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

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 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.

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.

[Editor note: this article was originally posted on venezuelasolidarity.ca. The Spanish version follows.]

by: Juana Cabezas

Over 50 people convened in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwood Park, site of a bust of South American Liberator Simon Bolivar, as an expression of solidarity with the Venezuelan people and with the Bolivarian Revolution.

In a recent meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, a grouping of continental Left parties and movements calledthe Sao Paulo Forum issued a call for international solidarity for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution to take place around the birthday of Simon Bolivar.  The forum also called for more expressions of solidarity and the combatting of a decade-long media campaign against Bolivarian Venezuela that have looked to topple President Chavez and reverse the gains made by Venezuelan people in their political process.

The event included words from Nery Quintero of the Gran Polo Patriotico-Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (GPP-PSUV) in Toronto, as well as greetings from Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Toronto, Martha Pardo.  Numerous participants also read short statements of solidarity, with others reading passages and quotes from Simon Bolivar.

Pablo Vivanco, Barrio Nuevo delegate before the ‘Avanzada Bolivariana campaign’ urged participants to join the campaign especially in the lead up to the October 7th Presidential elections in Venezuela.  The Avanzada Bolivariana and PSUV in Toronto will be working to produce materials and other information in order to show the tremendous social, political and economic gains Venezuelans have made and the dangers that are threatening to undo these.

Open letter from Jane Finch Action Against Poverty (JFAAP) to the Toronto Police Services Board

July 24, 2012

Attention: Toronto Police Services Board
40 College Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5G 2J3

Chair and Board Members;

We want to bring to your attention some very destructive activities by Superintendent Dave McLeod of 31 Division. On Friday, June 8th 2012, the Jane Finch Crisis Support Network convened a meeting of its members at Black Creek Community Health Center, Yorkgate Mall. This is a network of agencies and engaged residents who work together around issues of safety in our community. This was a regular monthly meeting.

Superintendent David McLeod of 31 Division arrived at this meeting. He had not been expressly invited; however, it was assumed that he had been passed on the invitation from a member of the police from a meeting held the previous week. The agenda was set and there were multiple opportunities and offers to people present to add items to the agenda. Superintendent McLeod did not add anything to the agenda.

What followed was a traumatic event for all those present. Superintendent McLeod hijacked the meeting with his own agenda item. He repeatedly verbally attacked the meeting’s chair, Sabrina (Butterfly) Gopaul, calling a quote from her in an interview with the Boss Magazine, “borderline criminal” behaviour.  Ms. Gopaul had stated in this interview that what she was most passionate about making happen in the Jane-Finch community was “a community led resistance against the police and working towards global comradeship against the austerity knife.”

Superintendent David McLeod was severe, unrelenting, and intimidating in his manner. Members of the network at the meeting stated on several occasions that this was inappropriate, that this was not the space or time to have this discussion, and that he should stop pursuing this topic, but he continued.

When members stated that she had a Charter Right to freedom of speech, he responded that as a community leader, she did not have that right. He then attempted to tell the group how to do their work, that they should not support Butterfly or this position on the police. In spite of the group’s opposition to his position, he continued to repeat himself.

In spite of his inappropriate behaviour, the other members remained calm, attempted to redirect the conversation, and tried to handle the matter professionally. This did not stop the superintendent, but it did stop any productive discussion. Many members left the meeting when the Superintendent refused to back down. He denied that he was being intimidating even after members had left the room and several others were crying.

Eventually the meeting was adjourned as the chair had no choice but to leave, the network was unable to do any of its work, and everyone there expressed that they felt intimated and bullied.

The actions of Superintendent McLeod at this meeting and at least one other community meeting has shown clearly that he has no understanding of the damage that he is doing in the community. He clearly does not understand the legal principles involved in the Charter of Rights. He demonstrated the lack of skills and professionalism in dealing with the community and he misused the authority and privileges that our city has given him that allow him to have a badge and carry a gun in our neighbourhood.

We believe that your officer, Dave McLeod, is improperly employed in the position of Superintendent of 31 Division or any other similar positions and demand to see him removed from that position as soon as possible.

Background: Ms. Gopaul and many others have seen numerous problems with the police service in our community. We have seen a number of cases where there have been no consequences for officers who abuse their authority on the streets, in their cars and in the station. The result of this has been emotional scaring, lack of trust and resentment towards the police and, in some cases, like Junior Manon,

death. We see our youth afraid to walk the streets of our communities
because of the racial profiling activities of your officers.

Thank you for taking all these serious concern and our demand into
your prompt consideration. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Jane-Finch Action Against Poverty (JFAAP)

janefinchactionagainstpoverty@gmail.com
Jfaap.wordpress.com
416-760-2677

TORONTO – Following the heartbreaking events this past Monday in Scarborough that saw two young people killed and more than 20 injured, Filipino and Latin American groups in Toronto are responding by expressing solidarity with those impacted and calling for an end to violence in our communities.

“Community gatherings are meant to bring neighbors together, building stronger more unified neighbourhoods.  No one should have to fear violence on their own streets and in these type of atmospheres,” said Chris Sorio, Secretary General for MIGRANTE Canada. “We want to express our solidarity with that community, with the families of Shyanne Charles and Joshua Yasay and everyone that was impacted.  We need to work together as communities to end violence in and among our streets.”

The groups are also condemning the political opportunism of Conservative Politicians, particularly those of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney who suggested that immigration is to blame for these killings.

“For Conservatives Politicians to exploit the tragedy of the Danzig shootings to further their agenda against immigrants is beyond reprehensible”, said Pablo Vivanco, coordinating committee member of Barrio Nuevo. “Mayor Ford and Minister Kenney are not only insulting the majority of Torontonians who are 1^st of 2^nd generation immigrants, but more importantly they are defiling the sorrow of the families whose lives were forever changed by this senseless act of violence”.

To date, no one has been charged for those killed and injured.  There is no indication that the shooters were immigrants.

The groups are calling for communities to express themselves against these baseless, racist and dangerous comments that look to scapegoat immigrants for the emerging problems in our society.

“What’s needed is unity among our communities and real solutions.  Instead of trying to scores points with cheap political trickery and sound bites, politicians need to prioritize social spending and ensure that youth have meaningful jobs and opportunities,” said Sorio.

“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,” said Vivanco.

Contact info:

Barrio Nuevo - [email protected]

MIGRANTE Ontario - [email protected]

Review by Noaman G. Ali / Photos by Steve da Silva

Rating: 4/4

Last week I sat in a meeting called by a councillor in one of Toronto’s “priority neighbourhoods,” populated by immigrants and working-class folks.

He talked about how the police run drop-in programs for youth so that they can get to know them, and keep an eye on them, so that they can easily question youth about other youth who they are running with and get them to snitch.  When these youth grow up and maybe get into trouble, police will know who they are beforehand. The youths will be “known to police.”

“Known to police” is a phrase that gets tacked onto mainstream media reports about a lot of crime and violence. “Known to police” is supposed to mean that the persons involved were already suspicious, shady, irresponsible to begin with. Isn’t this what they said about Ahmed Hassan after he was shot dead at the Eaton Center on June 2, or Nixon Nirmalendran, who died of his wounds over a week later?  Maligned, not mourned.  What the media didn’t tell us was that one of the main reasons Nixon was known to police was for witnessing Alwy Al-Nadhir’s murder at the hands of police on the night of October 31, 2007.

For those of us who don’t live the daily reality of police terror in this city, Jane and Finch’s resident people’s theatre troupe, Nomanzland, offers us a glimpse into what it’s like to be “known to police”:

It’s about neighbourhoods that are systematically ignored, neglected and oppressed. It’s about youths who have no job options, even when they get university degrees, because of their race and class status in a system where there’s a lack of jobs overall. It’s about families trying to make ends meet and build community in difficult conditions. It’s about politicians and developers trying to make a quick buck off of the land on which poor people live through “revitalization.”

And it’s about treating children and youths as criminals or potential criminals — about dealing with problems through racist and oppressive policing rather than through building communities and providing opportunities to the people there.

‘Known to Police’ doesn’t try to hide any of the problems of the hood. It lays them out for us to see — it revolves around two beefing youth, Dante and Kelvin, who are involved in criminal activities. But it also shows us the lived realities of the peoples involved, and that the problems aren’t with individuals but with the system that they live in.

We meet a group of women who are organizing against politicians’ and developers’ attempts at “revitalizing” — that is, gentrifying — the neighbourhood. We meet an OG revolutionary who resolves the beefing and seeks to unify the hood to build a revolutionary movement. We meet mothers who are single-handedly raising their families and keeping their kids on the right track. We meet people who tried to escape the violence of their homelands (caused by Canada and other Western powers’ imperialism) only to find themselves facing violence in the hood.

We see the cops killing yet another youth in the hood, and getting away with it – a likely reference to Junior Manon’s murder on York University campus on May 5, 2010.  We also meet an undercover cop entrapping youth in a web of violence by selling them the same guns that they’re banging out on each other.

All of this is put in the context of world revolution — the uprisings of working people in Egypt and Tunisia are our backdrop. Rhymes, raps and songs are dropped throughout the play — all of them written by the actors themselves. And the acting is amazing, it’s easy to forget that we’re watching a play. (No doubt, because so many of them are from the neighbourhood.)

The play was raw enough to provoke an older, white audience member to ask which parts of the play are based on actual events? “All of it. All of it” – answer a number of cast members, almost in sync.

In the end, the youth of Nomanzland tell us that there are no easy solutions to the problems — and that we certainly can’t rely on politicians of any party. Instead, just like the peoples of the Arab uprisings, communities have to organize to build self-reliant organizations and build their own power to take on the cops, the politicians and developers.

They tell us that we need a proper revolution.

Known to Police was performed at the Young People’s Theatre, June 15-17. Hit up Nomanzland and get them to perform the play in your hood.