When Mark Saunders and Peter Sloly were shortlisted as candidates for Chief Bill Blair’s job, it struck up a city-wide dialogue around diversity and the role of a Black police chief in tackling issues of anti-Black racism within the Toronto Police Service. Communities were proud to watch, for the first time, as men of colour rose through the ranks of the TPS, and when Mark Saunders was sworn-in, excited to begin unpacking issues of racial profiling and police violence in our city.
Mark Saunders is a Black face in a traditionally white space, but the celebration is cut short when his approach to policing upholds many of the same campaigns that disproportionately target and oppress communities of colour. Saunders has been part (and too often in charge) of divisions within the police service that, historically and currently, target and harass young men and women of colour, and instil in us a sense of fear when we think about policing.
What we are now learning is that putting a Black man in charge is not enough to meaningfully combat anti-Black racism. Saunders’ Blackness is a symbolic victory for diversity, but it doesn’t translate into tangible gains for communities of colour across the city; his swearing-in was not followed by meaningful policy change, nor even an acknowledgement of anti-Black racism in carding policies that, to date, have logged more encounters with young Black men than the actual population of young Black men in Toronto. For this reason, the conversation isn’t and cannot be about diversity within the TPS. We need a larger discussion around racism, classism and the adversarial relationship between the TPS and working-class communities in Toronto.
Carding—a practice that parallels the stop-and-frisk mandate of the NYPD—is a pre-emptive policing strategy that looks to tackle crime before it occurs in communities through indiscriminate, unwarranted contact with residents. The practice is loaded with issues of race- and class-based profiling. We now know that certain kinds of people in the city of Toronto are systematically stopped under these policies. Young men and women of colour are stopped and interrogated, with intimate details about our lives documented and logged in an expansive database. These encounters are deceptive, intimidating, and often degrading—creating a feeling that you can’t say “no”, because the police have guns and are largely unaccountable to anyone for the injuries they inflict.
When you’re carded, officers rarely inform you of your right to leave and demand intimate details about you, your intentions, and your background. When you hesitate, or refuse to give this information, officers bend the law to obtain it, threatening charges of trespassing, loitering, or officer baiting. Too often they resort to physical violence to get it, understanding that the complaint process is an inaccessible one, and that even when civilians do file complaints related to officer misconduct, rarely is the officer disciplined for this kind of violence.*
Carding is a very real example of how public encounters with the Toronto Police Service create a culture of fear around policing which runs so deep that many of our community partners refuse to call the police even when they are in serious danger. From an early age many Torontonians learn that the police are not their friends, and that officers are not stationed in schools, at community centres, and on their streets to serve and protect them.
Instead, many young people growing up in Toronto’s priority neighborhoods learn to actively avoid officers because of widespread harassment. Youth with precarious status learn that their in-school resource officers work closely with Canadian Border Services to police families without status. Because of the relationships that the Toronto Police Service has with agencies like the CBSA, the Toronto District School Board and Toronto Community Housing, negative interactions with police can have severe consequences – deportation, expulsion and eviction. For these reasons, we see people in this city, right now—entire communities—establishing their own systems of policing to avoid this one.
TPS has moved beyond policing as a tool for crime prevention and instead uses it as a regulatory tool that isolates, targets, and oppresses Toronto’s most marginalized communities. The trajectory of policing in our city has much more to do with the social and economic makeup of Toronto and in our city we criminalize poverty—we fine poverty and toss it in holding cells for sleeping on park benches (trespassing, loitering) and begging for money (harassment). The Toronto Police Service cites crime reduction as justification enough for these policing strategies, but we see too often that these mandates are used as a guise to control “problem areas” and “problem people”.
We’re operating on a punitive model of justice that looks to punish deviance and criminalize things like poverty, mental health, addictions, and homelessness. Our police reflect a larger correctional system that looks to solve issues of crime through punishment, without thinking about rehabilitative alternatives. This kind of correctional orientation translates into the kind of brutal “community policing” initiatives that alienate a certain subset of our city—young men and women of colour, poor and marginally housed Torontonians, those with mental health and addictions related issues, sex workers, and people with precarious status.
We don’t need police half as badly as we need affordable housing, shelter, basic income, access to proper care, and opportunity. We have the capacity to build safe and healthy communities by breaking down the TPS’ billion-dollar budget and pouring these resources into development and restorative justice at the grassroots level. A lot of this discussion comes down to what we believe justice is. If our legal framework is built on punishment, it is built to oppress—to isolate the wrongdoer and punish them.
So is justice punishment? Or is justice a transformative experience, something that looks to heal communities? When we concentrate on restorative justice, we look to transform communities and transform people. This is something that’s already happening at the community level in Toronto as a response to particularly punitive policing strategies in Rexdale and Jane & Finch. Under its current framework, the Toronto Police Service operates as a billion-dollar gang and Chief Saunders as a face-lift that brings no real change.
The most powerful and effective alternatives to policing—community patrols in the downtown eastside, sex workers coordinating and organizing safe business models, and restorative justice networks across the GTA—have all grown out of a need for marginalized communities to protect themselves from violence, from harm, and from those who claim to serve and protect the rest of Toronto.
*The ultimate guarantor of violent police misconduct is the Special Investigations Unit. The SIU is a civilian oversight body that employs both civilians and former officers to conduct independent investigations in cases where a civilian has been seriously injured by an officer. Between 1990 and 2010, the SIU conducted 3,400 independent investigations, filing criminal charges in 95 of these cases. Of that, 16 officers have been convicted of a crime and 3 spent time in prison.
(Photo Credit: Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail)
]]>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
There has been widespread condemnation of the attack on a 25-year old pregnant woman as she stood in front of Lahore Courthouse, Pakistan on May 27. Farzana Parveen died after being hit with bricks and sticks by her father, brother, and former fiancé.
The stoning coincided with news of Elliot Rogers who shot and killed 7 people including himself in Santa Barbara, California, in his “War On Women”, sparking the Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen. Rogers acted on a patriarchal power trip, and family friends reported that “Rogers had talked to [their] son about wanting to hold down and rape women”.
In both these instances, men intentionally, publicly and violently executed a gender-based attack on women.
Yet coverage of the two incidents have shown stark contrast. While the Santa Barbara shootings are portrayed as an act of individual rage, the attack on Parveen’s death is depicted as one of many ‘honour killings’. These are frequently described in op-eds of leading Canadian mainstream media sources as a ‘social institution in South Asia and the Middle East’, and are wrongly attributed to the ‘tribal’, ‘violent’, ‘illiterate’ South Asian men, who are steeped in ‘pre-modern’ and ‘ossified’ traditions.
The brutal attack on Parveen and her unborn fetus should rightly be condemned and taken as a call to action against the terrible conditions faced by many Pakistani women. But it can not be chalked up to any misguided notions of Islam, culture or to some inherent violence or madness found in Pakistani men. Such ideas allow structural oppression to be dismissed, colonial influences to be overlooked, and patriarchy seen as simply “a problem in our culture”.
“After reading the news that morning, one begins to think that murder by gunshot is somehow less barbaric an act than by stone,” says Tayyaba, a Toronto graduate student who was born and raised in Pakistan for 18 years. The depictions of an entire culture as barbaric are not only blatantly untrue, but also reek of Eurocentric prejudices that are used to justify imperialist aggressions around the world.
The vast prevalence of sexual assaults in our homes, on campuses, and in the military is evidence to the contrary that we in Canada / on Turtle Island stand on some moral higher ground when it comes to gender equity. Perhaps the most glaring demonstration of Canada’s colonial-patriarchal character is the epidemic murder and disappearance of Indigenous women. Yet such attacks are portrayed largely as exceptional and individualistic acts that have no connection to each other. What fails to be recognized is that the same problem that is so quickly pointed out abroad, also exists at home and should not be reduced to the tendencies of any given culture.
Shamefully adding to the blatant racism, one commentator began shaming other Pakistani women themselves for their inaction, mockingly asking if they “require permission from the men of their families”. She continues by saying that in other countries, “one does not need an outside agency to prick a conscience, and there is no hiding behind the deceptive veil of culture.”
Surely we’re as much to blame for the 1,026 murdered aboriginal women as a whole, if Pakistani society is to blame for their “social institution” of stoning? Where’s the public outrage about that? Or about Robert Pickton’s mass killing of 49 women? Or for the women who are raped every 17 minutes in Canada?
There is a rich history behind the global gender equity movement and women in Pakistan have not been known to keep quiet. Some of the prime examples of social movements in Pakistan’s history, such as the peasant movement in the Okara region and the anti-Zia Ul Haq protests, have been women-led.
Art by Iranian artist Seema Sardarzehi.
Alia Ali, a former women’s rights activist in Pakistan describes the public demonstrations that took place in the 1980’s under what is considered to be one of the most repressive regimes for women in Pakistan’s history. “Despite the oppressive regime, censorship and lack of connectivity large numbers of women from all walks of life came out on the streets and faced brutalization by the police,” she recalls.
The protests were against the harsh reforms implemented by military dictator Zia-Ul Haq that sought to limit the social visibility, physical mobility, and sexuality of women in both the public and private spheres.
“They were active in public consultations on the laws in higher courts across the country. Some of the organizations that came into being as a reaction have persisted and continue to raise their banner against oppression of women”.
Both of these tragic incidents resulted in a senseless loss of life. And both must be understood against the backdrop of the structural violence that silences women in the first place, and the ongoing struggle against it.
Reducing these acts to individual or cultural problems is tantamount to ignoring the systemic oppression and exploitation that women face in both Pakistan in Canada.
Both Rogers and Parveen’s killers are products of the same societal values whereby patriarchal relations – the social domination and violence of men over women – express themselves in the social relations of each country. Certainly Pakistan and Canada are widely variant. Yet, Canada cannot claim superiority in this regard, as women and Indigenous peoples from across the territories demand an end to the murder, disappearance, and violence against Indigenous women.
In a response to the racist discourses in a major media outlet. Azeezah Kanji, lawyer and active member of the Toronto Muslim community wrote to the editors:
Let us not forget that Pakistani men were among those protesting the horrific murder of Farzana Parveen … As a feminist, I am committed to addressing patriarchy in all its forms. And as an anti-racist, I am committed to not demonizing entire groups of men as carriers of an “antediluvian, violent hatred of female sexuality” on the basis of their ethnicity.
It is precisely these commitments that must be reiterated. Tackling systemic barriers requires that people get organized, following the trails that women before them set ablaze to confront the structures that stand in their way.
]]>“They tortured me. They punched me on the head, they slap[ped] my arms and they beat me with a stick,” said Kareem Khan to journalists after his release from detention on February 13th.
Kareem Khan, 43, poses with images of his deceased brother Asif Iqbal (L) and son Zaenullah during an interview in Islamabad November 30, 2010. REUTERS/Mian Khursheed
Khan, a vocal anti-drone activist from FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), was kidnapped (allegedly by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence – ISI) from his home in the outskirts of Islamabad on February 5, 2014. This was just days before he was due to testify in front of European parliamentarians to further expose the impact of the US-led drone attacks in the northwestern Pakistan. After eight days of torture in an underground cell, he was released by being thrown out of a vehicle blindfolded.
“Some armed men in police clothes and plain civil uniform came in my house after midnight and took me with them,” Khan said about the identity of his captors.
After losing his teenage son and brother to a drone strike in North Waziristan in December 2009, Khan had launched a case in Pakistani courts implicating CIA members, including the CIA’s former station chief, in their deaths. Khan’s abduction was no surprise considering his role in exposing the atrocities committed by the US-led drone operations in northwestern Pakistan, and the collusion of the Pakistani authorities in this program. His kidnapping is further evidence of the extent of this collusion and the measures that Pakistan’s authorities are willing to take to suppress any voices that break through the barriers of silence placed on the people of FATA for the last six decades.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as of 2014, millions of people have been displaced and at least 2,500 have been killed in drone strikes. Pakistan, being a ‘strategic ally’ of the US, has received more than $15.8 billion as security assistance in return for their compliance and support for US intervention in Central and South Asia.
After a renewed offensive launched in December 2013, which saw the bombardment of several neighborhoods in North Waziristan, the Pakistani government entered into negotiations with the Taliban under pressure from the people of Pakistan, allegedly to “give peace a chance.” These “talks” were unsuccessful, but many analysts have alleged that the government was not serious to begin with, and used the failure as a means to justify an alleged major offensive that would have resulted in the displacement of several thousand people, and many casualties.
The Pakistan army has entered into negotiations with the Taliban in the past, but these talks have been disrupted on numerous occasions. In June 2004, just two months after entering a peace deal with the Pakistan military, militant commander Nek Mohammad was killed in an attack for which the Pakistani military accepted responsibility, but it was later revealed that this was, in fact, the first drone strike of the region. Similarly, in November 2013, chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in another drone strike just days after he had agreed to peace negotiations. This attack coincided with a US congressional hearing of drone victims that incited much public outcry and made international headlines.
FATA is a region which is still ruled by colonial laws that were meant to subjugate the local population, deny them any representation whatsoever, and legalize collective punishment by the state. As such, the area remains largely underrepresented and underdeveloped. Any voices, such as Kareem Khan’s, that venture to speak about the plight of the people of FATA are often violently suppressed by the authorities. This lack of voice and opportunity has contributed to radicalization and support for radical groups, that were once created by the state itself. Instead of addressing the causes of this radicalization, the state is resorting to violence to further silence the people of FATA.
“A large number of students hailing from FATA staged a protest demonstration on Jan 16, 2013 in front of Peshawar Press Club against the killing of eighteen innocent people in Tehsil Bara of Khyber Agency. The protesters had brought bodies of the deceased as evidence of their loss and as a way to demand action by the authorities. The Police fired tear gas and started aerial firing besides baton-charge to suppress the protest. “
Courtesy FATA Research Center
Pakistan’s mainstream media is complicit in this suppression as they ignore the voices of the people of FATA. In response to these circumstances, organizers in Toronto have launched the Campaign Against Drones in Pakistan (CADiP). CADiP is a pro-people, anti-intervention and anti-imperialist campaign that seeks to shift public opinion and mobilize communities to take a stand against drone strikes in Pakistan and the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan in general.
To learn more or to get involved:
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RCMP training Haitian police under the Western-installed regime after the 2004 coup.
by Ajamu Nangwaya, Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity & Toronto Haiti Action Network
As we approach the 10 year anniversary of Canada’s invasion of Haiti, Ajamu Nangwaya of the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity & Toronto Haiti Action Network explores humanity’s debt to, and imperialism’s crimes against, the Haitian people.
by Ajamu Nangwaya
February 28th/March 1st will mark the 10th anniversary of the coup in Haiti that was orchestrated by the French, American, and Canadian governments, resulting in the kidnapping and downfall of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. According to journalist and writer Yves Engler:
“On January 31 and February 1, 2003, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government organized the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” to discuss that country’s future. No Haitian officials were invited to this assembly where high-level US, Canadian and French officials decided that Haiti’s elected president “must go”, the dreaded army should be recreated and that the country would be put under a Kosovo-like UN trusteeship.”
Just over a year after this pivotal meeting of the three Western states in Canada, the democratic government in Haiti was overthrown, President Aristide had been kidnapped and exiled to the Central Afrikan Republic, hundreds of Fanmi Lavalas’s (FL) supporters were killed, immediate occupation of Haiti by 2,000 Western troops (latter replaced by the United Nations’ military intervention), repression against grassroots organizations, filling of the jails with political prisoners and abandonment of the FL government’s investment in education, job creation, healthcare, public services and preoccupation with increasing the minimum wage.
People of good conscience across the world, especially those in the Americas, should take the upcoming anniversary of the coup to not only learn about what has transpired in Haiti these past ten years, but more importantly, develop and strengthen our ties of solidarity with the popular organizations within and serving Haiti’s working-class and peasantry.
The UN’s occupation forces in Haiti were instrumental in “stabilizing” the post-coup order by conducting urban counter-insurgency operations against Port-au-Prince’s major “slums”, like Cité Soleil, where support for the deposed Aristide was strong and where resistance was could be expected to flow from.
People-to-people solidarity based on mutual respect and principled collaboration will assist the Haitian people in their long struggle to rid themselves of the United Nations’ (MINUSTAH’s) occupation force that has been implicated in gross human rights abuses over the past decade, including the UN borne 2010 cholera outbreak that killed 8,300 deaths and infected close to 650,000 Haitians.
Our solidarity could support the demand put forward by kidnapped and deposed president Aristide that France repay Haiti the 90 million gold francs (over $23 billion today) ransom that was extracted from the latter as the price for diplomatic recognition and freedom from the threat of re-enslavement.
Our awareness can help end the cycle of Western military interventions, coups and/or propping up of anti-democratic, anti-people regimes that has plagued Haiti throughout the entire 20th century up to the present; and help Haitians put an end to the local elite’s and foreign capital’s exploitation of the people. Based on Haiti’s contribution to humanity, it should hold a special place in the internationalist programmes of progressive forces across the world.
Haiti’s 1804 revolution was the first successful slave revolution in human history to not only defeat its oppressor, but establish a new society of the liberated.
In the annals of history, the enslaved Afrikans in Haiti were the only people to have successfully overthrown a system of slavery. They defeated the strongest military forces of the day, that of France, Britain and Spain, in order to free themselves from the servile labour regime and boldly assert their freedom and humanity.
This historic feat, the Haitian Revolution, was significant beyond the victory that the enslaved Africans registered in using armed struggle to effect emancipation-from below. These Black Jacobins etched the fear of revolution in the hearts and minds of the enslavers or agricultural capitalists in the other slave-holding territories in the Americas.
Haiti’s role in Simon Bolivar’s wars of independence in Latin America is not widely known. In the spirit of principled international solidarity, Haiti provided a place of refugee to Bolivar and his comrade Francisco de Miranda in 1815 and gave them material aid in the form of schooners, printing presses, fighters and as well as guns for several thousand troops.
Haiti’s only condition for its contribution was Bolivar’s commitment to abolishing slavery, which he didn’t vigorously and speedily implement. Haiti was still living up to the ideal of universal freedom from slavery and colonial domination and it was there during a crucial movement in the Latin American struggle for self-determination. It is rather instructive and ironic today to see Latin American military forces serving in Haiti in occupation army under the United Nations’ banner (a force that includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay).
Haiti’s legacy of defying and exposing the farcical nature of the racist characterization of Africans as sub-humans by defeating the best European armies of the period, taking its freedom in its own hands, contributing to the liberation of Latin America and threatening the continued viability of slavery has probably earned the country the unenviable economic and political status it currently holds in the region.
I believe the poet William Wordsworth’s was right in declaring to the fallen and deceived Toussaint L’Ouverture (and by extension Haiti), “Thou hast great allies / Thy friends are exultations, agonies, / And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
Our anti-imperialist obligation to Haiti and its people for their contribution to universal freedom entail the provision of political, moral and material support in fighting our common enemies of social emancipation and justice.
Click the image for information on the Toronto event marking the ten year anniversary of the 2004 coup.
As the 10th anniversary of the coup d’etat and occupation of Haiti approaches, the least you can do is inform yourself about the situation in Haiti by attending Toronto Haiti Action Committee’s February 24 public education event with Haitian human rights lawyer, Mario Joseph and Dr. Melanie Newton of the University of Toronto.
The abolitionist, former enslaved Afrikan, feminist and statesman Frederick Douglass had this to say about Haiti’s role in promoting “universal human liberty” and a reminder of our debt of gratitude and obligation to its people:
]]>“In just vindication of Haiti, I can go one step further. I can speak of her, not only words of admiration, but words of gratitude as well. She has grandly served the cause of universal human liberty. We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy to-day; that the freedom that eight hundred thousand colored people enjoy in the British West Indies; the freedom that has come to the colored race the world over, is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons [and daughters], of Haiti ninety years ago. When they struck for freedom, they builded better than they knew. Their swords were not drawn and could not be drawn simply for themselves alone. They were linked and interlinked with their race, and striking for their freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man [and woman] in the world.”
In the 19th century, Frederick Douglass had a firm vision of how social injustice, stemming from unjust exercises of power, should be combatted. Isn’t his standpoint applicable to the 21st century?
Poor Frederick Douglass apparently had it all wrong when he famously stated, “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” According to a recent National Post opinion piece on contentious police practices in Toronto, sitting down and chatting with power, rather than demanding anything from it, is the key to progress.
Jamil Jivani, in his piece entitled “Not happy with the police? Try talking to them,” implies that those who “turn to law and policy to improve policing” or who make use of “human rights complaints or class action suits to demand changes to policing” are misguided souls who fail to recognize the value of “mediated conversations” as drivers of police reform. Having disparaged collective struggle in favour of bourgeois hyper-individualism, he recounts how he arranged to have a December 2013 conversation with two Toronto officers who, five weeks earlier, grilled him based on his (supposed) resemblance to a drug-dealer they were (supposedly) targeting. The conversation was enabled by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) and, all and all, he derived satisfaction from the fact of having an amicable talk with the officers.
Protestors in Toronto affirm their commitments to collective action against oppressive policing.
One of the supreme ironies of Mr. Jivani’s anti-law, anti-policy argument is that his mediated conversation took place under the auspices of a public body that came into existence through law: a 2007 amendment to the Police Services Act (Part V) initiated the 2009 opening of the OIPRD. He is therefore a beneficiary of the same police-related legal processes that he derides. Another irony: the OIPRD affirms the relevance of policy given that they accept complaints about “a policy of a police department,” as the “Complaints” section of their website indicates. Tangentially, he mentions the police killing of Sammy Yatim without considering that the resulting second-degree murder charge was issued by the Special Investigations Unit, founded in response to – god forbid – collective agitation, particularly on the part of the black community and youth.
The propositional foundation of Mr. Jivani’s overall stance is best summed up in his claim that “individual officer discretion largely determines how people will experience policing in their city.” While it is true that the low-visibility nature of policing gives cops a good measure of on-the-street decision making power, police discretion never unfolds in a vacuum. Organizational imperatives, police sub-cultural norms, prevailing public sentiments, asymmetrical power relations (between the police and the policed) and other factors establish the functional parameters within which such discretion is exercised.
No matter how law-abiding they may be, hundreds of thousands of people have been entered into the contact card database over the past several years.
If, for example, we take a look at a Toronto police practice mentioned by Mr. Jivani, namely, contact carding, it is a fact that blacks are more likely to be carded than whites in every patrol zone, it is a fact that officers are pressured by their superiors to engage in carding and it is a fact that when the contact card receipt system was implemented rates of carding plummeted. The old quip about those who never let facts get in the way of a good story applies to anyone who tries to explain carding (and numerous other police practices) with primary reference to individual officer discretion. Attempting to address large-scale violations of the law (the Charter, the Ontario Human Rights Code, etc.) as committed by “law enforcers” requires large-scale activism, not cathartic cop-meets-civilian conversations.
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NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to the right of Rogers President and CEO Nadir Mohamed, shaking hands after brokering a deal for Rogers to get monopoly rights over the broadcasting of NHL games.
by Tyler Shipley
It’s never a good sign when the papers carry a picture of Gary Bettman grinning like an idiot.
The multi-millionaire commissioner of the National Hockey League is the human representative of the collective soulless greed of the extraordinarily wealthy owners of NHL franchises, and if they’re happy, it usually means that they’ve found a new way to squeeze money from their workers, their players, or – more likely – everyone else.
Sure enough, the announcement of a massive $5.2 billion broadcasting deal between the NHL and the Rogers corporate colossus is a victory for the rich, at the expense of we who make them rich. Though most of the attention this story received was about the fate of Hockey Night in Canada and the CBC more broadly, what was ignored was the effect this will have on working people in Canada.
In a nutshell, the deal works as follows: Rogers pays the team owners in order to gain exclusive rights to the broadcasting of most NHL hockey games across a variety of different media. Team owners will share some of this cash with their players, to buy a bit of labour peace, but will pocket most of it as a reward for their “hard work.” In order to profit from this, Rogers will likely develop a variety of expensive cable and internet packages that will charge hockey fans more than they are used to paying in order to see their favourite teams. And since Rogers will have next-to-no competition, consumers will have little choice but to pay more, or abandon watching hockey. In effect, then, it is yet another transfer of wealth from the pockets of the poor to the ledgers of the rich.
HOCKEY NIGHT IN “CANADA”
So what will this mean for the iconic CBC broadcast, Hockey Night in Canada? The program televises two games each Saturday night featuring Canadian teams and typically follows most of the Canadian franchises through the playoffs. It is the CBC’s most popular program – arguably a centrepiece of Canadian television – and it brings to mind all of the mythologies that embody the supposed Canadian identity.
But let’s be honest: the Canadian identity promoted by Hockey Night in Canada is predominantly white, male, and middle class. At best, people of colour appear on the program as occasional proofs of Canadian “multiculturalism;” Ron MacLean represents white Canada’s “tolerance” as he tells the against-all-odds stories of players like P.K. Subban, one of a handful of non-white players in the league. At worst, it reinforces white stereotypes of people of colour – for instance, by painting Indigenous player Jordan Tootoo as “undisciplined” and “unsportsmanlike” – and gives a platform to the lunatic and racist ravings of Don Cherry.
Women are systematically tokenised by the program; in addition to the obvious fact that only men’s hockey is part of the actual programming, the telecast typically features one or two women as minor TV personalities who never participate in the critical discussion panels, but are occasionally called upon to conduct an interview or plug the CBC website. This reached an apex of absurdity last season when Don Cherry screamed from his pulpit that women were “not equal” to men and shouldn’t be allowed to do interviews in team locker rooms, only 30 seconds before the telecast was turned over to Cassie Campbell-Pascall, formerly one of Canada’s elite hockey players, who now primarily recites insignificant statistics as ‘filler’ between Hockey Night in Canada features.
Finally, the entire presentation of “Canada’s Game” is the story of middle class white families. Playing elite hockey is now a luxury reserved only for children of wealthy parents who can afford all the equipment, the camps, and the clinics, so the players’ stories tend to sound the same, and the greatest hardships they faced are usually early mornings and tough training sessions. The program doesn’t have much room to talk about people who work three jobs just to pay the bills, or who face constant and daily racism that keeps them locked in working poverty and precarity.
CBC’s romantic picture of Canadian kindness, community, and pond hockey looks nothing like the experience of the majority of Canadians. So mourning the now-inevitable decline of Hockey Night in Canada seems a little misguided. In fact, all the emphasis on the Canadian tradition has distracted us from the larger problem here.
ROGERS AND ME
For all its drawbacks, Hockey Night in Canada is the only way to watch the game free of charge; I watch in my apartment with just a TV and antenna. In order to see games carried by corporate broadcasters like TSN and Rogers, people have to order expensive cable packages, which can run anywhere from $50 to $150 a month, depending on the package. It is likely that Rogers will now force consumers to buy even more expensive packages in order to see their favourite teams, worried as it is that people are beginning to shift away from cable TV in the era of internet downloading.
The effect of this will be felt most by working people and families. For better or worse, hockey is a significant part of the lives of many working people, including those who aren’t represented by the game’s mythology. Sports, in general, continue to excite the imaginations of people from a variety of class backgrounds and, given the centrality of hockey in Canadian national consciousness, it is no surprise that working people often take solace and refuge from our daily struggles in the enjoyment of following our favourite teams in a fundamentally frivolous pursuit: putting a puck in a net.
The simplicity of the game can be a break from the complicated aggravations we go through from day to day, from deciphering credit card fee statements, to staying on the boss’s good side, to finding safe and affordable day care for our kids, to plugging the leak in the sink. Sport gives us a temporary outlet from life’s harsh realities. It gives us something simple to share with our friends and co-workers. For first- and second-generation immigrant families, it can be a way of engaging with a new, often hostile, community. For many of us, it is simply exciting and entertaining.
This shouldn’t lead us to romanticize professional hockey: it is still fundamentally a violent, patriarchal, elitist reflection of the racist Canadian ruling class. But it is still an enjoyable distraction for many working people, who make up the majority of the NHL fan base. It is working people who will then be most directly hurt by the Rogers deal, which represents a direct transfer of wealth from the poor and relatively poor to the already-astronomically wealthy.
Tyler Shipley is the Editor of Left Hook Journal, “a critical review of sports and society”.
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Op-Ed by Suzanne Baustad
Vancouver | The most conservative Supreme Court we’ve seen in decades has decided to decriminalize prostitution, striking down all laws against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution (pimping), and street soliciting. The most reactionary government we’ve had in decades has been given a year to rewrite the law that will have huge implications for all working class women in Canada, whether or not we’ve ever turned a trick. It is a clear victory to finally have prostituted women decriminalized, but the Court has opened the door to framing prostitution as ‘entrepreneurship’, the new social safety net for working class and poor women. I suspect Kim Pate, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies may be right when she said of today’s decision “Our daughters and granddaughters will look back and say ‘What were they thinking?’”
This is not a holiday greeting card. These are Canada’s Supreme Court judges, most of whom were hand-picked by Harper’s ruling Conservatives in the past seven years. They’ve just given the Harper government the ability to rewrite the laws on prostitution in Canada.
All the commentators I heard speak to the decision this past Friday morning celebrated the fact that ‘prostitutes’ have been decriminalized. Too true: they should never have been criminalized to begin with! But few highlight the fact that the Supreme Court just decriminalized johns and pimps and deregulated this capitalist and colonialist industry which functions most basically in the interests of pimps and johns. The safety of prostituted women has been used (disingenuously) over and over to mask the fact that what is really happening here is the unleashing of an industry no longer fettered by sanctions on those who buy and profit from the selling of women’s bodies. It’s a weird analogy but I can’t help but think of the asbestos industry – another industry known to be harmful to its ‘workers’. We didn’t argue to support that industry in order to ‘protect’ the workers. We shut it down and provided support to the workers to transition to another way of making a living.
Why the opposite approach when it is the most marginalized women facing harm? Why is the legal infrastructure for a Canadian sex industry emerging now at a time when working class, migrant and Indigenous women are increasingly displaced by Canadian colonialism and imperialism, and hit on all sides by neoliberalism? Outside of abolitionist circles – see for example, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry – the silence around what the sex industry stands to gain from the Supreme Court decision is deafening, even among those who should know better and among those who should have been told what was being argued in that courtroom in their name. I live and work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A prostituted woman I know who works doing orientations for Sex Workers United Against Violence – one of the key appellants to the Supreme Court case – and she was shocked and appalled when I told her that SWUAV was fighting to have johns and pimps decriminalized. So much for ‘nothing about us, without us’.
As with any capitalist industry there will be regulation, deregulation (and lack of enforcement), a flurry of competition, followed by the inevitable monopolization. As we’ve seen in Germany, New Zealand, Netherlands and other countries where decriminalization has occurred, this process will not be pretty, the industry will expand and become even more entrenched, and women will not be safer. Just check out what’s happening in New Zealand: mega brothels integrated into the entertainment industry including a 15-storey super-brothel, across the street from the country’s largest casino and conference centre development in Auckland. By 2017 it will also house a convention centre catering for up to 3500 guests and will employ 400 prostitutes. Think: a Walmart for johns.
The decriminalized sex industry is being presented as yet another neoliberal solution to the problems created by structural inequalities under patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism.
As demand increases, so does the need for a greater supply of women’s bodies, but with no ‘worker protection’ for the workers in this industry – wishful thinking under neoliberalism. The most recent review of New Zealand’s prostitution laws (read beyond the boosterish executive summary) shows no effective regulation of brothels – no enforceable employment standards, no enforcement of occupational safety regulations, no union formation, while women are not any more likely to report the still ongoing violence to the police.
This report is noteworthy as it excludes non-English speaking sex workers. Yet Asian and Maori/ Pasifika women make up a very significant part of the trade, and are concentrated in the street trade and the most exploitative brothels. By factoring out the experience of some of the most marginalized in the trade, the report creates a rosier picture of the trade than is warranted – and underestimates the size of the illegal sector given that non-New Zealander sex trade workers remain criminalized.
Canada’s Supreme Court decision will decriminalize all johns and pimps but not even all ‘sex workers’ will be decriminalized. We know that there will be a distinction made between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ prostitutes with the ‘good’ ones hidden away in brothels out of sight of property owners. The ‘bad’ prostitutes will be those at the bottom of the prostitution hierarchy who remain on the streets. In New Zealand, street-based workers have not moved indoors, for the same reasons they did not work in massage parlours and escort agencies prior to decriminalization, and continue to face high levels of violence – including the murder of two street workers by their johns after decriminalization.
In fact, the Prostitution Review report mentioned above concludes the situation is so dismal for street-based workers that they should simply get off the street. In New Zealand this amounts to a bit of ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ as there is not one dedicated exit program for street workers and, as in Canada, almost three decades of neoliberal fundamentalism has stripped social programs to the bone for all working class women living in poverty. But for those who ‘choose’ to remain on the street, the report holds out the promise of a bit of street lighting and maybe a bit more cordial relations with the cops – who continue to harass street workers, not under criminal law sanctions but through municipal bylaws which are already happening here, as do resident groups and brothel owners fearing ‘unfair competition’.
The other ‘bad prostitutes’ who will likely continue to face sanctions in Canada’s post-Bedford sex industry will be migrant women. We know that the vast majority of women in decriminalized prostitution regimes are not ‘locals’ but women from those areas of the world ravaged by colonialism and imperialism. In New Zealand, the Prostitution Reform Act made it illegal for non-citizens or non-permanent residents to sell sex. In fact, in all decriminalized regimes, these women are still criminalized, still in the illegal markets, which flourish alongside legalized prostitution.
Decriminalization will mean some, certainly not all, prostituted women will escape the carceral state; but many more women will be left to fend for themselves in a violent and intensely exploitative sex industry where johns will become “clients”, and pimps “entrepreneurs in the adult entertainment industry”. Supplying this market are women’s bodies, objectified and made into a commodity. Commodification under capitalism is not a feeling and women do not escape the process of commodification by claiming to ‘choose’ to sell sex or simply provide a service, a claim made by a tiny vocal minority at the top of the class and race hierarchy of prostitution. As one prostitution survivor aptly responded to the claim that prostitution is no better or worse than flipping burgers at McDonalds: “In McDonalds, you’re not the meat. In prostitution you are the meat.”
So exactly whose daughters, sisters, mothers, and aunts will supply the Canadian sex industry demand in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, in Vancouver’s entertainment zones, or along BC’s pipeline construction routes? Just look at the racist and colonialist back pages of the Georgia Straight or Toronto’s NOW magazine. All working class women and especially non-citizen women and Indigenous women will be the ones who bear the costs of this Supreme Court decision.
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For those many who identify with a progressive or liberatory politics, 2013 will be remembered as a year where two recognized leaders of the Left passed away.
One was still in his prime, having just won another election, and ambitiously continuing a popular, socialist-oriented national project involving a democratic process of political decentralization, coupled with a program of regional integration that went against the grain of corporate-led “free trade” projects. He died relatively young.
The other had been out of politics for a decade and a half, and although still a political reference point within his country, had not been a leading figure in its political landscape for some time.
Ideologically, both centred their politics around the building of socialism, challenged imperialism and led in some capacity armed movements which sought to liberate their territories from the domestic and international structures of oppression that dominated them.
Despite their similarities, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and former South African President Nelson Mandela were not treated the same, at least not by the governments and media of North America and Europe.
Mandela’s funeral not only counted among its guests the presence of presidents and dignitaries from across the Third World, but also the presidents of countries that most supported Apartheid South Africa — including the United States, Britain and Canada. These politicians and the media appear to pay their respects to Mandela, paying lip service to the anti-apartheid struggle and his place within that movement. Cynically of course, the world’s elite used his passing as a platform to whitewash in one-fell swoop the history of apartheid, eliminating the brutality of the white-supremacist regime, the complicity of the imperialist West, and also the armed resistance of African people and their allies. Nevertheless, the balance sheet of Mandela’s role in the liberation of the African continent from colonialism demands respect and admiration.
Nelson Mandela with Graca Machel and Joe Slovo, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party.
Chavez’s untimely death from cancer was afforded no such respect, however. While millions lined up in Caracas to pay respects to the man they had just re-elected for a fourth time, the Harper Government in Canada used the occasion to issue a statement calling for the Venezuelan people to build “democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” On Saturday Night Live, Justin Timberlake performed as Elton John, singing a version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ that ridiculed Chavez.
The contrast in responses to the passing of these two working class heroes is telling. This is more so when considering the differences and similarities in present social conditions, and the political project and policies implemented in both countries, and how these are presented in the media.
Legacies and Policies
There can be no understating the importance of the resistance to the political and legal structures of Apartheid, and the victory that the liberation of Mandela and the ascent of the African National Congress represented for the peoples of Africa. This is the legacy of Mandela and the Apartheid resistance — the uncompromising and forceful struggle for freedom against colonialism and imperialism — that should be upheld and re-appropriated as part of the same lineage of national liberation struggles from Cuba to Palestine (both of which Mandela supported vociferously until his passing).
As numerous others have pointed out, however, the promise of equality under the loose umbrella of socialism has never materialized. According to the National Planning Commission of South Africa, the gap between richest and poorest (the Gini coefficient) actually increased from 0.64 to 0.67 between 1995 and 2005.
Moreover the proportion of people living below the poverty line (measured at $2/day) increased from 53 percent in 1995 to 58 percent in 2001, before declining to 48 percent in 2008. Nevertheless, 50 percent of the population remains in poverty.
It would certainly be unfair to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Mandela. Yet, it must be acknowledged that in 20 years of government, the ANC and its partners in “Tripartite Alliance” — the South African Communist Party (of which Mandela was apparently a Central Committee member) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions — the economic fabric of Apartheid has been left largely intact.
Venezuela, on the other hand, has achieved significant social gains in a shorter period of time. According to the World Bank, the initial reforms under the Bolivarian Revolution reduced “moderate poverty significantly, from 50% in 1998 to 25% in 2012. Inequality has also declined, as evidenced by the Gini Index, which fell from 0.49 in 1998 to 0.39 in 2011, one of the lowest rates in the region.”
Yet, the media portrayals of and political attitudes toward both countries, and the policies implemented under the leadership of Chavez and Mandela, are significantly different.
South Africa continues to be portrayed as an emerging, economic powerhouse with a stable government and social peace. Venezuela on the other hand is presented as an unstable, violent society with a repressive, autocratic regime. In short, South Africa and Mandela are a success story while Venezuela and Chavez embody failure.
Yet, the social ills that reinforce the narrative around Venezuela and Chavez (high crime rates and government corruption and inefficiency) are also considerably present in South Africa.
With just shy of 16,000 homicides last year, South Africa remains one of the countries with the highest murder rates in the world. With regards to corruption, there are certainly no shortages of scandals including current President Jacob Zuma, who was recently derided for spending $20 million of public funds spent on renovations to his personal compound. This is not to mention the considerable discontent from the popular classes that was seen prior to hosting the World Cup, or that resulted in the massacre of 44 striking workers at the Marikana mine.
So why the difference in portrayal?
The difference in mainstream media portrayals really lies in the different approaches to the economy taken by the two countries, both within their nations as well as internationally. While neither country can really claim to be ‘socialist’ (as production remains largely in the hands of the private sector in both South Africa and Venezuela), Venezuela has been active in attacking the supremacy of private capital not only through the nationalization of factories and sectors and regulation of the economy, but also through the promotion of ‘social economy’ through cooperatives, community-run productive enterprises and worker-run factories.
This has produced a backlash from the business class in Venezuela, who have been attempting to derail the government and its redistributive policies since 2000. Most recently, large chains have been caught price gouging while many other vendors (as well as government distributors) have been caught hoarding products. This model of fabricated scarcity was the same model of destabilization employed prior to the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile.
As Slavoj Zizek mentions in a current article on Mandela’s legacy, in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union and the perceived victory of capitalism, the ANC was faced with a choice of challenging the economic underpinning of South Africa or attempt to “play the game.” Zizek reminds us, “if one disturbs these mechanisms, one is very swiftly ‘punished’ by market perturbations, economic chaos, and the rest.”
So it is that in Venezuela there are currently shortages of food staples and high inflation, whereas in South Africa these are not concerns. Conversely, the concerns in South Africa are wages and income, access to utilities and services where these are (at least) less of a concern in Venezuela than they were prior to 1998 (when Chavez was elected).
Of course, the idea is not to try and reverse the narrative and claim that Chavez is a model and Mandela, a failure.
Liberation struggles and the people that emerge as leaders within them will be complex and have their contradictions, which we need to acknowledge and learn from. This doesn’t mean we abandon these struggles and their figures in their entirety.
An example of how the corporate media tries to impose visions of history upon us. Thatcher resisted placing sanctions on Apartheid South Africa and refused to meet with resistance leaders like Oliver Tambo.
When we forget our history, we can be sure that the ruling classes will be quick to rewrite them for us. We can’t let the corporate mass media and the capitalist politicians of the world tell us who our heroes are, let alone, let them set the criteria for who deserves our mourning and reverence, and who deserves our scorn and contempt. Stephen Harper’s and Barack Obama’s Mandela – the Mandela that every living imperialist has lined up to snap a picture with — isn’t Africa’s Mandela, the working-class’s Mandela, or history’s Mandela.
The Mandela we need to remember and uphold was the freedom fighter, the one labelled a ‘terrorist’ who refused to trade his own freedom at the expense of the armed liberation movement. That’s the Mandela that helped dismantle the apartheid government; that’s the Mandela we need to reclaim.
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