This article is reprinted with permission from the Red Sparks Union 

In early August a massive tailings pond at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley copper and gold mine burst. The Secwepemc, the Xatsull and Esketemc Nations in the Cariboo region of BC immediately mobilized as the toxic waste spilled through their territories. Further north, in the Klappan region, members of the Tahltan nation went into action. It is here that Imperial Metals’ Red Chris mine – with an even larger similarly-flawed tailings pond – is under construction in a pristine area known as Tl’abāne, the Sacred Headwaters of the salmon-rich Stikine, Nass and Skeena Rivers. Sacred fires have been lit, resistance camps built, and various direct actions taken against both mining operations.

The Klabona Keepers, an organization of Tahltan elders and families, hold the Tl’abāne central to their food sustenance, traditions, and inter­generational teachings. Their 2005 blockades nixed a Shell fracking plan in the Klappan area. But the mining and oil/gas capitalists keep coming with government approval of LNG projects and an open-pit coal mine in the area.

The Mount Polley disaster was no “accident.” There is growing evidence that lax government inspection and years of corporate greed allowed massive waste dumping and environmental cost-cutting while workers’ warnings of cracks in the dam walls were ignored. When the tailings pond breached, people in the region mobilized to preserve traditional ways of living on these lands.

The Yuct Ne Senxiymetkwe Camp was established as a monitoring checkpoint at the entrance to the Mount Polley mine with the strong support of the Secwepemc people, the elder’s councils, the Ts’ka7 Warriors, as well as environmental activists and local residents. Clearly, the company’s clean-up efforts have made little progress. Even BC’s Environment Minister acknowledges the company has done less than two percent of the clean-up.

Heavy metals continue to leach into Quesnel Lake raising concerns about more damage with the spring break-up.

Within days of the August disaster, the Klabona Keepers set up a blockade at Red Chris Mine, hoping to prevent a similar catastrophe. When the Tahltan Central Council (TCC) and Imperial Metals came to an agreement for an independent review, the blockade was temporarily dismantled but was re-established at the end of September. Imperial Metals got an injunction and began pressing for arrests.

Though they have been arrested before, the Klabona Keepers took down the blockade to avoid that trauma of further prison time, and have been fighting the injunction ever since. This legal battle has been difficult as they’re up against corporate lawyers in a colonial court in far-away Terrace. The company has also managed to stir up division amongst the Tahltan nation. Two hundred members of the nation have been employed in the construction of the mine, and Imperial Metals is pressing for permits to begin operations by January, promising more jobs. The TCC has intervened against the Klabona Keepers in the injunction proceedings.

Meanwhile, the BC government has hampered an investigation of the disaster, failing to release records. Notably, billionaire and Imperial Metals shareholder

Murray Edwards was a fundraiser for Clarke’s re-election campaign. Both the Liberals and NDP say they won’t block Imperial Metal’s application to re-open Mount Polley, claiming the mine’s operations will pay for the clean-up!

The Klabona Keepers don’t trust the company or the government – and for good reason. “Imperial Metals has showed to us a lot of lies” says one of the grandmothers fighting for the land that has sustained her people for many generations and is their main source of food and cultural sustenance.

The Klabona Keepers are asking for solidarity, time and donations so that they can defend the land for their grandchildren. Their call has been answered by many, notably Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq Warriors (fighting fracking), Unist’ot’en Camp (standing against several pipeline projects) and Madii Lii camp (resisting LNG expansion.) Meanwhile, on Burnaby Mountain, five women were recently arrested opposing the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline and “in solidarity with the Klabona Keepers.”

By: Aiyanas Ormond

 “Don’t kick us when we’re down,” said Susan Aleck, standing in front of the provincial courthouse in Vancouver. “Let us get up and make ourselves better. Give us some space.”

Aleck is one of four members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) who, with representation from PIVOT Legal Society, are challenging street vending bylaw tickets on the grounds that the bylaw violates their constitutional right to ‘security of the person’.  This past Tuesday, September 23, B.C. provincial court Judge William Yee upheld the bylaw, delivering a big f-you to poor people and telling them that they have ‘other options’ even though each of the four had testified in detail that vending used goods was the best of a bad list of options available to them at the time they were ticketed.

VANDU has had a campaign against the use of bylaw ticketing to criminalize poor people and people who use drugs in Vancouver since 2009.  In that year, in the lead up the Olympics, the Vancouver Police Department went on a ticketing blitz, giving out more than 1400 tickets (normally a years worth) in a matter of days in the Downtown Eastside.  These tickets were for offenses like jaywalking, vending, public urination and riding a bike without a bell.  The targeted nature of the ticketing, the fact that people on welfare would never be able to pay them, and the reality that bylaw tickets can very easily turn into a warrant and jail time – usually for failure to appear for a court date – made this campaign a high priority for VANDU members.  VANDU took Political action, including shutting down a City Council Meeting, and forced the City Prosecutor to eventually scrap about two-thirds of the tickets.  But the pattern of criminalization has continued as the VPD use bylaw tickets to target, harass and criminalize poor people in the Downtown Eastside.  Churning poor people through their oppressive containment system also keeps police busy over-policing the community, justifies the inflated VPD budget and fills the new semi-privatized provincial remand centre.

As part of the campaign VANDU has: completed a major study on pedestrian safety in the neighbourhood and won a 30km speed zone on Hastings; helped launch a community controlled Sunday street market that has run for several years; exposed that 75% of all jaywalking tickets and 95% of all vending tickets are handed out in the Downtown Eastside; picketed City Hall and protested in Vancouver Police Board meetings; conducted a participatory action research report on lack of access to toilets in the DTES which the City paid for but would not publish; held a hot seat meeting with a City Councillor and 100 VANDU members; and made mass visits to the Mayor’s office.

The tactic of a legal, constitutional challenge to the vending bylaw was only one component of multi-faceted strategy, but the outcome is instructive. Basically, the decision makes it very clear that class war from above – starvation level welfare rates, gutting of social programs, criminalization of poor people’s survival activities – is both legal and constitutional.  In fact, we should expect less and less room to maneuver within the legal system.  The neoliberal containment state – the strengthening of the legal, police and prison apparatus of repression – is not an optional policy of neoliberal capitalism, but a necessary complement to the rising rate of economic exploitation inherent in neoliberal economic policy.  The judiciary, far from being independent, is profoundly implicated in (and shaped by) this process and ultimately will conform with the governance strategy of the ruling class.

This is why VANDU understands the ‘ticketing campaign’ as existing within broader campaigns against criminalization (‘Homes Not Jails!’ and ‘No More Drug War’) and those campaigns as only components of still broader project of drug users liberation which itself intersects with struggles against colonialism, racism and capitalism.

Louise’s video interview can be found here. See a previous article on this issue.

“The Vancouver Police Department went on a ticketing blitz, giving out more than 1400 tickets (normally a years worth) in a matter of days in the Downtown Eastside” PHOTO: VANDU

If you roll along the curves of 6th line following the flow of the Grand River you will come across two of the three sites where the Six Nations Farmers Association (SNFA) has planted community white corn that is ready for harvest.

Arthur Porter of the Oneida Nation and head of the SNFA shares, “the field, that’s down on River Range Road is the one that was planted later, and it’s actually good right now for ceremony. It’s good if somebody’s going to make green corn”.

The SNFA invite all Six Nations community members to visit any of the three growing sites and pick your own white corn that’s ready for harvest.

The sites are located at:

1. West of physical locator # 3202 on River Range Road
2. South side on 6th Line West of Chiefs Wood Road near physical locator # 1593
3. North side on 6th Line West of Chiefs Wood Road near physical locator # 1593

Porter explains, “we’ve been growing white corn consistently for a few years to help our community and the elected system has been kind enough to fund the projects, and we try to grow around 20 – 25-acres. So we have quite an anchorage there”. In speaking to the Two Row Times, Porter muses that, “we get a lot of good reports, people stop and compliment us on what we are doing. Sort of helps us to know that we are doing something good for the community. It takes a little bit of work, a little bit of time and land, but it’s good. We want to give back to the community, that’s the goal here”.

Fellow member of the SNFA, Ralph Sowden of the Mohawk Nation adds that “we didn’t just start it a few years ago, us guys [SNFA] have been doing it for quite a few years. It’s been 10-15 years that AJ Farm’s has been doing it. And the Band Council has just pitched in the last two/three years to help us to do the buying of the corn, [mostly] the seeds [because] the seeds are expensive”.

In exploring the reasons behind why this project was started and taken up by the SNFA, Mohawk and Turtle clan member Ruby Jacobs, who is the SNFA’s Secretary and Treasurer explains, “a couple of years ago there was no white corn; a shortage that stimulated a concern across the community and the farmers felt it and wanted to do something”. Further, Porter iterates, “in one of our meetings it was discussed how we could start to put something back and we started farming it [white corn] as a group in the Farmers Association. And it just kept going from there and we want to keep it going. We want to have corn available as long as we are farming. It’s a staple for our community and to give back that way is great”.

When asked about what are some of the challenges about getting the community white corn project off the ground, Porter shares “weather is the biggest part in growing anything on the farm…and we’ve had children ride through our crops, like ride through the corn. There’s been quite a bit of damage down there where they went through. It’s sort of picked up this year for some reason. We have worked with the police to get into the schools to tell the children, DON’T RIDE IN THE FIELDS!”

Farming along with stewardship of the land and care for community for each Porter, Sowden, and Jacobs has deep cultural and family roots. Porter emphasizes, “I think when you’re a farmer, an old school farmer I’d say, you want to help your neighbor, you want to make sure they have enough. If it’s white corn or extra potatoes you pass it on”. To that Sowden highlights, “I guess it’s just a community thing…There aren’t many people who want to help as it’s dollars that you see today, and there’s isn’t dollars at the end of the row I’ll tell ya…It’s got to be a community thing, help one another out.” Jacobs reflects, “because I came from a farm, I really understand the importance of that way of life, in order to sustain your family, community, yourself and the Haudenosaunee culture, the way of life of the Haudenosauee people”.

The SNFA, along with the community white corn project has plans of expanding their work and impacts in the community. Porter divulges, “we’ve been working on plans to get land to store our own grain, which would be better than taking her off the territory, plus a cold storage facility. Somebody would raise eggs; raise chickens, so we would have our own chickens, either way. There’s no reason in the world why we shouldn’t have our own….we’ve got some plans in the works. It’s just going to take a little time to get it, but hopefully before Ralph and I hang up our pitchforks. We want to have something in place for the next generation to carry on.”

SIX NATIONS – Late Friday, Two Row Times learned that the CAS and McMaster Children’s Hospital are seeking a push from the courts to forcibly return Jada Johnson into chemotherapy. The 11-year-old female from Six Nations was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in August.

Initially the CAS did inform the child’s mother Deneen Hill, that they had no issue with her decision to seek a holistic hybrid method of Ongwehowe Onongwatri:yo and other alternative therapies as treatment for Jada. This form of treatment will also be monitored by doctors.

However now sources say an unnamed third party is involved in bringing the CAS to court to order the child be put back into chemotherapy.

If the court makes that decision, it would violate Articles 10 & 24 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; that indigenous people cannot be forcibly removed from their lands without free and prior consent, and the right to use traditional medicines and health care practices without discrimination.

After completing 11-days of a 32-day round of intense chemotherapy, the child’s mother stopped the treatments because Hill says her daughter was experiencing severe reactions to standard chemo. That is when Hill opted to end chemotherapy and brought Jada home to instead start a traditional indigenous treatment program combined with other alternatives.

When Hill announced she was pulling Jada from the chemo treatments, CAS was contacted and they initiated a family visit.

Hill previously told the Two Row Times that CAS had no issue with her decision since she is willing to be cooperative with the hospital and a doctor from McMaster who would be tracking her progress. However now the CAS and McMaster Children’s Hospital are bringing the issue to court this Monday.

This is the second child from the Six Nations/New Credit community to have an ALL diagnosis and who reacted badly to standard chemotherapy treatments given at McMaster Children’s Hospital.

Earlier this year, Makayla Sault, also 11 years old, endured 11 weeks of chemotherapy at McMaster Children’s Hospital and endured severe side effects. After being informed by doctors that it is known that  First Nations Children don’t fare well in chemo, Sault’s parents pulled her from chemo in favor of treatment through Ongwehowe Onongwatri:yo medicines and alternative therapies. A decision that the New Credit Band Council and other band councils across the country supported. A large gathering of indigenous people from across the province also organized, the Makayla Defense Force, who said they were ready to peaceably ensure that the child would not be removed from her territory.

Sault’s parents previously told the Two Row Times that a doctor at McMaster told her that anyone who tells them indigenous medicines work “should be thrown in jail.”

The Sault family was also threatened by personnel from McMaster Children’s Hospital with CAS enforcement, being told that if they did not keep Makayla in treatment that CAS would be contacted and that they would likely remove all three of their children.

Eventually the CAS did become involved, however, they did not have objections to the child being treated with indigenous medicines while being monitored by the family’s physician.

The CAS called a public meeting official where they publicly apologized to the Sault family. The Sault’s also received a letter of apology from McMaster Children’s Hospital earlier this summer.

Sault is now healthy and has returned to school. She continues to receive indigenous medicines to support her immune system and keep her healthy.

Within the Six Nations/New Credit communities the rate of cancer survivorship in after utilizing an holisitc indigenous method of treatment for is high. However because it is considered traditional knowledge, practitioners choose not to put their patients through analysis and judgement by an external scientific review – one that is founded on studies that scrutinize data to establish proof.

This is in contrast to the indigenous perspective which has known thousands of years of experiential proof and knowledge via oral history.

This foundational difference has created a rift – specifically in treating children with cancer. While adults have the freedom to choose the course of treatment, hospitals in Canada who feel that a child is not being provided with what they percieve as proper treatment for illnesses must report the family to the CAS.

This article was originally published in the Two Row Times. 

By: Aiyanas Ormond

On Tuesday, September 16, about 30 people picketed St. George’s, an elite private school in Vancouver.  The picket, organized by Grassroots Women comes after more than 2 weeks of school closures as teachers in B.C. have been on strike.

St. George’s is the most expensive private school in the province with tuition ranging from $15,000 to $20,000 for non-boarded students and upwards of $50,000 a year for boarded students.  The school boasts of its small class sizes, extensive supports and extracurricular programs, the exact things that public school  teachers are saying are under attack with declining funding in B.C. public schools.

Grassroots Women, a working-class and militant women’s organization active in Vancouver since 1995, called for the picket to expose the fact that St. Georges also receives significant public funding, and to make the connection between the increasing number of students enrolled in publicly funded private schools and the economic starving of public schools, especially in working class neighbourhoods and communities.

“We’re picketing this school because, even though the tuition here is more than the annual income of tens of thousands of B.C. families, this school is subsidized from the public purse,” said Grassroots Women member Martha Roberts.  “They receive 35% of the funding a public school would receive, per student enrolled – millions of dollars annually.  And yet the sole purpose of this school, which is evident in reading any of their materials, is to replicate the economic power and class privilege of the families who can afford to send their kids here.”

It also happens to be the school where B.C. Premier Christy Clark sends her son.  Her support for education privatization goes beyond her own personal preference though, British Columbia subsidizes private schools in the province to the tune of $300 million annually and has the highest number of children enrolled in private schools per capita of any province.  B.C. also has the highest child poverty rate in Canada.

On the morning of the picket, the Province and teacher’s union announced a tentative agreement in contract negotiations that have been ongoing since public school teachers were left without a contract before the end of the school year of June 2013. “The union mounted escalating stages of labour action starting last April in an attempt to get movement from the employer at the bargaining table. After three weeks of rotating strikes, teachers launched a full-scale walkout about two weeks before the end of the last school year,” according to the Canadian Press. Thus, being on strike since the beginning of the current school year.

But the picket organizers were very clear that the issues of school privatization will not be resolved by a new contract for teachers.

“The public funding for private education is going to continue after this strike,” said Grassroots Women member Suzanne Baustad.  “What we have is an increasing two-tiered system, one that is based on reproducing the next generation of bosses and bureaucrats on the one side, and workers on the other.  This conflict really isn’t about government and teachers – its a class conflict, and redistributing resources from public to private schools is an attack on working class women and children.”

The action was the target of a significant online backlash, both from St. George’s parents, as well as from public school teachers and supporters, who were worried that militant action would “damage the teachers bargaining position.” An interesting reminder of how taboo it remains to engage in class conflict outside of the mediation of the State or the carefully scripted and managed collective bargaining process.

The picket that was organized by Grassroots Women in front of St. George’s Private School to protest education privatization. PHOTO: AIYANAS ORMAND

August 25/2014
In this feature interview we talk to inmate Ryan Jordan about systemic racism, racial discrimination, racial divides between administration and inmates and a racial division between who gets privileges and who gets punishments within Canada’s “Correctional Institutions”. Incarcerated since 2003, Jordan speaks from his experiences as a grievance clerk for other prisoners, as well as from his own experiences launching a number of legal challenges against the prison system and its administrators, the most recent of which in April 2014 was concluded in his favour at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Ryan Jordan is currently serving a life sentence and is currently institutionalized at Collins Bay minimum security

Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/basics-news/interview-with-inmate-ryan-jordan-a-grievance-clerk-for-his-fellow-prisoners

Interview with inmate Ryan Jordan – a grievance clerk for his fellow prisoners. Photo: Huffington Post

He looks straight into the broken night sky and whispers almost silently “there are prophets on every corner. They come alive when flares light up the night. There are prophets in every suburb. They find their voice when police hurl death sentences into megaphones. There are prophets in every tragedy. They present themselves at the exact place where the guns of white power empty themselves into the darkness.”

And god knows on nights like these, there is no sleep to be found amidst the chaos of a young boy’s mind. But he holds himself pure, he has been here before, seen this cycle on cynical repeat for far too many lifetimes. He wanders out into the summer night and curls up beneath an oak tree in his backyard. He presses the palms of his feet and hands into the burnt summer grass, asking for any reminder that life still lives here. He feels the roots dig into his back. Images of Malcolm and Barack and the Unnamed Ever-present Face of Whiteness fall through his mind, all men, all with a cold gaze fixed on their face. Their appearance is punctuated by the steady rhythm of 7 bullets. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. They play on constant loop in his mind, like a sinister track that he could never quite get out of his vision even if his life depended on it. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. These explosions set the pace for a crooked dance to which amerikkka marches onward, forever. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Forever, at least in their eyes, as the conquest is never finished. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Nevermind, in another world these bullets could be nothing else but seven pristine wake up calls, clear reminders of the places we were never supposed to go. But not here, not in this world, not in these suburbs, these rude interruptions serve no such clarifying purpose. Young boy, wide eyes, searching in the dark, he knows that bullets like these will fall as silently as toxic snow on the pale sleeping ears where old money rests, just down the street.

The young boy drifts into a temporary sleep, the type where nothing is reconciled but at least his mind is permitted some freedom to roam outside of this physical world. He awakens just as the morning begins to show its first signs of itself. He jumps, forever cautious of the light. He remembers that the ways in which the bright artificial rays will come to reveal his body have nothing to do with neither justice nor consent. He pulls himself up from the ground, moving with the precision of a soldier and intention of a god. His gaze cuts through the known, insisting that those who meet his eyes are ready to dive into a different world. He feels larger than life, fleetingly ready to take on a people that seemed so intent on his own extermination. And finally, he lets the shots of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 fade from his mind as he turns out onto the main intersection in front of his house.

Before him there is a peculiar silence that speaks like muffled screams. He is here, at the uneasy resting place that occurs between battles. However, there is nothing to signify an end to the war. The world stretches out in front of him, kept warm by the towering streetlights. The police are gone and the protesters have taken refuge in the early morning.

He stares straight past the concrete, and whispers almost silently “there are prophets on every corner. They come alive when flares light up the night. There are prophets in every suburb. They find their voice when police hurl death sentences into megaphones. There are prophets in every tragedy. They present themselves at the exact place where the guns of white power empty themselves into the darkness.”

Jeff Tanaka is a writer, spoken word artist and storyteller and works for the Asian Arts Freedom School in Toronto.

By Tascha Shahriari-Parsa

Participants setting up for the Rally on July 27, 2014 to commemorate the anniversary of the Komagatu Maru.

On May 23^rd, 1914, the Komagata Maru steamship arrived in Vancouver with 376 passengers who were fleeing India. There were already over 2000 Indians living in Canada, primarily Punjabis, who faced blatant discrimination. Due to racist government policies to keep out the so called ‘brown invasion’, the passengers of the ship were not let off, and the Komagata Maru was forced to return to India by the Canadian government. 20 of the passengers were killed upon arrival by British colonialists’ bullets.

That was the ‘old Canada’. Now, one hundred years later in what we might consider the ‘new Canada’, people of different nations, led by the Indian community, stood together on July 27^th, 2014 in Vancouver to commemorate the anniversary of the incident. It wasn’t, however, a passive commemoration. It was not the kind of commemoration that merely acknowledges the barbarity of the past and takes an idle stance on the present. It was not only a day to reflect on the racist government policies of the past, but also a day to connect them with the present. It was a day for marginalized and oppressed communities to voice resistance against the racism that is integral to colonialism and imperialism and the power of oppressive classes today, both in Canada and around the world.

Just over a hundred years ago, the Continuous Passage Act of 1908 was one of the discriminatory laws passed by the Canadian government, a law that required all immigrants to travel to Canada in an uninterrupted journey. The law made it extremely difficult for Asian immigrants to enter Canada, since most trips from Asia involved stops, and actually made it impossible for Indians to enter Canada as immigrants since there were no steamship lines that provided direct service between India and Canada.[1] To combat this blatantly racist law, Baba Gurditt Singh Sandhu led the journey of the Komagata Maru ship to challenge the act.

“Going a little further back in time,” spoke Lakhbir, from the Ghadar Party Centenary Celebrations Committee and the East Indian Defence Committee, “we can see that the economic hard-ships and social desperation that the Punjabi farmers faced due to increased taxation by British Colonialists on farmers forced them to flee the hell of colonial rule to look for better work opportunities. As the British subjects began to arrive in regions like Canada, part of the British Common Wealth, the Immigration laws became more and more discriminatory against the ‘undesirable ones’. The excuse given by the then Government was to avoid conflict between locals and immigrants, because locals feared job loss to immigrants.”

Lakhbir, from the Ghadar Party Centenary Celebrations Committee and the East Indian Defence Committee

 Thinking back to this incident, it is important that we do not see it in isolation, but rather understand that racism is and has always been inherent in the settler colonialism on which this country was founded; the appropriation of land and rapid accumulation of capital that once funded the British Empire and now serves the Canadian imperialist ruling class would not be possible without this racism.

If we think back in time to 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, the Europeans immediately began their plans to subjugate the Indigenous people. “They ought to make good and skilled servants…” Columbus writes early on, “With 50 men, you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished,” he said. This was a war of conquest, pursued with racist justifications for the purpose of economic domination. Merely 4 years after Columbus’s arrival in the island of Hispaniola, shared by the modern day Dominican Republic and Haiti, half of the 8 million Indigenous peoples on the island were dead. In the coming decades, this genocide spread through Mexico, Central America, and Peru, killing tens of millions of indigenous people, arguably comprising the most devastating holocaust of history.

The Europeans did not simply arrive in North America for the purposes of settlement – the indigenous peoples were enslaved, forced to work on their own land to grow crops for Europe or extract silver and gold through perilous mines – very similarly to the British occupation of India and the imperialist ventures that continue to exploit the Indian people today. Racism was so vital to this exploitation that it became in and of itself part of the rule of law: racism that has managed to exist independently of economic incentives and racism that has itself governed the nature of society.

Evidently, the refusal of the Komagata Maru very much fits into this legacy of racism. As Lakhbir continued, “On the other hand there were 400,000 immigrants admitted to Canada from Europe in 1913 alone: a figure that remains unsurpassed to this day.  One wonders then, if this was really not an act designed as a policy to keep Canada ‘White’?  One of the most important reasons was certainly, as we strongly believe, the initiations of National Liberation aspirations and fervour amongst Indian people. The heroic legacy of Indian People in resisting occupation and embarking on the liberation struggle, soon after the occupation was complete, is known to the world. The great Ghadar movement of 1857 is also known as last battle of resistance against occupation and first battle for National liberation. And the 1857 Ghadar rebellion has since inspired, generation after generation of Indian people to wage pitched battles against unjust rule.”

That was the old Canada. What about the new Canada?

As if to make us certain that racism persists today in the policies of our governments, the Federal government of Canada recently passed Bill-C24: The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act. This is a Bill that is so illegitimate that it violates International Law on Citizenship. Now, the citizenship of a person born in Canada can be revoked if they are thought to be able to claim citizenship in another state through one of their parents – even if that person has absolutely no connection to their parent’s country. What might merit such a revocation? The criteria is membership in “an armed force of a country or as a member of an organized armed group and that country or group was engaged in an armed conflict with Canada” or engagement “in certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada”.

The wording of this bill is so vague, who knows what could constitute “actions contrary to the national interest of Canada.” What is the national interest of Canada, and who decides it? ; Certainly not the indigenous people whose interests are completely ignored by the colonial government. Rather, the decision is made by the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, on paper, without a hearing of any sort; The minister merely provides a notice of intent to revoke Citizenship, allows for a letter in response, and then makes a decision. Not only that, but the minister must have only “reasonable grounds to believe” that a person possesses or could possess citizenship to another country in order to deport them – someone who is incorrectly perceived to hold citizenship elsewhere could become stateless, breaching article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bill C24 has been part of a long line of actions, taken by this government, to persecute the very same people who are fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in Canada. In 2012, the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act made it so that any group of refugees coming to Canada without papers, by boat or air, could be detained for up to a year without any form of judicial review. The Immigration Minister also brought forth a racist list of 27 nations that he deemed to be ‘safe countries’, making it so that Roma people fleeing persecution from Hungary would have no chance of being accepted as refugees in Canada. In the same year, the conservative government also cut health care for refugees, depriving them from life-saving medication, until the Federal Court struck down the government’s changes in July of 2014.

These racist policies of the Canadian government show that even the thin veil of ‘democracy’ that exists is being taken away – or perhaps its inexistence is becoming clear. People sometimes believe that we have democracy because of the court system, as we have the right to a fair trial and that the rule of law governs over them with justice; but as the capitalist crisis has hit post-recession, the state can’t even afford to put on a facade of democracy anymore. We see this with the stripping away of social programs, the implementation of brutal austerity measures, and bills like C-24.

Thus, while we commemorate the anniversary of the Komagata Maru, it’s important that we do not make the mistake of believing that racist government policies are a mere thing of the past. They have been ingrained in our system since the inception of our settler colonial state and they continue to persist today. The Canadian government has left us with nothing other than what the East Indian Defence Committee considers the “eye-wash politicsof Apologies”: what good are apologies for racist policies of the past when equally racist policies are being enacted in the present?

A placard reads “Down with Policies of Apologies”.

“Welcome to the new Canada,” said Aiyanas Ormand, a writer for BASICS, on behalf of the International League of People’s Struggle and Red Sparks Union, “Sadly, it is very much like the old Canada that so ruthlessly turned away the Komagata-Maru.”

 “We urgently need to build an alliance of oppressed people capable of not only waging powerful defensive battles, but also of linking with the revolutionary movements developing in the global South and of fighting for social transformation here in the belly of the beast,” Aiyanas continued. “We need an alliance of Indigenous peoples, people of oppressed nationalities, and the super-exploited multi-racial working class organized on a firm basis of anti-racism, anti-capitalism, women’s liberation and internationalism.

 “The positive Komagata-Maru legacy has been the role of the South Asian community, in Vancouver,  leading many very important struggles for social justice, and in linking us here to the great movements of the subcontinent for national and social liberation. Today, we should all commit to carrying on this legacy until this rotten racist patriarchal imperialist system is finally overthrown.”

 Therefore, let us stand for the legacy of the ship, and actively fight against racism and all other forms of oppression in the spirit of its passengers.

 The Komagata Maru rally was organized by the Ghadar Party Centenary Committee and supported by International League of People’s Struggles, No One is Illegal, Red Sparks Union, and the Revolutionary Student Movement. The following resolutions were also unanimously adapted:

1. This rally resolves to dedicate itself to the memory of the Passengers aboard Komagata Maru, who endured ugly unwelcoming gestures upon their arrival in Canada, inhuman conditions while they awaited their fate in the waters of the Burrard Inlet, and death for 20 of them (a miserable life for the rest) on return to India.

2. This rally resolves to call upon people to unite and fight against all the anti-people laws, such as Bill C-24, being enacted and enforced to devastate people’s lives. It further calls upon people to stand united and vigilant against the recurrence of Komagata Maru-like incidents.

3. This rally believes that, the politics of apologies is nothing more than a corrosive eye wash for people. This rally resolves to denounce the “POLITICS OF APOLOGIES”.

4. This rally resolves to denounce the “BILL C-24”, the so called ‘citizen-ship strengthening act’. The rally further resolves to challenge the BILL C-24 and call for its immediate withdrawal.

5. This rally resolves to denounce Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Nation, present attack on civilian population in Gaza, killings of innocent women and children. This rally further denounces the WAR CRIMES being committed by Apartheid Israel state. This rally resolves to be in solidarity with Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom.

6. This rally resolves to support the Native people’s struggle for their rights.

7. This rally resolves to denounce the Fascist Indian state, which crackdown on people’s democratic rights. It further resolves to call for an immediate end to Operation Green Hunt and other such operations. This rally also resolves to Demand for the release of all political prisoners in India.

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