May 30th, 2010 – Press Release
(Toronto, ON) – Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for Relief of Tamils (Canadian HART) both condemns and refutes the campaign of misinformation and intimidation being employed by the Sri Lankan government and it’s envoy to misrepresent Canadian HART’s international solidarity work in Venezuela.
Canadian HART is an independent grassroots humanitarian group organized by Canadian university students and activists in 2008 to educate on the situation of, and advocate for the human rights of the vulnerable displaced Tamil population of Sri Lanka. Canadian HART is an anti-imperialist, anti-oppressive, grass roots, solidarity based, non-partisan human rights organization and is in no way affiliated or connected with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). Canadian HART works with and in concert with student and labor unions; human rights NGOs and anti-war activists; anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-poverty organizations; Latin American, Palestinian, and Indigenous solidarity groups; and other grassroots community based organizations.
Public Statement – May 26, 2010.
The decision to close the University of Toronto St. George campus during the G20 summit – the week of June 21-27 – contradicts the purpose of the university, reinforces harmful stereotypes of protesters, legitimizes police repression and violence, and does not reflect the wishes of students, staff and faculty.
by M. Cook – BASICS Online
The Toronto Premiere of the award-winning Filipino film “Dukot” (Desaparecidos) packed the Nat Taylor Cinema at York University on the afternoon of Saturday, May 22. The film is one of the first to focus on the political killings currently taking place in the Philippines.
“[The film] is not a collection of stories from a distant past” said Bonifacio Ilagan, the screen writer. “This is what is happening in the Philippines since 2001. When outgoing president [Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] assumed power, extra judicial killings, abductions, illegal detentions have been increasing.”
Since 2001, over 200 cases of enforced disappearances and more than 1,000 cases of extrajudicial killings have been documented by the human rights organization Karapatan. Last November 2009, the Philippines made headlines worldwide for the Ampatuan massacre, a gruesome massacre in Mindanao that killed 57 people, including 30 journalists (see BASICS Issue # 17).
by M. Cook – BASICS Online
On Thursday, May 20th residents of the Jane and Finch community, along with residents from across Ontario, responded to the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) call for action against the provincial government’s anti-poor budget. However, upon arriving at their local MPP Mario Sergio’s office, the Jane and Finch residents were locked out by one of Sergio’s assistants.
25 years ago today, on May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia police bombed the commune of the MOVE organization from a helicopter. In the summer of 2008, S. da Silva from BASICS Free Community Newsletter interviewed the only living adult survivor of that massacre, Ramona Africa.
Here are some other resources on the May 13, 1985 massacre of MOVE members by Philadelphia police. Thanks to Kasama Project for compiling these resources. The BASICS interview appears further below
Commission blamed top officials’ actions
Mumia Abu-Jamal Remembers the Move Massacre
May 13, 1985: Police Massacre of Move’s Commune
On the morning of Friday, May 7, around hundred attended a rally held outside 25 Grosvenor St. in downtown Toronto. The occasion: the Ontario Coroner’s autopsy being performed on the body of police-murdered Junior Alexander Manon – beaten to death two days prior on the evening of May 5.
From 9:00am onwards, family, friends, and throngs of supporters outraged by the police terror rallied to make statements to the press and to the crowd.
While the rather clueless reporters from the Toronto Star, CityNews and Global News continued to pose their deluded questions about Junior’s “collapse”, members of the Manon family and other community activists spoke out against Junior’s violent death at the hands of Toronto Police Services.
Struggling to hold back his tears, Junior’s father Alejandro Manon told reporters: “I’m here looking for justice because they killed my son, they killed my son like an animal… It was a crime what they did, and it’s justice that I want. I feel destroyed on the inside, he was my son, he was my child… We would like the police to stop being so brutal – the police are supposed to protect, not to kill. There’s ways of making an arrest that don’t involve killing – they didn’t have to kill him.”
Family friend and a long-time resident and community organizer in the Jane-Finch area Chakanda Gondwe, also a lead organizer with the African People’s Socialist Party delivered a powerful message to the crowd, situating Junior’s violent killing within the broader strategy of police containment of African-descended working class peoples in their communities. Gondwe spoke to the widespread nature of the terror being inflicted on African working-class people across Toronto and North America.
Also speaking to the rally outside the Coroner’s Court was Kabir Joshi-Vijayan from the Justice for Alwy campaign, which was created back in 2007 in response to the police murder of 18-year-old Alwy Al-Nadhir: “This organizing is not something that’s going to end here – it’s going to be happening up at Finch where Junior was living, it’s going to continue at the site of the murder, it’s going to be happening everywhere that police are pursuing violence and terrorism against the community.”
A candlelight vigil has been organized for tonight, Friday, May 7 at Founders Road and , the site of Junior Manon’s murder.
With revolutionary music filling the air and people beating drums, singing, chanting, and waving flags, the May 1st Movement (M1M)* Coalition’s 400-strong contingent marched to take over Vaughan Street, near the busy Toronto intersection of St. Clair and Bathurst.
Despite a heavy police presence, the marchers militantly celebrated working class struggle, past and present, here and everywhere. To chants of “Whose streets? Our streets!” the marchers asserted their right to mark International Workers Day and refused to be corralled to the sidewalk by incredulous and obstinate police officers. That the march jubilantly held the street from Vaughan to Oakwood to St. Clair and resisted police intimidation through it all was perhaps a small victory. But its symbolic importance was not lost on all who marched that day – for the first time in years, hundreds took to the streets in Toronto on May 1st to celebrate International Workers Day, joining millions of their sisters and brothers around the world. Read more…
by S. da Silva – BASICS Online
Rally called by family for Friday, May 7 – 9:00am, 25 Grosvenor St. (see below for details)
Running from the police is not a crime punishable by death in Canada. Yet this is the sentence 18-year-old Junior Alexander Manon received on the evening of May 5, 2010 when he ran from the police near York University in Toronto. And by looks of what became of the young Dominican teenager, it’s no surprise that youth like him run when confronted by Toronto police.
