(Toronto) Justicia For Migrant Workers (J4MW), a migrant worker advocacy group is saddened to learn of the latest tragedy facing the migrant worker community. On Friday September 10, 2010 J4MW learnt that two Jamaican migrant agricultural workers died as a result of workplaces injuries suffered at Filsinger Farms near Owen Sound, Ontario. “We are aggrieved by this tragedy,” states Tzazna Miranda Leal an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers, “We mourn this loss, and we send our condolences to the families of these workers” continues Miranda Leal.

While details of the fatalities are pending due to an ongoing investigation by the Ministry of Labour, the Jamaican government is reporting that Ralston White and Paul Roach may have died from the inhalation of toxic fumes. Health and safety violations are an everyday occurrence for migrant workers. From chemical and pesticides exposure, to faulty equipment, to workplace bullying and harassment, migrant workers from across the province have described countless examples of dangers while working. Read more…

By Ajamu Nangwaya and Alex Diceanu

First published on Linchpin – website of Ontario anarchist organization Common Cause (http://linchpin.ca). Reprinted with permission from its authors.

Organized labour in Ontario will continue to put forth a weak and ineffective response to attacks from the ruling class as long as it continues to ignore the reality of class struggle. A perfect example is its current response to a proposed two-year wage-freeze that the Dalton McGuinty-led Ontario government plans on imposing on unionized public sector workers. The provincial Liberals would like to save $750 million per year from a wage-freeze, so as to help manage the $19.3 billion budget deficit. Readers need not be reminded that this deficit is the result of the risky financial speculations of the captains of finance, industry and commerce that created the Great Recession of 2008.

But it is the 710,000 unionized members of the working class and 350,000 non-unionized managers and other employees who draw pay cheques from the government[1] and the users of state-provided services (and private sector workers) who are being asked to bear the burden of paying for the actions of the corporate sector. At the same time as this attempt to take income from the pockets of government workers, the McGuinty Liberals’ have granted a $4.6 billion tax-cut to the business sector. Read more…

On Friday September 10th, over 900 hotel workers at the Royal York in Toronto went on a one day strike.

“We decided to take a one day strike action to let the company know that we are willing to fight for our rights” Michelle Williams, a hotel worker at the Royal York, told BASICS. Read more…

A Statement from the United Food and Commercial Workers

On August 24, 2010, the bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America were found in San Fernando, Mexico, approximately 100 km south of the U.S. border.  The migrant workers included 58 men and 14 women.  All of them had been shot dead and piled in a room.  Three other workers managed to escape and inform police.  Government forces then raided the location of the massacre where a gun battle ensued with the further loss of life of one Mexican marine and three gunmen. Read more…

Pragash Pio – BASICS Issue #22 (Sep/Oct 2010)

The August 13 arrival of the MV Sun Sea, with 492 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka—380 men, 63 women and 49 children—has been met by a wave of racism and xenophobic hostility in Canada. Unfounded accusations of terrorism and human trafficking spread by the Government of Sri Lanka and regurgitated by Canadian officials have further confused the matter, leading many to question the legitimacy of the refugees’ claims.

However, Canada has a long history of racism against all types of asylum seekers and migrants of colour (for one example, see Sikander Panag’s article on the Komagata Maru on pg. 3), which is now being played off by the Sri Lankan government. Read more…

BASICS Issue #22 (Sep/Oct 2010)

by S. da Silva

In 1990, Canada was taken to the brink of civil war for what on the surface appeared to be about a golf course and some sacred trees.  What was actually at stake, beyond the surface of things, was the fate of a nation, one that had suffered two and a half centuries of the colonial theft of their land, and was no longer going to take it.

This summer marks 20 years since the armed standoff between  Mohawk Warriors and the Canadian Armed Forces near Oka, Quebec, a small Quebec town whose mayor at the time, Jean Ouellette, was trying to push through plans for the expansion of a golf course and the construction of condominiums.  The land in question, however, had for decades, if not centuries, been the subject of a land claim upheld by the Mohawk nation of Kanehsatake, whose ancestral graves and grove of pine trees held to be sacred were situated on the land. Read more…

BASICS Issue #22 (Sep/Oct 2010)

Noaman Ali

On the night of July 23, 2010, Farshad Azadian, an organizer with the Esplanade Community Group, was arrested on charges of obstruction of a police officer.

In fact, Farshad was simply observing police rounding up on a friend and fellow activist near the site of a shooting that had occurred that night. But just because there may have been a crime in the neighbourhood “doesn’t mean that every youth ought to lose their civil rights,” said Farshad.

According to him, police in the neighbourhood know well that there is a group of “activist kids” moving on issues affecting the community. “It’s true that there are problems in the community, but when people in the community rise up to tackle these issues, those in power try to block them, including through the police,” Farshad told BASICS. Previously the police attempted to stop the Esplanade Community Group from booking space in a community centre, until community pressure reversed this block . Read more…

BASICS Issue #22 (Sep/Oct 2010)

by Mike Brito

This summer marked the 10-year anniversary of a protest outside the Ontario Provincial Legislature that has come to be known as the “Queen’s Park Riot”, which happened on June 15th, 2000 after a march organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). At the time, the provincial Progressive Conservatives, led by Mike Harris, were implementing changes that would go on to have huge impacts on the lives of people across the province.

While in power, the Harris Conservatives cut social spending, changed laws to benefit landlords, cut back on public spending for education, offloaded provincial responsibilities to municipalities, and basically did everything that they could to ensure that Ontario was open for business, describing their efforts as “The Common Sense Revolution”.

In the months leading up to the protest, 22 homeless people died on Toronto’s streets, and all over the province communities were bearing the weight of the Conservatives’ cutbacks and policies. Read more…