Yesterday Palestine solidarity activists in Vancouver fasted for 24 hours and set up an info table at a busy transit hub to inform people of the situation of Palestinian prisoners and gather support for the campaign to boycott and divest from British security firm G4S.

Five activists joined the fast and raised over $500 in pledges and donations to support Palestinian prisoners in the action organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network with support from BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories, Canada Palestine Association and Alliance for People’s Health.

The information table highlighted the cases of Muhammad Allan, Khalida Jarrar, Shireen Issawi and Ahmad Sa’adat, but focused on the fact that the mass incarceration of Palestinian activists and political leaders is a tactic of the Israeli occupation to attack Palestinian resistance to the occupation and the whole Palestinian people.  There are currently over 5400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 400 who are in ‘administrative detention’ meaning that they face no formal charge, are denied even the unfair process of Israeli military courts and do not get to see the evidence against them.

Muhammad Allan, who has been on hunger strike for 66 days, has been detained for more than 10 months on such an administrative detention.The information table also carried information about the campaign against G4S in Canada, newly launched by BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories, and dozens of people signed on to support the campaign.  In addition to contracts with the Israeli Prison Authority, G4$ runs immigration detention centres in Ontario and provides security for Tar Sands oil developments and pipeline projects in Canada.

(Photo Credit: Aiyanas Ormond)

* * *

On the afternoon of July 16th protesters from the Black Lives Matter Toronto Coalition disrupted the Toronto Police Service’s monthly board meeting, demanding answers directly from the Mayor as well as the Chief of Police in the aftermath of the death of Andrew Loku at the hands of a Toronto Police Officer a week earlier.

“Every day, black bodies face violence in this city. Every single day,” said Rodney Diverlus, a BLM organiser. “Mayor Tory and Chief Saunders, what is the response to the community for the slaying of Andrew Loku and the continued violence against Black people in this city?”

Loku was a 45-year-old refugee from South Sudan and father of five. On Saturday July 4th, police officers responded to a call from the tenants living a floor above Loku. They found him remonstrating with his noisy neighbours, and instead of de-escalating the situation, officers shot him three times.

Diverlus’ questions were initially met with silence from Tory, Saunders, and TPS Board Chair Alok Mukherjee. But after being faced with pressure from the protestors, Tory and Mukherjee attempted meager responses, stating that “investigations take some time,” and that measures to be taken are “in the process of being implemented fully.”

Mukherjee also explained that “de-escalation tactics are very much on list of priorities for us,” to which a female protester replied: “A list of priorities is not good enough! Somebody has been murdered.”

Mukherjee’s claims that the TPS is “fully committed” to the implementations of recommendations that help combat the issue of police violence are baseless. The murder of another young black man on the early morning of July 25th in Toronto’s Entertainment District is clear evidence of what this “commitment” actually looks like in practice.

Tory and Mukherjee’s vagueness, ambiguity, and a lack of concrete solutions in response to the continued violence committed against Black people and those with mental health issues are deliberate. They claim to be committed to eliminating racism and violence within the TPS, pretending that the TPS itself cannot exist without being racist and violent. Too many people have lost their lives at the hands of police, and the city has done and will do nothing to stop it.

On June 24th, the Toronto Baha’i Centre hosted a public forum called “Conversation on Carding”,  where community members came together to discuss the Toronto Police Service’s’ policy on carding, lately a hot topic in Toronto media.

Conversation focused on recent appearances by new TPS Chief Mark Saunders, who has defended carding as a harmless, “intelligence-led practice”.

Idil Burale, a former candidate for City Council who spoke at the event, pointed out that the claims TPS makes about its policy are inconsistent with reality. For example, when cops question people, the information they collect is supposed to be put into a ‘secure’ central database, which only police officers can access.

However, “there have been instances where information gathered from carding encounters is brought up when people have job interviews,” said Burale. “The top brass refuses to release any facts or statistics that supports their claim that the method of information-gathering has been useful in deterring crime.”

Anthony Morgan, the research and policy lawyer for the African Canadian Legal Clinic, detailed some of the information which can be recorded during an encounter: “they’ll take down anything: your address, information about the people were with, your skin colour, height, and weight, your disposition toward police…even the status of your parents’ marriage.”

“Black people are highly overrepresented in carding data,” he said. “Over 1.2 million contacts obtained through carding can never be justified.”

He added that Chief Saunders has referred to the tens of thousands of Black Torontonians caught up in the TPS dragnet as “collateral damage.”

Burale continued by pointing out that in spite of tall claims from police spokespeople, “the top brass refuses to release any facts or statistics that supports their claim that the method of information-gathering has been useful in deterring crime.”

“Crime rates have been decreasing since the 1970s, but the policing budget has not. Who can justify a billion-dollar budget right now?” This, despite an $850 million backlog of repairs just for the existing TCHC housing stock .

When Mayor John Tory recently announced that he wanted to put an end to carding practices, many Torontonians breathed a sigh of relief. But recent flip-flopping on his part, plus Chief Saunders’ support of the policy, have brought confusion to the issue.

Burale explained that “a lack of clear procedure from the police chief in the implementation of these practices means that nothing will change; but this ambiguity is deliberate and not something that is new.”

Many of us have noticed that the mayor and the police chief have been saying very different things about carding; but this confusion is intentional. It’s never been quite clear whether or not it’s legal for police officers in Toronto to profile Black and racialised youth. Carding isn’t explicitly legal, so the city can’t easily be called out on it, but it’s so widely accepted that in practice, cops can harass, intimidate, and assault whoever they want. While Tory flip-flops, Chief Saunders calls the shots; if his words are anything to go by, carding is here to stay.

(Photo Credit: Kevin van Paassen/Globe and Mail)

John Paul Wootton in custody of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (Paul Faith/Press Association)

By Julian Ichim

On August 8th, 2015 people across the world will be joining in actions demanding the release of the Craigavon Two, Irish Republican prisoners unjustly imprisoned for the murder of a RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland) police officer. In Kitchener and Toronto local organizers are planning demonstrations and a public event around internment in the Occupied Six Counties.

Packy Carty of the Justice For The Craigavon Two Committee in Ireland stated that “the case of the Craigavon Two is a clear case of a miscarriage of justice and targeting of Irish Republicans. The case against the Craigavon Two centred around four strands of so-called evidence: the brown jacket DNA, the brown jacket residue, Witness M and a British Army MI5 tracking device.”

He continued, “When Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were taken for interrogation by the PSNI, they seized Wootton’s car, and in the car they found a brown jacket with a number of DNA profiles, one of which belonged to Brendan McConville; also on the jacket was a firearms type residue. It was proved beyond doubt that the residue did not come from an AK 47, which was the weapon used in the shooting. The amount of DNA on the brown jacket could have been innocently placed by a sneeze or a slight touch. Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were friends and Brendan had been in the car before. Yet the crown prosecution were trying to say that the coat belonged to McConville and was used in the shooting, even though the forensics disproved  this theory.”

In terms of Witness M, a secret Witness giving testimony, Carty asserts that “his testimony was discredited in court, as he could not have seen the shooting of the police officer. He needed glasses, which he was not wearing that night, and there are other inconsistencies in his testimony.”

“After Wootton and McConville had become well-known in the newspapers and media, a man known only as witness M phoned the PSNI in the middle of the night while drunk and said he could identify those involved in the shooting. Despite being a questionable witness this man became the key part of the prosecution case. He said he had seen McConville near the scene of the shooting that night; it later transpired in court that his eyewitness testimony was clinically impossible, as he was severely short sighted and lied openly in court about his eyesight” stated Carty.

Carty also brought up the fact that Witness M’s own father, who is on the court record as “Witness Z”, came forward to call his son a liar in court.

On the issue of the tracking device, Carty points out that “it emerged that on the night of the shooting the British Army, most probably at the behest of MI5, were tracking Wootton’s car using a covert device. When the device was examined after Wootton’s car was seized, half of the data was purposely deleted, yet despite this destruction of evidence the device was accepted as evidence in the court.”

Despite all these inconsistencies and nothing linking Wootton or McConnville to the scene of the crime, they were both convicted and given life sentences. An appeal was carried out, yet the conviction was upheld despite the fact that according to Carty the prosecutor admitted that they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that either McConville or Wootton was involved in the shooting or supporting the shooters with logistics, etc. in the aftermath. At that point in time, a Supreme Court hearing was scheduled to hear the case yet this was cancelled with no explanation.

Due to the lack of justice seen in Ireland surrounding this case, international organizers have concluded that justice can only be served by people across the world taking action. Here in Kitchener, organizer Terry Helm said, “The case of the Craigavon Two is not just about these two people but about the injustice of the British occupational forces in Ireland criminalizing people, not because of acts that they can prove but rather for their political convictions.”

He continued, “If this hearing was carried out in a regular court this decision would be different, but when you have special laws, secret evidence, no right to confront your accusers and the presumption of guilt before innocence, what do you expect?”

He finished by comparing the treatment of the Craigavon Two with possible treatment of Canadian activists in the future: “With Bill C-51 becoming law, this case has more serious implications here for those who are engaged in activism, as the legal system that condemned them will become law here.”

“I saw Omar on a screen, stretched out and tied to this wire mesh, crying, screaming in pain; his body had suffered such terrible wounds, and the torturers, these evil men, when Omar had to pee, they would take him down and they would use his head as a mop to pick up the urine.”

These were the words used by defense lawyer Dennis Edney on June 6th at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto in describing the horrific experiences of Omar Khadr during his decade-long stay in Guantánamo Bay.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was just fifteen years old when he was captured by US forces in eastern Afghanistan, and has since spent over a decade in American military prisons. Accused of (and tried twice for) killing an American soldier, the evidence against him was so inadequate—based mostly on his own confessions coerced through routine torture—that even openly-biased American military courts couldn’t successfully convict him. Edney has been Khadr’s legal counsel since 2004.

Edney spoke passionately to an audience of hundreds, including members of the Khadr family, about the inhumane treatment that Khadr experienced, first at the military “hospital” at Bagram Airfield—an American military base north of Kabul, Afghanistan—and later at Guantánamo Bay, a maximum-security detention facility located in Cuba.

He described the method by which the Americans convinced Khadr that he had killed Sgt. Christopher Speer, saying, “when Omar woke up [at Bagram] he had been unconscious for a whole week, and from that moment he was put into stress positions—painful positions—and told that he had thrown a hand grenade that killed an American soldier. When they ask Omar [in interrogation videos], he says, ‘I don’t know if I did or not!’ Because from the moment he woke and throughout his many years at Guantánamo, when tortured, he was told that he had done that.”

“When your torturer asks you questions, after a while you’ll give them any answer that you think will make it go away,” he added.

All this, he emphasised over and over again, was a result of the American government’s refusal to act according to the ‘rule of law.’ “One has to look no further than the story of Guantánamo Bay to understand how easy it is for a nation to fall into lawlessness,” he explained, referring to the prison as a “hell-hole…outside the reach of the law. A place shut off from the rest of the world [and] forgotten by all of us.”

He pointed fingers at the Canadian government as well, accusing both the Liberal government of Paul Martin as well as the current Harper Conservatives of abandoning Omar. “When every Western government requested, and was granted, the return of their citizens—all of whom were adults—we left a child. The message that was given to the Americans was ‘we don’t care, do what you want with him.’ While the only message [the Canadian public] got to hear was ‘this young man committed a heinous crime; he’s a terrorist.’”

He attributed Khadr’s abandonment in Guantánamo to the Canadian government’s disregard for its legal obligations to protect its citizens: “Governments such as Germany, Britain, and France demanded that their citizens get out of that hell-hole because [they knew] it was beyond the rule of law… civil liberty was just a fiction there. Meanwhile, I remember [then-Public Safety Minister] Peter MacKay saying to the media, ‘we have been assured by the Americans that he’s being treated well.’ We still don’t talk about the fact that our government allowed one of our own children to be tortured and abused.”

Edney concluded his speech by linking the so-called ‘War on Terror’ to Canadians’ legal rights, stating: “In my view, defeating terrorism means convincing the world of the importance of following the rule of law….we must be alert to the extent to which governments, including our own government, continue to exploit us, by playing the fear card [and] trumping our civil liberties.”

But he also criticised Canadians for “failing” to defend Khadr and themselves from illegal government activity. “As we have failed Omar, we’ve also failed our children through bequeathing to them an uncertain future as the result of this systemic apathy shown by Canadian citizens and our civil institutions. We have all participated in abandoning him. As long as we allow a place like Guantánamo Bay to exist, we cannot call ourselves a civil society.”
Currently released on bail, Khadr now lives with Edney’s family in Edmonton, Alberta. Although his bail has many conditions, including a curfew and an ankle-monitor, Edney told the audience that Khadr studies a lot and is doing well with readjusting to society. “I recall a few years ago, saying to Omar, ‘What do you want to do when we get you out of Guantánamo?’ He said, ‘I wish to be a doctor, to make sure that no one is ever treated like I was.’”

Edney and Khadr in a press conference outside the lawyer’s home in Edmonton. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)

On May 1, 2015, the board of CHRY 105.5 FM—the York University community radio station—fired all of its volunteers and community programmers and re-branded itself as VIBE 105.5. VIBE 105.5 now advertises itself as an alt-urban music station, playing electronic music, reggae, soca, r&b and hip-hop.

Upset and offended community residents, students, advertisers, and former programmers met on May 12 at York’s Centre for Women and Trans People. For many, CHRY had been more than just a radio station: it had solid historical links to the Jane-Finch corridor and the Toronto region’s Caribbean community. Many felt that the board had conspired to deny the community any voice in the future of the station. The feeling in the room was largely that, in the words of one speaker, “[the board] just gave up on the community.”

During the meeting, it emerged that over the previous weeks many of the former volunteers and programmers had attempted to call the CHRY board members or meet with them at the station. In response, the board locked the station’s doors and ignored all calls.

“The fundamental issue is that we serve as the channel for voices that are unheard, marginalised, and under-represented”, explained Pet Cleto, a programmer for Radio Migrante (a show previously hosted by CHRY) to BASICS. With the re-branding of the station as a commercial urban music broadcaster, there seems to be little future at the new station for media exploring the struggles of migrant labourers in Canada.

Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, a programmer for Amandla: An African Perspective and former CHRY board member, expressed frustration at the closing down of a space of community expression. “Amandla continues to get requests for interviews from activists in Toronto. For example, the recent mass drowning of Eritrean migrants in the Mediterranean was to receive special attention on our upcoming shows. Now family members and activists have no outlet for their voices on Toronto airwaves,” she said.

The discussion quickly turned to the legality, according to the radio station’s by-laws, of the board’s actions. In spite of a long-term understanding that CHRY was a partnership between students, community, and alumni, this partnership was never officially recognised. A legalistic and bureaucratic board would have little trouble shooting down a challenge made on legal grounds.

Participants at the meeting decided to take action collectively through an open letter to the VIBE 105.5 board, asking them to sit down with the former programmers and come to an amicable solution.

In the following two weeks, the board failed to take any significant action toward satisfying these demands, and further community meetings were held in late May and June, to plan how to organise against the board’s cynical and opportunist—but likely technically legal—actions.

The outcome of this has been the Save CHRY campaign, which is currently running a WordPress site, Facebook page and Change.org petition. The campaign will be hosting a day of live jams and spoken word poetry on Monday July 6, featuring programmers and performers who are steadfast in their desire to see the station returned to the community that built it in the first place.

(Photo Credit: Save CHRY Facebook page)

CUPE 3902 Unit 1 represents more than 6000 teaching assistants, part-time lecturers, lab demonstrators, graders, and invigilators employed at the University of Toronto. In the early hours of February 27th, a tentative agreement between the employer and the union was reached, awaiting a ratification vote from its members. The vote, which took place last Friday afternoon, resulted in a resounding ‘no’.

Regarding this overwhelming vote to strike down the tentative agreement, one TA explained that “while the employer made concessions on a number of fronts, the main issue — the lack of a liveable wage — was hardly addressed.” The strike began immediately, with picket lines forming Monday morning.

Support for the union’s cause has been widely expressed, both on the picket line and in social media. Rachel MacKinnon, a first year PhD student, commented on this remarkable level of solidarity on the picket line near King’s College Circle. “I’ve actually seen other students with bigger funding packages who aren’t even teaching this term coming out for us, and that’s really awesome. So I want to be able to give that back to people.”

As outlined in a previous article, the guaranteed funding package for graduate students at the University of Toronto is $15,000, falling $8,000 below the Toronto poverty line. The central issue in the current strike is to bring the funding package, which has not been increased since 2000, closer to a ‘livable wage’. “None of the demands the union is making strike me as overreach,” said Eric Mathison, a PhD student in philosophy. “Graduate students and sessional instructors help this university operate. Requesting fair, stable employment is reasonable.”

Members also want to remind the public that while they see the strike as necessary, they would still much rather be in the classroom performing their regular duties. “We’re not doing this because we really want to be out here,” MacKinnon said. “We want this to be over as soon as possible.”

Picketers slow traffic as part of their demonstration.

There is still little indication as to how long the strike will last. In an email sent out to all students early this morning, the union stated that the University has not yet been in contact. The University did, however, send an email to all students last Friday, warning students of potentially ‘intimidating’ picket lines and to call campus police should they feel unsafe–a peculiar response, which the union called “scare tactics.”

Meanwhile, CUPE 3902 Unit 3, representing non-student academic staff such as sessional lecturers, voted Monday night on whether or not to ratify their tentative agreement. The result was a decision to send the vote to the entire unit across all three UofT campuses. According to one source, the agreement for Unit 3 faculty represents a strong step in ensuring more job security, but very little movement towards wage increases. Unit 3 may choose to reject the offer and strike in solidarity with Unit 1.

A similar labour strike looms further north at York University. CUPE 3903, representing contract faculty and teaching assistants, had also reached a tentative agreement with the employer. According to the union’s website, this agreement was voted down on Monday night, with a ‘no’ vote of nearly 70 per cent. 3903 also welcomes students and the public joining them on the picket lines.

A picket line near Queen’s Park.

Tensions are running high at the University of Toronto between administrators and CUPE 3902, the union which represents 7000 T.A.s and sessional lecturers on three UofT campuses.

During 2014, Units 1 and 3 of CUPE 3902 both had their collective bargaining agreements with the university expire. However, the University has shown little interest in negotiating new ones. In the face of intransigence from administrators, both Units have set a strike date of February 27. If collective bargaining agreements are not successfully signed by then, a large part of the teaching activities at UofT will temporarily cease.

A townhall held last Wednesday night at the George Ignatieff theatre, just south of Bloor and St. George, clarified the issues. Originally, it was organised as a forum for both CUPE and University representatives to explain their positions. A mere two days before the event, however, the University e-mailed organisers and notified them that it was refusing to participate. The peculiar reason provided was that “[negotiations] have not reached an impasse.”

This statement appears to bear little relation to reality. CUPE representatives Erin Black and Ryan Culpepper say that the University is resisting setting meeting dates on which both sides can negotiate.

“They’ve claimed [that] virtually every unionised group on campus is bargaining this year,” said Black in an interview, “[but] they’ve known that we’ve been coming for three years, and could have prepared better.”

Culpepper added: “But right now they’re not meeting with us and there’s no other unions bargaining. It’s just us and they’re still not meeting with us.”

Far fewer meeting dates have been set during this round of negotiations than in previous years. But so far it’s unclear why the university is uninterested in negotiating.

Empty chairs at empty tables: UofT representatives neglected to even show up on Wednesday.

Units 1 and 3 of CUPE 3902 are composed of different parties. Unit 1, with about 6000 members, represents mostly teaching assistants, who are almost all either graduate or undergraduate students at the University. Unit 3, with about 1000 members, primarily represents sessional lecturers.

Labour conditions for workers in both Units are no longer tenable. A minimum funding package for all PhD students at the University was won during the last CUPE 3902 strike in 2000, according to organisers. But this $15 000 per year stipend falls well short of the poverty line in this city, estimated at $23 000 per year.

“People are broke,” said Culpepper, “they’re broke and they’re overworked and they’re exhausted and they’re exasperated….they feel like they’re out of options.”

Despite inflation and rising tuition costs, it has been seven years since the last funding package increase. Furthermore, the package runs out after five years, forcing many students to search for other sources of funding. The goal of CUPE Unit 1 bargainers, therefore, is simply to get their members above the poverty line.

Sessional instructors, members of Unit 3, make on average about $7500 per half-year course they teach. If they manage to teach two courses per semester, which demands hours equivalent to a full-time job, they can make about $30 000 per year, plus a meagre $300 in benefits.

During the question period at the townhall, one speaker observed that the highest-paid person at the University (Jim Moriarty, who manages the UofT asset corporation) makes $750 000 per year, while President Meric Gertler, who because of his position has a residence provided by the University rent-free, makes over $400 000 per year.

Another student commented on the similar quality of instruction provided by sessional lecturers compared to tenured professors. She had taken a philosophy course one year from a tenured prof, and sat in on a lecture for the same course a year after, finding the experience “pretty much the same.” But, she pointed out, the University had to pay that professor almost $300 000 the year he taught that course, and only $7500 to the person who taught it a year later. “That’s not equal pay for equal work.”

The University’s media division did not respond when reached out to for comment.

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.”

Concerned residents and community members gathered at a vigil on Christmas eve for Jermaine Carby, a Brampton man who was shot and killed by Peel Regional Police three months earlier.  The gathering rallied about 50 members at the location of Carby’s murder, near Queen and Kennedy, where members of the Justice for Jermaine Carby Campaign along with friends, family, activists, and community members participated in an hour long blockade of the busy Brampton intersection.

Carby’s cousin La Tanya Grant, a lead member of the Justice for Jermaine campaign, stated that the vigil was held, “to bring awareness, to let [police] know that we are not going to stop, that we are going to keep coming in the media eye to demand answers for Jermaine.”

Carby was shot on September 24, shortly after being stopped by police for undisclosed reasons. Witnesses have stated that he had his hands up or was slowly approaching the officer who shot him, claims consistent with the gunshot wound to his inner left forearm which his autopsy indicated.

Grant spoke about his death as a personal tragedy, but also emphasised that it was only one moment in the red record of the Peel Police.

“A young man died and nothing is happening,” said Brampton resident Amuna, who went to highschool with Michael Wade Lawson, the 17-year-old who was also shot and killed by Peel Region Police officers in 1988 in the back of the head by an illegal 38-calibre slug known as a “hot bullet” which expands on contact, banned in Ontario by the Ontario Police Act.  Lawson’s murder, and the mass protests it set off, contributed to the creation of the S.I.U. a couple years later.

But nearly a quarter century later, organizers with the Justice for Jermaine campaign see little use for the S.I.U. except to “cover up” police actions, and put families on ice while community anger dissipates. Among the demands of the campaign included, disbanding the S.I.U., which organizers brought up “clears officers of wrongdoing at a rate of 98%.” The campaign is also demanding:

• That the name of the officer who shot Carby be released.
• That the name of the person in whose vehicle Carby was a passenger be released.
• Immediate public disclosure of whether a knife was recovered at the scene.

Police cruisers quickly showed up. They attempted to isolate the vigil by blocking off the roads around the intersection, but met with limited success for some time. While two or three drivers expressed anger at the vigil participants, uttering death threats to organizers right in front of Peel police, many others joined in, and some passersby shouted encouragement.

An inconvenienced driver threatens to the cops that he “run ’em over” if protestors are not removed by the police, while flailing his arms in the cops’ faces. How many people of colour could get away with uttering death threats and aggressively approaching the police? As one protestor mockingly hollered at this perturbed little man, “Hang on buddy, you’ll get to have that eggnog soon enough!” #white privilege #white terror 

One protester, who saw Jermaine like a big brother told BASICS, “I was homeless and he gave me a home. This was the kind of person he was… He helped me find a place… Why did they take him from me? He was my older brother and I love him so much, and I will not forget him.”

“Sabey” – being interviewd by BASICS correspondent Steve da Silva.

After almost an hour, the intersection was clear in all four directions but for the police roadblocks. The campaign organizers, buoyed by the strong impression they had made and the solidarity the participants had shown, thanked everyone in attendance. Shortly before the end of the vigil, a CityTV team showed up, but did not speak to any of the participants, and quickly left when it became clear that things were winding down. No other major media outlet was present.

For a video essay of the rally, see the following video