Ian Angus - Kinder Morgan Protest - Statement before Justice Affleck

By Michael C.K. Ma

Ian Angus is one of the people arrested and charged for criminal contempt of court because he disobeyed the Trans Mountain Pipeline injunction against protest. He appeared before the BC Court on May 14th, 2018. After his plea of guilty and his statement, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck decided that no one else would be allowed to make such statements following their plea. So, it seems that Ian Angus has the honour of being the first and last protester to make a statement before the court.

See below for his statement:

From: https://ricochet.media/en/2203/civil-disobedience-against-kinder-morgan-is-a-civic-responsibility

Statement to the Court before sentencing

I would like to begin by acknowledging that the City of Vancouver, where this court is situated, lies on the traditional and unceded territories of the Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam, and Squamish First Nations.

Having heard the recommendation of the Crown regarding my guilty plea to the charge of Criminal Contempt for “physically obstructing, impeding or otherwise preventing access” to the Burnaby Terminal of Trans Mountain (Kinder Morgan) on March 24, 2018, I would like to make the following clarification, explanation, and request for an altered penalty. I have been encouraged to do so in the first place by the Provincial Court information on sentencing and in the second place by the response of Judge Affleck to my question to him in court on April 23 when he said that I would be allowed to explain the “context” of my action.

I do not deny that I was physically present at the place in question at the time in question. My understanding of civil disobedience is that one commits a certain act for definite and considered reasons, one admits to the act, explains one’s reasons, and accepts the penalty. The purpose of the act is to bring a state of affairs to the attention of the public and the authorities with the intention and hope that it may serve to correct an error in justice.

Through this procedure, even though one may break a given law, or in this case an injunction issued by a court of law, one does not express disrespect for law in general. This understanding was clear to me prior to the event and very much on my mind on that day.

Positive law is always flawed as human beings are flawed. It is also flawed insofar as it serves interests which are not required by public safety but are nevertheless entrenched in the unequal power structure of the social order.

I felt proud to be able to join my near neighbours, the Tsleil-Waututh people, who have cared for this place for thousands of years, in order to oppose a project that puts our common inhabitation in grave danger.

A social order in which citizens follow the law simply because it is the law, in which they do not assess the practice of the law with their own critical faculties, could not be called a democracy. The critical intelligence of citizens is essential to a non-repressive social order. Indeed, it is only through acts which test the practice of law in specific cases that law can be revised more closely to approximate justice. Justice is above law. It is how we assess and revise law. It is what we are fitted for, what can make us most human, that for which we must continually strive.

The classic understanding of civil disobedience is complicated in our own time and place. Since we are living in unceded territories whose formal economic, social and political structure is a consequence of a colonial past and present, the dominant law represents such a colonial structure. There is also another law that has been established by the traditions and institutions of the Indigenous people of this place. Why are we not subject to that law also?

I have lived for the last 26 years with my wife and daughter beside the Burrard Inlet. It is of great concern to me that this beautiful and fecund place be preserved for our children and grandchildren. I felt proud to be able to join my near neighbours, the Tsleil-Waututh people, who have cared for this place for thousands of years, in order to oppose a project that puts our common inhabitation in grave danger. I respect their law.

If we do not place economic activity within an ecological context soon, the future of the human species, and the other species with whom we share the earth, looks very bleak.

Our country is in a difficult time. There is much talk, both official and popular, about reconciliation with Indigenous people. After all, they have suffered greatly from government policies, and collaboration in rendering that suffering by dominant institutions, that have tried to extinguish their cultures and their peoples. Many citizens have come to feel, knowing more than we used to about their suffering and the role of our institutions in causing it, that it is time to put an end to this legacy and to start anew. But for reconciliation to be more than symbolic, it has to make a difference in our actions. The Kinder Morgan pipeline is one important case in which real actions can make a difference. The action in front of the Kinder Morgan gate is, in my opinion, a case of real reconciliation that goes beyond mere lip-service.

Not only our country but the whole planet is in a difficult time because of the ravishes of industrial production and consumption. The foreseeable, near future of the human species, and also species of many other kinds, is threatened by the effects of climate change in destabilizing the ecological balance upon which we depend. Radical and immediate action is necessary to realign priorities in order even to begin to address this problem. Yet we look to our elected leaders in vain for any real action. They continue to put in place mega-projects of industrial infrastructure that deepen the problem and make it more difficult to change direction. If we do not place economic activity within an ecological context soon, the future of the human species, and the other species with whom we share the earth, looks very bleak.

The Kinder Morgan pipeline is an important example of a desperate coalition of government, industry and finance attempting to retain and even expand the past industrial economy with increasingly dangerous consequences.

For about 40 years, I taught in various institutions of higher education — most recently, at Simon Fraser University, whose location near the proposed expanded tank farm would put its population at grave risk in case of an accident. My vocation as a teacher, scholar and writer has been to think as widely and deeply about natural and human issues as I can, and to communicate with the younger generation about the lessons of the past and the challenges of the future. I have tried to discharge that responsibility to the best of my ability, stressing independent and critical thinking, social and ecological responsibility, and, perhaps most difficult of all in recent years, finding sources of hope that can orient our living-toward-the-future. This spring I felt that this responsibility had to be taken beyond the seminar room, lecture hall, and written word to a site where all of these concerns converge.

The convergence of issues of reconciliation with Indigenous nations, environmental and ecological danger, and social inequality due to the rapacious pursuit of private profit has made this not only a difficult time but one of crisis. The forces who wish to maintain the current system have come together to oppose those who seek a new future. When a new future appears on the horizon, the repression of this future, the fear of change, expresses itself in more and more desperate attempts to hang on to the errors of the past. The Kinder Morgan pipeline is an important example of a desperate coalition of government, industry and finance attempting to retain and even expand the past industrial economy with increasingly dangerous consequences. But, as creatures of thought, creativity and hope, human beings will always seek to address, in any form that they can muster, the gravity of the crisis and to push for something new and better.

There is a future struggling to be born in which environmental and ecological responsibility, social justice and equality, and reconciliation with the ancient claims of Indigenous peoples, each play their part. The old forces are arrayed against its emergence. Thus we are here today.

I was there. I did it. I meant to do it. The Crown has proposed a penalty of a fine of $500.00. I propose an alternative penalty of a fine of $1.00. The fact of a fine would be an acknowledgement that I broke the law in disobeying the injunction. Its amount would be an acknowledgement that my reasons for doing so mean that the act amounts to the exercise of a civic, human and natural responsibility.

Ian Angus lives in East Vancouver with his wife Viviana and daughter Cassandra. He is a retired Humanities professor from Simon Fraser University.

Symposium on the Struggles of Homeless, Urban Poor, and the Internally Displaced - May 19, 2018, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, B.C.

By Jeff Shantz

The present period of neoliberal capitalist offensive is one of dispossession, displacement, and containment of growing numbers of working class people, and requires militant opposition. On Saturday, May 19, 2018, 100 or so people gathered in Fir 128 on the Surrey campus of Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) for the Symposium on the Struggles of Homeless, Urban Poor, and Internally Displaced People, an event that I hosted at KPU, to analyze and strategize community self defense against the attacks on poor people.

Participants included members of several community resistance groups, including the International League of Peoples’ Struggles (ILPS), the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), Migrante, the International Workers Centre of Montreal (IWC), the East Indian Defense Committee, THAW-Victoria,  the Anti-Colonialist Working Group of Kitchener-Waterloo, Our Homes Can’t Wait, Chinatown Action Group, Pacific Rim Solidarity Network, Chinatown-International District Coalition (Seattle), Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (Seattle), Grassroots Women, Surrey People Power, and the Critical Criminology Working Group.

The aim of the symposium was to learn from united anti-imperialist poor peoples’ movements. Panels included “Developing anti-imperialist positions on criminalized industries” and “Resisting the fascist containment state.” There were multi-participant roundtables on experiences of informal, unpaid, and precarious and criminalized work, and on poor peoples’ resistance to gentrification and displacement. These emphasized the experiences of criminalized people and community organizers.

A central focus of the panel on criminalized industries was the drug war as a mechanism of control and regulation of poor and working class people. It was emphasized that the drug trade is a global imperialist structure. It is not poor people from the Downtown Eastside who are bringing drugs into the country, as Hugh Lampkin of VANDU pointed out.

The global context is essential in understanding criminalized labor. This is a context of dispossession, landlessness, and global chains of labor. It is a context of occupation, militarization, and imperialist wars of aggression. It was noted that according to author Samir Amin, there are still three billion people engaged in peasant farming and they are being proletarianized—removed from their lands. Military, as in Canada, are increasingly engaged in “investment defense”—straight up security service for capital (in extractives, extreme energy projects, etc.). We can see this in defense of projects like the tar sands developments. And we should remember that a young Indigenous man, James McIntyre, was killed by the RCMP for opposing the Site C dam in so-called British Columbia.

Speakers from Migrante and the IWC noted that migrant workers are treated like import commodities, like pineapples or coconuts. They are moved around according to the needs of capital in specific markets.

Discussions developed notions of super-exploitation. All work for capital involves exploitation, the extraction of surplus value from workers for capital. Super-exploitation denies freedoms available to other workers, such as the freedom to move or change contracts. This can include contractual obligations to bosses or debt bondage. Work permits allow for super-exploitation. Movement is tied to specific employers. Under conditions of super-exploitation pay is below what is needed to survive.

Speakers from VANDU emphasized that peers are essential community health workers. They provide necessary health services. But they are not paid like other health care workers (or paid at all). The distinction was clearly made between peers who work through trust versus professionalized services that work with police.

Flora and Vince of Our Homes Can’t Wait affirmed that militant street action works. They noted that if you engage in negotiations with powerholders they take things away from you. They discussed the recent occupation of City Hall in Vancouver.

Jannie Leung of Chinatown said we always need to ask: “How does gentrification affect peoples’ material conditions?” They noted that relationships are intergenerational and connections are important, The youngest member of Chinatown Action Group is 14, the oldest IS 108. Leung argued that in our actions and campaigns we need to expose a class enemy (a developer, for example) and develop a class analysis. We need to have demands that build class power. Demands need to show what a better world or actual liberation can look like. Choosing campaigns is always strategic.

Organization is necessary to help people to fight exploitation and oppression. To provide essential services. And also to fight off assaults from employers and police.

Martha Roberts of Surrey People Power stressed four organizing points. First, the need to organize the working class on a class basis, across divisions of legitimized and criminalized labor. Second, bourgeois law is not an instrument of liberation. The more police, the less you are protected. Third, the need to address slavery within super-exploited labor. Fourth, the essential need to fight for wealth redistribution now. As one presented image suggested: Defend communities, defund police.

On the whole this was a powerful day of organizing energy and ideas. It is the sort of event much needed in Surrey. I look forward to participating in more such organizing and strategy sessions at KPU.

FPSE - AGM at Whistler, BC - May 2018

By Michael C.K. Ma (Local 5, KPU)

Last week I attended the AGM for the Federation of Post Secondary Educators in Whistler. It was great to meet and chat with fellow union members --especially since, as locals, we are spread out all over the province and this is really the only chance each year where we get to share our experiences and thoughts. This year there was healthy debate and discussion regarding a number of important union issues. Notable was the debate regarding our strike fund and the absolute necessity to continue exercising and growing this fund. During the four day meeting it was great to see and hear the passion that union members have for solidarity and social action.

Some of the best resolutions that came out of the AGM, was penned by Rita Wong of Local 22 at Emily Carr University (see photos above of the original drafts and wording). Single-handedly, Rita penned no less than three resolutions pertaining to resource extraction and the environment. The resolutions proposed supporting the Legal Defence Fund for the Kinder Morgan Protest, supporting the Unist'ot'en Camp that strategically blocks numerous pipeline projects, and  supporting the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations legal battle to seek an injunction this summer against the Site C dam. All three resolutions to provide financial support ($2000 to each cause) were passed unanimously. That was amazing!

Sometimes union politics feels very slow and sluggish, but the fact that these three social justice actions were monetarily supported by FPSE makes me feel like we --as a social union movement-- really are part of something bigger, extremely important, and sustained and ... so needed. Solidarity Forever.

Rita Wong explains: Stop Site C dam protest at David Eby's office

Rita Wong: Stop Site C Dam

Rita Wong explains: Stop Site C dam protest at David Eby's office.

Rita Wong argues that there is far less work being done at Site C than in reality. The government has wrongly stated that 25% of the work has been completed. Currently there is just a big hole in the ground.

Wong states: "There is nothing being done that is irreversible."

The protest occurs every Friday 12:00-2:00 pm in front of David Eby's office.

Click play button below.

BC Coroner's Inquest on Deanna Dejarlais - Verdict

 The verdict at BC Coroners Inquest has been handed down. The Findings and Recommendations are a result of the Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Deanna Renee DESJARLAIS:

To Read the full report: Click Here

BC Coroner's Inquest - Deanna Desjarlais

Drawings by Mike Ma; Photos from CTV and CBC

By Mike Ma, Wednesday May 9, 2018

Yesterday I went to Metrotown to attend the BC Coroner’s inquest into the death of Deanna Desjarlais. The inquest is presided by Madame Coroner Brynne Redford and a jury of 5 citizens. Deanna was originally from Saskatoon and a member of the Kawacatoose First Nation. She came to BC in late 2015 and was street involved. In May 2016, she was reported missing by her family. Deanna was found dead at age 27 in Surrey’s Hawthorne Park in May 2016, but not identified until September 2017.

On Tuesday, some of the last people to see Deanna testified to the inquest. They included her probation officer, the owner/operator of  Lilith Recovery House (where she was released post-incarceration), psychiatrist Nancy Miki, and previous Warm Zone peer co-ordinator: Erica Thompson.

It was Erica’s testimony that was the most informative and riveting. She told the story of how she was contacted by Oaktree Clinic –who was treating Deanna’s HIV and Hep C status—because they were in a bind and needed someone to help Deanna navigate her post-prison release and integration. They needed a post-prison release navigator and the closest person to Deanna was Erica --who was in Abbotsford.

Through Erica’s emotional and raw testimony we learned that Deanna was a very happy and smiley person, but also someone who suffered from various cognitive deficits (e.g. FASD and ADHD) and was a very simple and overly trusting person. Before meeting Deanna for breakfast at a restaurant, Erica talked to her on the phone and asked her if she needed or wanted anything, to which she replied: crayons and coloring books. So, Erica brought her some clothes, pencil crayons and a coloring book and tried to discuss next steps. Deanna had left the recovery house because she was not happy there and had met a man “who helps girls like her” and was staying at his house over the Easter Weekend. After their breakfast and conversation, Eria knew Deanna was in trouble, but Erica’s hands were tied because Deanna had no money and no place to stay and wasn't returning to the initial recovery house to which she was released. Another confounding problem was that Deanna was released just before a long weekend and the state did not establish her income assistance –nor any kind of emergency funding before her assistance paper work could be processed. She had no money. Erica last saw Deanna when she dropped her off at the house of the person who was housing her. When Erica saw the owner of the house, the hairs on her back stood up. Deanna waved good bye with a big smile while hugging the clothes that Erica brought her. Erica immediately phoned all her contacts and pleaded with them to do something for Deanna, but nothing could be done for her until after the long weekend. After the weekend, the clinical team from Oaktree went to the address to deliver her medications, but she was no longer there. Many months later, the Oaktree nursing team called Erica and informed her that Deanna’s remains were found in Surrey.

With powerful emotion, Erica Thompson explained to the Coroner and jury that the release process from jail/prison is a broken process. Deanna was released without any proper co-ordination between the serving agencies who are entrusted with the task to help people like Deanna have a successful re-integration into society post-release. Erica argued that even though much of these problems regarding street involved women were examined during the Commission of Inquiry on Missing Women, presided over by former Attorney General Wally Oppal, http://www.missingwomeninquiry.ca, the same discourse of disposal still surrounds indigenous women. She argued that most of the problems identified in the previous inquiry are still un-addressed in any meaningful way. The same system of disposal is in place.

As Thompson explained, Deanna’s death was not just the product of a lack of support regarding addiction and mental health post-release, but it was also a direct result of her desperate need for proper supportive housing not being met. If Deanna had proper low-barrier housing, then it is likely that she --as a penniless parolee-- would not have sheltered with a complete stranger. An act that may have directly lead to her death.

From APTN News:

http://aptnnews.ca/2016/09/21/family-demands-answers-as-to-why-deanna-desjarlais-investigation-took-so-long/

Family demands answers as to why Deanna Desjarlais investigation took so long
Uncategorized | September 21, 2016 by Tina House Attributed to: | Comments Off on Family demands answers as to why Deanna Desjarlais investigation took so long.
 

Dana Morenstein,

explains the context of Deanna Desjarlais' missing women's report:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/when-deanna-desjarlais-went-missing-1.3786916

Kinder Morgan Protest Explained - Interview with Irina Ceric

Social Justice Centre member and Kwantlen criminology professor Irina Ceric will present on injunctions, contempt, and the criminalization of dissent during this webinar. Please join in!

Stand

May 3 at 11:00am · 

Governments are cracking down on demonstrations and dissent and have been targeting movements for the environment, Indigenous sovereignty, Black lives, and immigrant rights.

RSVP for our webcast: http://bit.ly/righttoprotest

Interview with Irina Ceric by Mike Ma, April 24, 2018

Q: What is the purpose of people being at the Kinder Morgan site, the encampments? How are they effective or not effective at shutting down the production facility?

The focus over the last two months has been their so-called tank farm in Burnaby, which is one of the facilities Kinder Morgan [KM] has in Burnaby. There’s also the Westridge Marine Terminal and of course there’s the existing pipeline itself. The tank farm is just one KM site, and it’s the one that’s been the site of both protest and as you said, encampments. There’s been an encampment called Camp Cloud for some time, watching what KM is doing. There was a Watch House built in March by members of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation as part of a traditional Indigenous idea about being stewards of their traditional territory. So those are the two main encampments and their purpose has been to both monitor KM’s activity and at various times, to try and impede them in some way. How effective has that been? The fact that we’re talking about is one sign that it’s been effective. The Watch House in particular sends a really strong message not just to KM but to the federal government as well, and to the Alberta government, both of whom seem really intent on framing this is as a conflict over resource development and not as an issue of free, prior and informed consent by Indigenous Nations or as a question of sovereignty or any other issue of Indigenous rights.

Q: Can people being there actually shut down production?

Not unless people actually go beyond being present there. Both Camp Cloud and the Watch House are on public land and they’re not within the boundaries of the injunction that was issued by the BC Supreme Court in March so any of the more direct impeding of KM’s activities has taken place outside of those encampments, usually at or near the gate to the tank farm.

Q: My understanding is that this current protest wasn’t just wasn’t born out of nothing. Can you enlighten us about how it was connected to the Protect the Inlet [PTI] coalition? What is the relationship?

In addition to the encampments which we’ve been discussing, there’s been a coalition of pretty big environmental NGOs who have come together to form the PTI coalition. Stand, 350.org, Greenpeace and a few other major environmental groups who called for civil disobedience actions, or what they call ‘bold actions’, beginning around the middle of March to try and actually both shut down KM’s activities and again to send a message to the federal government, to the National Energy Board, and to the Alberta government that KM doesn’t have the so-called social licence to expand this pipeline.

Q: In terms of the current situation, why has the Crown taken over the cases? Talk a little about the notion of contempt of court.

Around the same time that the PTI started calling for both a very large demo at the tank farm and also for bold action or civil disobedience, KM went to the BC Supreme Court and asked it to issue an injunction, meaning a court order, saying that people could not impede access to its various sites in Burnaby. This is a very typical way of dealing with environmental justice or Indigenous justice issues in BC, particularly around resource extraction, whether that’s logging or mining or pipelines. That injunction was issued in March and so by the time the first of wave of CD happened, what those people were allegedly doing was breaking that injunction, allegedly breaking that court order by impeding access to the tank farm and then refusing to leave when told to do so by the RCMP. In BC, this has become a very common way of doing protest policing but it’s not really typical in the rest of Canada. It sets up an interesting dynamic where the RCMP ends up enforcing what is essentially a private court order and then it becomes a public, policing issue.

Originally the people who were arrested in March and into early April were charged with civil contempt of court. When those people began appearing in court, KM asked the judge to have the Crown come in and take over prosecution. The BC Prosecution Service has a policy on civil disobedience and contempt of court and yet in this case they did eventually decided to take over the prosecution. A lot of people were surprised by this because the assumption was that this was going to be a decision made by the Attorney General of BC and the feeling was that David Eby would not do this because the BC government is not in favour of this project. But it turns out that that decision was not made in Victoria, it was made by the BC Prosecution Service, which is separate from the AG, and they decided, yeah, we’re gonna take over these cases.

Right now, we have the Crown instead of KM prosecuting people for criminal contempt of court, which is a similar offence to civil contempt of court but criminal contempt is contempt that’s done publicly or flagrantly; it’s sort of seen as thumbing your nose at the court’s order.

Q: Is it more serious?

It is slightly more serous although if you look at the history of sentencing for contempt of court in BC, for example the Clayoquot mass trials of the mid 90s, we’ve seen some pretty severe penalties for civil contempt as well. Fines are pretty typical for both kinds and periods of imprisonment have been ordered for both civil and criminal, although they tend to be longer for criminal contempt. We’ve seen sentences of up to a year in prison, actually, for criminal contempt of court in environmental cases in BC.

Right now, the Crown is trying to push through a pretty sped up trial process. The judge seems to be quite in favour of that. So the story is still unfolding but we do have this interesting situation where what began as a private lawsuit has now become a public prosecution for contempt of court; the Crown doing KM’s policing for them.

Q: What do you envision happening in the coming weeks?

It looks like there’s first going be some motions heard, starting in early May. Motions have been brought by both the Crown and various defence lawyers to figure out how these trials are going to happen. Contempt of court is not a Criminal Code offence, it’s not a regular criminal offence. It’s actually part of the common law, or judge-made law, and so the regular processes that would apply to a criminal prosecution don’t apply. There’s motions to determine how these trials will happen. For example, will the Crown be able to have police evidence given by affidavit rather than by having the police testify. The problem being of course, that you can’t cross examine an affidavit the way that you can cross examine a person who is on the stand. That’s going to start happening in early May and it looks like the earliest trials are gong to be in early June. In the meantime there’s about 170-180 defendants and a lot of them don’t have lawyers, there just simply haven’t been enough lawyers who have come forward to represent everybody. There’s going to be a number of people representing themselves. It looks like they’re going to be tried in groups, which in itself is going to be an interesting process. A legal defence fund has just been started up to try and raise some money for all this legal defence that’s going to be needed. We’re also hoping that defendants start doing some self-organizing and try to figure out what kind of defences they might want to bring, how to support each other, how to politicize their cases and their trials. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, it’s not just the arrests that were in the news.

Q: Is there a particularly way defendants can politicize their cases?

There’s going to be some interesting defences brought by unrepresented defendants. It seems pretty clear that from a strictly legal perspective for example, bringing a climate change necessity defence is not gonna fly legally but an unrepresented defendant might have a little bit more leeway to make that argument. And to make it knowing that its not necessarily going to help them be found innocent but that it’s going to politicize the cases and say ‘here’s why we did this.’ The judge keeps saying over and over again that he’s not going to allow any so-called ‘collateral attacks’ on the project itself. The idea is that the injunction’s been issued, therefore it’s a valid court order and the question before the court is not ‘is this pipeline a good idea or not’. Depending on what happens with these trials, defendants are going to try and get that back out there. I don’t think that a lot of defendants are happy about this idea that they can’t talk about why they did what they did.

Against Evictions: Stop Demovictions Burnaby March - Metrotown, April 21, 2018

By Jeff Shantz

The Metrotown area of Burnaby is an epicenter of battles over evictions and the destruction of working class housing and community in the Lower Mainland. As in Whalley in Surrey, city council and developers are making an ersatz downtown core modeled on petit bourgeois lines (boutique capital, hipster condos, etc.). And the working class residents are being discarded without care in the race to build up (high end high rise towers of capital).

In July 2017 Burnaby city council unanimously passed a “Downtown” Metrotown Plan allowing increased building heights in the residential areas at Metrotown. The aim and outcome are to demovict (evict through demolitions) thousands of affordable apartments and replace them with high rise luxury condo towers. That development is rapidly underway and by the time it is done more than 6000 people will have been displaced from their homes and the working class community there will have been destroyed. This neighborhood has been one with lovely two story apartments, though many have already been wiped out.

A grassroots campaign including residents of the buildings facing eviction and displacement is mobilizing to top the mass evictions. On Saturday, April 21, 2018, a rally and march of over 100 people took the message to the streets. The Stop Demovictions Burnaby campaign is a grassroots movement to stop the evictions and mass displacement of people in the Metrotown area of Burnaby. 

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has claimed that there are no homeless people in Burnaby. Along the march we were met by Jackie, who is homeless in Burnaby and lives near the library. She said that there are many people who are homeless in Burnaby. She personally knows 20 people who are homeless and living near the library.

The rally and speeches at stops along the march route made important connections between homelessness, neoliberal policy, and the ecological destruction associated with the Kinder Morgan pipeline through Burnaby (and across much of so-called British Columbia). All of these are interlinked and underpinned by—created by—systems that prioritize profit, exploitation, accumulation above human needs and care of the Earth and our communities. And these are systems of violence. The violence of evictions, homelessness, displacement. The violence of destruction of the land. Systems supported and sustained by state force—police, courts, confinement, surveillance. Upholding the violence of colonial dispossession and property claims. 

Mass evictions in Burnaby are destroying decent working class homes. Destroying communities. In the midst of a housing crisis governments and their developer sponsors are actively making people homeless, deepening the crisis.

This rally and march showed a committed group of residents ready to fight to save their homes. A fight that is of great significance in this vicious profit-driven housing market. 

Kinder Morgan "suspends non-essential activities and spending" ... NOT!

By Mike Ma - April 9, 2018

Today, I went up to support the pipeline protest with a couple of friends. We went up to Burnaby mountain and visited both campsites. It was interesting to see that on the day Kinder Morgan "suspends non-essential activities and spending" on the Trans Mountain Expansion project that a whole bunch of workers were actually cutting trees/bushes and vacuuming out rocks and debris from various drainage systems. They may have suspended activities and spending in their announcement, but it didn't look like they were suspending the real work of expansion. We dropped off some apples and chatted with people. It was inspiring to see the material work of protest and resistance.

Ending Violence Against Women: What if Police, Prisons, and the State are not the Solution?

Kwantlen Polytechnic University. March 22, 2018

By Jeff Shantz

It should be evident that police are not the solution to ending violence against women. Police are major sources of violence against women. From sexual, physical, emotional violence they inflict every day on marginalized women, including sex workers and street involved women, to the high levels of domestic violence among policing as a “profession” to the numerous cases now coming out publicly of sexual harassment within police forces and against women officers the connections between policing and violence against women are clear and substantial. With this in mind there is a need to think about social responses to the issues that go beyond and pose alternatives to policing.

This discussion was advanced at the “Ending Violence Against Women” event organized and hosted by the Kwantlen Public Interest Research Group and hosted at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The event was facilitated by activist Kalamity Hildebrandt of the PIRG at Simon Fraser University. Key among the alternatives are notions of transformative justice that change systems of violence, inequality, and injustice rather than offering a limited focus on individuals.

Oppression

Hildebrandt began by suggesting that they see much hope in the transformative justice approaches being developed and put forward among racialized feminist groups in the United States. These include anti-racist and prison abolitionist groups such as Black Lives Matter. The discussion began by identifying various forms of violence against women: physical; sexual; emotional; harassment; psychological abuse; and control, intimate violence—and more. These are tools of sexism and patriarchy, but not exclusively (they are also tools of exploitation and racism).

Indeed, these tools are used in various ways within all forms of oppression. Hildebrandt suggested that oppression consists of sets of logic that divide people and set up power hierarchies between them. As police do in constructing “bad guys” and other means of stigmatization.

Some women wield them against other women—as in carceral feminist approaches criminalizing sex work, for example. Hildebrandt called out a particular type of feminist analysis that is anti-sex work and/or anti-trans or which says only CIS women and girls can be counted in violence against women.

Oppression harms some people so that other groups can benefit. This relates to the unearned advantages of privilege within hierarchical systems.

Policing is Violence

After examining diverse systems of oppression, Hildebrandt asks: “What are people taught is the proper response to oppressive violence?” The answer, of course is: “Call the cops.” Hildebrandt noted that even victims are showered with guilt when they choose not to call the police. They are said to be contributing to the problem or “letting the bad guys get away with it.”

Yet police can and do harm victims as well as those who have done harm as well as “third parties” like children, for example. This can also include the use of border agencies to deport people and child welfare services to take children. Immigration officials can come after people who have been harmed as well as those who do harm. Laws, police, prisons, all do harm.

Here Hildebrandt asks about the experiences of women. “What happens to women going through those state systems?” Well, in part it depends, of course, on the class standing and racialized identities of women within an unequal and racist system of white supremacist capitalism.

So Hildebrandt asks: “Why might people not trust the police? Which women especially?” Answers are wide ranging: colonial racism; poverty; histories of psychiatrization; migrant status; Indigenous women; sex workers; trans women.

It bears emphasis: Police are a source of violence rather than a solution to it. And they inflict violence on communities as well as individuals. Not only is it a failure to protect and serve, but police are actual, active, perpetrators of violence. And that includes sexual violence. The discussion touches upon public strip searches, removing women from their homes without clothes on, sexual assaults by police, and more.   

Hildebrandt speaks explicitly against what has come to be called “carceral feminism,” an approach that calls for police intervention, criminalization of sex workers and sex work, etc. For Hildebrandt, this is a feminism of the most privileged women who have faith in the system ad turn to police to address issues the do not like (whether socially harmful or not). This is, they note, the most dominant funded version of feminist work. For Hildebrandt, there is a need to create new processes of justice in our day to day lives.

Transformative Justice

This is the need for transformative justice. Hildebrandt asks: “What are tangible and practical things that people have tried to bring this about?” Answers range from: accountability processes in collectives; conversations around consent; developing skills for intervening positively in cases of violence; skills for responding in different and unexpected situations of public violence.

It was acknowledged that we do not have opportunities to think about or prepare for responding in those situations. We need to be able to practice and rehearse things to see how we react and how we feel in situations that can be frightening. In terms of accountability we need to learn to receive negative feedback and to give it.

Transformative justice requires also taking on directly, and tearing down, systems of oppression. It is not only about building close relations in a community. We need groupings of people we can trust and rely on in specific contexts (of being harmed or doing harm). We need personal embodied experiences to connect to larger movement work and contexts of social change.

We have learned inhibitions that tell us someone else is better equipped to deal with challenging situations. We often do not realize that we have the ability to deal with situations. And this leads to defaults to authorities, who want us to feel helpless and inadequate.

On the whole this was a useful start to thinking about issues, of oppression, violence, etc., and our responses to them in ways that do not reproduce oppression and violence. The police and policing are about violence and the reproduction of violence. We can ad must do better. And we must develop alternatives in transformative practice. The organizers of this discussion, KPIRG, should be thanked for putting this on at KPU. Hopefully it will be the first of many building on crucial issues of transformative justice as social justice practice.

Carceral Cultures Conference - Vancouver 2018

Canadian Association for Cultural Studies, 2018:

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The Captive Maternal and Abolitionism: A Tribute to Erica Garner

Joy James and Robyn Maynard in Conversation. Carceral Cultures Conference. Simon Fraser University. March 3, 2018

By Jeff Shantz

Joy James and Robyn Maynard have raised critical voices in calling out and confronting state violence, particularly in its multiple forms of policing and containment. They have provided potent and insightful analysis of, and tools for opposing, state-driven anti-Black racism in the United States and Canada. Their work offer important examples of scholarship as, and in solidarity with, activism. This conversation, hosted by the Carceral Cultures conference, was full of significant insights and relevant calls to action.

Joy James began her talk by telling those assembled that her thinking is somewhat muddled these days. And it is muddled by grief. Yet her analysis was clear and incisive. James reflects that anonymous people wake up and do the work of movements and resistance. It is motivated by love. And they often suffer anonymously. The criminalization and brutalization of care. The captive maternal.

The conversation, and James’ thinking about the captive maternal, is dedicated to Erica Garner who was killed by the systems of exploitation and oppression, as was her father Eric Garner, even if her death was less public, less dramatic. Her death can be attributed to the stresses of fighting for her dad, infamously murdered by New York police officer Daniel Panteleo who choked him to death on a Staten Island street. Over three years of fighting for justice took a toll on her. Erica Garner was constantly doing research on her dad’s case, and organizing demonstrations against the force that killed him, but not taking care of herself. Erica Garner found no justice from any of a supposedly progressive mayor, supposedly progressive governor, or Obama.

James suggested, in what is a significant reflection, that Erica Garner was rendered a non-entity in the movements because she was too unruly and her demands too “unreasonable.” Even social justice movements and activists can be too ready to make accommodations to power and authority, believing criminal justice systems can be reformed (even when based on brutality, erasure, and genocide) and careful not to threaten their own positionality (through “reform-minded” politics). Criminologists who accommodate cops in their departments can be like this. So the unruly are left to deal with it—to push for real change, to confront the institutions and agents of exploitation of oppression. And face the consequences.

James emphasized the illness and disease suffered by Black women who are fighting for justice. Incidents of stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure are not uncommon. She has studied this in different contexts including health issues among poor Black women organizing in Brazil, which she referenced in the talk.

James noted that the origins of United States democracy are grounded in genocide and enslavement. The settler colonial state has had to deploy a captive maternal in its very development. Captive maternalism goes along with capitalist development.  She referred to the distortions of those who view Thomas Jefferson as a “benevolent slave owner” and asked if he might also be posed as a “benevolent rapist” by those seeking to whitewash settler colonial violence at all costs. They have tried to erase Sally Hemmings from history, but the refusal by activists to forget her, and Jefferson’s violence against her, has led to her becoming an icon of resistance.

How does the captive maternal take back their generative powers?

Robyn Maynard offered a thoughtful and engaged response to James’ words. She began by asking what is considered a public tragedy. In part they are those that are fought over and remembered. Recalling words by Angela Davis she asked how caring for ourselves and our children can be recognized as revolutionary work. This is more than individual action.

Erica Garner was a victim of both state violence and state neglect. She suffered the isolation that family members of policing killings almost always face. Erica Garner’s death was private. It is seen as sad but no one is held accountable. We need to look at other institutions that failed Erica Garner—beyond the spectacular forms of state violence.

In this regard we must put a focus on the criminalization of Black motherhood and care giving, as ongoing histories. This includes but is by no means limited to welfare snitch lines and refugee women who are demonized and said to be “sending money to warlords” as has been said about Somali women. In abolitionism, not only do we need to eradicate prison. We need to eradicate child welfare systems that disproportionately capture Indigenous and Black children. And which expend vast social resources in doing so. Maynard points out that these child welfare systems spend more per child than most poor women even have.

We need to address the fact of Indigenous women being killed disproportionately by drug policies. What happens to their families and communities?

For Maynard, as for James, we need to think about abolition in ways that are larger. We need to think about other sites of surveillance and punishment. And both speakers stressed that prisoners must be part of this, not only activists and academics—it must be relevant to prisoners.

One aspect of abolition that we need to start challenging now is in opposing police budgets. We need open campaigns to divest from police. This would address a range of interconnected issues of brutality, oppression, injustice, and social harm. From mass incarceration to drug overdoes deaths to violence against sex workers to ongoing colonial violence. We need to put resources instead toward other things that would bring real care and support to communities.

James pointed out that caregiving work, in families and socially, is done by women mostly. If women went on strike the system would fall apart. Straight up. This is the still relevant call of “Wages for Housework.” As James put it, we have to steal ourselves back from capital, from war, from misogyny.

To the credit of the speakers the conversation did not stay away from issues of ongoing imperialism and the role of the US and Canadian states. James reminded the audience that the US government has actively destabilized every national liberation movement around the globe for decades (while bringing in actual Nazis to develop their military and space programs). In her words the US is a war zone that exports war. Police in the US are often former soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are trained to kill. And they shoot first, ask questions maybe never.

Maynard added that the control of migration and the theft of resources, in “home countries” and abroad are the ongoing legacies of slavery. Now it is posed as the restriction of movement and tightening border restrictions.

Robyn Maynard concluded her discussion by saying that she hopes that today’s resistance will address the real nature of the system, not only the boldfacedness of Trump who puts openly on loudspeaker what has often been the unspoken reality. Maynard is clear that it is not positive, or progressive, to seek a return to the “closeted” status quo of empire as maintained under Obama. James worries that under Trump people have gone from amusement to outrage to simply numb.

Poverty, racism, grief and depression all contributed to Erica Garner’s death. These are the structural manifestations of exploitation and oppression. Her father’s killer, officer Daniel Pantaleo has received promotions and pay increases. The only person ever arrested and charged in relation to Eric Garner’s murder was Ramsey Orta, the man who recorded the killing on cell phone video and took it from the realm of anonymity and police cover up that so many police killings of civilians are contained within.   

Cops Are a Cause: "Understanding the Overdose and Opioid Epidemic." Science World.

Cops Are a Cause: “Understanding the Overdose and Opioid Epidemic.” Science World. February 28, 2018

By Jeff Shantz

Policing kills. It was significant that this basic, but often avoided, truth was stated so clearly and honestly at the “Understanding the Overdose and Opioid Epidemic” event at Science World. Criminalization and prohibition are causes of the crises that are taking so many lives. This must be acknowledged and police institutions and agents made accountable for it. As police continue to drain resources away from public and social health supports that would actually be useful and as realities and fears of criminalization continue to cost lives, it must be said openly—cops are the cause not the cure.

This truth is too little spoken, particularly in mainstream venues like Science World. So it was striking and important to here this said directly by participants at the “Understanding the Overdose and Opioid Epidemic” panel discussion. Dr. Mark Tyndall said very pointedly that criminalization and prohibition are at the root of all of this. That, fundamentally, is what has to be fixed.

Other participants in the event, Sarah Blyth, Patrick Smith of Culture Saves Lives, and Erica Thomson, touched on this issue in various ways. The panel included one cop, VPD Sergeant Mike Wheeler, and he too admitted that criminalization is regressive, but seemed unaware of ongoing repressive policing in the downtown eastside or was unwilling to address the fact (and the negative role of police more broadly).

The Speakers

Scott Sampson of Science World introduced the event by saying that it is the first public event in the institution’s efforts to rethink what role Science World should fill over the next generation. After a broad consultation process in which hundreds of people gave insight, it was determined that Science World needs to address pressing issues if social concerns for the local community. They need to contribute to creating a new world.

In asking what the most pressing needs are it was clear that the opioid ad overdose crises are having a massive toll on communities all over so-called British Columbia. This event was the first foray in transforming Science World into a “convening hub” for change in the community.

The event consisted of short opening statements by panelists and some follow up questions by host Don Schafer. Questions then moved to the audience.

First up was Dr. Mark Tyndall. He stressed that the work people do is not giving up on people. So many people need time. And we need to give them more time.

He pointed out that for every person who died, about 20 more people overdosed—that is, they almost died. This is more than traffic accidents, more than homicides, more than suicides. The relative death toll is astronomical in his words. And it impacts communities throughout British Columbia.

Tyndall referenced some terrible statistics, which had been provided in a handout to audience members. Eighty percent who died are men. Eighty percent are between 20-49 years in age. About 70 percent never had a chance to call for help. They were alone and isolated. Many have been saved from naloxone and most is administered by people in the community saving their friends and neighbors. Not by official institutions.

Tyndall emphasized that how we refer to people is so important. We have to roll back stigma. People who use drugs should be treated with respect. They should not be referred to and dismissed as junkies, abusers, druggies. Sadly, but not surprisingly I have had students tell me that police officers who “teach” in our criminology classrooms use these terms regularly and without self-awareness.

Sarah Blyth told the audience that we need to have the bravery to do something different, not keep doing the same thing we have done for 100 years (i.e. criminalization). That is key. The community overdose prevention sites have been part of a different way of thinking.

She said that she and others started the overdose prevention site at the downtown eastside street market because there were increasing numbers of people overdosing. There were people overdosing all day, everyday. So they put a tent in the most used alley where people were using drugs, they were aiding people in the alley. Now they see 400 to 500 people every day, with as many as 700 in one day. She reported they have seen about 10,000 people overall. They have saved around 500 lives.

Patrick Smith is with Culture Saves Lives who gave the evening a powerful and rising start with their singing and drumming. He made clear that what is most important is sovereignty and self-determination. We should not impose dominant values. What is needed is cultural justice. We need to operate on principles of equity. We also need to shine light where it does not usually go. He noted that the drummers have shown up for so many memorials and it is hard on them. He was strong in saying that culture had sustained Indigenous people through a previous genocide and it will carry them through this.

Erica Thomson, someone I greatly respect and have worked with on events in Surrey, spoke of overcoming stigma and the importance of lived experience and commonality. There is a special scope of peer practice and understanding for each other. She reminded the audience that drug users are divers and people in recovery are diverse. There is a need for diverse choices—which are not there in the system. She goes into her work with the idea that people know what is best for them. She feels safest and most belonging most in groups of drug users, like VANDU (the Vancouver Network of Drug Users). She said we need to remove deserving and undeserving labels.

On Policing and Crisis

Criminalization has driven people underground. It leads to lonely, isolated people using drugs alone. And not even telling friends or colleagues because of criminalization fears and stigmas. Erica Thomson challenged the audience to ask what was behind drug policy in the first place. It certainly was not concern for peoples health.

While Sergeant Wheeler tried to suggest the Vancouver Police Department is not criminalizing drug use anymore, Blyth reported, what people in the downtown eastside confirm, that for a month or so prior to the event date there has been a lot of police street activity around small level dealers being targeted. That is in no way a step forward.

Unfortunately Sergeant Wheeler made the police appeal, once again, for more resources and more cops to target and process larger dealers. Tyndall noted that for every drug bust celebrated in the media, that is 50 people who lost their trusted dealer and will have to turn to less safe, unknown, sources. He stressed too that the issue is demand driven not supply driven. It will not be stopped by shutting down dealers as so many seem to hope. It will still get out.

Dr. Tyndall asked how it became that 300 deaths a few years earlier became almost 1500 deaths last year? His answer is that criminalization and prohibition drove the market into fentanyl. Policing squeezed the market into all sorts of unsafe chemicals.

It was brought up be a member of the audience that policing is racist and disproportionately processing people on a racialized basis. Without acknowledging this Sergeant Wheeler admitted cops have a great range of discretion. Of course. Smith was more direct and said we have to name systemic racism and confront that it is alive and well in every institution in Canada. Indeed, Canada is founded on white supremacy.

Erica Thomson insisted that peers need to be supported and employed to bring their experiences and perspectives into the decisional positions. Tyndall tied the exclusion of peers into criminalization. People cannot get a voice and be empowered if they are hiding or being viewed as “criminals.” Tyndall also pointed out that there are no supports for people released from incarceration. And there are many overdoses of people after leaving prison. We must provide health care and social supports. And, even more, stop jailing people especially given that most people are incarcerated for non-violent, property, victimless, consumption, and administrative “offenses.”

What is needed is proper housing, medical care, access to safe drugs and medical doses.  Blyth stressed that medical provision could be done in the community right now.

Tyndall noted that policy makers say the public is not ready for this. But they haven’t asked the public. He noted that every death is predictable given the social context of inaccessible and inadequate housing, social inequality, personal and community trauma, etc. Social needs for health care and housing can be met but are not for political reasons. These are fixable but will require mobilizing to secure.

On the whole it says plenty that the only contribution that Sergeant Wheeler, or anyone else present, could see police making to alleviate the crises, was to stop criminalizing people. That is to stop being police (though Wheeler did not put it in that light). It tells us a lot that the only contribution police can make is negative (subtractive) rather than positive (additive). They need to go away. They need to dissolve themselves. And their funds need to be redistributed to people and organizations that can actually help our communities.

Police are always made to feel too comfortable, their demands are always met.  They are included in policy solutions discussions by politicians and business improvement associations seeking to preserve their political or economic capital. And in so doing police are able to diversify themselves and remarket themselves by expanding into areas they have no place being—like health care, harm reduction, housing. And people and groups that can provide these do without or face cuts to budgets and programs.

Instead police need to be made to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, their demands (for resources, funds, for inclusion) refused and rejected. They need to be addressed as the very causes of the problems we so desperately need to solve. In defunding police we need to fund proper community and social services.

Justice for Tina Fontaine: Rally and March, Vancouver, Feb. 24, 2018

By Jeff Shantz

On August 17 of 2014, the body of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, an Indigenous girl from Sagkeeng First Nation, was pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She had been wrapped in a duvet weighted down by rocks. Intentionally submerged. Her death was a major impetus to the forming of a national inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

On Thursday, February 22, 2018, a jury in Winnipeg delivered a not guilty verdict in the trial of 56-year-old Raymond Cormier, the man who admitted to throwing her body in the river. This verdict came only weeks after another infamous decision from Saskatchewan where white farmer Gerald Stanley was declared not guilty of killing Indigenous youth Colten Boushie, despite admitting that he shot the young man in the head. 

In response to the verdict, gatherings and marches calling for “Justice for Tina Fontaine” have been held in cities and towns across so-called Canada. A mass rally and march of at least 400 people took place in Vancouver on Saturday, February 24. It was a powerful and moving action with diverse voices, in rage and pain, raised against the criminal injustice systems of the Canadian state.

Love for Tina, Hate for the System

The assembly met in front of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) building in downtown Vancouver because the national broadcaster’s initial reporting on the trial emphasized that Tina Fontaine had drugs in her system, a case of victim shaming. The focus was not on her killer admitting to throwing her in the river. The focus was not on the failings of the child welfare system that let her down so fatally.

From the CBC the group marched, first to Granville and Georgia where the intersection was taken and traffic blocked for an hour or so. From there the march went to Howe and Robson where the intersection was also taken and held. The march ended at the Law Courts where there was a candlelight vigil for Tina Fontaine.

Speakers throughout stressed the injustice of colonial justice systems. Co-organizer Tawahum Justin Bige, a Kwantlen Polytechnic University student and poet, asked why Indigenous people have to go through a court system that banned Indigenous peoples own governance and justice practices. It was pointed out by several speakers that the Indian Act is a racist piece of legislation that provided a model for the Nazis and their racist programs.

The killing of Tina Fontaine goes well beyond the horrible, vicious act that directly took her life, but is located throughout the entire colonial criminal justice system and child welfare system in Manitoba and Canada. These are themselves murderous systems over the history of colonial occupation. As many have said: “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

Sii-amlouet Hamilton said, poignantly, that she always feels hunted here (in Canada). And she emphasized that the police are a large source of that feeling. She made it clear that the police are not on her side, not on the side of Indigenous people. She told the gathering that she always feels in danger with police present. She concluded by saying that she does not like being at events like this because it always means another woman or girl has gone missing or been killed.

She put out a call for people to start asking questions. The cops are not going to help, and will likely hurt. So we need to do the work that needs to be done to protect ourselves and our communities.

It was noted, quite importantly, that the colonial courts have made, and continue to make, millions and millions of dollars on processing the bodies of Indigenous people. As I have argued, without processing poor and oppressed people, and the flow of public money generated by this, the criminal justice system in Canada would collapse. Generations have been processed through the system. They are not in conflict with the law, the law are in conflict with them.

Kanahus Manuel spoke powerfully. In her words: “I want to say to Canada that we are done with you.” She said that as the grandmothers and mothers of collective Indigenous communities, “We must turn our backs on the system and build something more beautiful than Canada has ever had.”

People made clear that it will take community, together, to protect the children. Family and community need to “surround the children” as one speaker put it. Indigenous governance must be restored as part of protecting the children.

JB the First Lady affirmed the call that it is “time to do our way.” Indigenous people have tried the settler protocol. In her words: “We have the solutions and yet they don’t fucking listen.” Indigenous people have traditional ways of governance. In her view the two row wampum worked, now “get out of my canoe [to the colonial state].” She noted that the United States government took traditional ways of governance (the Iroquois Confederacy) but distorted it by forgetting the clan mothers and forcing it into a patriarchal system.

Several speakers stressed the need for solid allyship. And it was said repeatedly how good it was to see allies turn up. One ally, Cicely Belle-Blain, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Vancouver, noted that the injustices on colonized land are multifaceted.

While analysis and commentary laid out the injustices and violence of the colonial system the message of speakers was love for Tina Fontaine and her family. A foundation of love and solidarity against systems of callous brutality.

There is No Justice on Stolen Indigenous Land

It was emphasized that the land question must be dealt with all over so-called North America. Several people connected colonial violence against the land with colonial violence against women. Speakers reminded the assembly that Indigenous women began disappearing as soon as the colonizers arrived. Kanahus Manuel pointed out that the Hudson’s Bay Company took Indigenous girls and women. Defiantly she said: “How dare Canada?” Now governments want to bring more men from outside into their territories—and more women will go missing. Defending the land is the work of stopping women from going missing.

Carol Martin told the crowd: “When they destroy the women, they destroy the family and the community.” The system knows this. One speaker noted that it is not a coincidence that herb gatherers and knowledge women were called witches and treated like monsters.

Related to this directly was a call to drop the charges against those standing up against Kinder Morgan. It was pointed out that it is a waste of public money paying cops to protect a pipeline company. And again it was stressed that we need personal protection plans to protect our communities and families.  Not cops.

This was a strong and reflective, angry and loving gathering. The messages were clear. As Manuel said: We never destroyed our land, never contaminated our water. Canada, 150 years, we’re done with you.” Or as JB the First Lady proclaimed: “I am the Indian problem. And watch out!”

And as the verdicts in the Stanley trial and the Cormier trial show: “There is no justice on stolen Indigenous land.”