Police are taking lessons from the British occupation of Northern Ireland, and applying them to poor communities in Southern Ontario. This is the chilling conclusion of BASICS Kitchener-Waterloo’s research into the new PAVIS (Provincial Anti-Violence Strategy) model being deployed in Kitchener.
PAVIS supposedly focuses on crime prevention and building relationships with youth and mobilizing communities, however, it is actually about using counter-insurgency tactics to police communities in Canada.
In November, Kitchener community activist Julian Ichim attended a conference held by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD)—a body which is supposed to investigate complaints about police. Yet, the main purpose of the meeting was for OIPRD to promote a community policing model based on counter-insurgency techniques. Expert speaker, Dr. Webb, claimed that this model of policing is effective in Northern Ireland.
At a conference that was supposed to ‘consult’ with the community, Ichim says “Half the delegates walked out in disgust at their voices being silenced.”
The OIPRD is an allegedly independent body from the police force. But the board doesn’t seem to have much independence: “It’s funded by the government, and one out of every two people who works there is an ex-cop,” Ichim said.
Kitchener’s PAVIS is basically the same as Toronto’s Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS). This is a model of intensive police repression on targetted poor and racialized communities which has been used for the past few years in Toronto. It also resembles the model of counter-insurgency policing that Dr. Webb was referring to at the OIPRD conference.
Last year, a Toronto a police superintendent attended a Jane and Finch Crisis Support Network meeting to intimidate the community. The group’s purpose is to discuss police brutality and safety in Jane and Finch—a working-class area in Toronto and designated TAVIS area. At the meeting, the police officer verbally attacked the group’s chair, Sabrina ‘Butterfly’ Gopaul, and many community members were forced to leave the meeting visibly upset.
Similar encounters have started to occur during meetings on police brutality in Kitchener. Dianne, an activist, recounted: “We had a call-out for people to go to the Queen Street Commons [generally a safe haven for organisers] for people to talk about their experience with police brutality. The Police came right in, tried to chat people up, and took our fliers.”
Kitchener-Waterloo is not taking PAVIS laying down: fighting back is the priority for this year’s annual day against police brutality.
Joey, a coordinator of the March Against Police Brutality, said, “Our focus this year is to release a People’s Report in response to the OIPRD report.”
The people’s report will be a consultation not run by OIPRD police sympathizers. The community is also planning a protest on March 15—the 16th annual International Day Against Police Brutality.
“Our main mission is to raise awareness of how much police brutality there is and how very little is done about it,” Dianne, one of the coordinators said.
At last year’s anti-police brutality demonstration in Kitchener, police used horses to push the crowd, including young children, off the public road.
Kitchener-Waterloo’s 3rd annual March Against Police Brutality will take place on March 15, 5pm at City Hall. All are welcome.
by Laura Lepper
For information about the March 19 court support for Francine “Flower” Doxtator click this link.
In March and July 2013, two Six Nations women Francine “Flower” Doxtator and Theresa “Toad” Jamieson will be dragged through the Canadian courts once again for their defense of their nations’ lands. These women, along with other Six Nations land defenders, have consistently maintained that the Canadian courts do not have jurisdiction over Haudenosaunee peoples.
As these Haudenosaunee land defenders face the courts, they assert that the courts violates both the Two Row Wampum treaty and the rightful law – the Great Law of Peace – of the stolen land on which the courthouse stands. Toad stressed on December 12th, 2012 to the courts: “I don’t accept your law…See this Two Row wampum flag? There’s supposed to be separate ruling.”
The charges against Flower and Toad stem from the provocations of anti-Native rights activist Gary McHale and the Ontario Provincial Police on the reclaimed land of Kanonhstaton located just outside of Caledonia, Ontario. Kanonhstaton means “the protected place” in Kanienkehaka, the Mohawk nation’s language.
In 2006, Haudenosaunee people of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory reclaimed land in “dispute” for more than 150 years in order to stop development of a Caledonia subdivision on stolen land.
In reaction to the reclamation, Gary McHale and his followers, under the name of “Canadian Advocates for Charter Equality” (CANACE) set about a political movement against “native lawlessness,” “land claim terrorism,” and “race-based policing.” CANACE played a leading role in trying to establish a “Caledonia Militia” to stop land defenders.
Throughout the past year, several land defenders have faced charges and legal restrictions that have kept them from the reclaimed land of Kanonhstaton. Several of these charges have come as a result of provocations stemming from McHale’s incursion into Kanonhstaton. On February 18th, 2012, escorted by OPP officers, McHale instigated conflict by marching towards the house on the reclaimed land; and on July 7th, McHale tried to grab onto land defender Sean Toulouse to place him under “citizen’s arrest.” As Toulouse pulled back, McHale called for the OPP to charge Toulouse with assault, which the OPP did. This whole act can be seen on a YouTube video posted by McHale’s organization.
Throughout September 2012, McHale and his followers repeated this charade in order to criminalize more land defenders. Gary McHale was recently nominated by the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation and awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal.
As part of a campaign to resist the racist criminalization of land defenders and the fight for Indigenous land rights and sovereignty as asserted by the Two Row Wampum, the CUPE 3903 First Nations Solidarity Working Group (Toronto), the Two Row Society (Toronto), Friends of Kanonhstaton (Niagara) and Grand River Indigenous Solidarity (Kitchener-Waterloo) organize a strong supportive presence each time that Flower and Toad face the courts.
Criminalizing land defenders, disobeying treaties and violating Indigenous land rights is essential to the vested interests of the Canadian state to remove all obstacles to the exploitation of Mother Earth and her people. McHale’s actions attempt to further pave the way towards this goal.
Uniting our struggles in defense of Indigenous land rights and the Two Row treaty builds powerful resistance to this goal of capitalist exploitation. Building a supportive force at each court date is one part of the relationship building, education and actions of resistance necessary to build the movement.
Join us for a rally, round dance and court support for Flower on March 19th at the Cayuga courthouse, and later in July 2013 for Toad.
About the Author: Laura Lepper is a non-Indigenous member of the Two Row Society, based on Haudenosaunee territory in Brantford, Ontario.
This is an update about Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, a prisoner activist and intellectual who is currently in a dire situation in Snake River Correctional Institution in Oregon.
As was reported last week, Rashid has been in the midst of a health crisis for almost a month now, which has included periods of severe disorientation. For a time he was refusing to eat or drink; as far as our most recent information if concerned, he is currently accepting liquids but still not eating.
Rashid has spent most of his adult life in prison, and almost all of that time has been spent in various isolation units. This is a direct consequence of his actively resisting abuse from prison guards and their lackeys in the 1990s, and to his continued political writing and exposing conditions in America’s carceral nightmare ever since. A New Afrikan Communist and the founder and Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Prison Chapter, Rashid is also a longtime mentor to several activists (and, through his writings, other prisoners) in Virginia, and in recent years has gained national attention as the result of the publication of his book Defying the Tomb, and the use of his artwork in numerous progressive publications. Most notably, Rashid is the artist who designed the drawing used as an emblem during the historic 2011 California prisoners’ hunger strikes, in which over 12,000 participated.
Rashid is a Virginia State prisoner, yet in 2012 the situation at Red Onion State Prison (where he had been held in solitary for years) escalated, with certain guards singling him out for abuse. In one harrowing incident, he was beaten while in handcuffs, which left him with a dislocated shoulder several of his dreadlocks torn out from the roots (as reported here). This attack came shortly after he wrote an article exposing a pain-compliance technique used at Red Onion which involved twisting prisoners’ fingers back, leading in some cases to broken bones. Subsequent to this assault, he was transferred to Wallens Ridge prison where he was informed by guards that he “would not leave the prison walking” (as reported here).
It was following exposure of this set-up, and numerous phone calls and petitions from outside supporters, that Rashid was transferred across the country, to Oregon. This transfer was possible due to an American practice of some States agreeing to imprison people from other States, essentially renting out their prison cells for one another. Upon his arrival in Oregon, Rashid was placed in general population – the first time in almost twenty years that he had not been in solitary confinement. Nevertheless, after just a few months, his work educating other prisoners in revolutionary theory and the principles of solidarity led to his being transferred to Snake River’s Intensive Management Unit, a prison within a prison on the border with Idaho in Oregon’s remote south-east corner.
Outside supporters do not know the precise details that led to Rashid’s current health crisis, periods of disorientation, and refusal to eat food. However, we have no doubts about the general circumstances that led to this situation. Rashid is one of roughly one hundred thousand prisoners in the United States being held in isolation, or solitary confinement. He is also one of a much smaller number who has spent decades of his life in such conditions. This despite the fact that studies have shown that “There is not a single published study of solitary or supermax-like confinement in which nonvoluntary confinement lasting for longer than 10 days, where participants were unable to terminate their isolation at will, that failed to result in negative psychological effects. The damaging effects ranged in severity and included such clinically significant symptoms as hypertension, uncontrollable anger, hallucinations, emotional breakdowns, chronic depression, and suicidal thoughts and behavior.” (Craig Haney, University of California at Santa Cruz)
In the words of Chad Landrum, a communist prisoner in California’s notorious Pelican Bay SHU:
Social intercourse with others is a necessity to feed, clothe, shelter, and procreate, in order to perpetuate our species. Seeking out the company of others is a genetic drive programmed within our DNA, and in the process of social intercourse, our personalities as distinct individuals is shaped and molded, giving us our identities. To socially isolate and deprive us of social contact is to dehumanize us and destroy our identity as distinct personalities. A life of both social isolation and sensory deprivation is an unnatural state of existence artificially imposed upon a essentially social animal. Such conditions of social isolation amounts to nothing less that “social-extermination”—keeping us alive biologically as living, breathing, empty vessels, devoid of all social content—a socially engineered lobotomy. (Chad Landrum, “The Final Hour”)
Solitary confinement or isolation torture may seem like some barbaric custom imposed out of ignorance or sadism. However, the fact of the matter is that this form of confinement was developed by a multidisciplinary effort of psychologists, neurologists, penal authorities and counterinsurgency experts, all with the goal of developing a form of “clean torture” (i.e. one that does not leave physical marks), the ultimate aim being to break political prisoners and others with beliefs that run contrary to the established order of things. Solitary confinement cannot be understood without appreciating this ultimate goal. In Europe research into isolation torture was pioneered in experiments on political prisoners from groups like the IRA and the Red Army Faction. In the United States, solitary confinement was identified as an important aspect of the government’s behavior modification program targeting prison rebels, and most especially Black prisoners, as early as the 1960s. In 1990, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Anthony X. Bradshaw, Malik Dinguswa, Terry D. Long, Mark Cook, Adolfo Matos and James Haskins authored a study entitled “A Scientific Form of Genocide” which continues to provide one of the best available political analyses of penal counterinsurgency in the United States. As they noted, in the 1960s and 70s,
the government became concerned about group control inside the prisons, and to address this concern the government resorted to the use of psychological warfare. Consequently, prisoners of strong religious and cultural beliefs who had organized prisoners to resist and those prisoners who put up independent resistance were singled out and met with extreme oppression as the targets of experimental behavior modification.
We submit that Black people were in fact the first experimental targets of group behavior modification. Furthermore, current data and statistics on the prison situation support our contention that Black people inside the state and federal prisons today remain the prime targets of the government’s program.
The authors of this study exposed the fact that as early as 1961,
a social scientist named Dr. Edward Schein presented his ideas on brainwashing at a meeting held in Washington, DC, that was convened by James V. Bennett, then director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons Systems, and was attended by numerous social scientists and prison wardens. Dr. Schein suggested to the wardens that brainwashing techniques were natural for use in their institutions. In his address on the topic “Man Against Man,” he explained that in order to produce marked changes of behavior and/or attitude it is necessary to weaken, undermine, or remove the supports of old patterns of behavior and old attitudes. “Because most of these supports are the face-to-face confirmation of present behavior and attitudes, which are provided by those with whom close emotional ties exist.” This can be done by either “removing the individual physically and preventing any communication with those whom he cares about, or by proving to him that those whom he respects are not worthy of it, and indeed should be actively mistrusted.”
Dr. Schein then provided the group with a list of specific examples as to how to break prisoners, including physically removing them to isolated areas, segregating natural leaders, systematic withholding of mail, undermining emotional support, preventing prisoners from writing mail, and several other similar recommendations. While it can be assumed that Schein’s brainwashing prescription has been modified and perfected over the past fifty years, anyone who takes the time to learn about conditions in America’s isolation wings and supermax units will recognize that the basic approach remains the same.
Prisoners like Rashid, who have shown a willingness not only to resist but also to reach out to other prisoners and develop strategies against their ongoing oppression, are the prime targets of such behavior modification regimes. To once again quote A Scientific Form of Genocide:
The penal system is designed to break minds, to create warped and aberrated personalities, and isolation and sensory deprivation play a most singular and unique role in this.
In general, all prisoners are targeted. Even the staff themselves become victimized by the same system they blindly seek to uphold. You cannot dehumanize people without yourself becoming dehumanized in the process. Yes, all prisoners are targeted, and the harshness of their treatment varies only in degree with the most severe treatment being meted out to those with some political consciousness or to those who are in prison for political offenses. They concentrate extra hard on the political prisoner because the political prisoner has the clearest understanding about the true nature of things, about the exploitative relationships that prevail. Accordingly, they concentrate extra hard on the political prisoner because she or he has the greatest potential for awakening and organizing the rest of the prisoners.
So, isolation and sensory deprivation have always played a unique role in the government’s perennial war on the political prisoner. Through isolation and sensory deprivation, through being confined within a limited space, through the denial of privacy, lack of natural light and fresh air, through the lack of intellectual stimulation, lack of comradeship, through the lack of undisturbed sleep, lack of proper health care, lack of educational and recreational outlets—the lack of these things that contribute to fueling life reduces one to an existence of lifelessness.
This is war. This is a war of attrition and it is designed to reduce prisoners to a state of submission essential for their ideological conversion. That failing, the next option, in deadly sequence, is to reduce the prisoners to a state of psychological incompetence sufficient to neutralize them as efficient, selfdirecting antagonists. That failing, the only option left is to destroy the prisoners, preferably by making them desperate enough to destroy themselves.
The unit where Rashid is being held officially embraces its vocation within the kind of behavior modification/brainwashing program described above. According to an April 17th, 2003 memo, the Snake River Intensive Management Unit “by design is not long-term housing. IMU houses inmates to provide programming toward behavior modification and to prepare them for return to general population.” However, the human rights group Solitary Watch has received the housing history of one IMU inmate who spent 12 years in isolation before being sent to an out-of-state supermax unit. In other words, Rashid faces the equally dehumanizing alternatives of a “behavior modification” program to break him, or else years or decades under conditions designed to produce psychological distress. Such a faustian choice is not a bureaucratic accident or the result of the prison officials’ ignorance, it is the logical and scientifically developed conclusion to Schein’s brainwashing proposals adopted by the Federal BOP in the 1960s.
As such, to deny Oregon and Virginia DOC’s direct responsibility for Rashid’s condition is tantamount to the prison administrators throwing someone into a swimming pool with hungry sharks, and then claiming that it’s the sharks and not them who are responsible for what happens next.
Snake River Correctional Institute is a full day’s drive away from Portland, and Rashid has no established base of supporters in Oregon. When the alert went out last week about his situation, there was a wave of support, in the form of phone calls to the prison and to Oregon DOC officials. This was very useful, and helped to make it clear to the prisoncrats that people are watching, and their actions against Rashid cannot be carried out completely in secret. A lawyer managed to speak to Rashid for over an hour on February 23rd, and ascertained that he is aware of the support and appreciated it, and that his chief problem at the moment is that he does not have easy access to his mail or to his personal belongings, including his books.
According to an Oregon DOC spokesperson, Rashid is only given access to his mail for a few hours each evening as part of a program of “incentivizing to improve behavior” – when asked if this meant that good behavior would be rewarded with more access to his mail and “bad” behavior with more restrictions on it – the answer was “exactly”. So even according to Oregon DOC’s own spokespeople, limiting access to mail is being used as a form of punishment.
The same Oregon DOC spokesperson described the Snake River Intensive Management Unit where Rashid is being held as a place with “different depths of programming”, as “behavior based” and all about (as above) “incentivizing to improve behavior”.
Behavior modification amounts to an assault on a person’s psychological integrity, as their environment and their conditions of life are manipulated in order to mould them into submission. As Rashid himself has described what it is like to me targeted for this kind of brainwashing:
[The IMU is] a housing status that lasts from seven months to indefinitely, during which a prisoner must pass through four levels – which requires that he reveal his every thought to his torturers.
Those housed in IMU who receive rules infractions are automatically placed on level one for a month, which is even more restrictive and extreme in sensory deprivation than DSU housing. And for every infraction he then receives, his level one assignment is extended. Such conditions often put prisoners struggling to maintain their sanity in a catch-22, where coping prompts resisting their torturing confinement, and that very resistance prompts infractions which intensify and prolong that confinement. (“Oregon Prisoners Driven to Suicide by Torture in Solitary Confinement Units”)
Perversely, this kind of abuse is rationalized by Oregon DOC’s spokesperson as a way to minimize the effects of isolation torture. As was explained in a recent phone call to a supporter, “there’s a lot of discussion in Oregon and nationally about the use of isolation or solitary or whatever one wants to call it” and as a result Oregon DOC “made significant changes to our philosophy; we try to limit the use because we know it can have impacts”. The idea being that the IMU will mould prisoners into compliance, and then they won’t have to be kept in isolation!
Already in November, Rashid wrote a report on conditions at the Snake River IMU, in which he related how prisoners were regularly driven to self-destructive behavior as a result of the conditions of severe isolation, bordering on sensory deprivation, that they are forced to suffer. “In 22 years of imprisonment, I have never seen such a consistently high and continuous series of suicide cases,” he wrote.
(Rashid’s report on the Oregon IMU is well worth reading, and provides a much more detailed and specific information than the present article can. It is available on Rashid’s website at rashidmod.com)
Rashid’s recent period of intense distress is clearly a result of the conditions he is being subjected to. In the immediate short term we need to demand that he be transferred out of the IMU and that he be given access to his personal property and mail. Beyond that, we need to demand that units like the IMU be closed down, permanently.
In the meantime, one of the best things people can do is to write to Rashid. Even if you have never written to him before, or if he does not know you and you don’t know what to say, a simple letter or postcard expressing your solidarity and concern for his well-being may be of help. If he is able to receive his mail, such support will constitute a crack in the wall of isolation they have erected around him – and even if they keep his mail from him, they will be aware of the support Rashid enjoys and the attention being paid to his case, and this will hopefully constitute a deterrent to any further abuse.
Rashid can be reached at this address:
Kevin Johnson #19370490
S.R.C.I.
777 Stanton Blvd.
Ontario, OR 97914
Always put a full name (not initials) on the return address; otherwise your letter may be rejected. Similarly, do not write anything you would not want the prisoncrats to see, as it is assumed that all mail is read by guards as a matter of course.
by Makaya Kelday
New York –It was an especially frigid February afternoon in lower Manhattan, as our crowd huddled outside the Cinema Village theatre awaiting our entrance to see the new documentary, Long Distance Revolutionary, about Amerika’s most famous Political Prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The film, directed by Stephen Vittoria and produced by Prison Radio director Noelle Hanrahan, opened the night before to a sold out showing. This was the
Graphic by revolutionary prisoner Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson, Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party
first run of a tour that includes L.A., Seattle, Calgary, New Orleans, Miami, and your city if you request it.
Though the seats were full people continued to file into the theatre, leaving only a small area in the back for standing room that was soon taken up by the petite frame but enormous spirit of Pam Africa, along with her entourage. It was a family affair indeed, as Ramona Africa entered behind her, along with some children of the MOVE family. It’s only fitting that after all the support Mumia has given the MOVE family throughout the continued incarceration of nine family members, and the bombing of their Philadelphia home in 1985, that they would continue to support him, not only by heading up the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal committee, but also attending, coordinating and/or speaking at all events held on his behalf (see article from 2008 by BASICS with Ramona Africa).
The lights dimmed on the crowded theatre and our conversational murmurs turned into boos and laughs, and one chant of “Free Palestine!” as the big screen before us ran a Starbucks ad, which was then followed by a Target commercial that garnered a similar crowd reaction. Ironic ads for an event such as this one, but they somehow served to unite the audience, as we turned to our neighbors to share our laughs and/or disgusts, and reminded us that we are all here for the one common, broader cause of justice, and more specifically, to support Brother Mumia.
Long Distance Revolutionary distinguishes itself from previous documentaries about Mumia, In Prison My Whole Life, and A Case for Reasonable Doubt because it doesn’t focus at all on Mumia’s legal case, and instead follows his career as a journalist. From his teenage years as the Minister of Information for the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party, to his broadcasts at Temple University, to a journalism career that includes work for NPR, the Associated Press, a presidency at the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, and ultimately from behind bars, from where he has written seven books and thousands of commentaries. The film features the likes of Angela Davis, Cornell West, Dick Gregory, Alice Walker, M1, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and many other speakers who share their thoughts on Mumia’s work, as well as a group of young artists, writers, actors, and activists who recite excerpts of some of Mumia’s pieces throughout the film. Director Stephen Vittoria uses no frills or fancy effects, and no convenient editing, which allows Mumia’s poignant and thoughtful words to speak for themselves.
Rather than continue to allow their incarcerations to define them, we are made to remember that our political prisoners were accomplished men and women in all different areas of life before they got to where they are today. Like Mutulu Shakur who is a celebrated doctor of acupuncture, and as Sundiata Acoli is a gifted mathematician, Mumia is a brilliant journalist whose work has rendered him exiled on Amerikan soil. And after watching Long Distance Revolutionary, though it does not go into his case details whatsoever, it is clear that Mumia’s choice of weapon – his words – is really what the system sought to kill.
But after 30 years on death row (last spring Mumia was moved to general population) the system has still failed to silence him. We hear his voice on rap records, see his name on French streets that have been named after him, and find his image on t-shirts worn by his supporters that claim residencies from Canada to Japan to Germany to South Africa.
Long Distance Revolutionary is just in time to parallel the new “Free Mumia in 4” campaign, and will become an important piece of modern revolutionary history, documenting one of our heroes of the struggle, a revolutionary writer by the name of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
For more info go to www.mumia-themovie.com.
Light refreshments will be provided
ASL and child care will be available. Please email [email protected] 48 hours before the event if you require these services.
PLEASE NOTE: there are two series of steps into the building. A ramp system is available. Washrooms are in the basement down a flight of stairs
Hosted by the Law Union of Ontario’s Prison Justice Committe
http://www.facebook.com/#!/
Help promote the event: Omnibus Crime Bill Event Poster in PDF
by Louisa Worrell
Wednesday, November 14th at about 6pm in front of Concordia University, over 100 people gathered in protest of the intense air strike of the Gaza strip by the Israeli military. This scale of attack has not been seen in the Occupied Territories since Operation Cast Lead in 2008 with its 1,300 dead, and 53,00 injured.
The Montreal protest had been called hours earlier by the Concordia chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). Police vehicles blocked off the road and the entire block ahead of the protest. This effectively cut off the large group from the bystanders and people in their cars. This tactic of seperating and isolating protests and their message from the general population was also used during the Tamil occupation Rideau street in Ottawa during the 2009 attacks of the Sri Lanken government on the Tamil population.
The bi-lingual group began marching through Montreal’s downtown core, chanting «Israel Terroriste! Harper, complice! », «From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! » and other chants in Arabic. The cold air did not deter the group, whose voices echoed down St. Catherines’ business district, bouncing off the walls of the multinational corporation Chapters-Indigo, a company that actively participates in funding and promoting the Apartheid State of Israel.
Once arrived at the Square, a woman from SPHR spoke about the importance of standing up to this military operation and how the head of Hamas’ military branch, Ahmed Jabari, was killed along with 26 other people (primarily civilians). Tadamon!, a Montreal based group that organizes in solidarity with Palestinians, has called for a larger demonstration on Sunday. On Thursday, the Human Sciences Student Association at UQAM (AFESH-UQAM) voted unanimously in a general assembly to support this call.
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
Aftermath of the Eaton Centre shooting (Photo by Andy Miah/Flickr)
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.
Abdulle Elmi (Photo by Shafiqullah Aziz of BASICS Community News Service)
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.
Nixon Nirmalendran, 22, was the second person targeted in the Eaton’s Center shooting on June 2nd, he died of his injuries nine days later. A resident of Regent Park, he witnessed close friend Alwy Al Nadhir being executed by a Toronto Police Officer in 2007. Since that time the state consistently targeted him for imprisonment. BASICS members remember Nixon courageously standing up to the police lawyers at the 2009 inquest into Alwy’s death , despite facing charges himself.
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.
Rest in Power to all the victims of Horizontal and Vertical Violence! (Pictures of some of this year’s deceased)
by Natasha Brien
On August 10, 1974, a prisoner by the name of Eddie Nalon died after bleeding to death in the segregation unit of Millhaven Maximum Security Prison in Kingston, Ontario. Systemic issues of unjust prison policy, and abuse of power, were deeply entangled in the cause of his death.
Mr. Nalon initially wanted a transfer to another unit. After officially requesting a transfer, he was instead placed in segregation, and eventually solitary confinement. Mr. Nalon made a written request to be placed back into general population, which the board approved; however, this decision was not conveyed to Mr. Nalon.
When August 9, 1974 arrived – the ninth of the month being the standard transfer date to be released into general population – and he wasn’t moved, Mr. Nalon must have assumed he would be left in segregation longer, and that his request was denied. The following day, Mr. Nalon committed suicide. It was later discovered that the emergency button in his cell was non-functional, thus any attempts to call for help, would have likely gone unheard by prison guards.
Every year since his death, August 10 is the day when Mr. Nalon’s life is commemorated; and has eventually this day coming to be recognized as Prisoner’s Justice Day (PJD). On this day, inmates and their allies in Canada and throughout some U.S. states, protest the mistreatment of men and women behind bars. Supporters of PJD express abhorrence for inhumane prison conditions, as well as mourn the deaths of countless people who have lost their lives while in custody or through conflict with the law. Prisoners remain in their cells for the day, fasting, and refusing to work, while non-incarcerated people hold gatherings in many cities across Canada and the U.S.
The theme of Toronto’s 2012 PJD, was ‘Women in Prison’, which took place at the Church of the Holy Trinity behind the Eaton Centre. Brampton also held a PJD that took place in St. James the Apostle Church with the theme being ‘We Will Be There for You’. At these two community gatherings, loved ones of inmates, ex-prisoners, activists, and concerned organizations partook in fasts, presentations, songs, poetry, viewing documentaries, and readings of stories from former inmates.
What really stood out, was the common theme that most imprisoned people come from various communities struggling to rise above oppression – poverty, systemic racism, childhood abuse, spirit injuries via colonialism, gender injustices etc. – only to enter into further institutional forms of violence via incarceration. Aside from extreme lateral violence amongst inmates, correctional institutions have also been guilty of violating the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) code of conduct.
A well-documented example of prison violence is evident in the case of Ashley Smith – a woman who died in solitary confinement at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in October 2007. Some may say that Ms. Smith killed herself: the immediate cause of her death came through self-asphyxiation, as guards watched the incident take place. But Ms. Smith had been transferred between institutions seventeen times already within the year, having been pepper sprayed, tasered, subjected to full body restraints, involuntarily injected with anti-psychotic medications, and spending most of her last three years in “the hole” (solitary confinement). It’s hard to imagine how anyone could survive such conditions.
During the evening of the 2012 PJD in Toronto, a vigil was held outside of the Don Jail to protest the experiences people like Ms. Smith endure. People took to the microphone to share personal experiences and statistics surrounding these shameful conditions, and the dangers involved in expanding prisons, as well as creating harsher criminal laws. The crowd yelled in unison messages of support for inmates in hope that men currently in the Don Jail – and ghosts of men and women who have passed – would know they are not alone. The vigil concluded with a candle lighting ceremony, honouring our fallen brothers and sisters, and those still in the prison struggle, while putting out a call for the implementation of restorative justice everywhere.
by Tony Couto
In the immediate aftermath of the July 16 shootings on Danzig St. in Scarborough, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford took the airwaves on AM640 and in his predictably racist and idiotic style pledged “to find out how our immigration laws work” so he could expel those convicted of gun crimes in Toronto: “I don’t care if you’re an immigrant or not, if you get caught with a gun, I want to find out the legalities of are you allowed to stay here or are you not… I’m sure it falls under some sort of immigration law.”
Ford’s remarks would have been laughable were they not echoing the disturbing trend of the Federal government to link crime (speciously) to immigration. Take for instance Federal Bill C-43, what is being called the “Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act”. If passed, this legislation would allow for the deportation of any non-citizen who has received a sentence of six months or more for any crime carrying a ten-year maximum sentence, beefing up the Conservatives’ anti-immigrant and anti-refugee arsenal of laws.
Harper and Ford in front of a Parm Gill sign, the MP who introduced the private member’s bill that would make it a crime to recruit someone to a “gang”.
Ford the anti-tax crusader also seized upon the Danzig incident as an opportunity to express his opposition to social programming: “I don’t believe in these programs – I call them hug-a-thug programs.” So, the users of community arts and sports programs in Toronto’s designated “priority neighbourhoods” are all thugs? Ford continued, “[these programs] haven’t been very productive in the past” – arguing through assertion not reason –“and I don’t know why they are continuing with them.” Ford routinely uses the popular appeal of his anti-tax cause – a major factor that got him elected – to attack social spending and attack unions. But when it comes to police spending, however, Ford’s City Hall has no problems throwing billions into the law-and-order abyss.
The official police budget for 2012 was previously projected at $936 million; but as Ford began demanding of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty extra funding for police as advisor close to Ford revealed that that Toronto is already spending closer to $1.2 billion on policing. On July 23, McGuinty technically declined Ford’s request for $5-10 million to fund new officers, but he did the next best thing for the pro-cop agenda by pledging to permanently fund the so-called Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) to the tune of $5 million a year. McGuinty made himself more palatable to the public than Ford by paying some lip service to social programming and taking a more “balanced approach” to gun violence. But McGuinty’s announcement for the fast tracking of $500,000 through the so-called Safer and Vital Communities Program is not a counter-balance to the more-cops approach: it’s a extension of it.
To receive grants through this program, organizations and agencies must be willing to work with the police. This funding criterion will exclude all those organizations that acknowledge police brutality and profiling/carding in the “priority neighbourhoods” as a serious problem and are unwilling to collaborate with the police as a condition for the provision of social services.
While in Toronto for his July 24 meeting with Mayor Rob Ford at the ‘Gun Summit’, in addition to talking up Bill C-43, Harper defended his general ‘law and order’ agenda: defending elements of his Omnibus Crime Bill that judges have deemed unconstitutional or in violation of the Charter; and promoting a private member’s bill, C-394 (Criminal Organization Recruitment), recently introduced by Conservative MP Parm Gill of Brampton-Springdale. Gill recently said of the proposed legislation that “Criminal organizations today are targeting youth under the age of 12 and as young as 8 years-old to participate in criminal activity… There is a dire need to protect our communities from those who prey on innocent and vulnerable individuals.” What’s objectionable to this bill is not only the provision of the police and the courts with yet another law to criminalize youth; but its emphasis on petty criminal enterprises (would anything but a petty criminal enterprise recruit an 8 year-old?) when there exist much bigger players behind the guns and drugs game.
In a joint public statement from Toronto-based Filipino and Latino community organizations concerning events in the wake of the Danzig shootings, Pablo Vivanco of Barrio Nuevo raised this exact point: “We also need to start asking where these guns are coming from, who is bringing them into this City and why. These youth are not making or smuggling guns, so we need to acknowledge that there are bigger things at play and target the real players in this morbid game.” In this whole debate on gun crime, the giant elephant in the middle of the room that the media, police, and politicians are refusing to acknowledge is the role played by larger criminal syndicates – nothing short of a conspiracy of silence.
The influence of organized crime in Canada has been hitting the headlines in Quebec in recent months with a public inquiry exploring the links between the construction industry, the mafia, and Quebec’s political parties. The assassination of a series of major mob figures in Montreal has also in forced the issue of organized crime back into the mainstream. But are illegal donations to political parties and unfair public contracts the worst of it for the mob these days?
Then there’s the vast network built up by the Hell’s Angels over the last decade. It’s no secret that the Hell’s Angels – on the surface an all-white biker club – fronts for a large criminal network embedded within and around it.
Considering the very existence of large criminal enterprises like these, it isn’t a quantum leap to the arrive at the conclusion that there must be greater forces behind the guns and drugs flooding into and fracturing working-class communities in cities like Toronto. Yet it’s in our communities where the policing and criminalization is concentrated and where the violent scramble for market share plagues youth gang culture.
That impoverished racialized communities end up experiencing the bulk of the violence should come as no surprise when we analyze the socio-economic reality we’re left with: a shrinking pool of jobs for youth and their parents; rising tuition fees of post-secondary education (not to mention the alienating experience of racist curricula and administrators in high schools); rising costs of living; cuts to social programming; and the broad criminalization, profiling, and discrimination of racialized youth that push many out of the job market to begin with. Now throw into this mix of desperate circumstances the prospect of making a quick buck in the petty drug trade made possible by larger criminal syndicates reaching down into “priority neighbourhoods” for candidates to move their product, and what you get is a violent scramble for market share and domination. The big gangsters are getting paid behind the scenes regardless of the violence happening on the ground; and this violence gives the cops a cause for crusade, the politicians an election issue, and big capitalists a sense of security that the armed apparatus of the state is getting stronger and stronger at a time when the masses of people are getting poorer and more desperate.
The tragic shootings on Danzig St. on July 16 should definitely have us asking questions about violence in our communities and searching for solutions. But these questions, and the answers that must follow, are not the ones being posed by Rob Ford, Dalton McGuinty, Bill Blair, and Stephen Harper, these enemies of the people who are exploiting the Danzig tragedy to beef up police forces; peddle their racist, anti-immigrant, anti-people, and anti-social policies. These policies are not solutions to gun violence and crime: they’re desperate measures to stabilize a decaying capitalist society by dividing and containing the people.
The question that remains is how much the law enforcement agencies and politicians actually know about the relationship of larger criminal enterprises to the guns and drugs in our communities. Just for the record, that’s not an appeal to power: it’s an indicment of it.
