“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” – Assata Shakur

On Saturday March 26th, over a thousand people gathered for #BlackOut Against Police Brutality to demand justice for Andrew Loku and Alex Wettlaufer who were murdered by the pigs. On Monday April 4th, hundreds marched to Queen’s Park, demanded and were granted an audience with Kathleen Wynne, who admitted “I believe that we still have systemic racism in our society”.

Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) forces onlookers to recognize that police brutality exists and that black people in this city are specifically targeted by the police. It also gives voice to the ways that black people and people of colour experience racism in Canada today. Occupying a space like Police HQ shows that people can come together to build inclusive spaces that rely on the contributions, support and commitment of people across the city.

The Black Lives Matters Toronto movement has made concrete their solidarity with Indigenous organizers. BLMTO stood side by side with occupiers of the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) office in Toronto, just as indigenous allies had stood with the people occupying TPS headquarters when they were attacked by the pigs in the middle of the night.

As a result of Tent City and other actions, Toronto City Council voted to restore Afro-Fest to a full two-day event and unanimously voted to review the province’s Special Investigations Unit through an ‘anti-black racism lens’. Kathleen Wynne committed to meet again with BLMTO organizers and the Ontario Coroner opened an inquest into the death of Andrew Loku. And Michael Coteau, the Minister Responsible for Anti-Racism has promised there will be public meetings to talk about anti-blackness in policing.

But now that Tent City has come to an end, how will the community prevent police from harassing and killing our people? How will we prevent more state-sponsored murders, such as those of Jermaine Carby, Sammy Yatim, and Andrew Loku? Demanding inquests into the murders of people at the hands of police is not something new and has never changed the way police brutalize and murder the people in our communities.

The state has a long history of maneuvering around the demands of protest movements. In the 1990’s, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) agitated against the Toronto Police to stop the police’s investigation of police, which led to the formation of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). However, provincial and municipal governments have always found ways to protect the police because the police are accountable to the state, not the people. Today, the SIU is filled with people who are ex-cops and apologists who do nothing but uphold the current system of exploitation that allow these murders to happen in the first place.

We have to ask ourselves: what is it going to take to build strong and independent communities, to disrupt police brutality, and to challenge state power?

Basics Community News Service members have been working with the families of the victims of police brutality for almost a decade now from Alwy al-Nadhir to Junior Manon to Sammy Yatim to Jermaine Carby. In spite of increasing public awareness, the law continues to drag its feet year after year in the case of Jermaine Carby, who was murdered in December 2014. In the case of Sammy Yatim, the law was used to justify the clearance of murder charges against Officer James Forcillo.

“We are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults at it” – Amilcar Cabral

Despite vocal protests against state violence, the demands formed during Tent City will not provide the people with any way of protecting themselves from being brutalized, because the demands are not focused on building up our own power and capacity – they rely on the state agreeing to change for the better. BLMTO organizers frequently chant “the system isn’t broken, it was built this way”. But if the system is working the way that it is supposed to, why do we insist on asking this very system–directly responsible for the oppression we face–for small and incremental changes that don’t address the root of the problem?

The law will never go after the cops who killed Andrew Loku last July, even if they are identified, because that’s the way the system works.

We cannot ask to participate in the colonizer’s power. ‘Freedom’ does not look like black consultation with the SIU or a new body that will replicate the same incompetence. A number of public meetings that were held throughout the province last year had a resounding message: eliminate the practice of carding immediately. But even with all of these public meetings and promises that were made by Yasir Naqvi, the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, carding has merely been ‘regulated’ and in some cases temporarily suspended while under review.

But the practice of racial profiling and police targeting black people and people of colour still continues. What will these new meetings on anti-blackness in policing reveal that we didn’t know already? What can they change if the enforcement completely relies on the state and police to follow through on their empty promises?

Do we want to be on their investigation committees after they shoot our families and friends, or should we make sure that another pig does not dare kill another one of our own? Our power and freedom will come from protecting each other, and from creating our own autonomous communities that maintain the livelihood of the people within them.

“Whether it’s in America or the rest of the African world, black lives will never matter until we attain BLACK POWER; which is power in our hands to determine our future for subsequent generations to come.” – Black is Back Coalition

The people who are incarcerated by police know that they are human and deserve justice. What they don’t have is an organized community that has their back. We cannot ask the state to recognize the value of our lives; we cannot ask them for power. Black lives have never mattered to the Canadian state, and they will never matter, regardless of how much we plead for recognition.

For police violence to end in our communities, we must work towards building genuine people power that can be organized to prevent or respond to state violence. Building genuine people power means that we create alternative structures that directly challenge the repressive power of the state.

We don’t ask to be accommodated in the system or try to hold it accountable to the people. You don’t ask your enemy to solve your problems for you — especially when they are the ones who created the problem in the first place.

These tactics have proven successful in communities throughout the city including in the Esplanade, Dufferin and Eglinton and in Jamestown. Community members have made significant interventions the moment cops attempt violence on the streets.

In the Esplanade, when the TPS attempted to falsely arrest a young black man, accusing him of committing a murder that he had no involvement in, the Esplanade Community Group (ECG) intervened and prevented his arrest. When the community faced ongoing harassment and brutalization by constant police patrols, ECG members organized a cop watch and systematically intervened by gathering people around the police and recording video of police interactions. When a member of the ECG was targeted by police who attempted to throw him down a set of stairs, once again the community was there to protest police violence. Actions cannot just invite community members to attend, support and then leave, but must actively integrate them into the organizing.

In the neighbourhood of Dufferin and Eglinton, the police of 13 Division had targeted and terrorized the community to the point where black youth could not move freely in the community. If youth were in groups larger than two people, police would stop them and subject them to pat down searches and other forms of harassment. Youth who were most impacted by this police terrorism decided that they had to organize to change these conditions.

They began meeting regularly in the basement of a local bookstore to discuss the issues of police harassment and engaged in political education including knowing their rights when dealing with the police. This organizing work led to the creation of the Black Fist Defence Brigade in the community, and after a period of six months of organizing, youth would be able to walk the streets in their neighbourhood in groups of five, ten, or more without fear of police harassment. The police could no longer stop and harass these youth, because they had an organization to back them up and the support of elders their community.

In Jamestown, the TCHC regularly collaborates with the police at 23 Division, permits police to conduct searches of tenants’ homes, and uses the police to enforce evictions. When families came under attack by these two state institutions, local organizers in the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) mobilized their members and community supporters to defend them from being kicked out of their homes and put out on the street. InPDUM engaged community members directly with the understanding that the police are an institution of the state, which was built and maintained through the theft and destruction of Indigenous, African and other exploited peoples. With this understanding, InPDUM members did not ask the police to reform their tactics or improve their interactions with the community. Instead, the people recognized that in order to make change, they needed to be organized to contend with the power of the state and police.

These interactions with the police were successfully challenged because there was already a clearly outlined protocol in place for community members to follow. The efforts of InPDUM and the residents of Jamestown reflect how organizing – specifically, having meetings with the most affected, working class members of the community, establishing goals collectively, and demanding responsibility from each other rather than the state – all play a crucial role in developing our capacity to be leaders and protectors of our own communities. This is why organizing tactics must focus on creating trust and reliability of members within the community – our only strength is in our unity and organization. We must recognize this in order to combat a state that exists to eliminate indigenous people, brutalize people of colour and exploit the working class.

Organizing to resist and combat the violence inflicted on our communities by the police is not a simple task. But there are more of us than there are of them.

“We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.” – Fred Hampton

On December 9th, taxi drivers from across Toronto staged a series of protests against the rival company Uber. Protesters shut down four high traffic areas before finishing with a demonstration at City Hall, calling upon the mayor to ‘bring justice’ to drivers by stopping Uber from operating illegally. These disruptions reverberated throughout the city as thousands of commuter vehicles came to a resounding halt.

Uber is a company that uses online software to connect customers to drivers, often for much cheaper than what many licensced taxi competitors offer. Since Uber’s conception in Silicon Valley only a few years ago, it has spread to cities across the world—much to the dismay and protest of local taxi drivers. Both the Uber company and its software seem to represent where capitalism is headed right now. Many companies like Uber are moving toward a model in which they focus on the delivery of goods and services as efficiently as possible to middle class consumers using a combination of cutting edge technology and easily exploitable and disposable workers who are conveniently labelled independent contractors. The broader ‘Uberization’ of the economy is already underway, as the Uber platform is now being used from everything from package deliveries, to health care, to snow removal.

In Toronto during the December 9th strike, drivers pointed out that Uber drivers don’t pay licensing fees and undergo minimal training. As the Ontario Highway Traffic Act makes it illegal for any taxis to operate without special licensing, drivers questioned why city officials had yet to impose any restrictions on Uber operations. Mayor John Tory had indicated on several occasions that such plans were in the works, yet none had materialized.

In their protest, taxi drivers staged city hall demonstrations, road blocks, and a hunger strike. Frustrations were clearly running high: in one widely circulated video, a taxi driver was dragged down Queens Park Crescent by an Uber car; in another, a driver compared Uber to ISIS. Still, the sentiment of the protest is relatable.

Uber receives an unfair business advantage due to lack of regulation, and its introduction to Toronto has brought dramatic changes to the lives of already poorly paid taxi drivers—more than 80% of whom are working class immigrants. It is not uncommon for taxi drivers to have seen their incomes halved since the advent of Uber. “I’ve been a taxi driver for 25 years,” said one driver from Scarborough, “and this is the biggest change I’ve seen in my income over the shortest amount of time.”

Uber drivers have fared no better. Many were tempted by the flexibility of owning their own business and scheduling their own hours—something that the company advertises as a key selling point. Uber calls its drivers ‘business partners,’ only requiring them to have access to a car and a license, making it a highly accessible low-skilled job. As economic opportunities are scarce enough for those at the bottom, it’s not surprising to learn that many Uber drivers—especially those who drive for the lower-class ‘UberX’, and especially those who rely on Uber for most of their income—are working class immigrants who live in Toronto’s suburbs.

Since Uber cut its prices in 2014, many drivers now claim to work much longer hours and still struggle to make minimum wage from their fares. Even though drivers own their cars and pay for car insurance, gas, repairs, and so on, Uber still pockets 20% of their income as an access fee to the market of transporting people.

Uber drivers also depend on their customer satisfaction star-ratings, and rarely speak frankly about the conditions of their exploitation. For example, if they hold an average rating of less than 4.7 (out of 5) in many cities, they can be fired. Uber drivers have begun to organize in parts of the USA, demanding fairer working conditions and a living wage.

Parallels can easily be drawn between exploitation of both taxi drivers and Uber drivers by their respective employers. All drivers are faced with the burden of paying for the maintenance of their own vehicles. They also face daily, sometimes violent, racism. The companies that employ these drivers refuse to raise their wages, even as their livelihoods are threatened by economic insecurity. All are working longer hours and even taking on other jobs to make ends meet. Importantly, so many drivers are immigrants who came to Canada, the so-called land of economic opportunity, only to find themselves racialized and forced into cheap labour markets.

There is no doubt that the Uber corporation is worthy of contempt. Nevertheless, something missing from the recent taxi strike was a working class perspective. By directing complaint at the illegality of Uber, the protests missed the point that taxi drivers and many Uber drivers actually share a common struggle. It also shifts responsibility away from the exploitative taxi companies who continue to profit from their drivers’ labour.

Still, in the so-called Uberizing economy taxi and Uber drivers alike should take stock of the incredible power they sit on, as demonstrated by the traffic-blocking protests. In Toronto, a city where business demands the fast-moving uninterrupted flow of people and goods, taxis (and Ubers) are a vital part of the transportation infrastructure. Organizing a city-wide shutdown is undoubtedly a useful way to make one’s voice heard.

Featured image from The National Post

Over the last year in Toronto, we’ve seen disbelief and anger swell amongst people as they’ve learned that the police in this city have “carded” some 1.2 million people between 2008-2013, with young black men being the most targeted group.  What has shocked people has been both the illegal and violating nature of the whole practice.  If you haven’t been a victim of this practice, just imagine what it must be like to be profiled, stopped, harassed, questioned about where you’re going and who you know.

Now, imagine if that invasion of your privacy extended right to your front door. Imagine living in a place where your every movement in and out of your house was tracked, viewed, and the recordings controlled by someone else.  Now, imagine that the people who control these cameras can be sitting at home, on their couch, watching you in real time.

Welcome to 3400 Eglinton Ave East, where the superintendents can watch the comings and goings of every resident from the comfort of their own living room.

As reported by BASICS recently, the conditions in this 16-story Scarborough high rise at Markham and Eglinton shock even those who have lived in Toronto’s “low-income” hoods most of our lives.  Water leaking from hallway ceilings. Rampant roach and bedbug infestations. Carpets that hadn’t seen a steam cleaner in years, and only finally ripped out this past November to leave exposed deadly slippery flooring. Elevators are in a chronic state of disrepair.  The father of one Caribbean family on the 6th floor recently told BASICS that he “got stuck halfway between the basement and first floor [back in October] with a pregnant woman and a kid. I had to pull them all out.”

Yet, with very few funds flowing to repairs, last year Premax Management Ltd somehow found the money to install surveillance cameras on every floor of the building.  Pointing in each direction when you exit the elevator, there are cameras recording the comings and goings of every person in the building.

Kim, a resident and mother on the 17th floor, describes her first encounter with these cameras:  “I just came out of my apartment one day and realized that there was a camera facing my door. As far as I know, there at least needs to be a notice put up if your landlord is watching you.”

Kim’s right. According to the guidelines set out by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, prior to the installation of such a surveillance system, “consultations should be conducted with relevant stakeholders as to the necessity of the proposed video surveillance program and its acceptability to the public. Extensive public consultation should take place.” Such a consultation reportedly never happened.

A mother on the 9th floor, Benisha, who finally picked up and left the building this past November, told BASICS that back in June 2015 her entire load of laundry was stolen in the direct line of sight of the cameras. When she confronted one of the superintendents, Chamu, she was told that “That camera is not for all that stuff. It’s for when something happens in the building. If you have a problem with that, call the police… What do you want me to do about that right now? I tell you guys when you washing your clothes, ‘stay there, stay there’”.

Click here to listen to short audio segment from resident concerning stolen laundry

BASICS questioned the superintendent Chamu about the purpose of the surveillance cameras in the building, relaying concerns that residents had shared with us. Her response was brief: “Who has complaints with the cameras!? It’s for security.”  Chamu was more concerned with identifying those who were airing their grievances than giving a good explanation for why the cameras were installed. Again, more surveillance.

Abha*, an Indian mother who also lives in 3400, described two incidents where in spite of the existence of cameras, neither perpetrators nor lost property were ever located. “A year ago”, she says, “my friend saw a man looking lost, like he didn’t know where he was going in the building. My friend asked him if he was looking for something. He snatched her chain and ran down the staircase. We never found the chain though.”

Abha also relayed an incident about the cars of multiple residents being damaged in the parking lot. “It seemed as though the damage was intentional, as if someone had hit multiple cars in a row with a sharp rod of some sort.”  In the recent past, other residents have also reported to BASICS instances of their vehicles being damaged, even stolen, under the watchful eye of surveillance cameras. Residents reported that no action was taken by building management.

In six months of social investigation and literally hundreds of conversations by BASICS and allied community organizers, we have not come across a single story of the cameras being used to address people’s legitimate concerns about safety or protection of their personal belongings.  At least two residents specifically reported to us being robbed of their jewelry during building-related repairs.

But the problem at 3400 Eglinton is not that the cameras are going completely unused.

Many have reported that camera footage is indeed being used: used to harass residents about who visits their apartments, what personal consumer objects they own, and even the conversations they are having in the elevators or hallways.

In the spring of 2015, one single mother told a BASICS reporter that Chamu questioned her about a man who visited her apartment late. “She said to me: ‘You’re on welfare, you’re not supposed to be having any men over.’  A teenage girl residing on the 9th floor also reported that her mother was questioned about a man that had been in their unit. This man when her older brother, who came to stay with them for a few days.

A number of residents also believe that the cameras may also be equipped with audio. Karl Murray of the 6th floor told BASICS that: “You can say anything you want in the hallway, and they know about it. A lot of people are saying this. Somehow they know what people are talking about in their private conversations.”  A resident who wished not to be identified in this article backed up this suspicion by reporting that one of the few residents in the building who is close with the super told her earlier this year that the cameras are indeed audio equipped.

The ability of the cameras to record both movement and conversations disturbs many, particularly female residents. A resident and mother from the 6th floor, another Kim, also told BASICS that “I have to be conscious of what I’m wearing – it’s not like I’m wearing anything inappropriate, it’s just that it’s something I have to think about just outside my own home”. Michelle, who lives across from 6th floor Kim, said that “Women in this building do not feel safe… You should be able to have conversations without people using them against you.”

As we were talking to Kim on the 17th floor, one of the superintendents, Chet, arrived and threatened to remove BASICS correspondents from the building.

Though we could not acquire a legal opinion on the cameras prior to the print deadline on this article, a city inspector on site at 3400 Eglinton Ave this past October 2015 commented to a BASICS correspondent that personal surveillance of private activities seemed unlawful**.

Again, according to guidelines set out by the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, “organizations should ensure that the proposed design and operation of the video surveillance system minimizes privacy intrusion to that which is absolutely necessary to achieve its required, lawful goals.”  

It’s not so clear if harassing residents, threatening people’s journalists, and ignoring people’s concerns about their personal belongings constitutes “lawful goals”, but that’s the law of the land at 3400 Eglinton Ave East.  

But like “the law” in general, as with police carding, when people don’t fight back, “the law” will oppress us. The “lawful” authorities will use illegal, criminal means to keep the people down. So it’s time to stand up.

*Name altered to respect privacy. Unlike the superintendents at 3400 Eglinton Ave E.
**Correction made at 7:36 PM on 27 December 2015. Original article read: “Though we could not acquire a legal opinion on the cameras prior to the print deadline on this article, a city inspector on site at 3400 Eglinton Ave this past October 2015 commented to a BASICS correspondent that the surveillance system seemed unlawful.”

“I’ve been living here for three years, and last night was the first time I’ve seen anyone come to fix the laundry room,” says a 33-year old resident of 3400 Eglinton Avenue East.

The laundry room in the basement of the Markham and Eglinton area building is full of washing machines and dryers, but several residents have complained about them never working properly, gobbling up people’s cash for no return. On hot summer days and especially in cold winter months, when the snow piles up outside the building and on the sidewalks, they have to carry their laundry nearly half a kilometre to a laundromat.

But the night before Monday October 19, someone finally came to take a look at the machines in the laundry room. That might have been because on Monday morning, the 16-storey building in Scarborough Village was being audited by officers of Municipal Licensing and Standards from the City of Toronto.

Makeshift repair of padlock on door.

The building is in bad condition, both inside and outside. Residents frequently complain about an unresponsive management. Repairs and maintenance are rarely done in a timely manner. One couple became so tired of asking for repairs that they repainted and retiled the apartment themselves—“Not because we wanted to but because we had to. We did it to protect our family—we have two kids.”

Another resident had a broken lock on his door, finally replacing it with a padlock he installed himself after waiting months for the building management to make the repair.

The most common complaint of all residents is the dirty carpet in all of the hallways, which is stained throughout and often smells. “When visitors come, they smell it and think it is coming from our homes,” one resident said. The carpet had not been changed, according to some residents, for over ten years.

After the municipal inspectors ruled that the carpets are not kept in a “clean and sanitary condition” management is in discussion about replacing the carpet. They began to experiment with replacing the carpet on the second floor—where the building superintendent lives, and have now removed the carpet on all of the floors of the building.

A surveillance camera monitoring tenants movements in the building, surrounded by hastily repaired ceiling damaged by water leakage.

Leaks are very common in the building. On October 10, the ceiling of the 17th floor hallway was dripping water that we caught on video. When the superintendent was told about the leak, she simply denied it.On the 17th floor, residents say that leaks have led to mould growing in the carpet and floor.

On October 19, one resident showed BASICS her bathroom ceiling, which was caving in due to leaks from the unit above her. A few days later chunks of the ceiling and water actually fell on her, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling. On November 6, a plumber finally came to “fix” the ceiling—but just seems to have papered over it poorly, with nothing done to actually fix the source of the leak. The area is damp to the touch with bubbles coming out of it. “I can still hear the water dripping,” the resident said. She continues to remain concerned about mould and mildew in the bathroom, a safety concern for her three-year old daughter.

The ceiling of this washroom collapsed on a tenant due to an unresolved issue with water damage from the unit above.

BASICS spoke to municipal officers who said that the state of disrepair in the building was not surprising. Dozens of apartment buildings throughout the city are in horrible condition because the owners simply treat them as a business from which they want to turn a profit.

Despite the municipal officer’s attempts, there was not much they could do about repairs inside units unless they directly received complaints from tenants. But there are many problems, and bringing up units to minimum standards did not mean that they were good standards. The minimum standards require the building to stick to the old code, and not the new one.

For example, the bathrooms in 3400 Eglinton Avenue East all have a passive ventilation system, good enough for the 1950s, but no longer standard—bathrooms now require fans to actively pump the damp air out. The old system not only does a poor job of pushing damp air out, it can even bring damp air in from outside and from other units. This leads to growing problems with mould and mildew.

Many residents do not allow their children onto the balcony because they feel that it is unsafe.

The best and maybe only way that residents can bring about a change, according to the municipal officer we spoke to, is to build community among themselves. That means keeping an eye out for each other and for the building, and holding unresponsive building owners to account through collective action. Limiting actions to filing individual complaints will not push the management to respond. Only through collective action can we actually put pressure on the management and building owner to make the changes that are necessary for the building. 

Scarborough’s very own Abel Tesfaye—or The Weeknd as he is more popularly known—has made conscious choices of the new direction of his career. The goal is simple, as he states in a New York Times article, to become the biggest pop star on the planet.

The Weeknd sings in representation of the underground youth culture, where casual sex and drug experimentation are mainstays. Within the last year he has achieved unprecedented levels of commercial success, having dominated the airwaves with a handful of No.1 Billboard records, a certified Gold No.1 album and another sold out North American arena tour. His new album, “Beauty Behind the Madness”—the first project released after his delve into the mainstream “pop” world—shows us if the subject matter he’s relayed through his music previously has remained true.

The Weeknd’s first glimpse of real Billboard success brought about by “Love  Me Harder”, a duet alongside Ariana Grande peaking at No.7 earlier this year on the Hot 100 list, initiated the employment of super-producer Max Martin. Having written and/ or produced hits after hits past and presently for just about every mega star in the music business, Martin became the go-to in Abel’s mainstream recipe. The hazy, dark sound The Weeknd has embodied over the years by singing of sexual encounters, an inability to love and drug experimentation was at the mercy of reconfiguration and to my pleasant surprise, has mostly remained in tact.

The album opens with “Real Life”, a song where Tesfaye’s first verse sings, “I’ll be the same, never changed for nothin’”, his earliest attempt at comforting fans in worry of any betrayal to the content of his music. The song continues with lyrics, “I heard love is a risk worth taking, I wouldn’t know, never been that boy” expressing the aversion of romantic emotional attachment that has been consistently voiced in his music.

The first quarter of the album includes songs like “Often” and “The Hills”, each Billboard hits on their own standings, but play to The Weeknd’s traditionally dark, less-love more-sex musical vocation especially with their production and lyrical content.

There is a noteworthy crack in the cement, content-wise, that follows these consistent kinds of records with track 6 on the album called “Acquainted”. This song describes his growing feelings for a woman as he sings, “nobody got me feeling this way”, and even affectionately croons “babe” several times; to the oldest fans’ understanding, a phrase that has noticeably never been said in his music before. Simultaneously, he attempts to mute his own feelings by using the emotionless term “acquainted” throughout the song and in the title to characterize the relationship. This track speaks to the kind of tension Abel must be experiencing in his love life that are symbolically representative of his changes in the direction of his career.

During an interview with the New York Times, when asked if he was “in love”, he replied: “I don’t know, to be honest with you…it’s no, it’s yes, it’s maybe. It’s [the album] about me being who I am and stepping out of my comfort zone to try to feel something besides what I’ve been feeling the past four years.” He is trying to maintain the essence of his music and avoid sacrifices artistically while at the same time embarking on this typically sacrificial voyage to the top of the industry.

Whether or not the polishing up of his mainstream appeal and growing feelings for a woman are completely coincidental events in his life is a matter of debate, but in this song there are definite impressions of them in the music, and sonically, this isn’t a bad thing.

The album continues with a flush of recognizable Billboard hits, providing a substantial amount of the commercial safety of the album but still possessing the darker themes typically expected. For example, “Can’t Feel My Face”, a major summer smash with an upbeat vibe, still seems to possess the drug references notable in The Weeknd’s music. Singing, “And I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb, And she’ll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come”, Abel personifies a drug addiction to a beautiful woman and how he feels when he is with her; trickery to the mainstream radio. 

The choice of features are also appreciable, with the likes of Kanye West, Labrinth, Lana Del Rey, and Ed Sheeran all making appearances on this album. What I can say about the selection of features is that they are a collection of characters that mesh well with the dark, self-depressive world The Weeknd has created for himself and represent the favours he is now able to cash in due to his growing star.

Another notable album cut is track 10 entitled “In The Night”. Co-written and produced by Max Martin, this song is spookily Michael Jackson-esque with an electric feel, showcasing The Weeknd’s vocals on a swing-style beat. He stories a young girl’s fall into prostitution and loss of innocence, singing, “in the night she’s dancing to relieve the pain…she was young and she was forced to be a woman”. This record is Abel’s most effective example of his new ability to store all of his familiar subject matter into a neater, much more commercially friendly package in the same way iconic hits like “Dirty Diana” and “Billie Jean” were presented to the world.

Abel’s musical developments with this LP are subtle ones; he takes steps in the right direction towards becoming a full-fledged “pop” star but remains loyal to his distinct, eerie R&B sound. Thematically, the album contains much of the same content matter as his previously acclaimed mixtapes but are packaged in a tighter, neater arrangement this time around.  This album is built for radio, from the song lengths to the new friendliness of his choruses (or even the mere existence of choruses this time) to the chords he now sings over in comparison to his typically foggy production style. But what is most relieving is Abel refrains from jeopardizing the quality of the music; and so, with a sigh, the “Madness” comes to an end.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

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.

In 2014, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation issued its annual Performance Report, a document which measures whether TCHC reached its own targets in providing repairs and “sustainable living” conditions for tenants. Last year’s report included a section for Resident Satisfaction.

This new section meant to examine whether there was an “increase in resident satisfaction with the quality and conditions of their homes and buildings”, but concluded that there was “no tool to measure progress” and that a “resident survey [is] required.”

In the 2015 TCH Performance Report, however, the same statement is written under Resident Satisfaction: “Measure under development”.

Since TCHC seems pretty busy with coming up with a survey, BASICS has decided to report some of the experiences which residents at 3171 Eglinton Ave E. have shared about the state of repairs in their aging complex.

*Fatima, a resident of 3171 Eglinton for four years, described her first few months moving into the apartment: “When I arrived, I needed to repaint the walls to accommodate my son’s respiratory issues—because it wasn’t the ‘normal’ paint, I was charged for 50% of the cost.”

Respiratory concerns are shared by many residents due to the mold that is growing throughout TCHC building. Management is slow to make any changes in the perpetually damaged state of the building: ”When things go wrong, we must make an appointment with the superintendent. When you make an appointment, people only show up after three weeks, sometimes a month,” said Bilal, another resident.

Fatima and Bilal’s experiences are shared widely by others. Jacob, a long-term resident, explained that he reported mold in his kitchen cabinets repeatedly: “When they finally came to address it, they just painted over it. I keep my cups in there, it’s a health concern”.

Some aspects of the TCHC building seem to never get fixed, as BASICS reporters realized during our weekly stairwell hikes to the twelfth floor. “When I came, it was because I was told the building was very accessible. Then the elevators started to break down. Now they break two or three times a month,” said Fatima. “They are still broken now.”

Just this month, BASICS reporters saw one woman get her foot stuck in the doors of the elevator at 3171 Eglinton, due to its faltering ability to sense the presence of passing bodies. Disturbingly, after the initial shock, she seemed fairly dismissive of the occurrence: “It’s not the first time,” she said with a shrug.

The dismissal of individual experiences are unsurprising when seeing how building-wide infrastructural crises are dealt with. Bilal described the bursting of hot water from broken pipes in February: “The water flooded the plaster in the entrance, it wasn’t fixed until March.”

The fall of four storeys worth of brick in April of this year was covered by multiple Toronto news sources. Residents who spoke to us described it as “terrifying.” Hannah, a mother who has lived at 3171 for decades, reported being “afraid to sleep in my own room at night.”

Residents of that end of the complex were given a complimentary hotel-stay three weeks after the event, perhaps as a belated apology by TCHC for the potentially-life threatening situation. Today, the outskirts of the building are surrounded by two fences, apparently in the hope that no remaining bricks will fall on passing pedestrians. One fence is a metal grille, and the other plywood. Yet the ravaged south end of the building remains covered by no more than a long sheet of tarpaulin.

Experienced tenants have told BASICS repeatedly that after private property management companies—such as DMS, which currently runs 3171 Eglinton—took over from TCHC employees, repairs have become even rarer and less effective.

The TCHC website claims that “contract management is a cost-effective way to provide the same high level of service to tenants.” If the above tenant experiences are what TCHC identifies as a high level of service, then it is clearly unqualified to provide any assessment of “sustainable living” or “resident satisfaction”. Only the tenants themselves are qualified to measure the performance of TCHC, and this can only be achieved through by communicating and organising with one another.

*Some of the names of 3171 Eglinton residents have been changed in this article at their request.

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)

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)

“Two people have been killed since I moved in here. Of course I feel unsafe. I feel more safe in the street than in my home.”

This is how Maryam*, a woman in her early twenties and a three-year resident of 3171 Eglinton Avenue—one of the TCHC high-rises at the intersection with Markham Road—describes her life in the building.

“I don’t feel comfortable inviting friends over. Once a friend spent the night, and at two a.m. someone started banging on the door demanding to come in. How are two women alone in an apartment at that hour going to feel?”

Of the dozens of residents at 3171 with whom BASICS has spoken, nearly all have similar concerns about safety. For female residents in particular, the greatest feeling of threat can sometimes come from other residents—in particular, men. Such feelings are common for women who, like Maryam, live alone or as single mothers.

Due to the seeming lack of other choices, some residents turn to the police. For example, after racist curses were scratched onto her door a few months ago, Maryam immediately informed the Toronto Police Service. When constables came by, however, she found them unwilling to pay even cursory attention to the situation: “When I told them about these words someone had written and asked them what they were going to do, one of them just shrugged and said, ‘It’s TCHC’.”

The cop’s indifference to Maryam’s concerns reflects the attitude of the police department towards the concerns of low-income residents. After the murder of 22 year-old Dillon Phillips in the stairwell on September 2014, a second resident recalls the police and TCHC management as encouraging residents to “Take back your building”. In such circumstances, residents and onlookers are forced to ask whether the police are in place to protect or divide communities.

Trapped between a rock (insecurity) and a hard place (disdain and disinterest from the police), Maryam’s only goal is to get as far from community housing as possible. “I don’t hang out in the area, I don’t want to be here. When I’m gone, I’ll never think about this place again,” she said to BASICS.

For a woman in her position, this view is entirely reasonable, and it is one which many women in the building seem to share. Yet when residents are lucky enough to get a transfer or start making enough money to move out, their apartments will immediately be filled by a few more people from TCHC’s 160,000-household waiting list. New residents, as well as the many who are unable to leave, are simply forced into the same stressful, unchanging, and sometimes dangerous circumstances. Unable and uninterested in providing a secure home, TCHC and the Toronto Police Service bring TCHC residents to see their apartments as places where fear and suspicion are constant.

When asked if her concerns about security cause alienation from other residents, Maryam said, “Definitely.” In a building where turnover is high, security is low, and many wish to leave, it is difficult for residents to build a sense of trust in the community.

Yet the police prove, as they did in Maryam’s case, that they have little interest in protecting working-class and racialized women—and this is without any discussion of police treatment of working-class and racialized men.

Under these circumstances, who better for female residents to turn toward than one another? Protective links already exist in small, informal ways—between friends, for instance. But if these links could turn into something larger and more organised, a safer and more inclusive community for women—and perhaps also men—at 3171 Eglinton could take shape.

*At her request, we have given Maryam a pseudonym for this article.

(Photo Credit: Chris Doucette, Toronto Sun)