declared, police and policing have been a key component of the Merida Initiative, a US-Mexico strategy that aims to disrupt drug traffickers. In 2010, there were an estimated 409,536 police in Mexico, according to Insyde, a non-profit organization involved in US-funded police training. Federal police, of which there are more than 30,000, all receive in-country military training.

Before the US announced the Merida Initiative in 2007, Canada had already begun to increase security co-operation with Mexico.

Under the rubric of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, then-Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and his Mexican counterpart agreed to create a working group focused on bilateral security co-operation in early 2007. Two years later, RCMP officers were training Mexican Federal police.

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, along with trainers from the United States and other international partners, are providing basic training to Mexican Federal Police recruits," said Stephen Harper during a stop in Guadalajara in 2009. In addition to training 1,500 low-level Federales, the RCMP trained 300 mid-level Mexican officers, and 32 Mexican police commanders received training at the Canadian Police College.

There is no transparency from the RCMP regarding which Mexican officers have attended training in Canada, and thus far no way to verify whether or not Canadian-trained officers have been directly involved in criminal acts. "For security reasons we cannot give you the names of the Officials that attended training at our Canadian Police College," wrote RCMP media liaison Greg Cox in an email to The Dominion.

By late 2011, US funding had been used to "train over 55,000 law enforcement and justice sector officials, including 7,200 Federal police officers," according to the US State Department.

The New York Times reported that this training involved "conducting wiretaps, running informants and interrogating suspects."

Regardless of the stated efforts of international police forces, corruption among Mexican police has not diminished. "We do not want to overstate this finding: We see no evidence that police corruption is actually falling," reads a 2011 report prepared by the right-wing Rand Corporation.

RCMP and US training of Mexican police is taking place alongside officers from Israel, Colombia, France, Spain, El Salvador, Holland, and the Czech Republic. Maribel Cervantes Guerrero, the highest ranking federal police officer in Mexico, was trained in the US, Israel and Spain.

International co-operation in matters of security creates spaces where "bureaucrats and military elites actively study and borrow each other’s techniques and advise one another on effective ruling practices," according to Laleh Khalili, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of London.

Renewed international interest on the part of Canada, the US and others in training Mexican police comes despite the fact that there is no proof that such training improves security or democracy.

"There is no evidence that almost a century of US assistance to foreign police has improved either the security of the people in recipient countries or the democratic practices of their police and security forces," points out Dr Martha Huggins, who has written extensively on US training of Latin American police. Instead, she says, "the outcome of such training may suggest that the training of Latin American police has deliberately been used to increase US control over recipient countries and those governments' undemocratic control over their populations."

But this isn't just about the US training Mexican cops. The RCMP’s training of Mexico’s police indicates that Ottawa is interested in developing a stronger influence over Mexico’s internal security matters.

In addition to police training, Canada and Mexico hold annual political, military and inter-army talks, and work together with the US and other nations through the Florida-based, anti-drugs Joint Interagency Task Force South. Mexico is also a member state of Canada's Directorate of Military Training and Co-operation, an organization the Department of National Defence says is designed to "enhance bilateral defence relationships with countries of strategic interest to Canada."

From March 26 to 27, 2012, defence ministers from Canada, the US and Mexico held their first trilateral meeting, promising to increase defence co-operation in the fight against drug cartels, as well as protecting trade. "By virtue of our geography, our peoples, and our trading relationship, our three nations share many defence interests,” reads a joint statement by defence ministers.

With bilateral merchandise trade at $21.3 billion and Canadian foreign direct investment at $4.9 billion in 2009, the government of Canada considers Mexico "one of Canada’s most important trading partners in the world."

By 2011 there were more than 2,500 Canadian companies operating in Mexico. Canada's presence is especially strong in the mining and aerospace sector; Goldcorp and Bombardier have made major investments over the past two years.

Canada's growing corporate presence in Mexico may in part explain the increasingly close military and police co-operation. "If it’s a problem for Mexico, it’s a problem for Canada," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay in a statement to the media after the March meeting.

The fact that policing is the central focus of Canada’s security engagement with Mexico is in line with current military strategy, which advocates local police taking a key role over the long term.

"In the simplest of terms, the aim of military intervention is to restore the situation to the point at which the host nation police and security forces are able to maintain law and order," reads Canada's Counterinsurgency Operations Manual.

Indeed, getting the army off the streets of Juarez and the rest of Mexico is also a stated goal of the US State Department. "The Ambassador emphasized that the Mexican military needed an exit strategy," reads a State Department cable released by Wikileaks. "Mexico must build up its civil police and prosecutorial forces to fill much of the space currently occupied by the military."

Though homicide rates have begun to drop in Ciudad Juarez, there continues to be far more murders in the city than there were prior to 2008. Federal police still patrol Juarez, usually masked, often in the back of a pick-up truck with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles across their chests. Residents indicate that simply being out on the street is enough to provoke search and detention by police, likening the situation to an unofficial curfew under which the poorest are regular targets for police abuse.

Far from improving security for residents of Mexican cities and towns, the replacement of soldiers with an expanded, internationally trained, militarized police force is tantamount to the extension of war, by another name.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Mexico outlines

Food For Thought

Miles — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:24:56 +0000

DARTMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA—As government agencies find themselves unwilling or, more likely, unable to solve Canada’s poverty problems, provincial organizations like Feed Nova Scotia and individual food banks like Stairs United, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, confront these issues head-on, constantly enlarging and improving as they daily wage one of our nation’s most difficult battles: to keep our poorest and most vulnerable citizens as well fed as possible.

Canada’s first food bank opened its doors in Edmonton, Alberta in 1981. Prior to this, low income people scrounged extra food from a miscellaneous assortment of soup kitchens, churches and charities, or simply went without. Of course, poverty and hunger were not restricted to Edmonton and very soon other cities and towns followed the food bank’s example. Since that time, those providing free food to Canada’s poorest citizens have opened over 800 food banks and now operate more than 3,000 food programs.

In many ways the food bank at Stairs Memorial United Church in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia is a microcosm of the national food bank movement, expanding and modifying its services to meet an ever-growing and changing need.

Martin Walker is the current president of the North Dartmouth Outreach Resource Centre (NDORC), the organization that now officially runs the Stairs food bank. “I’m really impressed by the hands-on attitude of the volunteers here, the get-it-done attitude. They know that people need this and they just do it.” says Walker. “There’s almost no turnover here among our volunteers. Once people come here to help out, even if they didn’t plan a long-term commitment, they really tend to stay.”

Back in the mid-seventies when Stairs first started, it wasn’t really a food bank at all. Parishioners would bring contributions directly to the minister at the time, Reverend Vince Ihasz, who stored the food in his clothes closet and discreetly allocated the donations to those in need.

By 1987, the demand reached such proportions that a Food Bank Committee was established to be directly responsible to the congregation.

The passing decades have seen not only the growth of food banking but constant evolution and adaptation to changing times and needs. Many food banks have expanded their mandate to include provision of other services such as training in food preparation, assistance with job searching and raising awareness of hunger and poverty. Food banks have become one-stop-shops, offering clients resources and referrals to other support services, such as child care and affordable housing. All of this has been accomplished with heavy reliance on volunteer labour: almost half of all food banks in Canada are run entirely by volunteers.

There would appear to be three major factors fueling the evolution of food banks in Canada. First are the basic improvements and efficiencies gained through experience.

Frances Hunter, who has been Food Bank Manager at Stairs for 15 years, remembers driving to several different grocery stores to pick up day-old bread and items from the donation bins. Workers from other food banks would be doing much the same thing in their locale. “It’s just something I was called to do,” Hunter says. She’s very animated when discussing the clients. “Each one is different. They need to feel they are respected. Each one has a story and they want to be listened to. They want to be hugged and see a friendly face and that’s what I do – give them a hug and a big smile. That’s my reward too, the hugs and smiles I get.”

Increased demand in Nova Scotia, like all provinces in Canada, has seen the creation of central collection and distribution agencies. Feed Nova Scotia, a non-profit NGO created in 1984 as a Metro Food Society, now coordinates food bank operations in the greater Halifax area. Today it gathers and allocates food to more than 150 member agency food banks and meal programs across Nova Scotia.

The second factor that appears to be stimulating food bank modifications is contact with clients at the grassroots level, which is bringing into focus previously unrecognized needs. Stairs United, for instance, like almost every food bank in the country, now supplies diapers, dish and laundry detergent and toiletries. The church has also set aside an area for clothing and book donations.

Regular interaction with clients also allows volunteers to get a sense of the extreme social and psychological isolation poverty produces, causing most food banks to invite other agencies to visit during open hours and make themselves more readily available to those in need. Gordon McKeen, president of NDORC for the past ten years, explains the benefits of regular interaction.

“Our clients can be very fragile because of the problems they have and also because of the way that society treats them,” says McKeen. “For many people, it’s not easy to come to a food bank. One woman told me she walked past half-a-dozen times before she came in. For this reason we want to be very gentle in our dealings. We also want to be humble. Any of us can fall victim to circumstance. Finally, we need to be frugal both with our assets and our energy so that we can make sure every client gets help and shares the resources we have to offer.”

Stairs is regularly visited by Dartmouth Family Centre, Dalhousie Legal Aid, the Public Good Society and the newly formed Community Health Team, among others. Thanks to these organizations, clients can get advice and assistance with child-care issues, tenant-landlord problems, education and employment concerns, and questions about medical access and health issues.

The current minister at Stairs, Reverend Sarah Reaburn, remains closely connected with the food bank as well, usually spending the entire morning speaking (and sometimes praying) with clients who otherwise might not have that kind of spiritual connection in their lives.

“People frequently want to discuss their grief, often old grief that hasn’t been dealt with. There are also relationship problems and these often involve addiction issues. Lots of people just want to pray,” says Reaburn. “Of course, some people just want to chat! Since I’ve been doing this for over five years, I know these folks and they know me so there’s always lots of catching up.”

Stairs may be slightly ahead of the curve with one of their client services: transportation. Recognizing that many people have trouble getting their groceries home due to handicaps and other access issues, Councillor Jim Smith (District 9 Albro Lake Harbourview) has been offering rides to Stairs patrons almost every Wednesday morning for the last six years.

Last year Smith invited Ralph MacKenzie to join him and just a few months ago, the two men, along with the Public Good Society, a Dartmouth-based non-profit, obtained the license to operate the first urban community-based van in the Halifax Regional Municipality. The van is available to other charitable organizations and agencies making food bank visits available to those who otherwise could not participate.

“Some people wouldn’t come to the food bank at all without a ride home,” says MacKenzie. “They can’t afford cab-fare and physically can’t carry the groceries home. People talk about what a great thing you’re doing, but I feel really rewarded. I’m building relationships with these people. I know their names, where they live, and what’s going on in their families. I'm making friends. I love it.”

Being face-to-face with poverty is a powerful motivator and food banks like Stairs have responded. With only two paid staff, Stairs makes sure that one of them is an outreach worker, in this case, Tom Clarke. Clarke joined the food bank for what he thought was a one year stint. Fifteen years later he’s still the outreach coordinator.

Stairs also invites another outreach worker, Kevin Little from the non-profit Public Good Society, to attend the food bank to arrange job postings, education and employment opportunities, housing connections, and contacts with other helping agencies. Thanks to their work, clients have improved their education, gotten jobs and training grants, and became acquainted with numerous other beneficial organizations.

Lamont Dobbin volunteers at Stairs United. He lives and works in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Helen and Heather prepare client orders in the pantry at Stairs United.

Flawed Process, Flawed Project

dawn — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:17:31 +0000

Controversy flows on the Northern Gateway pipeline and Canada’s oil economy

VANCOUVER—Since January, the federal Joint Review Panel (JRP) has been touring Alberta and BC, accepting public statements on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway project. The controversial pipeline would carry tar sands bitumen and chemical condensate from Alberta to the BC coast.

Although some observers are encouraged by the JRP and opportunity for open dialogue on the pipeline, many First Nations, legal experts and environmentalists say the review process and the project itself are deeply flawed.

"We think there's significant problems with the way the federal government has carried out its consultation," said Josh Paterson, legal counsel with West Coast Environmental Law.

"The JRP process itself has no authority to look at the impacts on First Nations rights and title that would be caused by this project. The federal government still has the duty to consult with First Nations regardless of what this panel does, and so far they haven’t shown that they're willing to have very serious discussions about the Enbridge issue or the impacts on rights and title."

If the pipeline is approved, Paterson predicts there will be legal challenges from multiple First Nations, who have already stated they would contest the federal government's failure to carry out constitutionally-required consultations. Paterson also said that those cases will likely go to the Supreme Court of Canada, although it's hard to predict how the court would rule.

There has been a record number of registrants to give oral statements to the JRP, more than 4,000, and a strong negative response against the pipeline in many communities. Nevertheless, the Canadian government has openly, and some say undemocratically, favoured the project during the regulatory process, calling it "in the national interest."

Paterson notes that the Harper government is attempting to give the federal Cabinet the final say on all future pipeline projects, instead of the National Energy Board (NEB). Currently, the JRP is considered an independent body and offers a recommendation to the NEB, which then rules on whether or not the project is in the public interest. The NEB is an independent federal agency; its funding comes from government, but 90% of costs recovered from industry.

Canada's regulatory process is already heavily influenced by industry, critics say, and giving Cabinet members the final say on projects rejected by the NEB puts more power into the hands of industry-friendly politicians, rather than an independent third party.

The proposed pipeline and resulting increase in oil tanker traffic on the west coast, along with a "streamlined" environmental review process, has experts declaring that a broad new discussion is needed on industry's relationship with government.

"Environmental Law is really being gutted and environmental protections... are just being erased in order to accelerate approvals of pipeline projects like Enbridge and we think that's really problematic," said Paterson. "We think that’s going to result in a legacy of poor decisions being made and that's going to affect Canadians well into the future."

Resource exploitation by large corporations on Canadian soil is nothing new and has been around since the country was founded, including the operations of the Hudson's Bay and North West companies. Environmental groups are saying the fight is more important than ever, with politicians pandering to Asian and other markets to sell Canada’s resources, while failing to deal with a number of fundamental issues.

"Obviously this is a pretty large-scale fight," said Ben West, campaigner for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. "We're talking about some of the wealthiest corporations in the history of industrial civilization. Increasingly we've seen our leaders from Canada... going to Asia and trying to make the case that this is a safe place to invest [in the pipeline and other resource industries] and to a certain extent I really think that's the nature of this conversation."

West says recent attacks from Conservatives against environmental organizations and the labeling of concerned citizens as "radicals" shows the current government feels threatened by those beginning to think beyond the oil economy.

"To me it’s a sign of desperation and a clinging to maintain the status quo," said West. "The big question that I think we're all going to need to deal with is: what does a different type of economy look like? Canada's economy is very much based around oil at the moment but that can't last forever."

West notes that while the Canadian government appears unconcerned about voices against the project, support is growing. Recently, several First Nations participated in theYinka Dene Alliance (YDA) train journey that ended at the Enbridge AGM in Toronto. The trip raised awareness and protested against the pipeline in a number of cities.

The JRP was slated to hear oral statements until March 2013 and make their recommendation in the fall, but the timeline and review process may soon be changed by aspects of the parliamentary budget bill, C-38.

Trevor Kehoe is a journalist from Calgary, now based in Vancouver.

The Yinka Dene Alliance

Laboratory, Honduras

dawn — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 11:46:44 +0000

Dueling truth commissions, ongoing repression, and Canada’s role in the new Honduras

TORONTO—Just over one year ago, renowned Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda was brutally assaulted and illegally detained by police. “I have a scar on my stomach from a burn caused by a tear gas canister fired at me at point blank,” said Miranda, in an interview with The Dominion. It was a peaceful roadblock in Triunfo de la Cruz—a Garífuna community on the north coast of Honduras—when Miranda was hit with the canister, beaten, assailed with racial slurs and jailed without explanation.

Miranda was the only person detained that day. As coordinator of the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), she had clearly been targeted by police. She was detained more than two hours without receiving medical attention, only to learn later that she would be accused of sedition.

The roadblock where Miranda was arrested was part of protests across the country that were an expression of solidarity with the public school teachers’ union and their fight against privatization and repression. The Garífuna community was also calling for recognition and respect of their ancestral territories.

Miranda’s assault came more than 18 months after the 2009 coup d’état which deposed President Mel Zelaya and sparked sweeping civil unrest throughout the country.

A revived neoliberal economic agenda supported by Canada and the U.S., combined with brutal social repression, has plagued Honduran communities ever since. “With the 2009 coup d’etat, Honduras became a laboratory of political, social, and economic imperialism,” said Miranda.

Indeed, from signing a free trade deal to watchdogging the military and police, Canada has played a significant role in this neoliberal experiment, tinkering in legislative, industry, and security reforms that are defining the post-coup Honduras.

Early in the morning of June 28, 2009, Honduran soldiers forced a pajama-clad Zelaya onto a plane to Costa Rica. Congress Speaker Roberto Micheletti stepped in as interim President, though his appointment went unrecognized by the Organization of American States(OAS), who quickly suspended Honduras’ membership.

Micheletti’s tenuous reign was short-lived, however, as the November 29th elections ushered in the presidency of Porfirio Lobo, who was inaugurated on January 27, 2010. Despite the refusal of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) and many national and international organizations to recognize the elections, they were supported by numerous states, including Canada. Honduras was readmitted to the OAS on June 1, 2010.

Zelaya’s critics in the National Congress and military defended the coup as a preemptive measure to thwart an upcoming public poll on whether to convene a constituent assembly, framing it as an illegal attempt to open up the constitution to allow successive terms in office.

Many Hondurans saw the coup as “made in the USA,” as Miranda put it, engineered in North America in collusion with the local oligarchy, whose patience with the left-turning Zelaya had grown thin.

Zelaya had stirred up talk of agrarian reform, minimum wage increases, stiffer regulations on foreign industries, and, with the support of Congress, had recently signed Honduras on to ALBA—Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian” alternative for Latin America.

“It’s clear that the US saw Honduras as kind of the weakest link in the ALBA block,” said Tom Loudon, Executive Secretary to Honduras’ alternative truth commission, in a phone interview from Tegucigalpa, calling the coup “a strike at Chavez’s block.”

The coup sparked widespread mobilization within Honduras, where daily demonstrations ensued for more than three months, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country. This incited extraordinary repression perpetrated by the military, police and vigilante forces, including 4,234 human rights violations in the first 100 days following the coup.

Berta Cáceres, Director of the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), describes “assassinations of Indigenous people, assassinations of people in the Honduran resistance, of journalists [and] lawyers, and all this in a state of impunity.”

Indeed, the Committee for Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) documented 54 political assassinations during Micheletti’s short rule, while The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports another 120 since Lobo’s inauguration. Cáceres situates this criminalization of social movements, social struggles, women leaders and social leaders of the country as part of a broader economic, political, and military strategy.

In response to rampant repression and violence, an "official" Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established under the auspices of the OAS as part of a 12-point resolution know as the San José Accord.

Though the Accord was meant to be diplomatic, mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the TRC was established under decree of de facto President Lobo, who also hand-picked the five representatives to lead it, including Canadian diplomat Michael Kergin.

Human rights organizations have criticized the TRC for failing to comply with international standards. Under the banner of the Plataforma de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Platform), these organizations launched an alternative commission, the “Comisión de Verdad,” on June 28, 2010; the one year anniversary of the coup.

Despite the constraints of a much smaller budget (estimated at about one sixth the official TRC’s rumoured $5 million), the alternative commission took its cues from a broader segment of society.

“Our goal has been primarily, from the very beginning, to give voice to the victims,” said Loudon, a long-time affiliate with the Friendship Office of the Americas.

The commission has been guided by of a team of nine human rights defenders—two Honduran and seven international—including Toronto-based lawyer, Craig Scott, who was elected as an NDP Member of Parliament (Toronto-Danforth) this past March.

Under their counsel, the commission sent two teams to collect testimonies across the country and opened offices in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. “We have a much more robust —evidentially, and just in terms of our method—approach to the human rights situation than the government commission,” said Scott in an interview with The Dominion. Scott has stepped down as commissioner since his election as MP.

In addition to financial barriers, security hurdles have also stalled the Alternative Commission’s work.

“The stress-levels of our staff—especially the Honduran staff—were through the roof,” explained Scott. “Our only two Honduran commissioners had to flee the country.” After receiving anonymous threats, Commissioner Padre Fausto Milla left for several months, and Commissioner Helen Umaña left in August 2011, with no plans to return.

Further, one of the staff suffered an attempted kidnapping, in which he was hauled from a taxi by police officers and pistol-whipped, before struggling free and escaping. “We’re sure if it had been successful, they would have killed him,” said Loudon. “As he was fleeing, they were shooting at him.”

The commission is planning to release their final report by the end of June. It will appear in the form of three volumes: cases, patterns, and an executive summary.

The first volume profiles twenty-four of the most emblematic human rights cases in chronological order. These include assassinations, the dismissal of four publicly anti-coup Supreme Court judges, and the ransacking of the offices of COMAL—a fair trade organization based in Siguatepeque, a small city in a lush agricultural region northwest of Tegucigalpa.

The second volume identifies patterns, including the massive repression of demonstrations, such as the mass arrest of 400 protesters near the Nicaraguan border on June 30, 2009, two days after the coup. Other patterns include the persecution of vulnerable social groups, and violations related to land and natural resources.

The executive summary is likely to be the only volume translated into English.

In August 2011, Prime Minister Harper became the first foreign leader to visit Honduras since it was readmitted to the OAS. It was during this visit that Harper and Lobo finalized a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Canada had begun free trade negotiations with the “C4 countries” (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador) in 2001. But by the end of 2010, despite the post-coup climate of repression and human rights abuses, Canada decided to shed the collective and go bilateral.

“The idea of a Free Trade Agreement in that kind of context, was frankly almost obscene,” said Scott. “[Harper] probably sent as strong a signal as you could that the whole philosophy was one of economic trade and growth as the completely dominant paradigm for how a country like Honduras moves forward.”

A negotiating document acquired from the Honduran Secretary of Industry and Trade through an Access to Information request notes that over the course of 2010, Canada’s imports from Honduras had eclipsed exports by $20.9 million. Overall bilateral trade increased after the coup, showing a 9.3 per cent increase from 2009 to 2010, and a 22 per cent increase to $235 million in 2011.

Leading up to the FTA, Canadian companies already held 90 per cent of investment in Honduras’ mining sector, amounting to $146 million in total assets employed by Canadian firms by 2009. During a meeting with de facto President Lobo in April 2010, Canadian Ambassador Neil Reeder suggested that with the FTA this number would balloon to $700 million.

As the FTA was inked, ten of the most prominent Honduran human rights organizations released a document rejecting the agreement. The “Pronouncement Rejecting the Extractive Policy of the Government of Canada and the Bilateral Trade Deal between Canada and Honduras” describes the detrimental impacts that Canadian investments have already had on the environment, health, and self-determination of communities and rejects the FTA for facilitating further exploitation.

“The Free Trade Agreement with Canada has opened more doors for Canadian transnational mining companies...Leading to the violation of labour rights,” said Cáceres, whose organization signed the pronouncement. “And still, even at the international level, there is a lack of justice against these Canadian transnationals.”

The coup was carried out less than three weeks prior to the final reading of a proposed mining law that would have demanded community consent, raised taxes, prohibited open-pit mining, and banned the use of cyanide in new concessions. It has since been substituted with a new law on mining and hydrocarbons currently before Congress, which would slacken regulations and leave the county vulnerable to even more extractive development.

An April 23 communiqué put out by the Honduran National Coalition of Environmental and Social Networks against Open-Pit Mining and the Siria Valley Environmental Committee, denounced Congress for avoiding consultation with Honduran organizations on the new law, instead shopping it around to Canadian mining corporations and government officials.

The communiqué notes that Rigoberto Cuellar, Minister of Natural Resources (SERNA), and Aldo Santos, director of the Directorate for the Promotion of Mining (DEFOMIN), traveled to Canada to promote the proposed law at the annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada in March. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade sent two government representatives to attend, including International Trade Minister Ed Fast, who met with the Hondurans.

The proposed mining law represents just one of Canada’s efforts towards increased involvement in internal Honduran affairs.

Canada has provided one of two foreign advisors to a new, independent police monitoring body, known as the Commission for the Reform of Public Security. With an express focus on rural security, this body has also been acting as a key advisor to the proposed mining law. In November 2011, Honduran police took part in a training workshop on Military-Police Cooperation run by Canada’s Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. Canada has also participated in anti-narcotics operations in the region, including Op Martillo.

With continued impunity for both local human rights violators and foreign perpetrators, hope is hard to muster.

“The train has left the station in so many ways; the government has been barreling ahead with its neoliberal and oppressive agenda,” says Scott. According to Scott, the test will be whether or not the Alternative Commission is found to be useful as a way for new political forces and social actors to try to take back their country.

Regardless, the Alternative Commission's report is sure have local significance. “The report of the truth commission will be very important because it will verify situations that strip perpetrators of responsibility for their crimes,” says Cáceres.

Meanwhile, the movement presses on. In April, thousands of landless Honduran farmers occupied 30,000 acres of land across the country. Elections are on the horizon for November 2013, when the resistance movement will run candidates under the recently founded Liberation and Re-foundation Party (PLR).

Ongoing repression does not mean that the Honduran people stop fighting, says Cáceres. "Instead, we strengthen our struggles.”

Emma Feltes is a writer, researcher, and rights advocate based in Toronto and sometimes elsewhere. Her work centres on Indigenous-State relations in Canada and Latin America, land rights, cultural heritage, and urban issues.

Mel's Return

Canadian Bomb Spending Soars

Tim McSorley — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:01:19 +0000

CanBomb8d.jpg

Colombians Refuse Canadian Mine

Tim McSorley — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:14:16 +0000

Farmers' stance against extractive project ignored in Ottawa

BERRUECOS, COLOMBIA—In southwest Colombia people are organizing within and throughout their villages, creating a strong network of resistance to Canadian gold mining. But they’re not fighting for concessions or reforms: they’re fighting to win.

Canadian mining company Gran Colombia Gold set up exploration platforms in small farming communities near Berruecos, Colombia in early 2011. Soon after, local coffee farmers began to question the benefits of a large-scale gold mine. “All I see that can come from this project is conflict and displacement,” said Hector Gomez*, a local farmer who is opposed to exploration. We spoke at a former drilling platform near the Mazamorras stream, where he had brought his kids for a swim.

His neighbour, Carlos Perez, adds that he moved to the area in part because of its reputation for being safe. “The first thing we lost [when the company came] was peace,” he said.

The budget for exploration is $3.8 million, which includes geophysical surveys and drilling, to test the size of gold, copper and silver reserves.

Gomez and others have already paid a heavy price for speaking out against the project. The Committee for the Integration of the Colombian Massif (CIMA), a rural social movement that counts many local farmers as members, has officially reported ten separate cases of harassment, death threats and violent assaults against critics of the company and their children since April 2011.

In two of these cases, CIMA representatives say, the head of private security for the mining project directly threatened the lives of local organizers. The human rights committee for the CIMA notes that many more cases go unreported due to fear and a lack of faith in officials to investigate.

“It's just like what happened with the coca-producing zones,” said Gomez in a comparison that may seem unexpected, until explained. “First comes the money, then comes the violence—the armed groups, drinking [and] crime.”

Farmers have had difficulty getting the Colombian government to provide information about the environmental impacts of large-scale mining, let alone hear their concerns about the project.

Gloria Muñoz, another local coffee farmer and young mother, went door to door collecting signatures for a petition calling on the municipal government to hold a forum against mining. She says she collected over one thousand signatures and sent it to officials, including Ingeominas, the Colombian government department responsible for granting mining exploration permits. She received no response. Meetings with the local mayor led to promises of a forum, but no results. "They put it off three times," she said in the courtyard of her modest but quaint home overlooking green hills and neighbouring farms.

"They act like if the company leaves, we'll die of hunger," said Muñoz. Sylvia, a relative of Muñoz, was hired as a spokesperson for the company. Also a young mother, Sylvia stresses the importance of job-creation, and argues that, when it comes to the environment, farmers have nothing to worry about. “This is a responsible company,” she said.

The debate between locally-hired contract workers and project opponents over jobs and the economic future of the region has sometimes boiled over, creating what the CIMA has called an atmosphere of chaos, anxiety and confrontation.

Local spokespeople for Gran Colombia Gold have their work cut out for them. People living close to exploration platforms say that when drilling began, it was loud and took place around the clock. When a shuttered drilling platform began to leak water, project opponents say they noticed that the water level in a near by aquifer began to drop.

As tension mounted between rural communities and the company, local contract labourers and spokespeople carried out community projects on Gran Colombia Gold's behalf—some of which did not go over well.

On October 9, 2011, some of the company's workers and private security personnel arrived to repair a paved soccer court in Bolivar, a tiny hamlet only accessible by a winding footpath up a steep hillside. Farmers living nearby say that they did not want company employees to carry out community work, so they approached the workers and asked them to stop.

They allege that the head of private security for the project ordered the workers to continue, and that a physical confrontation resulted in which a mine worker struck a protestor along with his sister and niece.

Later that day, hundreds of angry residents from Bolivar and nearby communities occupied two of Gran Colombia Gold's mining exploration camps. They remained on the grounds until the following day when they burned the camps to the ground.

Shortly thereafter a mediation team arrived, including the Department (the Colombian equivalent of a province) of Nariño's Human Rights Ombudsman, representatives of two municipal governments and of the Governor's office, as well as a Gran Colombia Gold employee.

Farmers say they negotiated a tentative agreement in which Gran Colombia Gold would suspend work for one month while the Governor of Nariño prepared and held a department-wide forum on the impacts of large-scale mining.

Gran Colombia Gold never signed the agreement. In a press release it said that the burning was carried out by "unknown invaders." The release did not mention a previous confrontation or mediation process.
Municipal elections led to some small gains for project opponents in 2012. In March, organizers finally got their mining forum in Berruecos, at which a number of officials and mayors declared their opposition to mining by multinational companies.

They were also able to pressure the newly-elected Governor of Nariño, Raul Delgado, to hold a department-wide forum on mining in March. At the forum the governor committed to setting up a co-operative roundtable that would bring together an array of social actors and decision-makers in order to better negotiate land-use policies handed down by the Colombian government.

At the end of the forum, CIMA representative Robert Daza said he was hopeful about the roundtable, but that the movement was prepared to organize a general strike across the department if it doesn't work out in favour of the local population.

Organizers believe that a large mobilization like this is possible because they are not alone. Their story is being played out in different ways across the country. While agriculture accounts for 22 per cent of jobs in Colombia, the national government has made large-scale mining a major priority in development planning.

In 2008 the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy reported that 52 per cent of companies investing in mining exploration in Colombia were Canadian. That same year the two countries signed a free trade agreement, which includes strong protections for investors. The agreement went into effect in August 2011.

The Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) has followed the trade deal closely, producing a report on the agreement in 2009 entitled Making a Bad Situation Worse. Brittany Lambert, program officer for the CCIC's Americas Policy Group, said from Ottawa, “Our concern all along with the Canada-Colombia FTA has been that it has the potential to exacerbate the ongoing human rights crisis in Colombia.”

Colombia is home to the highest internally-displaced population in the world, estimated at between 3.8 and 5.4 million people. Peace Brigades International reports that 80 per cent of human rights violations that have occurred in Colombia over the last ten years took place in mining and energy-producing regions, with 87 per cent of internally-displaced people originating from these zones.

Many see this as a result of the tendency for rich earth to attract armed actors, from guerrilla groups to paramilitaries to the Colombian armed forces. The Colombian military has a strong presence in regions hosting large mining projects. President Juan Manual Santos announced in February 2012 that 30 per cent of Colombia's public forces—more than 80,000 members—are currently dedicated to protecting mining and energy infrastructure.

Aside from the militarization of mining zones, social and human rights organizations have reported the targeted killings of leaders opposed to large-scale mining. In September 2011 José Reinel Restrepo, a Catholic priest and outspoken critic of another Gran Colombia Gold mining project, was assassinated a week after travelling to Bogota to criticize the company's plan to displace the entire town of Marmato, Caldas.

Almost one year after the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia came into effect, the Canadian government was slated to release a report on how the deal has impacted human rights. Rather than comply with the requirement to produce an annual report, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade released a document on May 15 that merely outlined the methodology it will use to produce a report for next year.

Voices from communities like Berruecos have, at least for the moment, been ignored in Ottawa.

Despite being up against a powerful company, farmers in Narino are optimistic. "We're not rich, but we do good work here, and we're not going to lose what we've got because we're willing and ready to defend it," said Gomez.

*Some names in this article have been changed for security reasons.

Leah Gardner is a member of the Project Accompaniment and Solidarity with Colombia (PASC), a Montreal-based collective.

Colombian Farmers Demand Mining Dialogue

Burned out Mining Camp

May in Review

Tim McSorley — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:40:38 +0000

Red square uprising in Quebec, RCMP impunity, Fukushima a ticking time bomb

Negotiations between Quebec student representatives and the provincial government resumed at the end of May, following a tumultuous month featuring a chaotic protest at the provincial Liberal convention in Victoriaville (resulting in over a hundred arrests and at least three protesters and a police officer being seriously injured), and the resignation of the provincial education minister. There have been 33 consecutive night demonstrations in Montreal, ranging from 1,000 to 30,000 people protesting the passage of controversial Law 78, as well as a gigantic march of between 300,000 and 400,000 in Montreal on May 22. Montreal has also been the epicenter for rapid spreading “pot and pan" demonstrations, which have taken off across the province and the rest of Canada.

The Liberal government passed Law 78 to try and quell student protests against tuition fee increases, instead pushing protests to new heights. The emergency law suspended semesters at striking schools until August, and established fines of between $1,000 and $125,000 for protesting within 50 metres of any campus or participating in a protest without submitting details to police for approval at least eight hours in advance. Criticism of the law has been widespread, from the Quebec League for Rights and Freedoms to the provincial bar association. Student federations and unions, backed by nearly 200,000 people, filed a court challenge to have the law thrown out. Montreal city council also passed a by-law requring protesters to submit their route to police in advance and banning protesting with faces covered. The combined use of both law 78 and the municipal by-laws led to 650 people being arrested in one night across the province; 500 in Montreal alone - one of the largest mass arrests in Canadian history.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, Ontario’s Office of the Independent Police Review Director released a report reviewing police actions during the G20 summit there almost two years ago. The watchdog group said police referred to protesters as terrorists and used excessive force. There is unlikely to be reprimands against police known to be involved in abuses.

Instead of being dismissed or punished, RCMP seargent Don Ray, who admitted to sexually abusing a colleague among other offenses while on duty in Edmonton, was docked two weeks pay and transferred from Alberta to BC. Krista Carle, who served for 20 years in the RCMP, had this advice for women considering joining the Mounties: “You know what I would tell female officers or female recruits? I would quote Catherine Galliford: Run like your hair is on fire."

Byron Sonne was cleared of all charges in a packed Toronto courtroom after having spent 330 days in jail. The crown failed to build a convincing case against Sonne, who was picked up and targeted as the state’s primary security threat during the G-20. “It’s more important than ever that we fight against the slippery slope of what’s being done with our rights, against our ability to participate how we see fit," he said after his release.

Gatherings were held in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver to protest against Bill C-31, dubbed the Refugee Exclusion Act. “This Act is racist. It creates a two-tier system of refugee protection, increases incarceration, denies and revokes legal status, and violently targets and expels refugees and migrants from Canada," reads a statement by No One Is Illegal.

Thousands of protesters, including nurses and climate activists, showed up for a protest against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Chicago. Before protests got underway, police broke down the door of an apartment and raided activists without a warrant. Over the weekend at least 45 people were arrested. Protests also took place at Boeing headquarters, the aerospace company being a major war profiteer. “There’s absolutely nothing that could happen in the streets at a protest that holds a candle to the death and destruction caused by Nato to families and communities all around the world," Rachel Perrotta of Occupy Chicago told Reuters.

On Memorial Day, almost fifty United States veterans from campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan symbolically threw their medals in the direction of the NATO conference. “I want to tell the folks behind us, in these enclosed walls, where they build more policies based on lies and fear, that we no longer stand for them," said Marine Corps veteran Iris Feliciano, just prior to tossing her medals. “We no longer stand for their lies, their failed policies and these unjust wars. Bring our troops home and end the war now. They can have these back."

Just before the Chicago summit, Nato head Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested Canada should keep troops in Afghanistan until after 2014. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the federal government remains open to the idea.
The Canadian Army honoured a U.S. Batallion based out of Fort Bragg, Texas, marking the first time a U.S. unit has received official military honours in Canada. The two groups tag teamed the occupation of Afghanistan, fighting side-by-side in 2006.

Uniformed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officers took part in a shoot-out from a helicopter in the Mosquitia region of Honduras, killing four Indigenous people.

Protests against Newmont’s proposed Conga mine in Peru took centre stage at a mining conference in Lima. In Toronto, the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network held a weekend event bringing together anti-mining activists from Canada and around the world.

In Japan, the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima site were monitored by engineers concerned that one earthquake in the region could unleash a nuclear disaster more severe than anything yet experienced on earth. One engineer spoke to CTV, saying “Japan is sitting on a ticking time bomb."

A series of a dozen paintings by Toronto artist George McIntyre celebrating the city’s gay history were displayed at the 519 Community Centre.

Casseroles MTL!

Rally against C-31

Pinkwashing, Incorporated

Moira Peters — Wed, 30 May 2012 10:34:08 +0000

NFB film delves into depoliticization of breast cancer epidemic

LONDON—I remember the first time it really hit me. It was at the third World Conference on Breast Cancer held in Victoria, BC, in 2002. I walked out onto the balcony overlooking the exhibition hall and there it was, a sea of pink.

This conference wasn’t like the first World Conference on Breast Cancer in Kingston, Ontario in 1997. In Kingston, it was all about environmental and occupational causes of breast cancer, primary prevention and cutting edge science.

The speakers were iconic in their work on prevention, and the conference was attended by campaigners whose names were recognizable from the radical campaign material we in the UK eagerly received from Canada and the US.

The Kingston conference was initiated by Janet Collins, who features in the film Pink Ribbons, Inc., produced by Ravida Din and directed by Lea Pool for the National Film Board of Canada (2011).

“The whole pink ribbon culture drain[ed] and deflect[ed] the kind of militancy we had as women who were appalled to have a disease that is epidemic and yet that we don’t even know the cause of,” said Barbara Ehrenreich, author and activist, who is featured in the film.

“We found sisterhood from other women and [from] looking critically at what was going on with our health care," she said. "I mean, what a change; we used to march in the streets, now you’re supposed to run for a cure or walk for a cure...”

At the third world conference in Victoria, with its pharmaceutical funding sources, many of the previous speakers from the scientific community weren’t invited, and many campaigners stayed away.

Nevertheless, those of us committed to prevention and environmental exposure met together and drafted a resolution.

The resolution urged governments to ban proven and suspected carcinogens, and to take a precautionary approach to those chemicals and substances implicated in breast cancer causation. This would entail that even in the absence of scientific consensus, exposure should be eliminated until proof of no harm can be determined and agreed.

In other words, better safe than sorry.

Although initially hesitant, conference organizers used the resolution as a basis for the conference press release. But we were branded. It was the last time I was invited to speak at the World Conference on Breast Cancer, and I was dropped with no explanation from the international advisory group. I felt like a troublemaker.

But at least I was in good company.

On that balcony, looking at the festival of pink, I first imagined pink ribbons used like blindfolds to prevent women from seeing the harsh realities of the disease, and like gags to silence dissent about the the lack of acknowledgement that exposures in our homes, workplaces and in the wider environment could contribute to our breast cancers. But as Judy Brady, author and activist, points out in the film, “If it were a conspiracy then we could expose it and people would be aware; but it’s not, it’s business as usual”.

In less than a decade, women seem to have gone from challenging organizations like the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition and the Women’s Community Cancer project, first shown in the film marching with banners reading "Draw The Line At 1 In 8," then as women running in pink feather boas and wearing t-shirts with pharmaceutical company logos on the back, embodying that infamous slogan: running for the cure, sponsored by the cause.

What the hell happened?

Samantha King, author of the book Pink Ribbons, Inc., suggests that the big players in the cancer establishment have boards of directors with representatives from the pharmaceutical, chemical and energy industries. It is thus almost impossible to separate the people who might be responsible for the perpetuation of this disease from those who are responsible for trying to find a way to cure or, even better, to prevent it.

It is obvious, then, that emotions like anger, dissent or disbelief and questions about exposures at work, home or in the wider environment don’t sit well with this festival of pink.

We could say that the pink ribbon industry has identified its audience well: the premise being that breast cancer only affects middle-class ultra-feminine white women, because this is the demographic industry wants to sell pink products to.

While millions of dollars have been spent studying the same populations—white, largely middle-class women—this research does not translate to the many African, Asian, African American and racially diverse women contracting the disease. We know their outcomes aren’t as good as those of their white counterparts. Yet so little is spent finding out why.

Is it because they are not the "right" demographic the pink ribbon industry wants to reach out to?

Along with the socio-economic considerations around breast cancer, the racial, cultural, environmental and occupational inequalities are at best not addressed; at worst, neglected, unfunded and largely ignored.

In the film, King reflects: “It wasn’t until Reagan came to power that we saw explicit policies designed to shift responsibility for health and welfare from the government towards private entities, philanthropic organizations, along with the encouragement specifically for corporations to participate in that.”

Or as Reagan himself said, “A buck for business if it helps to solve our social ills.”

The term pinkwashing is used to describe companies associating with a cause that people care about in order to increase their sales and to market pink products. Breast cancer is the poster child of cause marketing.

The irony is that many of the products sold, specifically cosmetics, perfumes, plastics and petrochemical-based products, contain ingredients linked to breast cancer.

“It is hypocrisy to use carcinogens in products and at the same time be advocating for a cure in another way,” says Jane Houlihan from the Environmental Working Group, speaking in the film.

When looked at skeptically, research requires investment and the end product has to be profitable and marketable. There is no profit in prevention or removing carcinogens from the environment, home or workplace.

One of the women attending the Plastics Automotive Industry focus group in Windsor, Ontario, led by Dr. Jim Brophy and Dr. Margaret Keith, said it was the first time she had ever heard that ingredients in plastics are mimicking the female hormone estrogen. She felt that this message needed to be publicly articulated, loud and clear.

Despite all the information out there on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs), that information is still not reaching those who need it most. Women who have been working in the plastics industry for decades were given no health and safety training and no safety data sheets.

“The evidence is overwhelming on the impact environmental and occupational exposures have on this disease,” says Brophy. “Very little of the resources are going to looking at pesticides, combustion products, plastics, petrochemicals and solvents, many of the things that millions of women are being exposed to every day, either in the general ambient environment or their workplaces.”

And yet “women die from breast cancer just because they are women,” Dr. Olufunmilayoi Olopade reminds the film’s viewers.

While Pink Ribbons, Inc. doesn’t seek to undermine those who gain hope, strength and a sense of community from pink ribbon fundraising, it does ask critical questions about the industry and the pink ribbon brand.

Helen Lynn has campaigned on cancer prevention since 1995 with Putting Breast Cancer on the Map and the No More Breast Cancer campaign. She is currently a freelance campaigner and facilitates the Alliance for Cancer Prevention in the UK. This review was originally published on Alliance for Cancer Prevention's website.

What can you do?

•Go and see the film.

•If you raise pink ribbon money, follow the money and ask questions about how it is spent.

•Follow the example of the Toxic Links Coalition in San Francisco, which each year in October organizes a toxic tour and visits the branches of the worst polluters in their financial district.

•Organize a workplace group to examine what you are exposed to at work.

•Pay attention to what is in the products you buy—to check out cosmetics ingredients visit Skin Deep, a project of the Environmental Working Group.

•Don’t accept the blame. If 50 per cent of breast cancer cases have no known cause then it ain’t your fault.

•Read the book Pink Ribbons, Inc. by Samantha King.

•Check out the Tools for Action on Pink Ribbon Blues Blog.

•Remember: we can’t shop our way out of this epidemic.

The Big See

Ottawa's Colombia Problem

dawn — Mon, 28 May 2012 10:41:01 +0000

Canada fails to release human rights report on Colombia following FTA

MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA—The Canadian government's failure to report on Colombian human rights, as promised as part of its Free Trade Agreement (FTA), drew criticism from the country's opposition last Thursday.

The FTA, which went into effect in August 2011, received the backing of Canadian opposition parties when Prime Minister Stephen Harper committed to releasing annual reports on how trade was affecting human rights in Colombia. A report analyzing the treaty was released last Wednesday with no mention of human rights issues.

"As the agreement has only been in force for the last four and a half months in 2011, there's not enough available data to do a comprehensive analysis," said Trade Minister Ed Fast in Canada's House of Commons. "That analysis will be released in 2013."

The report's delay drew the ire of many government critics, who felt the current administration was only seeking profit from Colombia while ignoring its human rights violations.

"Canadians want more trade...but we also want...the partners we trade with to respect democratic values," said the opposition's international trade critic Don Davies. "It leaves us to wonder whether the government was afraid to table an honest human rights assessment because it shows the situation in Colombia has not improved."

Opposition party member Scott Brison, who used his close ties to Colombian officials to propose the joint report, assured Canadians that the South American nation was committed to improving its shoddy human rights record, which has seen 17 trade unionists disappear since the agreement was signed.

"I know the Colombian government, with which I continue dialogue, takes this reportage very seriously and actually views it as an opportunity to deepen corporate social responsibility and to increase transparency around human rights and the effect of legitimate trade on actually strengthening human rights," said Brison.

"I hope that the Harper government takes this reportage process as seriously as the Colombians do," he added.

Numerous criticisms against Canadian mining operations have been lodged by Colombian civil rights groups, according to Jennifer Moore, the Latin American coordinator for Canada-based industry monitor MiningWatch.

"What really worries us is that you put into place a new free trade agreement, you provide new and substantial rights to foreign investors to defend their investments...and there are no correspondingly strong rights for communities to assert their rights when they're being infringed upon by these corporate interests," Moore told Colombia Reports, where this story originally ran.

Complaints have ranged from company representatives entering Indigenous land without permission to overlapping mining operations forcing residents from their homes. Canadian gold mining company Gran Colombia has been the target of heated protest in recent years after its alleged failure to allow "robust public participation" in communities where operations have taken place, according to Moore.

In 2011, a Catholic priest from the historic gold-mining department of Caldas protested his town's demolition to make way for the company's mining operations. He was murdered by unknown assailants shortly afterward. Gran Colombia denied responsibility for the murder, saying it was simply a robbery gone wrong.

"The inclusion of this human rights report in order to justify the passage of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement was a whitewash from the beginning and now we're just seeing what a sham it really is," added Moore.

The FTA made news May 7 when Canadian officials claimed Colombia failed to issue duty-free licenses to its exporters in 2011.

The United States FTA with Colombia went into effect on May 15. The agreement has also been fiercely criticized by human rights organizations in both countries due to the ongoing violence against labour activists and union workers.

Brandon Barrett is a journalist and regular contributor to Colombia Reports based in Medellin, Colombia. An earlier version of this story appeared in Colombia Reports and the Media Co-op.

Harper and Santos Handshake

Plan to Pipe Tar Sands to East Coast Protested

dawn — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:59:40 +0000

Activists interrupt National Energy Board's hearing on Enbridge's proposal to reverse flow of Line 9 pipe

TORONTO—Environmental justice protestors temporarily shut down a hearing into a proposal to have tar sand oil piped through Ontario. The hearing took place place in London, Ontario, on Wednesday.

The three day hearing, held by the National Energy Board (NEB), is examining a proposal by Enbridge to reverse the flow of an existing pipeline (Line 9), which currently carries imported overseas oil west. Enbridge wants to instead use the pipeline to bring oil east. However activists are concerned that this will allow Enbridge to bring tar sands to the east coast for export to Europe.

After entering the hearing, protestors employed the People's Mic, where the crowd would echo back whatever was said by a spokesperson in order to project their voices. After a few minutes of the People's Mic commencing, most other attendees at the hearing exited the room. The NEB hearing was shut down for approximately an hour.

The spokesperson who led the Peoples Mic was arrested and then removed from the room. She was later released with a ticket for trespass.

The protestors raised concerns about the environmental impacts of the Alberta tar sands, the possibility of a spill in Ontario and the lack of prior and informed consent being sought from First Nations in Ontario.

"Six Nations rights already have been violated in this review process," stated Wes Elliot, a resident of Six Nations in a press release. "Free, prior, and informed consent is not a factor in these hearings."

Line 9 cuts through the Haldimand Tract, land which was deeded to Six Nations in 1784.

"We also must object to the illegitimate and anti-democratic conduct of the officials who are fast-tracking this review," said Elliot in the release.

Following the protest, demonstrators held what they dubbed an unofficial "People's Hearing on the Tar Sands Pipeline."

"The current framework of the National Energy Board hearings does not allow us to draw connections between tar sands extraction, toxic refineries and upgraders, and various other downstream consequences," said Taylor Flook a member of Occupy Toronto who attended the event in London. "The People's Hearing was arranged as a more open forum, where anyone can share any of their concerns about relevant issues."

"The tar sands industry is attempting to build as many pipelines as they can," said Flook. "We should not accept the fast-tracking of these projects," she said. "No tar sands operations should proceed without the consent of everyone who may be impacted."

As the extraction of tar sands from Alberta has increased, a series of new pipeline projects have emerged to bring the dirty oil to refineries and ports across Canada and the US.

The Harper government has loudly endorsed these projects. But following a series of protests against TransCanada's XL pipeline, which would send tar sands oil south, President Obama delayed approval for a section of the project that goes through the United States until after US elections, which will take place in November.

Opposition by First Nations and environmentalists to Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would bring oil from Alberta to the BC coast for shipment overseas, has garnered attention across Canada.

Protestors worry the Line 9 Reversal could be rushed through before there is time to build awareness and opposition to the pipeline. But they say many of the concerns with the Northern Gateway Pipeline also apply to the Line 9 reversal.

The Line 9 approval process is taking place in two phases. The London hearing deals with bringing oil from Sarnia, Ontario, to Westover, Ontario. The second phase regards oil transport from Westover to Montreal, Quebec.

Tim Groves is an investigative journalist and regular contributor to the Toronto Media Co-op, where the original version of this article appeared.

Protest against Line 9 reversal

A New Guide to Making Beautiful Trouble

dawn — Wed, 23 May 2012 05:20:43 +0000

"It's like an Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st century, but without the bombs"

VANCOUVER—Every chair, couch space and rolling computer seat, as well as some floorspace and standing room, were needed to accommodate the dozens of people who came out to the Purple Thistle Centre on Tuesday evening for the Vancouver launch of Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution.

Along with local contributor Harsha Walia, co-editors Dave Oswald Mitchell and Andrew Boyd were in town to discuss the book, a sort of encyclopedia for creative activism. More than 70 artists, authors, organizers and other shit-disturbers contributed entries.

"It's like an Anarchist Cookbook for the 21st century, but without the bombs," quipped Boyd. His other marketing brainstorm likens the book to the offspring of 1960s Yippies founder, activist prankster and writer Abbie Hoffman and community organizer Saul Alinsky, author of the seminal 1971 book Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.

Boyd's joking aside, the comparison of Beautiful Trouble to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals has its merits. Both works focus on strategic planning and organizing for effective actions and campaigns. To that end, each of the modular entries in Beautiful Trouble's four main categories—tactics, principles, theories, and case studies—is accompanied by sidebar references to other entries in the various sections as well as to books and websites for further reading.

"It actually came from the field of architecture," said Mitchell of the book's modular organization, derived from the concept of pattern language in architecture. "It puts the tools into people's hands so that they can apply them to their situation."

The collective organizing experience and activist knowledge of those gathered at the youth-run Purple Thistle would likely add up to a few centuries' worth. As people commented on slideshow photos of past actions, such as a famous snapshot of a lunch counter sit-in for racial desegregation in the southern United States, co-editors Boyd and Mitchell described some of the tactics, principles and theories at play in each example.

Local South Asian activist and writer Harsha Walia participated in the Beautiful Trouble project, contributing the entries "Challenging Patriatchy as You Organize" and "Consensus is a Means, not an End" to the Principles section of the book. She had not seen the final edited version of the publication before Tuesday.

"It was all kind of compiled in this wiki-type thing," Walia said of the process for contributors. She added that the book really encourages strategic thinking, reflecting that often when people are organizing, they are not really focused on the differences between strategy, tactics, goals and so forth.

"There's all kinds of ways that we don't really think things through," said Walia.

One of the tactics discussed at the launch was Prefigurative Intervention, an action that creates "a little slice of the future we want to live in." Its common uses are listed in the book as follows: "To give a glimpse of the Utopia we're working for; to show how the world could be; to make such a world feel not just possible, but irresistable."

Walia shared her reflections from a seat at the back of the room alongside some of the women who participated in the tent city that took place during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. At the end of the tent city, housing was found for some 80 homeless participants, but Walia considers it to have been more than just a successful direct action.

"The community that developed at the tent city was a prefigurative community," she said. "A lot of people refer to it as a place of freedom."

Boyd envisions that people will use Beautiful Trouble in two different ways: as an introduction to new ideas for people who are new to activism, and as a sort of reference book for "veterans."

"It's like a network of ideas and principles and tools," he commented, describing the book as "rhizomatic."

"I don't think that it really works reading it cover-to-cover," added Mitchell. "You just sort of navigate by association."

The launch of the book Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution will be followed by the launch of a website in the same vein as the design and purpose of the print publication. In fact, blank module formats are included in the book so that anyone can outline a tactic, principle, theory or case study to submit a new entry to the web-based project.

"We will be able to continue to add modules as they come up," explained Mitchell, adding that the website will be just as important as anything in book in that it will encourage activists to think in strategic terms.

Because publisher OR Books is printing the book on demand, Beautiful Trouble will likely not be available at many bookstores anytime soon but can be ordered online.

Mitchell and Boyd have moved on to book launch events in other cities and will be in Edmonton on May 23, but hopefully the discussions about strategic and creative activism that they inspired on Tuesday evening will continue in Vancouver.

Sandra Cuffe is a Vancouver-based journalist and regular contributor to the Vancouver Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Beautiful Trouble

Harper's Assault on the Past

Tim McSorley — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:20:36 +0000

Cuts to Library and Archives Canada fighting words for archival community

WINNIPEG, MB—While federal departments across the board are reeling from cutbacks in the recent budget, a fiery call to arms is ringing from unlikely sources. Librarians, archivists, historians, and antiquarian booksellers across the country— not generally known for raising a ruckus— are sounding a battle cry against the Conservatives' “war on culture, history, and ultimately, Canada.”

“Our history is in danger, and our culture,” says John Lutz, historian at the University of Victoria and council member of the Canadian Historical Association.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is expected to cut approximately 10 per cent of its budget and almost 20 per cent of its staff. This alone is frustrating to the archival community. Already, services at LAC have suffered as belts have tightened. However, it is the elimination of the National Archives Development Program (NADP) that was the final straw for the generally reserved caretakers of Canada’s historical and cultural documents and artifacts.

“It all comes down to archives in Canada being able to help Canadians find their history,” says Lara Wilson, archivist at the University of Victoria and Chair of the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA). The CCA, who have administered the NADP for its duration, recently wrote an open letter to Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages James Moore protesting the cutbacks.

“By cutting these relatively small funds to local archives they are in danger of becoming no longer accessible,” Lutz believes. “Local archives have been using these funds to make their materials secure, to protect them from degradation, and making them available online.”

With a modest budget of $1.7 million, the National Archives Development Program has supported small, local archives across the country to preserve local history for 26 years. The program’s overall cost to taxpayers is a drop in the bucket compared to the $28 million budgeted for celebrating the War of 1812. This doesn't sit well with Lutz.

“A certain kind of history that is pompous [and] jingoistic is getting all these resources,” says Lutz.

While cultural institutions like the Canada Council and national museums and galleries were spared cutbacks in this year’s budget, these institutions will still be affected by the cutbacks at LAC.

“I think what Canadians might not appreciate is that other cultural institutions like galleries and museums use archives to create their exhibits, do their research and so forth,” explains Wilson. “A blow to archives is a blow to museums.”

Even before these cuts were announced, antiquarian booksellers across Canada—who often act as “on the ground” scouts in the acquisition of cultural and historical texts—were feeling the freeze.

“Archives budgets have been cut back so badly it’s hard for them to acquire new material,” says Lutz, “which is impacting the antiquarian book market.”

Burton Lysecki of Burton Lysecki Books in Winnipeg, which specializes in western Canadian and local Manitoban history, has seen these impacts first hand.“We are the fetchers in the process of providing the books that need to be preserved for our national heritage,” he explained to The Dominion. “We’ve been let down on that subject.”

However, “Library and Archives Canada has the money to fulfill its mandate,” a spokesperson for Minister Moore told The Dominion via email. According to Minister Moore’s office, “LAC continues to modernize its operations to digitize its content and make it available to more people.”

While antiquarian book dealing is only a part of Burton Lysecki Books’ business, it is a part of the business that Lysecki and part-owner Karen Sigurdson take very seriously.

“Customers come and go,” explains Sigurdson. “What’s bothersome about losing this customer is the kinds of things we were selling to them. Those are important things that belong in our country.”

If the historical texts are not purchased, there is a strong chance that they will be lost, sold at garage sales or thrown out.

“The point is it’s important that these things be captured and preserved in the national archives,” says Lysecki.

“Countries really only hold together if they have a national story that is available to all of us,” Lutz believes. When the infrastructure and funding to enhance, preserve, and display our national story is eroded, ignored or dismantled piecemeal, Lutz believes it bodes ill for future generations.

“This is, it seems to me, a part of a larger assault on the past,” argues Lutz. “It is part of a series of cutbacks that are going to affect historians and archivists adversely.”

Combined with deep cuts to the information economy and to cultural institutions such as Parks Canada, Lutz agrees that what we are seeing could very well be described an aggressive restructuring of culture, history, and Canada.

“History is under attack from many directions,” he says. Whether anyone will be able to read about this battle in the archives of the future, however, has yet to be determined.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor and song & dance man living in Winnipeg.

Burton Lysecki

Quebec Government Looks to "Lock-Out" Striking Students

dawn — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:25:09 +0000

Libs threaten to suspend classes unless pickets lifted

Editor's note: Bill 78 was introduced in the National Assembly late Thursday night, and goes even further than what is laid out below. To read the bill itself, click here [PDF, French]. Check the Montreal Media Co-op for updates and more details.

MONTREAL—After fourteen weeks of student strikes in Quebec, the provincial Liberals announced Wednesday they will introduce a law that would suspend the rest of this semester at colleges and universities if striking students do not stop holding picket lines or enforcing strike votes.

Bill 78, "A Law Allowing Students to Receive the Education Provided by the School Which They Attend", was introduced in the National Assembly in Quebec City after deadline late Thursday night.

Student representatives were fast to denounce the proposed regulation on Wednesday night, calling it a "lock-out" and saying it will only add "fuel to the fire."

"Tonight, the government spit in the face of a generation...We will remember how we were treated tonight for a long time," said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-spokesperson for the Enlarged Coalition of the Association for a Solidarity Among Student Unions (CLASSE), at a press conference.

As the government's intentions became clear, an array of voices spoke out against the government using legislating to deal with the conflict, including the Quebec Bar Association, and even a group of students which is actively mobilizing in favor of the tuition fee increase.

Across Québec, over 155,000 students remain on strike at 14 colleges and 11 universities. Since the government made its latest offer to students, some 325,000 students have voted against it. It is the longest student strike in Quebec and Canadian history, launched in opposition to the provincial government's plan to increase tuition fees by 82 per cent over seven years.

Wednesday's proposal from the government came in two parts:

First, at schools where students are on strike, students, administrators and teachers must come to an agreement that would allow any student who wishes to return to class—even those whose associations have voted in favor of the strike—to be able to do so. This requires putting an end to all pickets lines or any other disruptive tactics used to ensure the strike vote is respected. If such an agreement is reached, classes will continue normally for the remainder of the semester.

For those schools where such an agreement is not reached, classes will be suspended immediately, and will resume in August, with each school taking on the task of determining what the schedule should look like. The example of the Université de Montréal has been given, where winter semester classes are being suspended until mid-August. They will then run until the end of September. The Fall semester will begin at the start of October—a month late—and finish in mid-January.

The second part of the proposed law will serve to "guarantee the right to education," according to a government press release. It is believed that this means the government will introduce methods to enforce the ban on picket lines, possibly through major fines. The exact details will only be revealed when the bill is introduced in the National Assembly on Thursday night.

Following the announcement, over a thousand people took to the streets of Quebec City, while up to another 20,000 people marched in Montreal.

The effect of the law, according to CLASSE, is essentially the same as a lock-out: at schools where students are still on strike, they either stop enforcing picket lines - eliminating any power that the strike may have - or they will see classes suspended, removing the element that they are striking against.

"This is a lockout, in the end, because it stops students from exercising their democratic rights in general assemblies," said Jeanne Reynolds, CLASSE's co-spokesperson.

The Quebec Federation of University Students and the Quebec Federation of College Students also spoke out soon after the government announcement. They said that they are already preparing to launch a legal challenge against the legislation, should it be adopted. The Liberal party has a majority of seats in the National Assembly, so there is little doubt it will pass.

The proposed law comes as tensions have continued to rise on campuses.

As the strike continues, more and more students have turned to the courts to seek injunctions allowing them to return to class, even if their student associations have voted by a majority to strike. In most cases, these injunctions have been approved. Thought student unions are officially recognized under Quebec law, their right to collectively strike is not. Therefore the courts and the government see participation in the strike as a personal choice. The result is that if one student out of several hundred - or in some cases, out of thousands - requests an injunction to return to class, they have received it.

While the right of students to strike is not legislated, it has been accepted as a practice in the past.

As court injunctions multiply, striking students have taken action to protect the legitimacy of their strike votes. The result has been hard picket lines and classroom disruptions. In response, both local and provincial police have been dispatched to campuses, ratcheting up tension and resulting in arrests, injuries (often from batons), and tear gas and pepper spray being used.

"Each [member of the National Assembly] who votes in favor of this law will have to live with consequences," said Reynolds. "Government intransigence has already seriously injured individuals."

CLASSE has called for a major demonstration in Montreal on May 22, two months after some 300,000 marched against the tuition fee increase, to show that the opposition remains.

An extended version of this article first appeared in the Montéal Media Co-op. Tim McSorley is a journalist and an editor member of the Media Co-op.

Night March in Montreal

Indoor Work Spaces Prove Safer for Sex Workers

Tim McSorley — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:28:17 +0000

Study shows drop in abuse, HIV rates when sex work brought indoors

VANCOUVER—A recently released study by the BC Centre For Excellence in HIV and the University of British Columbia proves what community advocates have been saying for years: safer indoor spaces for sex work save lives.

The study interviewed 39 women living in supported housing projects on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Run by RainCity Housing and Atira, these projects are self-identified women-only (in terms of staff and residents) and include safety measures such as cameras in the buildings, sign-in sheets for guests and harm reduction supplies. Sex workers who live in these buildings are allowed guests, which means that they can bring in their clients.

The women who live in these buildings were largely homeless before moving in, or living in buildings that did not allow guests. This lead to interactions with clients where the workers had very little power or control. “It’s common sense if you think about it,” says long time sex work advocate Trina Ricketts. “Imagine yourself preparing to work outside in the cold, negotiating services and fees in strangers’ cars. Then imagine yourself preparing to work out of your apartment building, which happens to be staffed with caring, vigilant support staff committed to helping you stay safe no matter what.”

The findings are that these projects help empower women to better negotiate safer sex with clients, which is a factor in preventing HIV transmission. “We have previously shown that displacement and lack of safer indoor options for street-based sex workers are directly associated with elevated rates of violence and HIV risk,” says Dr. Kate Shannon, the senior author of the study. Of course, having easy access to healthcare workers with harm reduction supplies also helps.

Workers also reported that being housed inside made them feel safer from police harassment and violence. While many of the workers interviewed for the study were quite weary of police, they found that they felt safer when placed in one of the housing projects.

As one sex worker explains: “On the corner, doing it in the car, I used to be scared all the time, paranoid about cops, scared of getting charged. It is a lot easier now. It is different.”

Less fearful relationships with police as well as access to trained healthcare staff and harm reduction supplies are meeting survival sex workers where they are at. “We have created policies and practices that support women’s choice and ensure their health and safety are protected,” says Amelia Ridgway, Manager of RainCity Housing. “Women have the right to govern their own bodies. We believe that housing is a human right and this is about providing women with the most basic human rights around protection from violence within a harm reduction framework."

This study reinforces the need and effectiveness of safe, indoor sex work spaces which is very encouraging for the sex work community. “Safer sex work spaces support better health and safety, period,” said Dr. Patricia Daly, Chief Medical Health Officer, Vancouver Coastal Health.

Kathleen Cherrington who has organized events such as the International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers says that perhaps more intentional work spaces may be a next logical step. Not everyone wants to bring their work home with them. “Some sex workers have children and need a place to work that isn't from home. So we also need brothels that are for those wanting a place to work that is away from home,” says Cherrington.

The West Coast Cooperative Of Sex Industry Professionals has formulated a business plan which includes a collectively run sex work space where workers can take their dates. This would be a multiple room establishment where folks could pay per use. Their vision is described as similar to a bath house, with showers, towels and safer sex supplies avaialble to both workers and patrons. The hope would be that as patronship increased, costs could be kept low. Unfortunately, this plan was formulated quite some time ago and has not come to fruition due to both a lack of funding (capital) and legality issues.

This study comes on the heels of a legal development that the sex working community sees as encouraging. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that prohibiting bawdy houses is unconstitutional, as it increases the dangers faced by those who are forced to work on the streets. While the Conservative government is currently in the process of challenging this decision, it may very well find its way into the practices of law enforcement in Vancouver.

In the meantime, Ricketts feels that more housing, like the facilities in the study, are sorely needed in Vancouver and that no survival sex workers should go without a home. “In my opinion, being homeless is violence,” she says. “So providing housing is paramount to reducing violence against women.”

Eli Mills is a contributor to the Vancouver Media Co-op.

This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Trina Ricketts