From the May 1st Movement

20 years ago, a justified rage spilled out into downtown streets.

Shortly after the outrageous injustice of the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King prompted a week-long uprising in LA, outraged people in Toronto responded to the call of the Black Action Defense Committee to gather in front of the US consulate.  That same week a white, plain clothed police officer shot and killed 22 year old Raymond Constantine Lawrence, the 14th black man shot by the Toronto police Service since 1978.  The Yonge Street Uprising forced Queens Park to acknowledge the widespread racism in government policies and institutions, leading to some reforms.

20 years later, we still see the same racism, poverty and oppression in our City that gave way to the Yonge Street Uprising. These conditions feed an exploitative system that keeps communities and people poor, circumstances that lead to youth harming themselves and others in their own community.

Following the shootings in the Eaton Centre and in Scarborough, Toronto this past summer, politicians have opportunistically used the tragedies that claimed 4 young lives to further their own attacks on working people.  Mayor Rob Ford didn’t hesitate to call for more police on the streets, despite the fact that the ratio of police to residents is at its highest in 31 years and costs have doubled in the last decade. Across Canada, there are 69,299 officers at a cost of $12 billion in salaries.

What’s more, he and other Councillors such as Giorgio Mammoliti (who has actively tried to remove basketball nets from his Ward and famously called for the Armed Forces to be brought in to fight ‘gangs’) almost immediately called for an end to funding of ‘Hug-a-thug’ programs, presumably directed at social, recreational, and arts programs for youth. Paradoxically and shamelessly, Ford uses the youth from the football team he coaches to deflect from the mounting evidence of his own incompetence and corruption.

Premier McGuinty plays along with Ford and his buddies in Ottawa who on top of wanting more police are also working to build huge prisons and change criminal laws to send more people to jail and for longer periods.

Unfortunately, there are very few voices that have publicly called the response from Government to the shootings this summer for what it is – an opportunistic alignment with the ongoing coordinated attack on working class people and our neighbourhoods.

Everyday the news tells us about job cuts, wage freezes, and government cutbacks while at the same time reporting record profits for banks and large companies.  The lesson from 1992 is that injustice continues until people rise up to challenge them and those responsible.

The May 1st Movement, a coalition of community and labour organizations and activists rejects the scapegoating of working class youth and racialized communities which has been used as a pretext to justify the building of prisons coupled with the reduction of social and cultural programs while increasing police presence in low-income neighbourhoods.

Since Toronto Mayor Rob Ford took office, communities have organized to resist his agenda of cuts to social services, layoffs of public sector workers, and attacks on the poorest people in this city. We support and are encouraged by the rising tide of people in Toronto, including youth, artists and social workers who are beginning to realize that we cannot stay silent while the attacks mount on our neighbourhoods as well as the projects and initiatives that support our people.

We must continue to resist and organize to fight back against austerity policies and those who are pushing them.

To learn more about the May 1st Movement, visit www.may-1.org

To learn more about the “War on Communities” component of the “Right to Exist, Right to Resist” conference, visit www.ilps-canada.ca

Why We Should All Support Their Struggle

by Laura Lepper

You have probably never heard of a small, rural town in Southgate Township called Dundalk. But its location is significant.

The town is situated at the highest elevation in Ontario, the headwaters of both the Grand and Saugeen rivers, and sits on land deeded to the Six Nations through the Haldimand Proclamation of 1763.

Despite the ecological importance of the region and the outstanding land claim, the Southgate municipal council and Lystek International Inc. are attempting to secretly force through a plan to build a “bio-solids” processing facility just a stone’s throw from the town.

The process and product are banned in much of Europe.

This project would involve trucking Toronto’s sludge – including everything flushed down sewers, toilets, and sinks in homes, hospitals and industry – up to Dundalk to be turned into a “fertilizer”.

This sludge plant is set to be built on land that is practically sitting on water surrounded by wetland.

The sludge would then be spread on farm fields – meaning our food, water and land would be poisoned by sludge.

“Three applications of these biosolids on the land and it’s dead,” says Doyle Prier who lives on a nearby farm.
Lystek and the town council’s plans have been met with powerful resistance from local residents and Six Nations community members alike.

After exhausting the official government channels, concerned Dundalk residents approached Six Nations for assistance in their opposition to the sludge.

Southgate township resident Lori Prier remarks “We hadn’t heard of our council consulting Six Nations … and I became very concerned … because it’s their land.”

Dundalk sits at the very top of the Haldimand Tract, the territory stretching six miles on either side of the entire Grand River, recognized by the British Crown in 1784 as a territory which was specifically granted to the Mohawks and other members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in return for losses suffered for supporting the British side in the war of American Independence.

Sharing concern for the land, the health of their communities and future generations, members of Six Nations have been working together with Dundalk residents to stop construction of the sludge plant.

Because Six Nations people drew a line in the sand saying the construction could not continue on their lands, Dundalk residents were given Haudenosaunee flags to fly on the frontlines of their resistance.

For about 100 days, they held a blockade in the name of Six Nations land rights where they stopped all construction on Lystek. Several organizers are now fighting lawsuits and an injunction.

“As we work to protect the land, in many ways we have a common struggle with Six Nations,” states Dundalk resident Mike Roth.

Echoing many other Dundalk residents, Paul Chatterbull stresses that, “if we don’t work with Six Nations, we have no hope whatsoever.”

This struggle is not only important to support because of the disastrous effect on communities’ health, water and food security this project would have; it is also a living example of the concrete links that are possible between environmental justice and Six Nations land rights, between people seeking justice for non-native and native working class people through the advocacy of Indigenous sovereignty.

Concerned Torontonians should also pay attention because it is our waste products that are planned to be dumped in Dundalk, requiring pending approval of the Toronto Works committee.

Our water and our food will be affected.

Furthermore, this environmentally destructive project would violate both the spirit and the letter of the treaties which allow non-native people to be on this land.

For information on how to get involved with either Six Nations solidarity activities, contact the Toronto First Nations Solidarity Working Group. Email april28info (at) gmail (dot) com. Find out more info at april28.net. Follow @TorontoFNSWG on Twitter.

by Julian Ichim

Since I was charged last year for refusing to take down my blog post regarding the piece of shit infiltrator who goes by the name Khalid Mohamed I have decided to do several things with my defense that have irritated some of my close friends. I have chosen to fight these charges on a political basis as opposed to play within the framework of a system designed from the outset to criminalize political people and normalize and justify their repression. Many liberal organizations that work with me on a variety of issues were surprised that I refused to take character references to talk about how much good work I do in the community on the basis that unless they support an end to political persecution of activists they are useless to me.

The reality of the situation is that these charges that I am facing are due to the fact that I chose to write a blog based on my personal experience of being targeted for surveillance and infiltration based on the fact that my ideology is deemed “criminal” by the state because I am a proud Marxist Leninist. Everything that followed afterwards stems from this fact. To play into their game and deal with this as a criminal matter only goes to justify the narrative put forward by the crown, the OPP, CSIS, RCMP and various other police and intelligence services that make up the SIU, a police body who monitored, criminalized, and tried to contain any who chose to dissent against the 2010 Olympics taking place on stolen native land and those who chose to oppose the agenda of the G20 taking place in Toronto.

To fight this on their level means that I must accept the idea that to be political makes one a criminal, and public political people get seen as persons of interests or suspects, something I can’t accept.

To me the issue of refusing to take down my blog was a political decision based on the fact that others were intimidate by the state to shut up and not discuss what happened with the covert ops launched by the state to target, imprison and silence dissent vis a vis the g20. The reason that the state wanted to silence this has nothing to do with the safety of their operatives who testified in open court, but rather so that the people living in this territory would be unaware of the extent in which dirty tricks against political people are the norm, creating the space in which they can continue these attacks.

Every decision on dealing with this case therefore must achieve two things:

1. To expose the extent to which the state will go to criminalize political organizers;

2. Fight for our right to hold whatever political views we chose to hold; and

3. Force the state to admit the political nature of these charges, as well as the fact that those now in jail stemming from G20 related charges as well as others who are incarcerated because of their politics are not hoodlums and thugs but rather political prisoners and should be treated accordingly.

These two goals can’t be achieved in the framework set up by the system and a legal defense that negates the political nature of these charges and serves the interests of the state who has yet to admit that they hold any political prisoners.

While I am expected to play my role in their kangaroo court, holding my head in shame and being fearful and repentant, I instead chose to do the only thing that is politically and logically sound, fight these charges politically, and hold high my bright red banner of Marxism Leninism refusing to be ashamed of my ideology or politics.

When confronted by a state that attempts to criminalize and demonize people due to their politics the only solution is not to water down your politics in an attempt to appease a system whose goals is to uphold power and privilege but rather to take it head on and make the issue the criminalization of politics. I refuse to be ashamed of my ideology and I will win or lose based on that. Tomorrow in court I will show that in the face of state attack the only way forward is to resist, and I will do this as a Marxist Leninist.

Horizontal violence, political opportunism and the war on our communities

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan

On July 17th 2012, just hours after the mass shooting at a Scarborough block party that left 23 wounded and two dead, Mayor Rob Ford declared:

“Some people have suggested there is a gang war brewing. I don’t know if that’s true. But, I do know it’s time for us to declare war on these violent gangs. …We must use every legal means to make life for these thugs miserable, to put them behind bars, or to run them out of town. We will not rest until being a gang member is a miserable, undesirable life.”

Indeed there were many upset faces, repeated condolences and angry words from officials and politicians after the Danzig tragedy. The usual bad cop/good cop routine was acted out: the Mayor had his ridiculed outburst about using “immigration laws” to exile anyone with gun charges from the city, and later blubbered on about useless “Hug-a-Thug programs”; the Premier chided the statement as “short-sighted” and pleaded for a balanced and reflective approach; ‘progressive’ politicians, like Councillor Adam Vaughan, got emotional: “If…all they want to talk about is jail, they can go to hell!”

After this media charade was over, both the stick and carrot were ready for action and unanimous approval. Within a week Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, Premier McGuinty and Mayor Ford were chuckling over a table passing a $12.5 million boost to aggressive policing programs in Ontario (the stick). A month later the same provincial government unveiled a $20 million plan for youth jobs and community programs (the carrot). Both strategies serve the same wicked agenda –  exploiting blood and fear to ramp up the invasion, occupation and containment of poor and oppressed communities.

Self-destruction festers in every hood in the city, consuming African (West Indian, West African and Somali) men as both the primary victims and perpetrators. Murders this year included two people close to BASICS members past and present: 22 year-old Nixon Nirmalendran, the second target in the Eaton’s Centre shooting; and a month later 25 year-old Abdulle Elmi. It’s clear that this  needs to be called out and confronted, but it’s no mistake that the official analysis fails to trace its origin.

This level of violence emerged in the early 90’s after Toronto’s ghettos were flooded with drugs and guns over the preceding years. This coordinated process began in the U.S. in a campaign to neutralize the revolutionary Black Power movement, particularly the Black Panther Party; and while those radical forces were sparse in Canada, the potential for social upheaval was still present. That lethal flood was followed by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs with the signing of the NAFTA trade agreement in 1992, and then by the systematic stripping of social assistance and programs under Mike Harris (Premier of Ontario 1995-2002). Those cuts to welfare and other benefits have been maintained by every provincial government and political party since, and because of inflation have actually been intensified.

Blatantly white supremacist policies like the Safe Schools Act deliberately fed the violence by expelling black students, pushing them into illegal means of survival, and thereby into sharper confrontation with each other. During the eventual Ontario Human Rights lawsuit it was estimated 80% of expelled students were non-white; the majority of those being black males. This agenda continues to advance with the annual increases to the Toronto Police Service’s budget (currently over $1 billion/year), and mass incarceration with the March 2012 passing of Harper’s Bill C-10.

So the calls of “Stop the Violence” from the same political and social forces that created the conditions in the first place couldn’t be more perverse. On the ground police officers not only do nothing to prevent conflicts from arising, but often deliberately instigate tensions between youth. The hypocrisy can be seen in public discourse where the only time crime becomes an issue is when it spills over into the commercial centers of the city, or when certain bodies become targets: a white teenager on Boxing Day, a 14-year old, or University graduate at a BBQ versus the dehumanized young men “known to police”. This is not to say the system as a whole really holds any more value for  the former lives; but that their deaths allow for the whipping up of public hysteria to push through long-desired pieces of legislation and policies that people would otherwise meet with skepticism.

After Jane Creba’s death in 2005 TAVIS (Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy) introduced new levels of occupation and surveillance to the poorest neighbourhoods in the city- and has since been responsible for 4 massive paramilitary raids and 22,000 arrests. On July 24th TAVIS got approved for indefinite provincial funding ($5 million/year), along with $7.5 mil to PAVIS (Provincial Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy), its now permanent counterpart across Ontario.  Also in Danzig’s aftermath the Harper regime wasted no time in relating and promoting their proposed piece of legislation that would see any non-citizen (landed, refugee, permanent resident etc.) deported automatically after any sentence over 6 months. As for Bill C-10 –  which ends pardons, introduces mandatory minimums and eliminates conditional sentences for a number of charges – we have yet to see the real impact in part because many judges are refusing to implement it. Now the Justice Minister and other are demanding they be forced to do so.

Along with pigs and prisons there’s the carrot being dangled in front of us: a multimillion dollar social service industry. The same 2005 “Year of the Gun” saw the designation of 13 priority neighbourhoods and the injection of millions through such boards as the Youth Challenge Fund. This was parallel to police expansion that saw TAVIS deployed in the same neighbourhoods. In total $100 million has been pumped into these areas over the past six years, and despite many important projects making use of the flow, most money never reached the ground and was instead siphoned off into bureaucratic structures, poverty pimps, and spaces inaccessible to actual communities. This government-NGO complex in fact serves as another form of control: preventing independent mobilization and self-determination, reinforcing dependency on the system and illusions of its necessity and generosity. Even the limited community power created by genuine peoples’ initiatives is destabilized as successful projects get funded one year and cut the next. Any substantial discussion of violence perpetrated by the system is censored, and sponsored organizations and individuals are often forced to work directly with cops and other crooked apparatuses, like the social housing authority, Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC).  Much of McGuinty’s Youth Action Plan goes directly towards this – the ‘Youth-in-Policing Initiative’ for example, or the $500,000 ‘Safer and Vital Communities Program’ where applicants “must partner with the police.”

Horizontal violence (violence amongst the people) will only be resolved when we have real democratic control over our communities; when neighbourhoods have enough organization to solve internal strife and defend their common interests against vertical violence coming down from the state. This does not mean we stop getting every dollar, space and opportunity we can grab to advance the immediate needs of our people, including using the social service sector for employment as many mass leaders have done. But it does mean moving towards the consolidation of institutions that remain accountable only to the people and strive for self-sufficiency.

When Rob Ford declares a war on gangs he does not mean a war on the Hell’s Angels, the Mob or any of the high level syndicates often allowed to operate as extensions of the system –  sometimes with the collaboration of elements of the state. He means a war on the racialized bodies at the very bottom of the drug trade.  He means a furthering of the attack on poor neighbourhoods: heightened levels of harassment, more sweeps, new laws and packed jails. And not because they oppose smoking, dealing, robbing or shooting when the victims are almost always in the same conditions and communities;  but due to the connotation of these behaviours: disregard for the law, and more significantly, the danger of that armed force being redirected at them. And for those not connected to these areas, the G20 and Quebec Student Strike have shown that the methods of physical repression and containment usually reserved for the hood will be extended to any rebellious section of the population.

As poor, working, and progressive people we have a collective interest in recognizing and resisting this physical, economic and social attack. If this is war they are the only side fighting. It’s about time we responded.

by Ysh Cabana

The parking lane along Progress Ave. was quite wide enough to congregate local Hip-Hop artists of Filipino descent from different parts of Toronto.  Dance crews walked it out with beats by the DJ. Graphic t-shirts stood along the walls of the garage that was bombed with stickers nascent of contemporary cultural identities. Emcees took to the front of the garage their verbal front while the youthful crowd matched the rhythms with hand gestures, almost as if scratching their own records.

Such was the scene in at the last summer block party organized by Filipinas Clothing Co. (FCC), an apparel brand owned by brothers Corwin, Harvey, Nikki, and Gino Agra. The one-off event succeeded in bringing together fans, Hip-Hop artists and even passersby to raise awareness of Filipino talent and collectivity.

Beyond his signature cigar hazed and bling-pimped videos, Fenaxiz rhymes with profundity yet grounded in reality. In “White Man’s Burden,” from his album Vintage released 2012, Fenaxiz educates his listeners about material history. Referencing the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same title, he reflects on the critical aspect of the history of his people and reclaims his personal story in Hip-Hop space:

“I was lost ‘til I found my inheritance
Now I know my worth, I control the world
And this rap ain’t even scratching the surface
Of our collective experience, my peoples
We gotta match our path with our purpose…”

For some time now, for Filipino-Canadians, “knowledge of self” has come from Hip-Hop. It is arguably part of a long standing Filipino culture which can also be traced in the Ilonggos’ romantic “binalaybay,” the Tagalogs’ “balagtasan,” and the Cebuanos’ “balak.”  Its productive grammatical process is vernacular yet stemming to the Filipino diaspora.

Seeds of Counterculture

Perceived internationally as the spawning ground of Hip-Hop, the district of Bronx in New York experienced an influx of new immigrants in the 1970s. The fragile low-income neighbourhoods were gradually deteriorating because of failed urban renewal policies. Mobility went to a decline for families who faced racist and classist subsidies in favour of suburban commuter residents, majority of whom were white.  Ironically, the diverse population in housing projects later became a major indicator of ‘authentic’ Hip-Hop culture. Until the end of the 1970s, Hip-Hop and rap music were primarily localized.

In Los Angeles, many working-class Filipinos were compelled to resettle in the outer districts, where the growth of West Bay Hip-Hop was witnessed in the 1980s. Through their sense of crisis caused by inclusive corporate development, the youth of this era had found ways of naming their experience. Emcees of Filipino descent were at the forefront of local Hip-Hop scene. Among the most recognized rappers were Bambu and Kiwi of Native Guns. Immersed in the long standing and ever evolving creation of the other elements of the culture—DJing, breakdancing and graffiti writing, Filipinos proved to be part of a thriving Hip-Hop generation that is parallel with the fundamental stage of Afro-diasporic narratives.

In fact, many second-generation Filipinos have, since then, been in a sense “blackened.” The sociocultural affinities of Filipinos with Blacks have been conceivable, especially if attributed with Hip-Hop culture. “Black Asians” has been a label that is even accepted by individuals themselves leaning on either positive or negative implications. Filipinos have a diverse culture that they can hardly be narrowed down into a homogenous stereotype. Such diversity affords an individual to associate themselves to another identity with either pride or self-denial.

For Scott Ramirez, Filipino Hip Hop in Toronto has started to experience its brighter days. While in university of which included a thesis project in his senior year, he went on a mission to record the impact of Hip-Hop culture as a channel of representation and a tool to facilitate knowledge of self. In his 2011 documentary “Flip Hop: Bridging the Gap,” the emcee posited that with the growing visibility of Filipino Hip-hop, solid community outlook is somehow achieved while its members are “instilled with a sense of cultural pride and confidence”

Tales from the Flipside

Wind back to 1995, Superskillz debuted as the first local stage to showcase Filipino talent among youth organized by university-based student groups. Though its heyday has past, it would usher waves of artists who saw connections outside their cliques as a way to tap into a larger audience, hence the so-called “Rise of Toronto” of more authentic Filipino in Hip Hop swag. The “Rise of Toronto” also meant the increasing number of immigrants who brought with them the current diversity which is the highest throughout the history of the city.

By 2000s, Filipino Hip-Hop in cosmopolitan Toronto was fueled by the beef that is defined by the rivalry between groups from east and west ends of the city. The solitudes of Mississauga and Scarborough were perceived to be dissected by the downtown core. The suburbs grew as preferred residential turfs of immigrants which in turn were not distinctly concentrated because of the labour market disadvantage under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

Young Filipinos were skewed as bolshies as tensions among new immigrants and assimilated youth who were born and raised in Canada increased. Figures from statistical research found the downward trend of success for the following generation of Filipinos. With the comparative value of the category of visible minority, the ethnic group were even shown as more likely who consistently underperformed in academics.

But regardless of the deplorable environment, Filipino youth were able to adapt Hip-Hop culture from the sole Hip-Hop Filipino station in Toronto Jump Off Radio (now defunct) to Bucc N Flvr representing Canada in an international street dance championships. To artists, it has a certain appeal to be an alternative space for transformation.

This was, in part, why the newcomer Agra brothers then jumpstarted Filipinas Clothing Co. The scope of FCC’s vision is more ambitious than doing rounds in the local events scene. It is a project that aims to “find avenues that will lead to positive changes in the Philippines and to less privileged citizens.” Thus, FCC, which also means for continuous change, asserts its potential in developing a critical lens that can be utilized to not only understand the composition of the world but more significantly to re-create it.

Forward to 2011, the first Flip Dot Battle Grounds took place in Toronto—“Flip” is an obvious play on Filipino while “Dot” is in reference to the city—as an outgrowth of a burgeoning format of Hip-Hop all over the world. Rap battle is a form of emceeing where artful insults are rhymed in acapella against each of the parties. Despite the hurls of loose meter, taunting and the lack of monetary compensation, rap battles are able to magnetize audience with the use of Internet channels to gain control of cultural capital. For instance, the Philippine-based FlipTop movement even exceeded by million views its predecessors America’s GrindTime, and Canada’s King of the Dot combined. Filipinos once again pushed the gameplay a notch higher. Only then, Flip Dot is decidedly worth more than watching.

FDBG “The Video That Sparked The FDBG Revolution In Toronto” (Prelude to “The Rise Of Toronto”)

Word Up

The unity that is espoused by FCC is probably best embodied by the supergroup Southeast Cartel, which has become the preferred brand by arguably the most popular emcees in Toronto including  Tagalog-rapping Franchizze and Abstrakt of Dos Amardos, Pipoy, Dagamuffin, Biggz, Raygee and Bustarr of Sundaloz, Rydeen, and Mississauga-based Da Barkadaz. Southeast Cartel combined conventional views of Filipino with improvisation of language, either native, second language or both.

However, ifthe emergent Flip Dot culture is any indication, organizing Filipino youth still has a long way to go. Fenaxiz  speaks sincerely again in “The Real Toronto” :

“The good, the bad, the beauty, the ugly
The young, the old, the smart, the dummy
The peace, the war, the poor, the wealthy
The hoods, the ‘burbs, the sick, the healthy
The love, the hate, the true, the fake
The strong, the weak, the asleep, the awake
The success, the hustle, the stress, the struggle
It is what it is and this the real Toronto.”

In the end, it lures us to a calm compromise with “what it is,” instead of challenging the norm with what is to be done.

The challenge to forge unity among the Filipino youth through Hip-Hop is to bring forth new materials circumventing resistance against the standard notions of culture. While the more popular analyses on Hip-Hop’s origins date it back to the rhetoric of oppression caused by racial segregation, it is the understanding the axis of classes that strengthens it as a tool to deepen the lyrics and facilitate real human relations between different identities.

Perhaps the FCC block party was a swarm of Flip Dot’s finest. But for it to be a more durable performance is to spit back from Hip Hop roots of principled resistance, to put the cipher into plain text: “Makibaka! Huwag Matakot!” (Dare to struggle! Never be afraid!)

by shono

The following piece is a reflection on the June 2nd, 2012 shooting at the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto that resulted in the deaths of two young men named Ahmed Hassan (age 24) and Nixon Nirmealendran (age 22). The piece speaks to the ways in which young men with dark skin are vilified and dehumanized by the general public and the complex ways in which violence structures the lives of all of those who live in Toronto.

This weekend the heavens opened up and the city exploded in a burst of light. I’m sure it happened, the gusts of wind told me so. And of course the headlines of the daily newspaper agreed, as they swept their ominous messages across the city of Toronto. Somewhere an army of voices declared a war on blackness and violence and darkness, and the city exploded right before our eyes, and no one could do anything of it. The newspapers spoke hushed words, spreading into the minds of the people, warning the law-abiding citizens that evil lurked among us, gangs of blackness and violence in the heart of the city. The newspapers said sternly and without challenge that this evil, like all darkness, must be purged from our lives, once and for all.

However, the choruses of voices that came hurtling forth wrapped within the wind spoke stories that the newspapers would never dare to print. Stories that screamed of sadness, and urgency, stories of violent neglect and stories of a world spiraling out of control. The winds shrieked, saying that it takes a broken world, for a broken man to pull a trigger, for he is never alone, it is a collective and communal process. But the newspapers would never say this, because then we’d all realize just how accountable each one of us is. The winds implored us to remember all that we had forgotten to do. For we had forgotten to mourn the death of a man, and we had forgotten that men break when they have been broken. We had forgotten that cities and people explode when they have no other choice, and finally we had forgotten that darkness is not evil it is sacred.
And as the city exploded, the only question that most asked was, how do we keep the darkness from our lives? When instead we should have asked how have we become so far gone, that we can’t mourn the life of a young black boy killed from broad daylight, in the busiest mall in the busiest city in this country.  And as the winds thrashed the streets, and the rain soaked the people, they begged me to listen, for when the city explodes, it is always a collective process. For men break, when they have been broken.
This weekend the police were on high alert, for the newspapers assured us that explosions in the city must come from darkness and blackness. All to get blown up in bursts of masculinity – ticking time bombs, ticking time bombs. The wind warned of a danger much deeper, but the police were still on high alert searching and silencing, searching and silencing.

And I am left with a thought, a reality of this world:
“I am scared of the darkness, but the darkness is sacred.”

shono is a spoken word artist and storyteller. lost in history, he sees the need to recover forgotten words, so he writes. ([email protected])

by Carlos A. Rivera-Jones

Richard Aoki (1938-2009) was a Japanese-American revolutionary.  He grew up in a WW2 internment camp, then became a street hoodlum and was forced to join the military to clear his criminal record. He later became connected with the Communist Party, the Socialist Worker’s Party, before ultimately becoming an influential leader in the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Third World Liberation Front. These groups were critical components of the civil rights struggles in the late 1960s in the USA, and in particular the Bay Area of California, a hotbed of radicalism at the time.

Aoki’s military training, access to weapons, ethnic origin, and charisma, were critical components in the development of the practice of the Black Panthers, its views on internationalism, its views on armed struggle, and its approach to ethnic groups other than Black Americans. He helped shaped the Black Panthers into something more than just a black nationalist formation, but rather an anti-imperialist, internationalist formation.

Recently, he has been alleged to have been a long time informant of the FBI.

Aoki was a symbol of uncompromising anti-imperialist internationalism, a political line that remains as valid now as it was then, and remains equally dangerous to the State and to those that defend imperialism and oppose national liberation. On the right, the defense of white supremacy and empire is of importance, and in the left, self-ghettoization and the pacifist liberalism of identity politics find an advantage in the pushing of this myth of Aoki-as-agent. Even on the left that is not identitarian or pacifist there are already sectarian rumbles, full of the wounds of another era, that take advantage of the uncertainty to promote sectarian explanations for Aoki’s move from Trotskyism to a form of Third Worldism – a view that the revolutionary moment was focused on the peoples of the Third World.

To cast him in the light of a snitch shakes the very foundations of one of the most important, successful, and tragic examples of revolutionary organizing in the second half of the 20th century in the USA. It opens wounds of anti-Asian bigotry among Black revolutionaries, questions the internationalist instincts of the BPP, and in general pushes the ever present question of a security culture to the forefront. It also forces us to revisit COINTELPRO (a covert and often illegal program run by the FBI to disrupt radical movements), and its current incarnations as an existing force, rather than a painful memory of a long-gone era.

“Snitch Jacketing” is a classic counter-intelligence practice, in which people who are not informants are named as informants either via “leaks” or other actual informants, in order to de-stabilize the targeted individual or the targeted group. It is historically extremely effective, and hence has been used time and time again. Often the instincts of the movement are wrong: snitching is much less effective than the allergic reaction to its possibility as way to disrupt movements by causing them to self destruct. The presence of snitches is a normal part of revolutionary politics but it must not become the primary preoccupation of a movement over and above the political struggle.

Snitch jacketing, however, has been losing effectiveness because of the information society and also because it generated a culture within certain corners of the revolutionary movement in which the fear of informants is such that the State has no need to deploy it: groups perpetuate a paranoid style of politics and neutralize themselves.

The contemporary State hence has modified the age-old technique into something we can call Snitch Jackecting 2.0. It utilizes existing history to create a climate of panoptical paranoia, where people are scared into passive compliance by the state through the snitch jacketing of historical leaders.  This climate of fear and self-isolation needs to be fed from time to time with fresh kills, to keep the tree of fear and uncertainty watered.

There is good reason to be skeptical of the claims against Aoki. The evidence against him is extremely thin and entirely from FBI sources, which are hardly credible on their own. Also, in spite of ample opportunity to do so, these allegations were never made public while he was alive to defend himself. That is highly suspect in itself – in the context of escalating mass resistances in the greater Bay Area of California, the political scene in which Aoki always stood out as an icon of a certain brand of cross-ethnic internationalism. As white supremacy suffers a demographic challenge with whites becoming a minority, this is of extreme historic importance: divide and conquer is a tool of power much older and powerful than snitch jacketing ever was.

by Johnny Hawke and Richard Peters

Land claim settlements between the federal government and the indigenous Anishinabek Nations of Turtle Island are being resolved using biased colonial policies where these settler states are the judge and jury of their own crimes. The policies used to settle the land claims reflect the same injustices that are in the claims are supposed to resolve.  Unlike our ancestors we can read and write in the colonial languages and understand what we are signing and surrendering.

There are two types of Aboriginal claims in Canada that are commonly referred to as “land claims”: comprehensive claims and specific claims. Comprehensive claims (also called modern treaties) are always about rights to land. Specific claims deal with a majority of our grievances and allow our Nations to purchase private lands back from private landowners on a willing seller and willing buyer basis.  Specific claims also involve financial compensation distributed per capita to “Band Members.” The remaining dollars are usually not enough to acquire the same amount of lands that were stolen.

Why should we have to purchase our own territories that were stolen from us? Our teachings are that we are of the Earth and do not own the Earth but these lands are our territory. Just as a bear belongs to its natural territory, we have our natural habitat. The theft of our lands allowed for the imposition of colonial policies that suppressed our own forms of government as sovereign nations. In these land claim settlements there is no relinquishing of these foreign laws such as the Indian Act and the judicial system that are imposed on our nations.

Our Nations of Turtle Island have Intertribal Agreements where many nations around the Great Lakes agreed to the One Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt. This agreement established a peace and coexistence treaty that acknowledged each nation’s right to their territory. We know we don’t own the Earth and never colonized each other for territory. We made this agreement because what happens to one nation’s territory affects the others. This Agreement was forgotten as individual groups started to cede away their own territories to the settler nations without first consulting with the Nations involved in this agreement. Many land surrenders are invalid because this agreement has not been respected.

The 1764 Treaty of Fort Niagara is an agreement where our nations established an alliance with the British Crown where the Canadian state is its current representative. Our nations and the Crown accepted a nation-to-nation relationship rooted in a policy of peace, non-interference and coexistence. When the Crown breaches this Agreement, which ultimately legitimizes their presence on this Continent, every one of their laws becomes invalid.

If we as Anishinabek Nations believe one does not sell or own the Earth and at the same time believe that we need to walk in both a mainstream and an Anishinabek world how do we then accept the benefits from selling our share of the Earth to survive in the mainstream capitalist world yet expect to distinguish ourselves as a distinct Nation with a belief system that connects us to the Earth?

My community has accepted $307 million settlement surrendering our traditional territories. I, along with my brother, opted out of this illegal process and have repossessed a traditional gathering place that now sits in a provincial park, a place interwoven in the Six Nations and Ojibway Friendship Belt. A Nation is not a Nation without a connection to the Earth and a Territory to feed its own people. Like a bear I will die fighting to protect my territory and way of life. No surrender!