Press Release
March 21, 2008 - Toronto
March 20, 2008 thirty-five University of Toronto students occupied
Simcoe Hall, the home of the President's Office, to protest a 20% fee
increase. The nonviolent sit-in was accompanied with a peaceful rally
outside the building--until the police began brutalizing those inside.
This was captured by multiple video cameras.
The students had three simple demands.
1) To be granted a meeting with President David Naylor;
2) To have the proposed fee increase removed from the University
Affairs Board meeting, scheduled to take place on March 25; and
3) To be given 15 minutes at the University Affairs Board meeting for
a presentation and discussion on broader issues of access to education
and the impacts of high tuition upon students, families and
communities.
Students attempted to deliver their letter to the University of
Toronto President, David Naylor, and to speak to other members of the
administration in Simcoe Hall about the rising costs of education in
Ontario. The administration refused to meet with the students. The
response of the University of Toronto was to violently remove students
from their peaceful sit-in. Police aggressively grabbed students and
dragged them away from the entrance of the office. The students
feared for their safety and after four hours in the building, the
police violence forced the students to leave.
Video of these events has been posted on YouTube and it can be viewed
here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ketNtnZQIwQ
Images can be viewed here:
http://www.edwardfwong.com/uoftact/9.jpg
http://www.edwardfwong.com/uoftact/10.jpg
Students are continuing to demand a meeting with President Naylor, and
the right to accessible and affordable education.
For more information contact:
Farshad Azadian, student member and organizer with AlwaysQuestion:
416-569-7471
Ryan Hayes, President of Arts and Science Students Union: 416-421-0879
Michal Hay, Vice-President University Affairs, University of Toronto
Students' Union: 647-802-4131.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
A Short History of Community Organizing Against Police Brutality in Toronto: The History of B.A.D.C. and Beyond
by Wasun
The Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) emerged in the late 1970s to become a powerful force in the struggle against police brutality. At the organization’s first meeting, BADC founder Dudley Laws affirmed: “Canada is a racist state. If you have a racist state, then you have racist police”. The murder of Buddy Evans August 9, 1978, and Albert Johnson August 26, 1979 marked the beginning of BADC’s mass demonstrations against police brutality. Evans was a 24 year-old Black man shot at a downtown bar, and no charges were laid against the officer who shot him. Johnson was a 35-year-old Black man shot by Constables William Inglis and Walter Cargnelli at a rooming house in the Vaughn/Oakwood area.
In response to the Johnson murder, BADC mobilized the Black community, and their efforts culminated in 2000 people marching from Vaughn/Oakwood to 13 Division headquarters to protest his death. When Johnson was killed Dudley Laws formed the Albert Johnson Defense Committee Against Police Brutality.
On October 14, 1979, 1000 people rallied at Nathan Phillips Square. The Albert Johnson Committee had three demands in their struggle for justice. One, that constables Inglis and Cargnelli become charged with murder instead of manslaughter. Two, they formed the Albert Johnson Family Fund and requested that Toronto police provide full compensation to his wife and four children. Three, they demanded the Province and Ontario Attorney-General Roy McMurty establish an independent civilian review board for complaints against the police.
On November 13, 1980, Cargnelli and Inglis were both acquitted of their manslaughter charge after a four-week trial, and this resulted in more protests organized by BADC’s organizers. The following week at Nathan Phillips Square, 300 demonstrators protested the Cargnelli and Inglis acquittal. As a result of BADC’s protests, Toronto police made a secret settlement in court in 1988 when the Johnson family filed a civil lawsuit against them.
The government responded to BADC’s mass mobilizations against the Evans and Johnson murders with the following institutional reform: In 1981 the Province enacted a three-year pilot project called the Office of the Public Complaints Commissioner (OPCC) under the Metro Toronto Police Force Complaints Project Act, 1981. The OPCC was a new and improved civilian complaints system to report incidents of police brutality and increase accountability. Under this act the Toronto Police Chief was required to set up a Public Complaints Board that would conduct case hearings referred by the chief or commissioner. The OPCC faced much criticism from the Black community because it was still biased in favor of police without community-control of the police complaints process.
Despite the militant protest of Dudley Laws and others dating back to the late 1970s, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) as a formal anti-racist organization was formed days after the shooting of Lester Donaldson on August 9, 1988. According to Metro Police, the shooting occurred when they responded to a call stating Donaldson was holding people hostage in his rooming house. However, Donaldson was shot dead while alone in his apartment in a confrontation with five police officers. On Saturday, August 13, 1000 people demonstrated in front of 13 Division where Constable Deviney worked. Although Deviny was arrested and charged with manslaughter on January 11, 1989; he was acquitted in November 1990.
A second police murder later that year enraged the Black community even further and increased racial tensions in the city. On December 8, 1988, 17 year-old, Michael Wade Lawson was shot in the back of the head by the Peel Constable Anthony Lelaragni, age 24, who was charged with manslaughter; and Constable Darren Longpre, age 27, who was charged with aggravated assault. Lawson was shot in the back of the head by an illegal 38-calibre slug known as a “hot bullet” which expands on contact, banned in Ontario by the Ontario Police Act.
Later that year, in October 1989, 23 year-old Sophia Cook was shot and paralyzed by police. The third Black person shot by Toronto police in 15 months, Cook was a Brampton resident and mother of a 2 ½ year-old son when she was shot in the back. The bullet narrowly missing her spine and paralyzing her from the waist down. Cook was in a reported stolen car with two men whom she accepted a ride from after missing a bus at Jane/Grandravine. During the investigation, police confirmed Cook had never been involved in any criminal activity.
After a decade of militant anti-racist mobilization, the province implemented its second major police reform. The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was created in the 1990 Police Service Act to increase police accountability in the investigation of civilian murders. The SIU was set up to be the first organization staffed by civilians instead of police homicide investigators. However, it ended up being staffed by retired officers who were promoted by the force as the only “civilians” competent enough to investigate these incidents. Despite the limitations of the SIU, the reform was a victory for the Black community because it indicated the Canadian state admitted that anti-Black racism and police brutality was a systemic problem that required institutional reform.
In the early 1990s, racial tensions heated up again with the acquittal of Michael Wade Lawson’s killers. On April 7, 1992, Constables Melaragni and Longpre were acquitted of their charges in the Lawson murder by an all-white jury. In the upcoming month, race relations declined even further when 22 year-old Raymond Lawrence was shot by Constable Timothy Gallant on Saturday May 2, 1992, just days after the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992.
On Monday, May 4, 1992 BADC organized its largest anti-racist demonstration in a decade to protest the murder of Raymond Lawrence. Dubbed the “Yonge St. Riots” by the media, 1000 people demonstrated in a peaceful march that began at the U.S. Consulate and ended with 30 arrests, 200 windows smashed on Yonge St. and City Hall, and a hundred thousand dollars in damages. Hundreds of Black youth and others vandalized the Yonge St. strip and fought with police in the streets.
The history of BADC’s struggles formed a legacy of militant protest and organizing against police brutality in Toronto that has continued into the 21st century. In response to the police murder of Jeffrey Reodica, the Filipino community and its allies mobilized for years and created the organization ‘Justice for Jeffrey’. And today, with the police murder of 18-year-old Alwy Al Nadhir, communities demanding an end to police brutality have come together to form the Justice for Alwy Campaign Against Police Brutality. Through learning the lessons that organizations like BADC and the Justice for Jeffrey campaign have to offer, we should expect that our movement in the 21st Century will be even stronger. ∗
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Mackenzie-Papineau Brigades of the 1930s: Yesterday’s Heroes Would be Today’s ‘Terrorists’
by Corrie SakalukAs a regular feature, Basics will cover important events in the history of popular struggle in Canada.
Though our school’s official history books ignore it and our government has always tried to stop it, there is a long history of revolutionary political organizing and international solidarity amongst Canadians.
One example is the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade of 1936-1939, formed to fight in solidarity with the Spanish Republicans in resistance to fascism during the Spanish Civil War. These brigades were organized by the Communist Party of Canada and were made up almost entirely of workers who became politicized after witnessing the Great Depression of the 1930s, the crisis of capitalism that destroyed thousands of people’s lives and livelihoods.
This brigade fought with great enthusiasm and discipline, despite a powerful fascist opposition backed by Nazi Germany and Italy and a complete lack of support from any of the Western democracies.
The Canadian state actually did everything possible to stop working-class Canadian citizens from showing international solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters in Spain. In April 1937 the Canadian government made it illegal for Canadians to fight in the Spanish Civil War.The Canadian government refused to issue passports to those who they thought might be going to fight in Spain and they sent the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to spy on the organizing of activities to aid the anti-fascist struggle.
Canadians who wanted to serve in Spain had to travel under false pretenses. For the most part they went first to Toronto, where they met at the headquarters for the operation at the corner of Queen and Spadina.
When it was time to return to Canada, the Canadian government ignored and persecuted members of the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade. They were kept from returning home after the conflict was over, some were arrested in France, others were investigated by the RCMP and denied employment.
The Canadians who died in the Spanish Civil War are not included in the Books of Remembrance in the Peace Tower and their sacrifice is not commemorated on federal war memorials or in Remembrance Day services. Those who survived the war are not entitled to veterans’ benefits.
These tactics of the Canadian state should come as no surprise given what we see today and what we saw about the Winnipeg Strike of 1919 in the last issue of BASICS. There is much more to our history than we are taught in Canadian schools. The Mackenzie-Papineau brigade is an inspiring example of a working-class people’s army that heroically fought the spread of fascism.
721 of the 1,448 Canadians known to have fought in Spain against the fascists lost their lives.
March 8, 2008: 100 Years of Int'nal Women's Day
by Corrie Sakaluk
IWD Poster from Soviet Union, 1920
This year on International Women’s Day our Iranian sisters made this call: “In 2008, on the 8th of March we intend to exclaim ‘Enough is enough!’ We no longer want to tolerate the hell created by the patriarchal systems stretching from Kosovo to Iraq, Afghanistan to Philippines, the USA to France, Britain to Turkey and Iran to Pakistan.”
The 8th of March is the date of an historic 1857 protest of women workers in the clothing and textile industries in New York, in demand of better working conditions. These women were attacked and dispersed by police but kept organizing, and established their first labour union two months later.
On March 8th 1908, fifteen thousand women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay, and voting rights.
March 8th also commemorates the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York in 1911 where over 140 women who worked inside lost their lives, and the rallies held by women across Europe in 1913 that called for peace in the face of a looming war.
The first stage of the Russian Revolution was kick-started by demonstrations marking International Women’s Day in 1917. IWD was made an official holiday in the former Soviet Union shortly after the revolution, and was declared a non-working state holiday in 1965 to honour “the outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace.”
In 1975, designated as International Women’s Year, the United Nations gave official sanction to and began sponsoring International Women’s Day.
Across the world on March 8th this year, there were parades, rallies, and marches to commemorate IWD.
Let us hope that the next 100 years results in changes that can change the still horrible situation of most women in the world today. This situation cannot be fixed until global capitalism is replaced with a more just and equitable political and economic system.
As long as the economy and the fat wallets of the rich people who control the state and the economy require workers, women’s rights will be of minimal concern to the ruling global capitalist class.
IWD Poster from Soviet Union, 1920
This year on International Women’s Day our Iranian sisters made this call: “In 2008, on the 8th of March we intend to exclaim ‘Enough is enough!’ We no longer want to tolerate the hell created by the patriarchal systems stretching from Kosovo to Iraq, Afghanistan to Philippines, the USA to France, Britain to Turkey and Iran to Pakistan.”
The 8th of March is the date of an historic 1857 protest of women workers in the clothing and textile industries in New York, in demand of better working conditions. These women were attacked and dispersed by police but kept organizing, and established their first labour union two months later.
On March 8th 1908, fifteen thousand women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay, and voting rights.
March 8th also commemorates the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York in 1911 where over 140 women who worked inside lost their lives, and the rallies held by women across Europe in 1913 that called for peace in the face of a looming war.
The first stage of the Russian Revolution was kick-started by demonstrations marking International Women’s Day in 1917. IWD was made an official holiday in the former Soviet Union shortly after the revolution, and was declared a non-working state holiday in 1965 to honour “the outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace.”
In 1975, designated as International Women’s Year, the United Nations gave official sanction to and began sponsoring International Women’s Day.
Across the world on March 8th this year, there were parades, rallies, and marches to commemorate IWD.
Let us hope that the next 100 years results in changes that can change the still horrible situation of most women in the world today. This situation cannot be fixed until global capitalism is replaced with a more just and equitable political and economic system.
As long as the economy and the fat wallets of the rich people who control the state and the economy require workers, women’s rights will be of minimal concern to the ruling global capitalist class.
Feb 16 Legal Clinic in Lawrence Heights a Success!
On Saturday, February 16, Lawrence Heights residents attended a free Legal Clinic at Lawrence Heights Community Centre, set up by BASICS Community Newsletter, with support from allies at the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and the Roach, Schwartz and Associates law firm. It took place between 1-4 PM and demonstrated that tenants don’t have to sit back and put up with cockroaches, rodents, water leaks, and holes in their walls anymore.
Since the forms are notoriously confusing, BASICS organizers alongside the lawyers helped people learn about their legal rights as tenants and how to challenge the slumlord policies of TCHC. Residents were instructed on how to fill out the T2 (Tenant Rights) and T6 (Maintenance) forms of the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board, which can be downloaded from the Board’s website.
TCHC residents who have maintenance issues that have been ignored by TCHC can contact BASICS for assistance in filling out the T2 and T6. If you are interested in having BASICS aid you in filling out these forms, please contact us at basics.canada@gmail.com or at 416-800-0823. However, so that we can all save time and be better organized, you must organize 5 or more of your neighbours who are facing similar problems so that we can fill out many forms at once.
All working people deserve decent social housing and BASICS will continue to work alongside Lawrence Heights residents to build a stronger community that can stand up to the slumlord policies of TCHC. But this process begins with Lawrence Heights residents organizing themselves.
Since the forms are notoriously confusing, BASICS organizers alongside the lawyers helped people learn about their legal rights as tenants and how to challenge the slumlord policies of TCHC. Residents were instructed on how to fill out the T2 (Tenant Rights) and T6 (Maintenance) forms of the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board, which can be downloaded from the Board’s website.
TCHC residents who have maintenance issues that have been ignored by TCHC can contact BASICS for assistance in filling out the T2 and T6. If you are interested in having BASICS aid you in filling out these forms, please contact us at basics.canada@gmail.com or at 416-800-0823. However, so that we can all save time and be better organized, you must organize 5 or more of your neighbours who are facing similar problems so that we can fill out many forms at once.
All working people deserve decent social housing and BASICS will continue to work alongside Lawrence Heights residents to build a stronger community that can stand up to the slumlord policies of TCHC. But this process begins with Lawrence Heights residents organizing themselves.
Gary Freeman Released!
by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
After 4 years of imprisonment and physiological ordeal for him and his family, Gary Freeman was finally released on probation in the U.S. on March 7th. The black librarian was arrested by Toronto cops in 2004 for his suspected involvement in the 1969 shooting of a Chicago Police officer. After spending 4 years in Ontario prisons, he agreed to be extradited to face trial in Chicago in early February.
At the time of the shooting, black liberation and other revolutionary organizations in the US were being exterminated by the FBI. Chicago itself had the reputation of having the most corrupt and brutal police force in North America. John Knox, the cop that attacked Gary in 1969 (forcing Freeman to shoot in self-defense), had headed a squad that illegally infiltrated dozens of legal political organizations. Freeman fled to Canada because he feared he would be killed in prison after being wrongfully identified as a Black Panther and being convicted by an all white jury of shooting Knox.
Had he been found guilty of attempted murder in February, Freeman would have faced 30 years of imprisonment in the Chicago Cook County jail. This is the same prison where 65 black inmates were tortured, resulting in multi-million dollar lawsuits. Fortunately, the court only charged Freeman for aggravated battery as part of plea bargain, and sentenced him to a month in jail and 2 years probation in the U.S. Freeman must also pay $250,000 to a police aid fund.
This has been a remarkably positive outcome for the situation, and Basics extends our congratulations to Gary Freeman and his family. However, while some are celebrating Freeman’s release as proof that the racial and political situation in the US has improved since the 60’s, the reality is that social and political conditions remain deeply oppressive for the majority of Black and poor Americans. Today, a Chicago cop shoots a civilian every 10 days, and across the U.S., black people (13% of the population) make up 60% of the prison population. The fight to and end to systematic racism and police brutality in the US and Canada continues.
The Bloody Birth of Kosovo: How the United Nations Created One of the World’s Leading Narcotics and Terrorist States
by Steve da Silva
With the exception of the U.S., there is no country in the world today whose connections to the international drug trade and international terrorism is more clearly documented than Kosovo. Type into google.com “heroin”, “terrorism”, and “K.L.A.” (Kosovo Liberation Army) and you get 18,000 web hits that detail the links of the corrupt Kosovar political elite to international drug trade, human trafficking, terrorism and al-Qaida – all of these illicit activities in a region that hosts a massive 1000-acre U.S. military base.
Yet, when the mafia-state of Kosovo and its Prime Minister Hashim Thaci declared independence from Serbia on February 17, countries like America, France, Britain, and Germany rushed to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
The movement towards Kosovo’s independence began back in the 1990s when the U.S., Canada, and the Europe were supporting a number of right-wing military organizations throughout Yugoslavia in order to break up the socialist federation and create a number of smaller capitalist states that the Americans and their allies could easily dominate. The formula was simple: to smash socialism, divide and conquer the multinational peoples of Yugoslavia.
The result of foreign destabilization in Yugoslavia resulted in a decade of “civil wars” and ethnic cleansing between Croatians and Serbians, Bosnians and Serbians, and Kosovar Albanians and Serbians.
In order to create many little nation-states out of the large multinational Socialist Yugoslavia, the Americans and Germans especically funded right-wing nationalist, religious, and criminal organizations in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in order to drive Serbians out of the regions that they lived in. Meanwhile, to draw attention away from the bloodshed that the West was responsible for, everything was blamed on the Serbians and their elected leader Slobodan Milosevic. This is not to say that casualties and war crimes were not committed by people on all sides; however, the pertinent questions to ask are: ‘Who started these wars?’ and ‘Who stood to gain the most from them?’.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (of which current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was once a commander of) was created in the 1990s to violently separate Kosovo from Yugoslavia. Important to note is how KLA fighters were shipped in from all around the world to fight for Kosovo’s liberation – just as the Americans did in Afghanistan with the mujahadin fighters (which became the Taliban). Not surprisingly, hundreds of these same mujahadin fighters from Afghanistan, alongside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, were sent to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s to dismantle socialist Yugoslavia. These fighters routinely attacked and raped Serbian civilians, which led to a spiral of retributive violence on all sides, but mostly against Serbians.
It is well documented that Osama bin Laden helped actually helped train some of these KLA fighters, which makes perfect sense: Afghanistan’s warlords produced the heroin whiled Kosovo’s mafias distributed it.
And when the KLA forces were almost completely wiped out in 1998 the response of the West was to intervene to beat back the Yugoslav army and punish the Serbian people. NATO bombed Serbia and regions of Kosovo for 78 days straight. Serbia was bombed back into the stone, with the complete destruction of Serbia’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges, hospitals, schools, and factories. Thousands of cluster bombs were laid down to terrorize the civilian population for years to come, as Israel did in 2006 in Lebanon. The Canadian Air Forces dropped 10% of all of NATO bombs in the aerial war.
The consequence in each of the country’s that broke away from the formerly socialist Yugoslavia in the 1990s has been right-wing economic policies that has led to the mass privatization of the public wealth in those societies, often by Western companies. The Balkan wars made the rich richer and poor poorer.
The fact that Western countries rushed to recogize the independence of a state whose participation in the international heroine trade and the international terrorism shows that it is the Western countries themselves that are the biggest supporters of drugs and terrorism. Western countries talk about the War on Drugs and the War on Terror out of one side of their mouths; but they fund and support the drug trade and terrorism while the Western public is not looking.
Furthermore, what makes the independence of Kosovo so dangerous in today’s world is the geographical importance of the Balkan region to the superpowers. Russia, who has been staunchly opposed to the independence of Kosovo, has now declared that it is going to support the independence movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Georgia is currently governed by an extremely corrupt pro-American governemnt. So we see how imperialist governments, like the U.S. or Russia, stir-up “independence” movements through terrorist and criminal organizations.
All the while, legitimate and massively popular peoples’ liberation movements from Palestine to Philippines, from Six Nations to Kurdistan, are demonized as terrorist and extremist, but yet they struggle on unrecognized…
From Left to Right: Kosovo’s Mafioso Prime Minister Hashim Thaci with France’s Bernard Kouchner, U.K.’s Sir Michael Jackson,
Former KLA Commander Agim Ceku,
and U.S. General Wesley Clarke
With the exception of the U.S., there is no country in the world today whose connections to the international drug trade and international terrorism is more clearly documented than Kosovo. Type into google.com “heroin”, “terrorism”, and “K.L.A.” (Kosovo Liberation Army) and you get 18,000 web hits that detail the links of the corrupt Kosovar political elite to international drug trade, human trafficking, terrorism and al-Qaida – all of these illicit activities in a region that hosts a massive 1000-acre U.S. military base.
Yet, when the mafia-state of Kosovo and its Prime Minister Hashim Thaci declared independence from Serbia on February 17, countries like America, France, Britain, and Germany rushed to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
The movement towards Kosovo’s independence began back in the 1990s when the U.S., Canada, and the Europe were supporting a number of right-wing military organizations throughout Yugoslavia in order to break up the socialist federation and create a number of smaller capitalist states that the Americans and their allies could easily dominate. The formula was simple: to smash socialism, divide and conquer the multinational peoples of Yugoslavia.
The result of foreign destabilization in Yugoslavia resulted in a decade of “civil wars” and ethnic cleansing between Croatians and Serbians, Bosnians and Serbians, and Kosovar Albanians and Serbians.
In order to create many little nation-states out of the large multinational Socialist Yugoslavia, the Americans and Germans especically funded right-wing nationalist, religious, and criminal organizations in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in order to drive Serbians out of the regions that they lived in. Meanwhile, to draw attention away from the bloodshed that the West was responsible for, everything was blamed on the Serbians and their elected leader Slobodan Milosevic. This is not to say that casualties and war crimes were not committed by people on all sides; however, the pertinent questions to ask are: ‘Who started these wars?’ and ‘Who stood to gain the most from them?’.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (of which current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was once a commander of) was created in the 1990s to violently separate Kosovo from Yugoslavia. Important to note is how KLA fighters were shipped in from all around the world to fight for Kosovo’s liberation – just as the Americans did in Afghanistan with the mujahadin fighters (which became the Taliban). Not surprisingly, hundreds of these same mujahadin fighters from Afghanistan, alongside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, were sent to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s to dismantle socialist Yugoslavia. These fighters routinely attacked and raped Serbian civilians, which led to a spiral of retributive violence on all sides, but mostly against Serbians.
It is well documented that Osama bin Laden helped actually helped train some of these KLA fighters, which makes perfect sense: Afghanistan’s warlords produced the heroin whiled Kosovo’s mafias distributed it.
And when the KLA forces were almost completely wiped out in 1998 the response of the West was to intervene to beat back the Yugoslav army and punish the Serbian people. NATO bombed Serbia and regions of Kosovo for 78 days straight. Serbia was bombed back into the stone, with the complete destruction of Serbia’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges, hospitals, schools, and factories. Thousands of cluster bombs were laid down to terrorize the civilian population for years to come, as Israel did in 2006 in Lebanon. The Canadian Air Forces dropped 10% of all of NATO bombs in the aerial war.
The consequence in each of the country’s that broke away from the formerly socialist Yugoslavia in the 1990s has been right-wing economic policies that has led to the mass privatization of the public wealth in those societies, often by Western companies. The Balkan wars made the rich richer and poor poorer.
The fact that Western countries rushed to recogize the independence of a state whose participation in the international heroine trade and the international terrorism shows that it is the Western countries themselves that are the biggest supporters of drugs and terrorism. Western countries talk about the War on Drugs and the War on Terror out of one side of their mouths; but they fund and support the drug trade and terrorism while the Western public is not looking.
Furthermore, what makes the independence of Kosovo so dangerous in today’s world is the geographical importance of the Balkan region to the superpowers. Russia, who has been staunchly opposed to the independence of Kosovo, has now declared that it is going to support the independence movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Georgia is currently governed by an extremely corrupt pro-American governemnt. So we see how imperialist governments, like the U.S. or Russia, stir-up “independence” movements through terrorist and criminal organizations.
All the while, legitimate and massively popular peoples’ liberation movements from Palestine to Philippines, from Six Nations to Kurdistan, are demonized as terrorist and extremist, but yet they struggle on unrecognized…
From Left to Right: Kosovo’s Mafioso Prime Minister Hashim Thaci with France’s Bernard Kouchner, U.K.’s Sir Michael Jackson,
Former KLA Commander Agim Ceku,
and U.S. General Wesley Clarke
Why to Oppose the 2010 Vancouver Olympics: Massive destruction and dispossession unfolding to prep for Olympics
by Steve da Silva
We are often told that the Olympics are good for the economy. But for whose economy? Will the profits “trickle down” to the base of the population? No. The Olympics have always been an opportunity for a massive transfer of public wealth into the hands of the bankers and big businesses. The public bill for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver is already over $6 billion. The city of Montreal just recently in 2002 paid off their debt for the 1976 Olympics.
The Vancouver Olympics is being called the “greenest” one ever; but nothing could be further from the truth. In Whistler, tens of thousands of trees are being cutdown and mountainsides are being blasted open to create Olympic venues. Furthermore, most of British Colombia is unceded land legally belonging to First Nations peoples. What have the indigenous peoples in B.C. traditionally got in return for the settlement of their land? Poverty, unemployment, police terror and imprisonment.
In preparation for 2010, Vancouver’s poor are being criminalized and “cleansed” out of the city’s Downtown Eastside. Laws have been passed against begging and sleeping outside. Since Vancouver won the bid to host the Olympics in 2003, 850 low-income housing units have been destroyed, and homelessness has increased from about 1000 to 2500. By 2010, it is feared that there will be more homeless people in Vancouver than the 5000 participating athletes. But Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics is no exception when it comes to displacement of peoples. Over the last 20 years, about 2 million people have been forced off their land by Olympic-related development.
And nothing about the 2010 Olympics is out of tune with the vicious and repressive history of Olympics. During the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, a concentration camp of Jews was operating less than an hour away. In the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, just days before the games began hundreds of student protestors were massacred by the “Olympia Brigade” police force.
In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, displaced low-income people were promised 2500 new units of affordable housing. Only 150 were ever created. For the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Australian government passed a permament law allowing the military to be deployed on its civilians.
In spite of all this, an opposition movement to the 2010 Olympics is growing. In late 2007, indiginous nations from across Turtle Island (North America) gathered in the liberated region of Chiapas, Mexico for an intercontinental gathering of indigenous peoples. In a show of solidarity, the 1500 delegates to the summit passed a resolution to pose an intercontinental resistance to the 2010 Olympics.
In preparation for the anti-Olympic protests that are already being planned, the Canadian government is preparing an army of 12,500 police and military personnel. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the biggest winners of the 2010 Olympics won’t be the athletes stacking up gold medals, but the rich people stacking up the real gold!
Mexican revolutionary sub-commandante Marcos seen with other indigenous leaders
from Americas; in the backdrop flies the flag of the Mohwak Nation, who struggle
for self-determination in "Canada"
We are often told that the Olympics are good for the economy. But for whose economy? Will the profits “trickle down” to the base of the population? No. The Olympics have always been an opportunity for a massive transfer of public wealth into the hands of the bankers and big businesses. The public bill for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver is already over $6 billion. The city of Montreal just recently in 2002 paid off their debt for the 1976 Olympics.
The Vancouver Olympics is being called the “greenest” one ever; but nothing could be further from the truth. In Whistler, tens of thousands of trees are being cutdown and mountainsides are being blasted open to create Olympic venues. Furthermore, most of British Colombia is unceded land legally belonging to First Nations peoples. What have the indigenous peoples in B.C. traditionally got in return for the settlement of their land? Poverty, unemployment, police terror and imprisonment.
In preparation for 2010, Vancouver’s poor are being criminalized and “cleansed” out of the city’s Downtown Eastside. Laws have been passed against begging and sleeping outside. Since Vancouver won the bid to host the Olympics in 2003, 850 low-income housing units have been destroyed, and homelessness has increased from about 1000 to 2500. By 2010, it is feared that there will be more homeless people in Vancouver than the 5000 participating athletes. But Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics is no exception when it comes to displacement of peoples. Over the last 20 years, about 2 million people have been forced off their land by Olympic-related development.
And nothing about the 2010 Olympics is out of tune with the vicious and repressive history of Olympics. During the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, a concentration camp of Jews was operating less than an hour away. In the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, just days before the games began hundreds of student protestors were massacred by the “Olympia Brigade” police force.
In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, displaced low-income people were promised 2500 new units of affordable housing. Only 150 were ever created. For the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Australian government passed a permament law allowing the military to be deployed on its civilians.
In spite of all this, an opposition movement to the 2010 Olympics is growing. In late 2007, indiginous nations from across Turtle Island (North America) gathered in the liberated region of Chiapas, Mexico for an intercontinental gathering of indigenous peoples. In a show of solidarity, the 1500 delegates to the summit passed a resolution to pose an intercontinental resistance to the 2010 Olympics.
In preparation for the anti-Olympic protests that are already being planned, the Canadian government is preparing an army of 12,500 police and military personnel. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the biggest winners of the 2010 Olympics won’t be the athletes stacking up gold medals, but the rich people stacking up the real gold!
Mexican revolutionary sub-commandante Marcos seen with other indigenous leadersfrom Americas; in the backdrop flies the flag of the Mohwak Nation, who struggle
for self-determination in "Canada"
Black-Focused School Approved for Toronto: TDSB approves Africentric school for 2009
by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
On January 29th, school trustees at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) headquarters overflowing with students, parents and teachers, voted 11-9 in favour of opening the city’s first Africentric or Black-focused school. This decision came after over 10 years of meetings, debates, reviews, and a tireless campaign of black parents and community workers demanding that the school board finally take some sort of action to deal with the crisis of a 40% high school drop out rate among black youth. The school is set to open by September 2009 (with details being hammered out in the interim.)
So what exactly is an Africentric school? Any racialized, poor and/or marginalized person who has gone through the public education system knows how isolating and discriminatory it can be. Much of what is taught has no relevance to racialized and working-class youth and their experiences. The hope is that black-focused schools would be an alternative to this.
It would be an environment where students would learn about their own history, culture and experience in every part of the curriculum. Africentric schools are based on the vision that education is a shared community responsibility and so parents and the wider community would be included within the education environment. And contrary to popular belief and corporate media distortions, the schools would be open to students of any background because it is believed that an Africentric program can help any student feeling pushed out of the mainstream system.
Many community groups who understand the devastating affect the school system is having on black youth have hailed the vote, such as the Jane-Finch Concerned Citizens, Jamaican-Canadian Association, African Canadian Heritage Association, Canadian Alliance of Black Educators, the Ontario Parents of Black Children, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, the Black Action Defence League.
However, the corporate media, including all major newspapers, has pushed strongly against the creation of the schools. Through twisting the message of black community activists, and even openly racist editorials, the media have unfortunately been successful in encouraging the wider Toronto community to oppose the decision. We all have heard the arguments that black focused schools would “return segregation” and further divide Canadians. In fact it is the complete opposite.
Segregation is when ruling groups in society force marginalized people out of public institutions (arguably what is effectively happening right now with “revitalization”, or the privatization of medical services). Instead, Africentric schools represent a demand from within the black community for a little bit of public space to help their youth and mend some of the damage done by the mainstream system. The shameful thing is that investigations and reports have been calling on the TDSB to implement an Africentric program for 15 years. However, the TDSB did nothing. Yet in the same period they opened a number of other alternative schools with varying specialities in order to, according to the TDSB, “offer (disengaged) students and parents something different from mainstream schooling”.
Meanwhile Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty has said that he won’t give one cent to the establishment of such a school because he is “uncomfortable with the concept”.
There are those who say that Africentric schools are not the solution because they don’t really address the problem, which is the system as a whole. Some say that opening a couple of schools may help a small number of students, but it would still leave the majority of youth to struggle in a toxic system.
Yet Africentric schools in no way contradict this point. Those who have fought for them are faced with a crisis right now! They understand very well that our school system is broken and is failing kids from all different ethnic, social, economic and cultural backgrounds. It is not just a question of race, but also a question of class. While 40% of Black youth do not complete high school, 43% of Portuguese students and 25% of all students are dropping out as well. Advocates see Africentric schools as just one step and a small part of the larger discussion about how we eliminate racism and inequity in the system.
The lessons learned through an Africentric program can and will be fed into the mainstream public system. Angela Wilson, one of the leading members who fought for Africentric schools, recently said after the TDSB vote: “we’re happy, but as I said the struggle continues – we have layers and layers of things to do”.
On January 29th, school trustees at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) headquarters overflowing with students, parents and teachers, voted 11-9 in favour of opening the city’s first Africentric or Black-focused school. This decision came after over 10 years of meetings, debates, reviews, and a tireless campaign of black parents and community workers demanding that the school board finally take some sort of action to deal with the crisis of a 40% high school drop out rate among black youth. The school is set to open by September 2009 (with details being hammered out in the interim.)
So what exactly is an Africentric school? Any racialized, poor and/or marginalized person who has gone through the public education system knows how isolating and discriminatory it can be. Much of what is taught has no relevance to racialized and working-class youth and their experiences. The hope is that black-focused schools would be an alternative to this.
It would be an environment where students would learn about their own history, culture and experience in every part of the curriculum. Africentric schools are based on the vision that education is a shared community responsibility and so parents and the wider community would be included within the education environment. And contrary to popular belief and corporate media distortions, the schools would be open to students of any background because it is believed that an Africentric program can help any student feeling pushed out of the mainstream system.
Many community groups who understand the devastating affect the school system is having on black youth have hailed the vote, such as the Jane-Finch Concerned Citizens, Jamaican-Canadian Association, African Canadian Heritage Association, Canadian Alliance of Black Educators, the Ontario Parents of Black Children, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, the Black Action Defence League.
However, the corporate media, including all major newspapers, has pushed strongly against the creation of the schools. Through twisting the message of black community activists, and even openly racist editorials, the media have unfortunately been successful in encouraging the wider Toronto community to oppose the decision. We all have heard the arguments that black focused schools would “return segregation” and further divide Canadians. In fact it is the complete opposite.
Segregation is when ruling groups in society force marginalized people out of public institutions (arguably what is effectively happening right now with “revitalization”, or the privatization of medical services). Instead, Africentric schools represent a demand from within the black community for a little bit of public space to help their youth and mend some of the damage done by the mainstream system. The shameful thing is that investigations and reports have been calling on the TDSB to implement an Africentric program for 15 years. However, the TDSB did nothing. Yet in the same period they opened a number of other alternative schools with varying specialities in order to, according to the TDSB, “offer (disengaged) students and parents something different from mainstream schooling”.
Meanwhile Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty has said that he won’t give one cent to the establishment of such a school because he is “uncomfortable with the concept”.
There are those who say that Africentric schools are not the solution because they don’t really address the problem, which is the system as a whole. Some say that opening a couple of schools may help a small number of students, but it would still leave the majority of youth to struggle in a toxic system.
Yet Africentric schools in no way contradict this point. Those who have fought for them are faced with a crisis right now! They understand very well that our school system is broken and is failing kids from all different ethnic, social, economic and cultural backgrounds. It is not just a question of race, but also a question of class. While 40% of Black youth do not complete high school, 43% of Portuguese students and 25% of all students are dropping out as well. Advocates see Africentric schools as just one step and a small part of the larger discussion about how we eliminate racism and inequity in the system.
The lessons learned through an Africentric program can and will be fed into the mainstream public system. Angela Wilson, one of the leading members who fought for Africentric schools, recently said after the TDSB vote: “we’re happy, but as I said the struggle continues – we have layers and layers of things to do”.
Hip-Hop’s Revolutionaries: UMI of P.O.W.
Interview 3 of 3 / See Parts 1 and 2 with M1 of Dead Prez and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers
Umi from Brooklyn, New York has worked with Prisoners of War (P.O.W.), the People’s Army and the RBG (Red, Black, and Green) Family – all revolutionary hip-hop cliques in the U.S. Umi’s solo debut album comes out in late 2008, and his film Under the Gun will be released in June 2008. Basics caught up with Umi in Lawrence Heights back in the summer of 2007.
Basics Interviewer: Umi, you were at Lawrence Heights on your trip to Toronto – the largest social housing project in Canada , with Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) as the largest landlord in Canada. The area is located very close to a big mall [Yorkdale], and what the government is trying to do is demolish part of the area and sell it off to condo developers, and then move out the people who are currently living there, low-income working-class peoples, most being East African and West Indian. Is this process happening in the U.S. too?
Umi: The gentrification process you’re talking about has been going on for a long time. It used to be about race, but now it’s about economics. Right now, the rich are saying, “We don’t want to be secluded in the suburbs anymore.” You know, in the 1960s, they wanted to be in the suburbs to get away from the Civil Rights movement, which they felt was our day of reckoning - African people getting courage. But not just Africans, Browns too. Our struggle to be mobilized as a people affects rich people’s positioning. So, back then, they said “We don’t wanna be downtown, we wanna be in the suburbs.” And the suburbs used to be all the furthest spots of the hood that you could go out to in most cities. So they condemned them, and turned them into suburbs. And now, it’s just the opposite, and this started in the early ‘90s, or late ‘80s. They said, “We wanna take downtown, we wanna revamp downtown.”
This started in the larger cities first. But it’s cities like Chicago that we don’t here a lot about, where people are the most disenfranchised because they’ve been doing this shit relentlessly for the last twenty years… Now they want the downtown areas, so they take black people and now they’re moving them to the suburbs. A lot of black people don’t have cars, so it’s fucked up, and a lot people are not accounted for. When they take their houses, they don’t replace them with new homes immediately, they get stuck with stipends to just survive day-to-day. Look at the shit they did at Katrina – don’t be fooled, that’s trickery right there: that’s another form of gentrification right there. That’s something that’s gotta be studied because that’s something that’s been planned for over 55 years. They knew Katrina was going to happen – and they were just waiting to take land from certain people.
Basics: You all are not just artists in the RBG Family – obviously fantastic artists – but you’re revolutionaries too. You’re organizing, you’re out there with the people. How have people in the U.S. been responding to the ongoing process of gentrification?
Umi: Well, people are mad as hell. We are aware of this negative process, and the way the system stings us. We can’t help but feel the effects. But the problem is that we haven’t organized ourselves and come up with a strategy as a community that can combat to put ourselves in a better position.
The things that are affecting me as a man affected my father as he became a man. What I am most adamant about is not just talking about shit – when I go into the communities I’m linking with people like Fred Hampton Jr. in Chicago, for instance. I try to link with people who are doings things that can help people transform their communities in a strategic way.
At this point, they’re actually trying to destroy us as a people. It’s not just about taking over some property – they are crippling and destroying people’s families… If you cripple a man first, dehumanizing him to the point where it affects his family. At this point, we’ve got to come together and combat this process.
Basics: With the organizing we’re doing in the community against gentrification, can we count on you to come back and help us build this struggle.
Umi: Anytime, anywhere, I’m there. Umi, P.O.W. – even Dead Prez, RBG, I can speak for us all. You call on us and we’ll be there.
"Dropping Prices, Dropping Planes": Part 1 of 3 on the History of Crack Cocaine
by Akumo
‘Crack Head’. Youths as young as ten years old commonly use this phrase and nobody seems to misunderstand what it means.
But what is crack, exactly? And what is the history of this destructive drug that so many people in our society seem to be continually seeking? To understand the full history of crack we must look into the history of its derivative, cocaine, and to cocaine’s derivative, the coca leaves that grow wild in the fields of Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia.
Cocaine was first refined out of coca by an Italian chemist Angelo Mariani in 1863, after the Spanish colonizers of South America had been transporting the relatively harmless coca leaves back to Europe. European entrepreneurs began putting the drug in everything, because when it was ingested it made the consumer feel so good. Until 1903, a bottle of Coca-Cola contained about 9 milligrams of cocaine.
African Americans were first introduced to the drug in the American South after the American Civil War in the late 1800s.
When ‘freed’ slaves were forced to work in labour camps for little pay, during their breaks and after dinners the workers were given doses of cocaine to make them work faster. These Africans soon became addicted to the drug and a racist myth began to be propagated that “cocaine made Negro’s go crazy and rape white women.” Southern whites bought the political lies and due to a public outcry the American constitution was amended. The Harrison Act was implemented and to this day drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and heroin are illegal in America.
During the two imperialist world wars in the 20th century cocaine fell out of favor because it was so expensive. However, after the second war, the economy in America began to explode, the money in the economy allowed for more cocaine to re-enter the scene: just as capitalism had gone through its booms and busts, cocaine followed the economic trends.
Cocaine made a huge comeback in the 60s and by the 70s. Mainstream coverage of cocaine picked up as well: Newsweek wrote numerous stories discussing the many positives aspects of the drug.. Cocaine also entered the mainstream in other ways, the relationship of cocaine to ‘70s disco culture was a standard. Time magazine ran a cover story on the drug in 1981 and called it The All American Drug, describing cocaine to as a drug that gives you ‘speedy bursts of energy, extreme confidence, and an intense sex drive”.
Government policy and positive media attention drove cocaine to the place that it is today. Cocaine is now much cheaper now than it ever was in the 1970s or early 1980s and the prices have continued to fall. It would soon be too late to wage an effective war on drugs, especially when ‘crack’ cocaine began to sweep the nation in the mid ‘80s. Once the economic force of the commodity begins rolling in the economy, how can you stop it, when the demand is so great? But is consumer demand alone the only force that drives the North American cocaine and crack cocaine market?
In late September 2007, an American Immigrations and Customs Enforcement jet crashed in Mexico and was found by Mexican authorities to contain over 4 tones of cocaine. The cocaine had an estimated street value at over $25 million.
The question must then be asked, what proportion of the drugs in America are coming in through these official government channels? What does this mean for the crack epidemic in America and Canada? And most importantly, who is to blame? These questions will be addressed in Part 2 of the BASICS series on the History of Crack Cocaine.. As you may have noticed by now, the mainstream press tends to overlook the basics when looking at issues like these.
Interview with an African-American Revolutionary: Muhammad Ahmad
Basics: This is Basics Community Newsletter, and I’m here with Muhammad Ahmad, a long time revolutionary brother from the U.S., involved in a number of organizations, including the Black Panther Party, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the African People’s Party. I’m with him here at Ryerson University tonight, after finishing up a presentation. Good evening, Muhammad.
Muhammad Ahmad: Good evening.
Basics: During your presentation tonight, one brother came up during question period, trying to suggest the problems African peoples face on this continent in terms of the breakdown of the Black family. You had a good response to that question. What was it?
MA: The capitalist system is extracting more and more profit from the African-American community, because it is in structural crisis right now. Being in a structural crisis right now, it has to lower the wages of its domestic working-class. Now, whoever is on the lowest rung of the domestic working-class in each capitalist country receives the brunt of the exploitation. So you have the disintegration of the African-American, or African-Canadian family first…
Basics: And the indigenous peoples too…
MA: Definitely the indigenous peoples too. The market is such that to get around paying higher wages they have created the prison-industrial complex. Prisoners are put to work through the privatization of prisons and paid slave wages. This leads to a complete ruinization of the community. At the same time then, those on the outside – women – are reduced into the service economy being paid the lowest of wages in the domestic working-class.
Basics: Well those social forces would certainly ruin any family… Now the people up here, African-Canadians, indigenous peoples, new migrants from around the world, are facing the same sorts of victimization and brutalization as in the United States. What do people facing police brutality, gentrification, and exploitation need to do?
MA: Well, one: we need to build organizations that are based on collective leadership. Those organization that have been most successful have studied Marxism [dialectical and historical materialism] in conjunction with their own histories. The need is to develop cadre and leadership. One problem in the development of organizations has been the uneven level of development in organizations: you need to be able to have people who can carry on the organization if anything happens to the leadership, and that takes time.
More importantly is the choosing of issues that are winnable. Some of our biggest mistake is that we have attacked the stronger points of the system and been defeated, and this has demoralized people. So once building that organization we have to pick our issues strategically in order to get small victories, because getting five small victories is better than getting one big defeat. For the time being, we have to rebuild the people’s will now. We have to rebuild the movement now, picking our issues carefully so that we can see what we can win. We need to train people.
One really important thing is to get young people off of drugs, so that they can struggle to get into the working-class. In my day, we didn’t have to struggle to get into the working-class. You know, I could quit a job, and walk across the street and get another job. When I talk about ruinization, I’m talking about the young brothers and sisters today who have to fight and train themselves to even get a job. We have to struggle to even reach parity with white workers wherever they are.
Basics: I know that some of the work of organizations like the Black Panther Party, or the Puerto Rican Young Lords Party, back in your day where doing work to organize street gangs into revolutionary cadre. There are some groups in Toronto trying to do similar peace work amongst street gangs, such as the Bloods and the Crips. Can you say a few words about the history of that kind of work?
MA: First of all, those of us who have come through the struggle have come to the consensus that we have to be drug free. You can’t be a revolutionary and drink alcohol. You can’t be a revolutionary and smoke marijuana, or do other drugs.
Also, we have to teach basics, we have to teach reading and writing; we have to teach scientific thinking, and we have to teach leadership. And to do all this you have to have absolute moral superiority to the system that your fighting against. The Bloods and the Crips should know a little something about this: the esprit de corps. To break any military establishment you have to be able to break the esprit de corps. When you break the esprit de corps of your enemy, you have won 90% of the battle.
Basics: One of the terms that the Black Panther movement popularized was the term “Blaxploitation”, which was what they called capitalism and white supremacy culturally exploiting African-American peoples through images and music. You mentioned something in your presentation tonight about gangster rap and its relationship to capitalism. Can you elaborate?
MA: Well, gangster rap serves as a negative role model sending out counter-revolutionary message to young people and turning them against themselves. Its all about the glorification of gangsters, and there’s a big difference between a gangster and a revolutionary. A gangster is all about him or herself, against the people, and a gangster subdues the people through what he or she sells the people. It’s all about getting rich in capitalist society by any means. As revolutionaries, we are socialists and communists, and so we are anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, anti-colonialists, and anti-oppression. And a revolutionary does this out of the spiritual will to serve the people. A revolutionary comes from the people and serves the people, not hurts the people. And the hope is that your work advances the interests of the people. So that’s the difference: a revolutionary is a positive role model, working for the collective, not money.
Basics: There are some more radical groups popping up in Toronto – anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-gentrification, anti-police. Would you have any words of wisdom for them from your own history of revolutionary struggle?
MA: All I would say is that everything in the universe is constantly changing, and that we should not think about things abstractly or in sectarian terms, but to think dialectically: that we learn through change in our tactics and strategy as conditions change. If we do not change, if we do not constantly assess our work, constantly do criticism and self-criticism, as Fidel Castro said, our movement will not be around for long.
Basics: Well, let’s leave it at that then Mr. Ahmad.
MA: Salaam-aleykum
Basics: Wa-aleykum a salaam.
Canadian Occupation of Afghanistan Another 10 Years?
Canadian PM Stephen Harper with hisAfghan puppet President Hamid Karzai
Troubled by their inability to defeat the Afghan resistance to a foreign occupation, last October 2007 the Canadian government set up a commission to “review” Canada’s role in Afghanistan. The Conservative government chose the prominent Liberal, John Manley, to head up the commission. The report called for the extension of the occupation, alongside calls for more troops and more weapons and equipment. With extra troops and weapons, the report says the war can be won “in less than ten years”. Just because the pro-war Conservatives and Liberals are saying that they're going to extend the occupation to at least 2011 shouldn’t have us thinking that it’s going to end by then. How many times have we heard over the last 7 years that the Canadian military will be out in “2005”... “2007”... “2009”... and now 2011?
The truth of Afghanistan today is that the once-hated Taliban is growing in popularity in the face of the brutal foreign military occupation and the corrupt puppet government of Hamid Karzai.
Little do Canadians know that Karzai’s government operates under a narrow and harsh interpretation of Islamic law under which many people are suffering. The effects of this theocratic dictatorship is demonstrated by the recent condemnation to death of a 23-year-old journalist/student Pervez Kambaksh for downloading an article about women and Islam So while Western politicians rant on about religious fundamentalism and the “war on terror”, it is they who installed and maintain the criminal and fundamentalist regime of Hamid Karzai. But the Karzai government and NATO forces know that they can buy out the corrupt and opportunist leaders of the Taliban, as they have in the past. Indeed, the occupying forces have already begun encouraging Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban. Whatever comes of these “peace efforts”, the people of Afghanistan will continue to suffer under occupation.
And what about all this talk of human rights? Today in Afghanistan, many marriages are contracted between older men and underage girls by extremely impoverished and desperate parents. Women are frequently killed and shot with no consequences. The former Women’s Affairs Minister of Afghanistan Sima Simar was dismissed from parliament for “blasphemy against Islam” because she referred to Karzai’s government as a rubber stamp democracy.
Furthermore, a recent report by the UN indicates that violence against women has doubled since the US/Canadian invasion. Suraya Subhrang, a member of the committee that released the UN report comments that "in spite of six years of international rhetoric on the emancipation of Afghan women, there has been no real change in the lives of millions of women".
And what about Canada’s record on torture? It is well documented that the Canadian government has continuously outsourced torture to its puppets in the Afghan, police and military forces.
Much is said about ‘progress’ and ‘victory’ in Afghanistan by the Canadian government; but we should be particularly worried about what is not being said. Exact numbers of Afghan casualties are not reported. And when casualties are reported, the victims are referred to as “Taliban supporters”.
Canadians should not be fooled by the politicians. What is undeniable is that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is worse today than it ever was under the Taliban. Consequently, the Afghan people are in insurgency, and the Taliban is appearing as the lesser of evils. However, progressive left-wing movements, like the Maoist Communist Party of Afghanistan – who also fought against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s – are also growing in support.
So while the politicians go on stirring fear amongst Canadians of what would happen if the troops withdrew from Afghanistan, Canadians should know that the Afghan people have resisted and defeated many occupations in the past, including the British and the Soviets. They will likely do the same to the Americans and Canadians.
The majority of working-class Canadians should cheer the prospects of the Canadian military being chased out of Afghanistan by a people's war. Maybe then Canadians can regain our crumbling healthcare, education, and public transportation systems.
The Modern Slavery of Ontario's Migrant Farm Workers
by Chris Ramsaroop of the Justicia for Migrant Workers Campaign
Over the past few months glossy TV ads have promoted Ontario’s agricultural industry through the campaign “Good Things Grow Here in Ontario”. With a catchy tune these ads encourage consumers to buy Ontario fruits and vegetables. Missing, however, from these commercials are the images of those responsible for putting fruits and vegetables on our tables.
For over forty years Canada has relied on Caribbean and Mexican migrant workers to harvest our fruits and vegetables. These workers are employed under the auspices of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP), an employment scheme of our government that hires Mexican and Caribbean Workers to work in our agricultural industry for up to eight months annually. The program operates in Canada in every province with the exception of Newfoundland. The overwhelming majority of these workers are employed in Ontario. However, there is increasing demand for these workers in other provinces, particularly in British Colombia and Quebec.
While the Canadian government alleges that the migrant worker program represents ‘best practices’ – a model program for migration in Canada. However, what is a ‘best practice’ for the farming industry and the Canadian government is far from what would be considered a best practice from the perspective of the average worker.
It is quite common for migrant workers to compare the CSAWP as a form of modern day slavery, and they are demanding an end to conditions where they are treated worse than animals in Ontario’s fields. These workers, despite their contributions to the Ontario economy, can never apply for permanent residency in Canada. The farm worker program prohibits workers from applying for status. Furthermore, if workers speak out against the injustices they face they can be ‘repatriated’ (deported).
Along with their precarious immigration status, workers are subjected to working and living conditions that are heavily exploitative.
In our experiences, workers have reported being forced to work in fields that had recently been sprayed with dangerous chemicals and pesticides, being forced to work up to 18 or 19 hours a day, not being provided with water while working, nor being provided with bathroom facilities at their site of employment. Many of these workers experience racial harassment from supervisors and are denied breaks while at work – this despite working under temperatures reaching close to 40oC.
Instead of workers receiving medical attention for injuries sustained at work, many of them are simply ‘repatriated’ back to their countries. These workers have no medical assistance while working under extremely harsh conditions in Canada. As a result of these repatriations our organizers at Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) has heard of numerous stories where workers have either died or have become permanently disabled as a result of injuries sustained in Canada.
Despite these injustices, workers and their allies in organizations such J4MW are fighting back against these injustices. Emphasizing a workers-led model of organizing, J4MW co-ordinates campaigns with workers to address the numerous complaints they have pertaining to the CSAWP program. From advocating for reforms in migrant worker accommodations to demanding the legal right to organize, J4MW works to build solidarity amongst migrant communities as well as developing educational campaigns to raise awareness on the conditions faced by migrant workers to the greater community many of who have no idea of who represents the real face of our agricultural industry.
Recently J4MW and several community organizations have come together to demand changes to Canada’s two tiered healthcare system. While universal for permanent residents, migrant workers have been denied the basic right to access our healthcare system.
For more information to get involved with J4MW, you can visit www.justicia4migrantworkers.org.
Over the past few months glossy TV ads have promoted Ontario’s agricultural industry through the campaign “Good Things Grow Here in Ontario”. With a catchy tune these ads encourage consumers to buy Ontario fruits and vegetables. Missing, however, from these commercials are the images of those responsible for putting fruits and vegetables on our tables.
For over forty years Canada has relied on Caribbean and Mexican migrant workers to harvest our fruits and vegetables. These workers are employed under the auspices of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP), an employment scheme of our government that hires Mexican and Caribbean Workers to work in our agricultural industry for up to eight months annually. The program operates in Canada in every province with the exception of Newfoundland. The overwhelming majority of these workers are employed in Ontario. However, there is increasing demand for these workers in other provinces, particularly in British Colombia and Quebec.
While the Canadian government alleges that the migrant worker program represents ‘best practices’ – a model program for migration in Canada. However, what is a ‘best practice’ for the farming industry and the Canadian government is far from what would be considered a best practice from the perspective of the average worker.
It is quite common for migrant workers to compare the CSAWP as a form of modern day slavery, and they are demanding an end to conditions where they are treated worse than animals in Ontario’s fields. These workers, despite their contributions to the Ontario economy, can never apply for permanent residency in Canada. The farm worker program prohibits workers from applying for status. Furthermore, if workers speak out against the injustices they face they can be ‘repatriated’ (deported).
Along with their precarious immigration status, workers are subjected to working and living conditions that are heavily exploitative.
In our experiences, workers have reported being forced to work in fields that had recently been sprayed with dangerous chemicals and pesticides, being forced to work up to 18 or 19 hours a day, not being provided with water while working, nor being provided with bathroom facilities at their site of employment. Many of these workers experience racial harassment from supervisors and are denied breaks while at work – this despite working under temperatures reaching close to 40oC.
Instead of workers receiving medical attention for injuries sustained at work, many of them are simply ‘repatriated’ back to their countries. These workers have no medical assistance while working under extremely harsh conditions in Canada. As a result of these repatriations our organizers at Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) has heard of numerous stories where workers have either died or have become permanently disabled as a result of injuries sustained in Canada.
Despite these injustices, workers and their allies in organizations such J4MW are fighting back against these injustices. Emphasizing a workers-led model of organizing, J4MW co-ordinates campaigns with workers to address the numerous complaints they have pertaining to the CSAWP program. From advocating for reforms in migrant worker accommodations to demanding the legal right to organize, J4MW works to build solidarity amongst migrant communities as well as developing educational campaigns to raise awareness on the conditions faced by migrant workers to the greater community many of who have no idea of who represents the real face of our agricultural industry.
Recently J4MW and several community organizations have come together to demand changes to Canada’s two tiered healthcare system. While universal for permanent residents, migrant workers have been denied the basic right to access our healthcare system.
For more information to get involved with J4MW, you can visit www.justicia4migrantworkers.org.
NY Army Recruitment Centre bombed
Basics Editorial
A small explosive device has caused minor damage to a military recruitment centre on New York City's world famous Times Square. Since it occurred very late at night, the centre was empty and no-one was injured, leaving only one window smashed
New York's Multi-Millionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was quick to tell everyone to continue shopping and sight seeing, and suggested the attack on the recruiting office was an insult to US forces currently stationed around the World.
While the White House has already stated that no terrorism was involved, media reports did seem to indicate that they were investigating this being an act of protest by individuals or groups against the US' governments War on Iraq.
This will probably scare supporters of the war who will probably be reminded of the sort of actions staged around the world in the 1960s to protest against the War in Vietnam, where U.S. Embassies and U.S. officials were targeted.
The pattern fits similar bombs tossed at the British Consulate in 2005 and the Mexican Consulate last year. US officials seem to be grasping at anything to explain what happened, including investigating some Canadians as possible suspects.
A small explosive device has caused minor damage to a military recruitment centre on New York City's world famous Times Square. Since it occurred very late at night, the centre was empty and no-one was injured, leaving only one window smashed
New York's Multi-Millionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was quick to tell everyone to continue shopping and sight seeing, and suggested the attack on the recruiting office was an insult to US forces currently stationed around the World.
While the White House has already stated that no terrorism was involved, media reports did seem to indicate that they were investigating this being an act of protest by individuals or groups against the US' governments War on Iraq.
This will probably scare supporters of the war who will probably be reminded of the sort of actions staged around the world in the 1960s to protest against the War in Vietnam, where U.S. Embassies and U.S. officials were targeted.
The pattern fits similar bombs tossed at the British Consulate in 2005 and the Mexican Consulate last year. US officials seem to be grasping at anything to explain what happened, including investigating some Canadians as possible suspects.
Ontario Gov’t Gives $10 Million to Kellogg's
Basics Editorial
Dalton McGuinty must have been eating his 'Wheaties' this past month, as his government decided to give $9.7-million to Kellogg's for their new plant in the Quinte region, which will produce ‘Mini-Wheats’ cereal. The amount represents 10% of the costs of the $97-million plant, which began construction in October 2006.
Kellogg's is far from your small business operation that needs government money in order to keep going. The company is on the New York Stock exchange and had Revenues of $10.906 Billion in 2006.
This isn't the first time that McGuinty has engaged in corporate welfarism. In 2007 McGuinty gave Ford Motor Company of Canada $55,061,011, despite Ford’s cutting of shifts in St. Thomas. McGuinty also loaned $29,096,192 to General Motors (GM) of Canada while they cut shifts in Oshawa. The chocolate maker Ferrero Rocher, received a $5.5 million interest free loan, while other firms like car parts manufacturer MAGNA received millions of dollars, while the big bosses took home millions in their own pockets.
McGuinty says that this blatant subsidizing of the rich is to improve the province's manufacturing industry, which has been decimated since the Conservatives and the Liberals signed Canada into and implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990's.
McGuinty does this with no acknowledgement of two facts: 1 - the Liberals are hypocrits for giving millions to millionaires, while denying people on social assistance any meaningful increases; and 2 - manufacturing jobs will only be brought back through public investments that generate jobs and revenue for the people. Our tax dollars should be used to build things that we need, including factories that are owned by the people and not some rich jokers.
Dalton McGuinty must have been eating his 'Wheaties' this past month, as his government decided to give $9.7-million to Kellogg's for their new plant in the Quinte region, which will produce ‘Mini-Wheats’ cereal. The amount represents 10% of the costs of the $97-million plant, which began construction in October 2006.
Kellogg's is far from your small business operation that needs government money in order to keep going. The company is on the New York Stock exchange and had Revenues of $10.906 Billion in 2006.
This isn't the first time that McGuinty has engaged in corporate welfarism. In 2007 McGuinty gave Ford Motor Company of Canada $55,061,011, despite Ford’s cutting of shifts in St. Thomas. McGuinty also loaned $29,096,192 to General Motors (GM) of Canada while they cut shifts in Oshawa. The chocolate maker Ferrero Rocher, received a $5.5 million interest free loan, while other firms like car parts manufacturer MAGNA received millions of dollars, while the big bosses took home millions in their own pockets.
McGuinty says that this blatant subsidizing of the rich is to improve the province's manufacturing industry, which has been decimated since the Conservatives and the Liberals signed Canada into and implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990's.
McGuinty does this with no acknowledgement of two facts: 1 - the Liberals are hypocrits for giving millions to millionaires, while denying people on social assistance any meaningful increases; and 2 - manufacturing jobs will only be brought back through public investments that generate jobs and revenue for the people. Our tax dollars should be used to build things that we need, including factories that are owned by the people and not some rich jokers.
Enemies of the People: Three Federal 'Leaders'
Basics Editorial
This is going to be a special edition of ‘Enemy of the people’, for the title will not be handed over to one person, but several.
First off, let’s give it up for Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion. Their first names aren't the only thing that these guys share slight variations of - their policies and ideas are pretty damn close as well. Dion postured himself as the peaceful, gentler alternative to known war-monger and racist Michael Ignatieff when the two were running for the Liberal Leadership (don't worry Bob Rae, former NDP Premier turned Liberal party flunky, we haven't forgotten about your class-traitor, Palestinian-hating ass either). 'I will be a voice against the war in Afghanistan' gestured Mr. Dion. Now - surprise, surprise - he is making a deal to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan until at least 2011. To be fair, you can’t really be the leader of the Liberal party and not completely abandon one of your principle election promises (like Chretien with his promise to drop the GST and do away with NAFTA in the 1990s).
Harper, a former lobbyist for right-wing organizations based in Alberta is of course also in favour of keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Both him and Mr. Dion are lap dogs to the wealthy and the transnational companies like Quebec-based SNC Lavalin that are making BILLIONS off war through reconstruction and munitions contracts.
So for being shamelessly able to send of young people to die and kill innocent people in order to make others rich, Stephen and Stephane are ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE. Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff - you can join your colleagues as enemies of the people too for
reasons already mentioned.
Now the NDP almost got off on this one, as Jack Layton in opposing the War in Afghanistan. And then they went ahead and supported the Conservatives walking out on the Durban Conference against Racism in South Africa in protest of motions condemning the disgusting and brutal colonial treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel. For sticking up for the racist state of Israel that has been killing hundreds of Palestinian children, women and men every year for 60 years, you can join the Liberals and Conservatives as Enemies of the People.
This is going to be a special edition of ‘Enemy of the people’, for the title will not be handed over to one person, but several.
First off, let’s give it up for Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion. Their first names aren't the only thing that these guys share slight variations of - their policies and ideas are pretty damn close as well. Dion postured himself as the peaceful, gentler alternative to known war-monger and racist Michael Ignatieff when the two were running for the Liberal Leadership (don't worry Bob Rae, former NDP Premier turned Liberal party flunky, we haven't forgotten about your class-traitor, Palestinian-hating ass either). 'I will be a voice against the war in Afghanistan' gestured Mr. Dion. Now - surprise, surprise - he is making a deal to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan until at least 2011. To be fair, you can’t really be the leader of the Liberal party and not completely abandon one of your principle election promises (like Chretien with his promise to drop the GST and do away with NAFTA in the 1990s).
Harper, a former lobbyist for right-wing organizations based in Alberta is of course also in favour of keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Both him and Mr. Dion are lap dogs to the wealthy and the transnational companies like Quebec-based SNC Lavalin that are making BILLIONS off war through reconstruction and munitions contracts.
So for being shamelessly able to send of young people to die and kill innocent people in order to make others rich, Stephen and Stephane are ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE. Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff - you can join your colleagues as enemies of the people too for
reasons already mentioned.
Now the NDP almost got off on this one, as Jack Layton in opposing the War in Afghanistan. And then they went ahead and supported the Conservatives walking out on the Durban Conference against Racism in South Africa in protest of motions condemning the disgusting and brutal colonial treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel. For sticking up for the racist state of Israel that has been killing hundreds of Palestinian children, women and men every year for 60 years, you can join the Liberals and Conservatives as Enemies of the People.
People's Organizing for Housing in Venezuela
by Hassan Reyes
Like many major cities in what North Americans and Europeans like to call the 'Third World', the streets in Caracas, Venezuela are busy and crowded people. However, Venezuela isn't your typical 'Third World' nation. There is a revolution going on and you can see it and feel it when you are there.
BASICS Community Newsletter and the Toronto-based Latino radio program Barrio Nuevo sent us to find out what’s really happening in Venezuela and link up with the movements and people that are advancing a people's program.
The corporate media in North America portrays the Venezuelan revolution as 'authoritarian' and 'violent', and it portrays the democratically-elected leader of the movement President Hugo Rafael Chavez as a 'dictator'. It’s not hard to understand why rich Americans and Canadians feel so threatened by what’s happening in Venezuela, with the nationalization of the oil sector and the support that the peoples’ movement is obtaining from its allies in government. Venezuelans have resurrected two words that the rich people of the world hoped they would never hear again - Revolution and Socialism.
On the streets the idea of revolution has become a tangible thing, with incredible murals and graffiti everywhere, everyone announcing support for Chavez, and actively organizing themselves at the local level.
We come to a building with a considerable amount of this sort of graffiti - the headquarters of the National Committee of the Homeless (Sin Techos). I walk in and ask for Layo Gascuez, a local leader who agreed to give BASICS an interview and tell us about their work. Layo takes us to the second floor of a 5-storey building being occupied by the movement. Once occupied, the residents (mostly single mothers, seniors and youth) are organized into committees to carry out the every aspect of living collectively, including communications and renovations. On this same floor, the movement is renovating a space that will be used as a free day care centre for the single mothers in the buildings.
"Currently, we have 75 occupied buildings in Caracas and 165 nationally" says Gascuez, pointing to other adjacent buildings also run through the collectives.
"The Sin Techos movement began 2003 when we in Venezuela really began to take on the oligarchy, who live off the misery of the people" explained Gascuez of how the movement started. "In our Bolivarian constitution, Article 103 prohibits all types of
monopolies and so we started doing occupations of buildings to break that monopoly."
So united and strong are the peoples’ collectives within the Sin Techos movement that Layo proudly brings us to another occupied 7 storey building - which has a McDonalds as the main tenant on the street level. "Whenever we need something done to the
building we go to their management and demand that they pay for it. They don't dare say no."
The Sin Techos form part of the Manifesto for People's Liberation (MLP) that brings together over 8000 collectives and mass organizations together in Venezuela and other parts of Latin American.
Layo also brings us to other collectives under the banner of the MLP - the Workers of Art Centre, and Soberana TV.
The Workers of Art also function within an occupied storefront that hadn't been in operation for years. The Centre offers quality space for poor artists to do
their trade (painting, sculptures etc.) that they can then sell in order to survive. The artists offer free classes to youth and people in the community.
Soberana TV is a media centre, where the Sin Techos produce a local newsletter and TV-quality media reports to offer to other local TV stations.
"Ultimately, the work we do stems from a necessity. There are families who are living on the streets. Just as our President Chavez has said we can’t keep on allowing a monopoly over land and to permit a situation where the most vulnerable and poor in our society are trampled on."
A political mural in Caracas that reads " Work amongst the people must be the first principle of any revolutionary".
Like many major cities in what North Americans and Europeans like to call the 'Third World', the streets in Caracas, Venezuela are busy and crowded people. However, Venezuela isn't your typical 'Third World' nation. There is a revolution going on and you can see it and feel it when you are there.
BASICS Community Newsletter and the Toronto-based Latino radio program Barrio Nuevo sent us to find out what’s really happening in Venezuela and link up with the movements and people that are advancing a people's program.
The corporate media in North America portrays the Venezuelan revolution as 'authoritarian' and 'violent', and it portrays the democratically-elected leader of the movement President Hugo Rafael Chavez as a 'dictator'. It’s not hard to understand why rich Americans and Canadians feel so threatened by what’s happening in Venezuela, with the nationalization of the oil sector and the support that the peoples’ movement is obtaining from its allies in government. Venezuelans have resurrected two words that the rich people of the world hoped they would never hear again - Revolution and Socialism.
On the streets the idea of revolution has become a tangible thing, with incredible murals and graffiti everywhere, everyone announcing support for Chavez, and actively organizing themselves at the local level.
We come to a building with a considerable amount of this sort of graffiti - the headquarters of the National Committee of the Homeless (Sin Techos). I walk in and ask for Layo Gascuez, a local leader who agreed to give BASICS an interview and tell us about their work. Layo takes us to the second floor of a 5-storey building being occupied by the movement. Once occupied, the residents (mostly single mothers, seniors and youth) are organized into committees to carry out the every aspect of living collectively, including communications and renovations. On this same floor, the movement is renovating a space that will be used as a free day care centre for the single mothers in the buildings.
"Currently, we have 75 occupied buildings in Caracas and 165 nationally" says Gascuez, pointing to other adjacent buildings also run through the collectives.
"The Sin Techos movement began 2003 when we in Venezuela really began to take on the oligarchy, who live off the misery of the people" explained Gascuez of how the movement started. "In our Bolivarian constitution, Article 103 prohibits all types of
monopolies and so we started doing occupations of buildings to break that monopoly."
So united and strong are the peoples’ collectives within the Sin Techos movement that Layo proudly brings us to another occupied 7 storey building - which has a McDonalds as the main tenant on the street level. "Whenever we need something done to the
building we go to their management and demand that they pay for it. They don't dare say no."
The Sin Techos form part of the Manifesto for People's Liberation (MLP) that brings together over 8000 collectives and mass organizations together in Venezuela and other parts of Latin American.
Layo also brings us to other collectives under the banner of the MLP - the Workers of Art Centre, and Soberana TV.
The Workers of Art also function within an occupied storefront that hadn't been in operation for years. The Centre offers quality space for poor artists to do
their trade (painting, sculptures etc.) that they can then sell in order to survive. The artists offer free classes to youth and people in the community.
Soberana TV is a media centre, where the Sin Techos produce a local newsletter and TV-quality media reports to offer to other local TV stations.
"Ultimately, the work we do stems from a necessity. There are families who are living on the streets. Just as our President Chavez has said we can’t keep on allowing a monopoly over land and to permit a situation where the most vulnerable and poor in our society are trampled on."
A political mural in Caracas that reads " Work amongst the people must be the first principle of any revolutionary".
Thursday, March 13, 2008
“The Faces Seemed Weary of Battle...”
An anonymously submitted poetic account of the March 1st Launch of the Justice for Alwy Campaign Against Police Brutality
Many helping hands sought to form a collective union for a revolutionary cause.
Some might have called the affair a lost cause: a voice muffled out in the sound proof booth that is censorship by the media; a candlelight dwindling in a breeze of ignorance on a topic that widely affects the general public.
But on Saturday, March 1st, in Regent Park, I saw a gathering of many determined people, wearing nothing but sheer dedication as their shield and sword. All the faces seemed weary from battle, baring many symbolic scars, etched and engraved within their facial expressions.
But the ambience was unnatural, as if everyone’s hearts were beating in unison for Alwy Al Nadhir. Many people tore out a piece of their hearts inscribed with a few heartfelt words to share with their fellow masses.
Many friends and family members enlightened us on the issue at hand. We peered into the looking glass of these people’s day-to-day lives, and how this specific controversial situation is affecting them and has them searching for a greater sense of justice. What is being sought is not an apology, not a thorough detailed inquiry on the topic, but to set a precedent for future cases, to assist and aid other such unfortunate cases.
The launch of the Justice for Alwy campaign on March 1st was not meant for us to just hear an all-star cast filtering a burden too big for us to bear alone. It was not meant for us to acknowledge and applaud those courageous enough to battle stage fright. It was meant for us to unify and form a movement that correlates with everyone’s one true aspiration: Justice for Alwy Al-Nadhir.
On March 15th, when we rally outside police headquarters, we will signify the unification and the mobilization of these people. Actions do speak louder than words.
I would like to give honorable mention to one of the speakers. Ali, Alwy’s cousin, had a few words to say, with each word he uttered coursing through our veins and bodies, entering the depths and corridors of our minds, with his deep concentration and thought given to each word.
I for one bore witness to a surge of commitment and passion amongst each individual that was lucky enough to take part in that affair. ∗
My Life: A Poem in the Loving Memory of Alwy Al Nadhir
by Fatma Al Nadhir (Age: 14)
Everyday’s a struggle,
When you’re not around.
I live up to my full potential,
Because I know you’re looking down.
I can’t concentrate, I feel like there’s no
point.
Why should I try?
Have you ever felt the pain I go through?
These days I don’t even know what I’m
going to do.
They killed my brother! What did he do?
Now I have to suffer, because of what he
went through.
I miss you Alwy!
What happened the other day?
We have no clue,
But don’t tell me my brother did wrong,
I know that’s not true!
I remember the day Alwy, Basma and I
stayed till about 5 in the morning
playing monopoly.
I will never forget you Alwy.
There’s not one day I go without
thinking about you.
You made us laugh, and cry.
Remember the day I started crying
because I got mad at you…
And then you started laughing, and
tried to make me smile,
You always wanted to see us happy.
Alwy, words can’t express
how much I miss you.
I want justice for you, Alwy… ∗
The spirit of the Justice for Alwy campaign: Salma, Besma, and Fatma Al Nadhir
TO Cops Kill Again: Native Man Byron Debassige Slain in Davisville Area
by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
On the night of February 16th, in a convenience store near Davisville station, Byron Debassige stole two lemons. He had a pocket knife. A few minutes later, in nearby Oriole Park, he was shot in the chest by police and was later declared dead in hospital.
A witness recounts that Byron was obviously drunk at the time, and was singing and asking for change immediately before being killed. The passer-by heard the cops scream “drop the knife” moments before they fired four shots at Byron who “fell like a bag of hammers.” The police and media’s explanation of what happened is, unsurprisingly, sketchy to say the least. Some initial reports talk about two officers being hospitalized for minor injuries suggesting Byron had stabbed/assaulted the police. However, later articles and quoted police statements make no reference to any injured cops, and simply talk about a “confrontation” with police.
Whatever happened that night, one thing is clear: a 28-year old man was deliberately slain by the cops – for the initial crime of stealing lemons.
On March 5th, friends and family honored Byron in a packed room at the Native Canadian Centre. He was remembered as a kind person who always saw the best in everyone. He was a gifted DJ and graffiti artist, and despite having gone through difficult times, he had renewed a commitment to succeed. Attendees also expressed a deep frustration and anger at Police, with many acknowledging the violent targeting of the Native community. One friend mentioned that Byron was a schizophrenic, which, along with his intoxication, may have well meant he did not understand police when they told him to drop his knife.
While no one (except his killers) knows how Byron died, we DO know that Byron was Native, which in this country makes you a target for the Canadian state and its thugs (RCMP and Police). We also know that Cops in this city brutalize and execute racialized and impoverished youth on a regular basis. Byron’s death comes only 4 months after Alwy Al Nadhir was murdered in Riverdale.
While it is not certain that Byron threatened the police, because the police consistently lie to cover up their crimes, even if Byron had attempted to harm one of the officers, a group of well-armed, trained men could have easily restrained or talked down a single intoxicated man with a pocketknife. The firing of 4 shots was a brutally excessive use of force. We must demand a full investigation into Byron’s killing, not by the ex-cop stacked Specials Investigations Unit, but a fully independent civilian body.
Justice for Byron! Justice for Alwy! Justice for all victims of police terror! ∗
Saving Toronto Housing from the Condo Developers
by John Clarke
of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Buildings owned by Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) are being run into the ground. A lack of repairs and maintenance has created a crisis for tenants. The neglect is so bad that housing stock will be lost for good if the situation is not turned around.
TCHC admits that they would have to spend some $300 million to get their properties up to a decent standard. The City of Toronto owns the housing but claims that Queen’s Park is to blame for the problems. Actually, both levels of Government want to see the housing deteriorate so that it can be given over to developers to build condos. The process of gentrification has already begun in Don Mount Court and Regent Park and they have planned to do it at Lawrence Heights and in many other places as well.
Tenants who lose their homes to condo developers are told that they will have the right to return once the rebuilding phase is over. However, in Regent Park, they are already reducing the rent-geared-to-income (RGI) portion of the new development. Middle class homeowners will want their property values increased. This means that RGI units will be eliminated over time, and the City knows it. The Regent Park model is a blueprint for destroying public housing.
Obviously, the more the City can run down TCHC communities, the easier it is to hand them over to the condo developers. Buildings pass the point where they can be fixed up and tenants give up on them.
Over the last months, having received many calls from angry TCHC tenants, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has taken up the fight against their abusive landlord. We have taken action to demand repairs for families and communities. We’ve organized community meetings, petitions and delegations to TCHC offices. This work has led to some important successes. We have gone around the City photographing and documenting the shameful conditions that many TCH tenants have to endure and will use this to expose TCHC as a slum landlord. We realize, however, that the developers and their political friends at City Hall will not be stopped unless can find a very serious way to stand up to them.
Currently, OCAP is taking a letter into TCHC communities that tenants can sign. It includes a fill-in portion in which the tenant explains the problems with her/his unit and how long they have been going on. The letter then informs TCHC that they are expected to meet their responsibilities as a landlord and fix the unit to a decent standard. If this is not done, however, the tenant says that it may be necessary to use rent money to do those repairs.
If you would like to sign the ‘rent for repairs’ letter or help organize in your community to challenge the neglect and defend it from the developers, then call OCAP today. ∗
ONTARIO COALITION AGAINST POVERTY (OCAP)
416-925-6939 www.ocap.ca
of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Buildings owned by Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) are being run into the ground. A lack of repairs and maintenance has created a crisis for tenants. The neglect is so bad that housing stock will be lost for good if the situation is not turned around.
TCHC admits that they would have to spend some $300 million to get their properties up to a decent standard. The City of Toronto owns the housing but claims that Queen’s Park is to blame for the problems. Actually, both levels of Government want to see the housing deteriorate so that it can be given over to developers to build condos. The process of gentrification has already begun in Don Mount Court and Regent Park and they have planned to do it at Lawrence Heights and in many other places as well.
Tenants who lose their homes to condo developers are told that they will have the right to return once the rebuilding phase is over. However, in Regent Park, they are already reducing the rent-geared-to-income (RGI) portion of the new development. Middle class homeowners will want their property values increased. This means that RGI units will be eliminated over time, and the City knows it. The Regent Park model is a blueprint for destroying public housing.
Obviously, the more the City can run down TCHC communities, the easier it is to hand them over to the condo developers. Buildings pass the point where they can be fixed up and tenants give up on them.
Over the last months, having received many calls from angry TCHC tenants, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has taken up the fight against their abusive landlord. We have taken action to demand repairs for families and communities. We’ve organized community meetings, petitions and delegations to TCHC offices. This work has led to some important successes. We have gone around the City photographing and documenting the shameful conditions that many TCH tenants have to endure and will use this to expose TCHC as a slum landlord. We realize, however, that the developers and their political friends at City Hall will not be stopped unless can find a very serious way to stand up to them.
Currently, OCAP is taking a letter into TCHC communities that tenants can sign. It includes a fill-in portion in which the tenant explains the problems with her/his unit and how long they have been going on. The letter then informs TCHC that they are expected to meet their responsibilities as a landlord and fix the unit to a decent standard. If this is not done, however, the tenant says that it may be necessary to use rent money to do those repairs.If you would like to sign the ‘rent for repairs’ letter or help organize in your community to challenge the neglect and defend it from the developers, then call OCAP today. ∗
ONTARIO COALITION AGAINST POVERTY (OCAP)
416-925-6939 www.ocap.ca
A Short History of Police Brutality in T.O.
The History of the Black Action Defense Committeee and Community Resistance to Police Brutality,
by Wasun - March 2008
The Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) emerged in the late 1970s to become a powerful force in the struggle against police brutality. At the organization’s first meeting, BADC founder Dudley Laws affirmed: “Canada is a racist state. If you have a racist state, then you have racist police”. The murder of Buddy Evans August 9, 1978, and Albert Johnson August 26, 1979 marked the beginning of BADC’s mass demonstrations against police brutality. Evans was a 24 year-old Black man shot at a downtown bar, and no charges were laid against the officer who shot him. Johnson was a 35-year-old Black man shot by Constables William Inglis and Walter Cargnelli at a rooming house in the Vaughn/Oakwood area.
In response to the Johnson murder, BADC mobilized the Black community, and their efforts culminated in 2000 people marching from Vaughn/Oakwood to 13 Division headquarters to protest his death. When Johnson was killed Dudley Laws formed the Albert Johnson Defense Committee Against Police Brutality.
On October 14, 1979, 1000 people rallied at Nathan Phillips Square. The Albert Johnson Committee had three demands in their struggle for justice. One, that constables Inglis and Cargnelli become charged with murder instead of manslaughter. Two, they formed the Albert Johnson Family Fund and requested that Toronto police provide full compensation to his wife and four children. Three, they demanded the Province and Ontario Attorney-General Roy McMurty establish an independent civilian review board for complaints against the police.
On November 13, 1980, Cargnelli and Inglis were both acquitted of their manslaughter charge after a four-week trial, and this resulted in more protests organized by BADC’s organizers. The following week at Nathan Phillips Square, 300 demonstrators protested the Cargnelli and Inglis acquittal. As a result of BADC’s protests, Toronto police made a secret settlement in court in 1988 when the Johnson family filed a civil lawsuit against them.
The government responded to BADC’s mass mobilizations against the Evans and Johnson murders with the following institutional reform: In 1981 the Province enacted a three-year pilot project called the Office of the Public Complaints Commissioner (OPCC) under the Metro Toronto Police Force Complaints Project Act, 1981. The OPCC was a new and improved civilian complaints system to report incidents of police brutality and increase accountability. Under this act the Toronto Police Chief was required to set up a Public Complaints Board that would conduct case hearings referred by the chief or commissioner. The OPCC faced much criticism from the Black community because it was still biased in favor of police without community-control of the police complaints process.
Despite the militant protest of Dudley Laws and others dating back to the late 1970s, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) as a formal anti-racist organization was formed days after the shooting of Lester Donaldson on August 9, 1988. According to Metro Police, the shooting occurred when they responded to a call stating Donaldson was holding people hostage in his rooming house. However, Donaldson was shot dead while alone in his apartment in a confrontation with five police officers. On Saturday, August 13, 1000 people demonstrated in front of 13 Division where Constable Deviney worked. Although Deviny was arrested and charged with manslaughter on January 11, 1989; he was acquitted in November 1990.
A second police murder later that year enraged the Black community even further and increased racial tensions in the city. On December 8, 1988, 17 year-old, Michael Wade Lawson was shot in the back of the head by the Peel Constable Anthony Lelaragni, age 24, who was charged with manslaughter; and Constable Darren Longpre, age 27, who was charged with aggravated assault. Lawson was shot in the back of the head by an illegal 38-calibre slug known as a “hot bullet” which expands on contact, banned in Ontario by the Ontario Police Act.
Later that year, in October 1989, 23 year-old Sophia Cook was shot and paralyzed by police. The third Black person shot by Toronto police in 15 months, Cook was a Brampton resident and mother of a 2 ½ year-old son when she was shot in the back. The bullet narrowly missing her spine and paralyzing her from the waist down. Cook was in a reported stolen car with two men whom she accepted a ride from after missing a bus at Jane/Grandravine. During the investigation, police confirmed Cook had never been involved in any criminal activity.
After a decade of militant anti-racist mobilization, the province implemented its second major police reform. The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was created in the 1990 Police Service Act to increase police accountability in the investigation of civilian murders. The SIU was set up to be the first organization staffed by civilians instead of police homicide investigators. However, it ended up being staffed by retired officers who were promoted by the force as the only “civilians” competent enough to investigate these incidents. Despite the limitations of the SIU, the reform was a victory for the Black community because it indicated the Canadian state admitted that anti-Black racism and police brutality was a systemic problem that required institutional reform.
In the early 1990s, racial tensions heated up again with the acquittal of Michael Wade Lawson’s killers. On April 7, 1992, Constables Melaragni and Longpre were acquitted of their charges in the Lawson murder by an all-white jury. In the upcoming month, race relations declined even further when 22 year-old Raymond Lawrence was shot by Constable Timothy Gallant on Saturday May 2, 1992, just days after the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992.
On Monday, May 4, 1992 BADC organized its largest anti-racist demonstration in a decade to protest the murder of Raymond Lawrence. Dubbed the “Yonge St. Riots” by the media, 1000 people demonstrated in a peaceful march that began at the U.S. Consulate and ended with 30 arrests, 200 windows smashed on Yonge St. and City Hall, and a hundred thousand dollars in damages. Hundreds of Black youth and others vandalized the Yonge St. strip and fought with police in the streets.
The history of BADC’s struggles formed a legacy of militant protest and organizing against police brutality in Toronto that has continued into the 21st century. In response to the police murder of Jeffrey Reodica, the Filipino community and its allies mobilized for years and created the organization ‘Justice for Jeffrey’. And today, with the police murder of 18-year-old Alwy Al Nadhir, communities demanding an end to police brutality have come together to form the Justice for Alwy Campaign Against Police Brutality. Through learning the lessons that organizations like BADC and the Justice for Jeffrey campaign have to offer, we should expect that our movement in the 21st Century will be even stronger. ∗
by Wasun - March 2008
The Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) emerged in the late 1970s to become a powerful force in the struggle against police brutality. At the organization’s first meeting, BADC founder Dudley Laws affirmed: “Canada is a racist state. If you have a racist state, then you have racist police”. The murder of Buddy Evans August 9, 1978, and Albert Johnson August 26, 1979 marked the beginning of BADC’s mass demonstrations against police brutality. Evans was a 24 year-old Black man shot at a downtown bar, and no charges were laid against the officer who shot him. Johnson was a 35-year-old Black man shot by Constables William Inglis and Walter Cargnelli at a rooming house in the Vaughn/Oakwood area.
In response to the Johnson murder, BADC mobilized the Black community, and their efforts culminated in 2000 people marching from Vaughn/Oakwood to 13 Division headquarters to protest his death. When Johnson was killed Dudley Laws formed the Albert Johnson Defense Committee Against Police Brutality.
On October 14, 1979, 1000 people rallied at Nathan Phillips Square. The Albert Johnson Committee had three demands in their struggle for justice. One, that constables Inglis and Cargnelli become charged with murder instead of manslaughter. Two, they formed the Albert Johnson Family Fund and requested that Toronto police provide full compensation to his wife and four children. Three, they demanded the Province and Ontario Attorney-General Roy McMurty establish an independent civilian review board for complaints against the police.
On November 13, 1980, Cargnelli and Inglis were both acquitted of their manslaughter charge after a four-week trial, and this resulted in more protests organized by BADC’s organizers. The following week at Nathan Phillips Square, 300 demonstrators protested the Cargnelli and Inglis acquittal. As a result of BADC’s protests, Toronto police made a secret settlement in court in 1988 when the Johnson family filed a civil lawsuit against them.
The government responded to BADC’s mass mobilizations against the Evans and Johnson murders with the following institutional reform: In 1981 the Province enacted a three-year pilot project called the Office of the Public Complaints Commissioner (OPCC) under the Metro Toronto Police Force Complaints Project Act, 1981. The OPCC was a new and improved civilian complaints system to report incidents of police brutality and increase accountability. Under this act the Toronto Police Chief was required to set up a Public Complaints Board that would conduct case hearings referred by the chief or commissioner. The OPCC faced much criticism from the Black community because it was still biased in favor of police without community-control of the police complaints process.
Despite the militant protest of Dudley Laws and others dating back to the late 1970s, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) as a formal anti-racist organization was formed days after the shooting of Lester Donaldson on August 9, 1988. According to Metro Police, the shooting occurred when they responded to a call stating Donaldson was holding people hostage in his rooming house. However, Donaldson was shot dead while alone in his apartment in a confrontation with five police officers. On Saturday, August 13, 1000 people demonstrated in front of 13 Division where Constable Deviney worked. Although Deviny was arrested and charged with manslaughter on January 11, 1989; he was acquitted in November 1990.
A second police murder later that year enraged the Black community even further and increased racial tensions in the city. On December 8, 1988, 17 year-old, Michael Wade Lawson was shot in the back of the head by the Peel Constable Anthony Lelaragni, age 24, who was charged with manslaughter; and Constable Darren Longpre, age 27, who was charged with aggravated assault. Lawson was shot in the back of the head by an illegal 38-calibre slug known as a “hot bullet” which expands on contact, banned in Ontario by the Ontario Police Act.
Later that year, in October 1989, 23 year-old Sophia Cook was shot and paralyzed by police. The third Black person shot by Toronto police in 15 months, Cook was a Brampton resident and mother of a 2 ½ year-old son when she was shot in the back. The bullet narrowly missing her spine and paralyzing her from the waist down. Cook was in a reported stolen car with two men whom she accepted a ride from after missing a bus at Jane/Grandravine. During the investigation, police confirmed Cook had never been involved in any criminal activity.
After a decade of militant anti-racist mobilization, the province implemented its second major police reform. The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was created in the 1990 Police Service Act to increase police accountability in the investigation of civilian murders. The SIU was set up to be the first organization staffed by civilians instead of police homicide investigators. However, it ended up being staffed by retired officers who were promoted by the force as the only “civilians” competent enough to investigate these incidents. Despite the limitations of the SIU, the reform was a victory for the Black community because it indicated the Canadian state admitted that anti-Black racism and police brutality was a systemic problem that required institutional reform.
In the early 1990s, racial tensions heated up again with the acquittal of Michael Wade Lawson’s killers. On April 7, 1992, Constables Melaragni and Longpre were acquitted of their charges in the Lawson murder by an all-white jury. In the upcoming month, race relations declined even further when 22 year-old Raymond Lawrence was shot by Constable Timothy Gallant on Saturday May 2, 1992, just days after the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992.
On Monday, May 4, 1992 BADC organized its largest anti-racist demonstration in a decade to protest the murder of Raymond Lawrence. Dubbed the “Yonge St. Riots” by the media, 1000 people demonstrated in a peaceful march that began at the U.S. Consulate and ended with 30 arrests, 200 windows smashed on Yonge St. and City Hall, and a hundred thousand dollars in damages. Hundreds of Black youth and others vandalized the Yonge St. strip and fought with police in the streets.
The history of BADC’s struggles formed a legacy of militant protest and organizing against police brutality in Toronto that has continued into the 21st century. In response to the police murder of Jeffrey Reodica, the Filipino community and its allies mobilized for years and created the organization ‘Justice for Jeffrey’. And today, with the police murder of 18-year-old Alwy Al Nadhir, communities demanding an end to police brutality have come together to form the Justice for Alwy Campaign Against Police Brutality. Through learning the lessons that organizations like BADC and the Justice for Jeffrey campaign have to offer, we should expect that our movement in the 21st Century will be even stronger. ∗
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