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.”

On June 16, 2014, community members in Kitchener protested the gentrification of the downtown core by marching down King Street and constructing a “tent city” in Victoria Park. Victoria Park’s tent city — a temporary housing facility made using tents or other structures — was set up as a fully functioning community. Food was served and workshops were held educating occupants on topics such as anti-imperialism and healthy living. There was a trauma centre and a nurse on site. Many occupants of the tent city were displaced poor that had been thrust into almost unlivable situations due to the rising cost of rent in Kitchener’s downtown core.

Downtown Kitchener’s gentrification has been steadily increasing over the last decade, with full support from City Council. Increased land value as a result of major condominium projects has caused rent to soar to unprecedented levels. What few affordable accommodations remain have been steadily purchased by companies such as the Revel Development Corporation (formerly The Madison Group) and renovated into luxury apartments. The municipal government has made it clear that developers, not poor and working class people, are their priority.

Speaking to organizer Cheryl B., one gets a sense of the struggles faced to the citizens of Downtown Kitchener. Cheryl told BASICS that, “The reality of the situation is that poor people have no choice but to take a stand. The state has given us no other options and when pushed into such a corner, the only option is to stand up to the state and show that we will not be pushed around any longer.”

“At a time where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, good jobs are being replaced with part-time minimum wage positions; something needs to be done and it needs to be done now. The state thinks that the poor will be shuffled away quietly to make room for the rich and their condominiums, but that cannot be the case. We will fight for our equality and we will fight in order to take what is rightfully ours,” said Cheryl. “It is the right of everyone to have a roof over their head and it is the right of everyone to be able to afford that. Poor people in The Core have been displaced for far too long and enough is enough.”

Tent City was dismantled by the organizers after about a week to avoid coming under attack by police before K-W Multicultural Festival commenced.

Kitchener’s ‘Tent City’ anti-gentrification protest.

by BASICS Kitchener-Waterloo

After the recent closure of “The Hot Dog House” — a community outreach initiative that handed out hot dogs and coffee to downtown Kitchener’s poor community — the community came together to rectify the situation. On the afternoon of June 29, 2014, citizens of downtown Kitchener’s poor community handed out pizza in front of the model office for the still-to-be-built City Centre Condominiums.

The local community’s decision to hand out food at the condo model office was a symbolic one. One the organizers of the event explained, “City council and the condo developers that are displacing the poor need to know that we are here and we aren’t going away. Resources for the poor are steadily disappearing, making a difficult situation even worse for the downtown core’s poor. Since the state will not assist us, we will take matters into our own hands and ensure that Downtown Kitchener’s poor will not have to go hungry.” With the closure of The Hot Dog House there are no other food options for the poor on Sundays.

For the poor residents of downtown Kitchener, finding effective social resources has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Cuts to social programs from both the federal and provincial level have forced organizations to attempt to do more with less. At the same time, the rate of poverty has been steadily increasing. Both these factors make it difficult, if not impossible, for community organizations to assist the growing number of displaced poor in downtown Kitchener. And, as community organizations that assist with feeding people disappear, the pockets of the poor and working poor become even more strained as they struggle to fit groceries into an already strained budget.

Currently, a single person living on Ontario Works makes around $600 each month. This is far from enough to cover living expenses such as rent, food, utilities, and transportation. Someone working for minimum wage on a part time basis makes about $1,230 per month. Although slightly better, this situation also leaves a person with very little room for additional expenses.

As the government continues to attack the poor with cuts to social programs, community organizers will continue working tirelessly to fill the void. Going forward, organizers will continue handing out pizza in front of City Centre’s model office every Sunday to make sure that no one will have to go hungry, or forced to choose between rent and food.

by Julian Ichim

A first person account on the history of fascism and anti-fascist resistance in Kitchener in the last two decades.  This piece is an edited version of a commentary made by the author on his blog.

Photo by Tyx via Wikimedia. Taken from ImmiGroup website.

“Congratulations, Kitchener-Waterloo, you are the hate crime capital of Canada! Despite hosting two universities and a massive tech company campus, the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge tri-city area experiences a high per capita rate of verbal and physical assaults on ethnic, religious and gay minorities… Kitchener has inherited the mantle from the previous main offender, Calgary.”

This quote is pulled from a recent article by the Immigration law firm, Immigroup, which listed Kitchener as the second worst immigration destination in the country. Despite a drop in hate crimes, Kitchener still has twice the instances of hate crime over the national average.

To those of us who have lived and organized in Kitchener for some time, this comes as no surprise.  We have fascist and racist groups ranging from Blood and Honour to Orange Order-type loyalists, racist anti-native organizations, the English Defense League, the Canadian Defense League, and the list goes on.

As a kid growing up in Kitchener, one of the first groups I joined was Anti-Racist Action (ARA), and not because of any grandiose desire to change the world at the time.  I was an armchair marxist at the time.  But after a violent assault I experienced at the hands of Nazis in front of my school, my views changed. The teachers and so-called authority figures did nothing as I was beat senseless. I joined the ARA because that beating taught me that sitting on the sidelines and ignoring these fascists wouldn’t make them go away.  If agents of the State would do nothing against this fascist violence, then it was up to us to defend ourselves.

I think that I was 14 when this happened.  Since then I have been an active organizer and have learned quite a bit over the years.  And from my experience, fascism and racist violence is not something that grows out of a vacuum: it is nurtured and harnessed by the Canadian state and corporate media everyday.

I am not just referring to the collusion between fascists and security forces which has been well demonstrated, from the use of these organizations to attacks and firebomb Marxist Leninist Bookshops in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Kitchener to the Grant Bristol Affair where CSIS took a bunch of drunken anti-social elements, armed and trained them, and unleashed them throughout Canada as the Heritage Front.  All this while boneheads have been always deployed to target organizers such as myself, with our drop in centre in Kitchener getting attacked, its organizers receiving death threats, beatings, and the targeting of family members.

The Canadian state and the media create the conditions and ideology that gives birth to all these racist organizations and their activities. From the anti-immigration policies and rhetoric from the Federal government, to Tamil refugees fleeing genocide being labelled as terrorists, to the promotion of reactionary ideologues like Christie Blatchford and the like who glorify people like Gary McHale who deny basic rights of self-determination to the land of the original peoples — everyday we can see the the ideological conditions for fascists to emerge. When the murderer of the Sudanese youth John James in Kitchener gets $2000 bail and is out the next day, only to beat the charges later they are creating the conditions; when they say the economic crisis that we are facing is not because of the greed of the capitalists who have closed Ar. Kaufman, Arrow and other factories in our area only to exploit third world workers, but instead the fault of immigrants, they are creating the conditions for fascist violence.

When anti-fascist Monna Zentner’s house was firebombed in Kitchener in November 1992 with no consequence and fascists are allowed to run neighbourhoods, selling drugs to finance their activities, with the police doing nothing, they are creating the conditions for fascism.

The racism we see on our streets is part and parcel of the racism fostered when not directly sponsored by the state, a state that continues its colonial and genocidal project against the original peoples.  This violence is akin to the violence Canada promotes in places like Haiti, Venezuela, Ukraine and elsewhere to advance its imperialist aims.

As long as the state teaches us that colonialism and imperialism is acceptable and marginalize people on the basis of nationhood treating people as second class if not non citizens, then there jackals and lackeys who will carry out such racist acts of violence as we’ve seen in Kitchener over the years, because they know that they will be met with impunity for their actions.

The state not only turns a blind eye to all this, which is in there interest, but targets those who expose and oppose this behaviour.

When the anti-terrorist unit was created, the police stated in The Record (the newspaper for Kitchener and surrounding areas) that it was there to fight neo-Nazi’s and their left wing counterparts (us), pushing the idea that we are two sides of the same coin, and the role of the police and the state is simply to shut down both “extremes”.

But it wasn’t the state that shut down Heritage Front, nor was it the state that shut down the neo-Nazi group the Canadian Ethnic Cleansing, and a slew of other fascist groups. Rather it was us by mobilising the community and meeting force-with-force in the process of defending our right to exist and our right to resist.

An image of Kyle McKee, co-founder of the Aryan Guard, leader of the Calgary branch of Blood & Honour, which this author claims was chased out of Kitchener by anti-fascist organizers.

It was not the state that drove fascist Blood and Honour leader Kyle McKee out of town, but it was the state that defended him as they laid charges against anti-fascists whose only crime was opposing his fascist activities.  It is not the state that’s fighting the alphabet soup of fascists formations, but us.  Yes Kitchener has a history of fascism, but it also has a history of resistance in the streets, and like we have beat back these fascists in the past we will do it again and win whenever necessary.

On Jan 3, 2014, the Kitchener-Waterloo Spot Collective announced the relaunching and professionalising of their people’s programs.

The people’s programs, which include the serving of free food, programs for those dealing with addiction, and literacy programs, have come out of the need to deal with the problems the community faces by mobilising the community, says organizer Amber Sinson.

The Spot Collective serving free food and coffee downtown, November 2013. Photo: DIANNE HARTMAN

“Our children need food, warm winter clothing and basic needs that are not provided by the state,” Amber continues. “It’s obvious that we must rely on ourselves to solve our own problems.”

The Spot Collective, created in 1998 by street youth and socialist students looking for for solutions to the problems they were facing, has always focused on balancing the immediate needs of the community with solving the root causes of poverty by attacking systemic problems, according to Sinson. The relaunching of the people’s programs is a continuation of this combined approach.

When asked about food banks and other social agencies that provide such services she replied, “They humiliate you and make you feel like garbage, and that it’s your fault you’re poor. They also do nothing to address the issues behind poverty.”

Wesley Gibbons, a person who uses the peoples programs, also added, “You can only get one or two boxes a month from the food bank and most of the stuff is expired.”

Those interested in participating are invited to come out to meetings Wednesday nights at 6pm at 43 Queen St., after the free food servings. Contact: 226-289-2559.

Katrina Kozarek speaks in Montreal, outlining the process of building communal power (SANTIAGO ESCOBAR)

By the Hugo Chavez People’s Defense Front

As Venezuela faces yet another attempt by the Right-wing opposition to create political, economic and social turmoil in the wake of the upcoming municipal electoral process, the Hugo Chávez People’s Defense Front of Canada, organized a 5 City speaking tour with Katrina Kozarek from the Comuna Socialista Ataroa in Lara, Venezuela. According to organizers, the purpose of this tour was not only to bring attention to the renewed destabilization campaign against Venezuela, but also to show exactly what this process of building peoples power in Venezuela looks like from the ground.

According to Santiago Escobar, of Barrio Nuevo and the Hugo Chavez People’s Defense Front, the speaking tour had the intention “to promote the accomplishments of the Bolivarian revolution, especially the socialist communes, which are concrete experiences of popular power from below and to the left, also with the intention of creating a network for educational and information interchange as an alternative to the information created by mass corporate media”.

Since 2006 Venezuela has begun to create a new ‘geometry of power’ in an effort to deepen and fortify the Bolivarian Revolution. This has meant the application of direct democracy through participation in economic, social and political planning and decision making from the grassroots, local organizations building towards a ‘communal state’.

At the neighbourhood level, laws were passed providing guidelines for the people to organize themselves into communal councils comprising of up to 400 families in a defined geographic area. Once formed through a democratic process that invites and includes all people living in this area, the communal council decides the identity of the area (including the name), elects spokespeople and defines the neighbourhood priorities. Importantly, it can also obtain funds in order to meet its assessed needs. Since the passing of the Law of Communal Councils in 2006, over 33 000 communal councils have been registered and over $2 Billion transferred from the central government directly to these communities for projects ranging from repairing of stairs and roads, to neighbourhood sports facilities, to cooperatives producing shoes and bricks.

In 2010, the Law of Communes was passed, which outlined the process for neighbouring communal councils to come together to take greater control over their area. Over 1100 communes have been registered to date.

Kozarek, who is part of the Ataroa Socialist Commune which comprises a territory which includes roughly 30 000 families, describes the communes “as the primary defense strategy of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela that promises to bring the country to the point of no return towards a truly democratic, and socialist future, creating an infrastructure for direct participation from a grassroots level, as well as promoting local and national production and self-sustainability.”

Kozarek acknowledged the fact that this process is still in construction and that capacity of Venezuela to resist the economic and other forms of sabotage is extremely important for the future of Venezuela and all of the countries and popular movements that have come together under the platform of the Bolivarian Alternative of Our America (ALBA) to resist imperialism in the region and build a model that moves away from neoliberalism.

The tour started off in the University of Toronto on the 7th of November, passing through Guelph University, Centro Hispano de York, Kitchener, Ottawa and finishing off in Montreal. The diversity of organizations, individuals and groups that participated in the events, joined in the call to participate in a solidarity social network created by community media and social movements of ALBA in Venezuela, called the Cayapa Communicacional, to share information and counter-act the opinions and information disseminated by the opposition and their supporters on an international level.

Activist being arrested at occupation of Enbridge Pumping Station north of Hamilton (rabble.ca)

by Kitchener-Waterloo BASICS

In an attempt to reverse the flow of highly-corrosive tar sands bitumen through the Haldimand Tract (Six Nations land), the Calgary-based oil company Enbridge is using the ageing Line 9 pipeline. The company is moving forward without the consent from the indigenous peoples whose way of life is directly threatened by the pipeline which has been built on the land where they live.

The danger with pumping is that bitumen is an unprocessed tar sands oil that is mixed with a highly-corrosive natural-gas liquid, and needs to be pumped at a higher temperature and pressure due to its viscosity. As a result, this puts a heavy strain on the aging 38-year-old pipeline. Pumping this oil also comes with a lot of waste that is pumped back into the Athabasca River system, which has an extremely negative effect on the surrounding environment.

Over the years, Enbridge has been dangerously careless when pumping tar sands oil through their pipelines. Between 1999 and 2010, Enbridge has reportedly been responsible for at least 800 spills (approximately 7 million gallons of heavy crude oil). One of the most devastating examples is the 2010 Line 6B spill in the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, Michigan. The effects of that spill were massive, and three years and almost one billion dollars later, the spill is still not completely cleaned up. Both Line 9 and 6B were built to transport conventional crude oil, not bitumen.

KW is showing resistance through a coalition of broad-based community organizations who oppose the proposal of the reversal of tar sands oil. Malcolm of Kitchener Ontario Animal Liberation Alliance said, “there was an occupation of the Enbridge Westover pumping station on Beverly Swamp, resulting in delaying the reversal through the area. This inspired people to take action in their own communities. This dirty tar sands oil not only puts people at risk, but also wildlife in the environment as well”.

“Here in Kitchener we have put forward a declaration and used it as a tool to get support from the community. By having info nights, lobbying, and organizing around this declaration, we hope to pressure the council to oppose this attack on our communities,” says Joe Campbell, community organizer.

KW organizers believe that we as a community need to work in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of this land to stop the reversal of the tar sands oil through this land before it’s too late and we have our own Kalamazoo on our hands. For more information, you can visit http://noline9wr.ca/.

KW activists demand an increase to minimum wage (Poverty Makes us Sick)

by Kitchener- Waterloo BASICSNEWS

“Ronald McDonald,” joined by approximately 30 other people, targeted a McDonalds located in Kitchener, ON, to demand a living wage for all workers. McDonalds is part of a larger lobbying group that wants to keep the freeze on minimum wage (which is currently $10.25/hr in Ontario), forcing workers to live in poverty. This action is part of a larger provincial campaign that seeks to raise minimum wage to $14/hr. According to Statistics Canada, full-time workers making only minimum wage have incomes that are 19% below the poverty line, with limited to no benefits.

“In KW alone, we’ve lost manufacturing jobs and tech industry jobs (ex. RIM), due to temporary agencies, precarious part-time work, and outsourcing,” says community activist Mark Corbiere. “While the cost of living increases and minimum wage stays the same, the gap between rich and poor increases at an alarming rate,” stated Di, a member of various community organizations.

Businesses from the targeted lobbying group include Tim Horton’s, Wal-Mart, Loblaws, and McDonalds, as well as others. For more information on this campaign or to get involved/sign the petition to raise minimum wage, please visit www.raisetheminimumwage.ca.

Julian Ichim, appearing for his first day of trial in Toronto on September 30, 2012. “Our crime is our ability to organize and resist”, said Ichim. (BASICSnews.ca).

by Denise Cordova and Nicole Oliver

The dedicated community organizer, Julian Ichim from Kitchener-Waterloo, appeared in court on September 30 facing charges held against him for blogging about his personal experiences with an undercover police officer in the year that lead up to the Toronto G20 protests. Arguments were put forward that the charges should be dismissed because the Crown is over-prosecuting the case.

Julian Ichim is a 33-year-old former University of Waterloo student. He has been a community activist and organizer for over a decade, positively changing the communities he has worked with. He started one of the first youth-run youth drop-in centers in Kitchener, assisted in creating youth harm reduction programs, coordinated addictions programs and anti-poverty initiatives, helped run free food programs, among an exhaustive list of initiatives.

But his strong political and social conscience has come at a high price.

In light of the G20 Summit in Toronto from June 26-27, 2010 many activist groups prepared to take that opportunity to protest under the banner of various causes, including fighting poverty and capitalism. So for a year and a half prior to the Summit, undercover police infiltrated protest groups planning G20 demonstrations. In Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph, two undercover officers, started spending time with activists and Ichim unwittingly became friends with one of the undercover officers.  That is, until he was arrested on June 26, 2010 hours before the G20 Summit even began. He was charged with conspiracy to commit mischief. Ichim never received the police synopsis (police version of what happened and why he was charged) nor was he told where or when he allegedly counseled or conspired to commit indictable offenses. These charges were later dropped.

Ichim was not able to speak publicly about his brutal arrest on June 26, being persecuted for his Marxist political ideology, nor about his feelings after having been deceived by the officer who he considered to be a personal friend.  Neither was he able to speak about the most difficult part of it all, having lost his mother to cancer during this process. So he decided to start his own blog in November 2011 in an attempt to tell his story, about the G20 among many other things.

One month later, he was criminalized just for speaking out. The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) asked Julian to remove one of his posts where he referred to the undercover police officer. The cop identity was never reveled. But standing by his principles and his belief in freedom of speech, he refused to remove his post and was therefore charged by the police with three counts of disobeying a court order.

According to Ichim “the purpose of the motion for today was to challenge the Crown’s chosen path; to proceed with indictment. There were other options available, yet the Crown chose not to use those options.”

The charges Ichim faced could result in up to two years in prison, which argues Ichim “is clearly a case of over prosecution due to the fact that I took a political stand”.

The Judge for the trial, Justice Michael Quigley ruled the Crown could not proceed by indictment based on legal principles, although he refused to acknowledge the political grounds at the core of Ichim’s defense.