Radio: Working for a multi-issue “revolution of care” in Newfoundland

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Scott

Kerri Claire Neil lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and she is the co-chair of the Social Justice Co-operative NL, an activist organization whose members work on a wide range of social, political, and environmental issues. Scott Neigh interviews her about their choice to be a co-operative, the many struggles they are involved in, and their “Revolution of Care Manifesto.”

In 1964, Oxfam Canada set up an office in St. John’s. Across the many decades of Oxfam’s presence in the city, the affiliated chapter of active volunteers worked – as Oxfam does – on important global issues, at least some of the time tying them to local issues. A few decades into that time, some members of the chapter decided to think big, bought a building, and sold it to the global Oxfam organization for $1, on the condition that if Oxfam ever pulled out, the building would be returned for the same price to a local organization doing similar work.

Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative federal government, things changed. Organizations like Oxfam faced significant funding cuts and major new restrictions on the advocacy work they were allowed to do, one consequence of which was the decision by Oxfam to close their office in St. John’s.

Local activists associated with Oxfam were not content to just fade away, however. They formed a new organization – and not just any organization, but a co-operative. Co-ops are pretty common in general in the Canadian context, particularly housing and consumer co-ops, but it’s rare to see one focused on activism and social justice. According to Claire Neil, they made this decision because of their understanding of co-ops as “democratic,” “transparent,” and “accountable,” and because of the considerations for justice and equity built into the seven principles of the co-op movement.

The new group entered into negotiations with Oxfam to get the building back. Unfortunately, during that process the building burned down. However, the organization was able to get a chunk of the insurance money.

They were a purely volunteer outfit at that time, so while they regularly held events and workshops, overall their capacity was quite limited. They had visions of using the insurance money as a starting point for buying another building, but they were never able to put together the sort of major initiative that would have required. Then in 2018, they decided to take a different approach – they used some of the money to hire a part-time permanent staff person to coordinate volunteers, help with organizing events, and fundraise.

From that moment on, the organization flourished, and has been able to sustain itself and maintain its staff through its fundraising efforts. Large numbers of mostly small monthly donors are the backbone of that work – Claire Neil estimates they currently have about a hundred monthly donors giving a total of about $2000 each month. The dependence on fundraising provides an additional form of direct accountability to members, while freeing the co-op from the kind of externally imposed constraints on grassroots political work that come with dependence on grant funding from governments or foundations. Claire Neil said, “By really focusing on the people who believe in our work, we have, I think, been able to be a bit more radical and and say things that other groups haven’t or can’t.”

She continued, “We take being a grassroots organization very seriously. So we’re very much like a bottom-up organization. … Instead of the board deciding what projects we’re going to come up with, it’s very member driven.” This means that much of the co-op’s work begins as ideas among members, and the staff and board serve as resource, support, and infrastructure to help members turn those ideas into action. Having staff support enables much more activity among members, in both amount and breadth, than would otherwise be possible.

The co-op’s many working groups and projects, the kinds of actions they take, and the politics informing all of this have always been very eclectic. Claire Neil said, “We’re not [exclusively] socialists, or communists, or anarchists, or, like, liberal-democrats – we’re a real melange of everyone. We are explicitly anti-capitalist, but I think it’s important that we kind of keep the umbrella open.” One strand of their work has flowed from concern about the climate crisis, but they have done lots of other things too.

Active working-groups at the moment include one challenging car culture, another that focuses on corresponding with prisoners, a 2SLGBTQIA+ mutual aid pod, a zero waste group, and an anti-capitalist reading group. They have also been active in supporting the youth-led climate strikes, and in working with Climate Action NL and the Workers Action Network NL. They recently organized a Rights of the Atlantic Ocean fundraiser. And they’ve been involved in supporting Indigenous land defence efforts and in opposing offshore fossil fuel extraction.

An important development for the co-op was the elaboration of a more detailed unifying vision for their work, embracing the organization’s breadth while giving it a greater coherence. Called the “Revolution of Care Manifesto,” it sets out a sort of pluralist anti-capitalism informed by Indigenous and other anti-racist feminisms that, as the name suggests, places “care” at the centre of the many and varied ways it envisions working for a better world.

Claire Neil said, “Under capitalism, we’re very individualized, and kind of told, you know, only look after yourself, and nobody cares about you. And there’s a lot of harm in that approach. … And then, of course, there’s the violence and the harm that capitalism does, you know, by putting us in prison, by making us homeless if we don’t have a job, by forcing us to move away from our social safety nets, our families, to seek employment so that we don’t end up on the streets. And then, of course, even in the jobs, there’s a lot of risks, depending on where you work. And care is, I think, really kind of the antidote to that.

“How can we be kind and compassionate to each other and build spaces where you’re going to feel accepted and you’re going to feel taken care of? And how can we, as a community, show care to each other and take responsibility for each other? Because I think that’s going to be a really important part in resisting that individualism, and thinking more about us as a collective. Because I think especially in this individualized approach, it can also feel really, like, why would I get involved in an advocacy organization, because I’m just one person, and the systems that we’re up against are huge. But if we are thinking of ourselves as a collective, and recognizing that we’re all parts of like a bigger organization and together we are strong, then hopefully we can shift what’s happening and still take care of each other, but not in a way that’s exploiting each other or oppressing each other.

“And the land, of course. The land is really being harmed under capitalism and the resource extraction that’s happening. And so we also have to show care for the land and the animals, and recognize that we’re all we’re kind of just like a small piece of this big, beautiful earth. And we have a responsibility to, like, take care of it.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of the Social Justice Co-operative NL.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Mobilizing musicians around the world in support of Palestine

Posted on November 15, 2022 by Scott

Stefan Christoff is a musician and a long-time activist based in Tiohti:áke, or Montreal. He is also the co-ordinator of Musicians for Palestine, a network of musicians from around the world committed to speaking up in support of Palestinian human rights. Scott Neigh interviews him about the work involved in building a global initiative of this sort, and about the network’s most recent statement, which was released in September 2022.

Christoff’s grassroots political work started when he was a teen, and he has participated in struggles related to everything from opposing police brutality, to anti-capitalism, to migrant justice. He has been very involved over those years in Indigenous-led land defence struggles across so-called Canada, most recently those by the Wet’suwet’en people against the Coastal Gas Link pipeline. And, for more than two decades, he has worked in support of Palestinian struggles for justice and liberation.

Christoff has always seen the Palestinian struggle as integrally interconnected with both Indigenous struggles within and against so-called Canada and with the waves of anti-colonial resistance around the world in the 20th century. All are fundamentally about the land. The colonial states involved draw from similar repertoires of oppressive practices. And the struggles are interconnected too, not just in an abstract way but concretely. Contemporary manifestations of Palestinian struggle clearly draw on lineages that include the anti-apartheid fight in South Africa and the liberation movements that threw off the yoke of European empire in the middle of the last century.

As for his music, Christoff has been releasing it publically for about ten years. His work is generally instrumental, and often experimental. He uses music as a way to process the demands of constant frontline organizing and to nourish himself. And he uses it as a way to build community, through the shared pleasure and creativity of playing together, and also through putting on musical events meant to raise awareness and sometimes funds in support of particular struggles.

For over a decades, he was involved in organizing a series of concerts in Montreal called Artists Against Apartheid, which he said “were trying to create a community space for artists to speak together about what’s happening in Palestine, and improvise and work together to basically have creative moments of shared community.” He emphasized that often the music at these concerts “wasn’t super slogan-based, but it was often more beautiful and reflective.”

He continued, “I think that that’s important, right? To have that space to reflect, to have that space to create. And to see that as part of the process of activism. I think that often activism is understood as only the moments that are in the headlines. But it’s much broader than that. To be involved in these issues over a lifetime, you need to take different approaches. And music has been a really important part of that for me.”

Around Palestine and other issues, Christoff has often seen musicians asking the same question that many of us ask when faced with some great injustice: What can we do? In response to the Israeli state’s military assault on Gaza in May 2021, there was once again a surge of such questions. So he decided to make use of his experience as an organizer and worked with others to build on the engagement around these issues that had been happening within Montreal’s multiple overlapping music scenes over many years, to create Musicians for Palestine.

From these local networks, people then reached out through networks of musicians that spanned the globe. It was a long, challenging process requiring many one-on-one conversations, with lots of listening and lots of grassroots educational work. In addition, it all happened in ongoing dialogue with Palestinian communities on the ground, and Palestinian-led activist organizations like the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, and the International Solidarity Movement. Ultimately, Musicians for Palestine was able to release a collective statement in support of the Palestinian people endorsed by hundreds of musicians from around the world.

This initial statement in 2021 was, Christoff said, a great success. As hoped, it was covered by many of the major outlets in the world’s music press, and after its release, “hundreds, maybe thousands, of musicians wrote us wanting to also join this process.”

This year, Musicians for Palestine developed a second statement, which it released in September 2022. Christoff said that the goal this time was “to basically outline that, despite Palestine not being in the headlines, there’s a lot of interest to continue expressing, collectively, support for Palestinian human rights, as musicians.”

Across the two statements, one or both have been endorsed by musicians like Patti Smith, members of the Roots and the Sonic Youth, Boots Riley, Asian Dub Foundation, The Halluci Nation (formerly A Tribe Called Red), FKA Twigs, Lido Pimienta, Denzel Curry, plenty of young hip-hop artists associated with Black Lives Matter organizing, and hundreds and hundreds of others.

A key element for Christoff in building support for these statements is maintaining a clear distinction between the Israeli people and the Israeli state – it is the latter that is the target of criticism and organizing, much like when we oppose the role of the Canadian state in colonial violence against Indigenous peoples here. And he said that in the time he has been active on this issue, he has seen a real shift. Not only have mainstream human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International come to recognize that Israeli state practices meet the definition of “aparhteid” – which Christoff explains as “the clear delineation of rights based on racial categories that is translated on the ground through an occupation [by] the Israeli military and a series of laws that discriminate directly against Palestinian people” – but he also said that increasing numbers of people in North America are coming to realize the importance of speaking out on the issue.

Christoff encourages musicians who wish to be part of the process around Musicians for Palestine’s next statement, which they will develop and release at some point in 2023, to get in touch. He also encouraged musicians to take other kinds of actions. Musicians are well-placed, for example, to put on fundraising events for Palestinian organizations. He emphasized that while the money raised in such efforts can be useful in supporting important work on the ground in Palestine, often the value in organizing events is “less about the funds. It’s more about the process of speaking together, of creating a space, and for people to gather and to talk about what’s happening in Palestine…to talk and to create community around these issues, to talk about interconnections. You know, what’s the parallels we can understand between the Canadian colonial state and the Israeli colonial state? What does solidarity look like? How do we learn more about what’s happening in Palestine? [About] what Canadians arms companies are doing, in terms of exporting to the Israeli state military complex? You know, all these questions. That’s what creating small events can do, is create conversation in community. And that’s what’s important.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: By Susanna Gonzo, used with permission of Musicians for Palestine.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Seeking healing, justice, and change in the wake of the convoy occupation

Posted on November 8, 2022 by Scott

Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah and Gaëlle Muderi are long-time residents of Ottawa who are involved in the Ottawa People’s Commission on the Convoy Occupation – Owusu-Akyeeah as a commissioner and Muderi as project coordaintor. The commission is a grassroots, nonpartisan initiative to listen to the voices of Ottawa residents in order to chronicle what happened in the city during and after February’s convoy protest, and to document its impacts on the people who live there. The goal is to contribute to community healing and justice, and to produce a report that, unlike the other inquiries and commissions related to the convoy, will prioritize the experiences of residents. Scott Neigh interviews them about the convoy, the community response, and the work of the commission.

In February 2022, the so-called convoy protest descended on Ottawa and went on to occupy its downtown for weeks. The narrative coming from the protesters was that this was a spontaneous uprising primarily by truckers against vaccine mandates – a narrative that the mainstream media has often uncritically reproduced, particularly in the protest’s early weeks. However, it is not a narrative that has proven able to stand up to much scrutiny, and not just because of the protest’s relatively minor connection to actual truckers. Admittedly, genuine discontent related to the pandemic and to the government’s handling of it combined with actively propagated misinformation about COVID-19, vaccines, and other issues to give the protest’s messaging a substantial reach. But Owusu-Akyeeah said that among people on “the grassroots side of things,” it was clear from the start that the occupation was about “more than just vaccine mandates, and that there was something a little bit more insidious behind the trucks and what their presence might mean in Ottawa.” Already in January, material had been published demonstrating that many key convoy organizers had a range of connections to far-right and white nationalist politics, and the convoy was likely a way to recruit more people into their sphere of influence. Indeed, this was only the latest in a series of much less successful convoy protests with other focuses (and often with connections to the oil industry) organized by such figures in earlier years.

The occupation’s impacts on residents of Ottawa were profound. The lives of those living in the city’s downtown were utterly disrupted. And particularly many who are Black, Indigenous, racialized, disabled, and/or LGBTQ+ reported feeling unsafe in their own neighbourhoods during the occupation, and frustrated by the seeming inability or unwillingness of governments and institutions to do anything about it. As a result, both during the convoy occupation and since, community members in Ottawa have, in Owusu-Akyeeah’s words, been “taking the lead” in working to organize and mobilize themselves to support each other, to defend their communities, and to voice their dissatisfaction with both the convoy and the government.

In the aftermath of the convoy, a number of official investigations and commissions were promised – most visibly, the official inquiry into the Liberal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, which is currently ongoing. Muderi described “the scope of the inquiries currently happening at the federal level as well as at the municipal level” as “limited,” particularly “in its ability to hear from a wide array of residents who were affected. … There hasn’t been a venue for residents who were negatively affected to speak to the traumas and losses that they had, and to hold to account the officials that were not able to guarantee their public health and safety at that time.”

Another key feature of the community response during the occupation, Owusu-Akyeeah said, was residents “taking advantage of online spaces where they can converse, almost like miniature digital community town halls.” In the context of the poor response to the occupation by governments, she continued, “these community-focused spaces were an opportunity for us to share information, mobilize, but then to also come together to talk about, what are you seeing, what are you experiencing?” It is out of these grassroots conversations and the associated mutual aid networks that a group of local residents with the support of a number of smaller local institutions – most prominently the community health centre in the area – have launched the Ottawa People’s Commission.

Owusu-Akyeeah said that among people’s many frustrations with the occupation and with how governments responded to it has been that since then, “whether it was the city [or] the country, decision-makers wanted to move on as if this didn’t happen.” She said that when the commission was first announced, “people’s response was, thank-you, because we can’t forget what we went through and this is an opportunity for us to do some kind of collective remembering.”

The People’s Commission has been holding public hearings in person and online since September, collecting testimonies from residents. They are holding community consultations with groups that were particularly affected, such as Asian seniors; people living in shelters; Black, Indigenous, and Muslim communities; and queer and trans folk. And they have been offering a range of other ways for people to share their experiences in safe settings, including privately and in writing.

Muderi said that the commission has “absolutely” experienced active opposition from far-right formations and their supporters. In addition, she said, they have seen “the rise of online harassment, and of folks expressing their fear to come forward due to the online harassment that has taken place surrounding the subject of the convoy occupation.” Part of their response has been to offer “a space for those who support the convoy occupation to speak to their experience… We have been willing to hear from them as long as it happens in a context of respect, and of validation of other people’s experiences. … But it’s certainly not something that we take for granted, that people will continue to peacefully engage with us when they disagree.”

In addition to her role as a commissioner, Owusu-Akyeeah is the executive director of a national nonprofit dealing with LGBTQ+ issues, and she has been active in both organizational and grassroots ways around gender-based violence, queer and trans issues, police violence, and racial justice. Project coordinator Muderi, who lived in the area directly impacted by the convoy, has worked in communications for both governments and community organizations. Along with Owusu-Akyeeah, the other three commissioners are former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada Alex Neve, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing Leilani Farha, and award-winning author and human rights activist Monia Mazigh.

Public hearings and other methods of collecting public testimony will continue into December, and the process of producing a final report will begin in January. The report will include a detailed account of what residents endured during the occupation and a range of recommendations for all levels of government and other institutions.

Owusu-Akyeeah said that “everybody’s been sharing impactful testimonies” but she found a recent online session featuring six disabled residents of downtown Ottawa sharing their experience during the convoy to be particularly powerful. “There’s just something about looking at it from the perspective of disability justice, and how deeply embedded the ableism is to the very infrastructure of the city.” And in the official responses to the occupation, “the ableism was there.” Governments showed no awareness of or interest in the specific impacts of the occupation on disabled people, and made no particular efforts to support them. But, Owusu-Akyeeah said, “One of the things that really showed across all of the testimonies we’ve heard is how community was filling the gap of protection and support.” Broader grassroots efforts to fill that gap still sometimes failed to meet the needs of disabled people, and disabled people supporting each other ended up being crucial.

Another key focus of the commission’s work is the response to the occupation by the police. Both during the occupation and since, and also in the context of what residents have been telling the commission, there has often been a division – sometimes explicit, sometimes not – between those who see the answer as more and better policing, and those who recognize the profound problems with such a response. As is true of most police services, that in Ottawa has a long history of violence and racism against residents.

Owusu-Akyeeah said, “[During the occupation] I was very vocal in pointing out the discrepancy and the hypocrisy in the city’s response to what I like to talk about as different forms of dissent. You know, we’ve had examples of Black and Indigenous folks organizing, again, around police brutality that were responded to by the police very harshly. And then we saw in comparison the lack there of a response during the occupation.”

She continued, “I think what has been an interesting thing to observe – and I’m speaking as someone who has lived experience as a Black queer person – is that we are noticing that some people who may have been indifferent to calls to look at policing from a critical lens have finally caught up and finally get it, based off what they experienced in not having the police respond to them when they were in a moment of crisis. And I don’t want to frame this as, like, an ‘aha, gotcha’ moment. But I do think there’s something to be said about people experiencing this for the first time, and that shifting their thought process, the way they they think about this particular institution…. And in terms of what it means for a solution to it, we will see. But I do think that that is a key thing for us to continue to look at.” While it is unlikely that the commission’s final report will be able to resolve all of the questions and tensions related to policing, Owusu-Akyeeah hopes they are able to use it to “maybe open up a different conversation” about those issues.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Scoutguy5427 / Wikimedia

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Settlers building decolonial solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Scott

Kate Turner is a climate justice organizer living on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory in Tiohti:áke, or Montreal. Chantal Pelletier is a retired speech and language pathologist living on unceded Anishnaabe land in Gatineau, Quebec. Both are active with the Decolonial Solidarity Campaign, a network of affinity groups across so-called Canada acting in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people’s struggle against the Coastal Gas Link (CGL) pipeline by targeting the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), one of CGL’s main financers. Scott Neigh interviewed them about what it really means to act in solidarity in principled, accountable ways, and about the campaign.

Last week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio featured Jennifer Wickham, a Wet’suwet’en land defender who is involved in the struggle against CGL. The Wet’suwet’en people themselves are, of course, the central agents in that struggle, and their voices are what the rest of us should centre as we learn about it and make our own decisions about action. But as Wickham herself discussed, solidarity from Indigenous nations across so-called Canada and from settlers has been and continues to be crucial to that struggle. And this week’s show focuses on one such example of solidarity.

In late 2021, the RCMP was conducting militarized raids against Wet’suwet’en land defenders. Those land defenders issued a call for solidarity actions, and that call reached both Kate Turner and Chantal Pelletier.

For Turner, the first step was talking with other climate justice organizers in Montreal about what they could do. They decided that they wanted to do more than just take some sort of one-time action themselves – a decision that has ultimately led to the Decolonial Solidarity Campaign. She said, “We were really interested in figuring out how we could mobilize other people to take action as well … in a coordinated way – you know, just one person taking action in front of an RBC is amazing, but it’s so much more powerful when it’s done in a coordinated way and you can see that there are people all over Canada taking the same action on the same day.”

The approach they came up with was to develop some kind of movement infrastructure that would support people across the country in taking action, regardless of their level of prior experience with activism and organizing. They were inspired by a model developed by the Sunrise Movement, a climate movement organization in the United States, a key feature of which Turner described as “a distributed support structure.”

Initially, the campaign was considering targeting a range of different institutions that are complicit with the CGL pipeline. But Turner said that in consultation with Wet’suwet’en land defenders, “we refined our campaign to be just focused on RBC” so as to “align our strategy more closely with their strategy.” RBC is the fifth largest investor in fossil fuels in the world, the largest in Canada since the Paris Agreement was signed, and a massive financer of CGL.

They circulated the Wet’suwet’en call to action with their own offer of support. When people responded indicating that they wanted to take on planning an action and/or starting an affinity group, they connected them with a coach in their region, who could then offer ideas and advice for doing so. They also created a toolkit with resources explaining related issues and discussing possible actions.

Pelletier was one of the people who responded to that callout. She was new to activism and organizing, and she found the supports from the campaign to be very useful. The small rally she helped put together targeting a branch of RBC in Ottawa quickly turned into an affinity group that has been acting together ever since.

The initial cross-Canada wave of actions took place in November and December 2021. Then in the spring of 2022, the Decolonial Solidarity Campaign took up another call for action from the Wet’suwet’en and targeted the RBC Annual General Meeting. Since then, they have encouraged affinity groups to “adopt” a branch of RBC to regularly target in their actions.

The details of those actions vary a great deal, but Turner is clear that the campaign has no interest in confrontation with employees or customers, but rather in education, dialogue, and relationship building. “We do not believe that employees should feel guilty about [RBC’s actions]. That is not part of our beliefs. And we recognize that employees don’t have any decision making power at the corporate level.”

She said, “Our goal is to bring employees and customers into this movement, and to provide the facts about the situation, and to mobilize people to speak out about the situation – either in their workplace, or speaking out, if they’re a customer, at their branch talking to their manager.”

The campaign has lots of affiliated affinity groups across the country and involves people coming to the movement from many different contexts, and they continue to offer resources and supports. Best of all, according to Turner, their network is “growing” and “all of this is starting to have an effect.” Multiple groups and campaigns are targeting RBC these days on multiple fronts, and based on the bank’s media interventions lately, she said, they are “on the defensive right now. And I think that’s a really good indication that all of this effort, in the entire ecosystem of resistance, is really having an effect. So now is the time to take action. And now is the time for us to grow and mobilize more people, as many as we can, so that we can all put pressure on them in a coordinated effort.” Since the interview for this episode was recorded, Wet’suwet’en land defenders have issued a new call for a day of action on November 5, 2022.

When asked about what solidarity means for her, Pelletier said, “I can quote [Wet’suwet’en land defender] Molly Wickham, known as Sleydo’, who said in the call to action in December, ‘You want to fight for climate justice, stand with us. Every time you stand with us, we are more powerful, and they can’t ignore us.’ That really spoke to my heart. And it said to me that if people all over Canada stand, well, there’s a chance that we’ll be able to achieve what we’re supposed to be doing. … We have to acknowledge the truth before we can pretend to speak about reconciliation. Acknowledging the truth means seeing what’s happening out there, even if it’s far from us, because even if it’s far away – the pipeline is far away – eventually we will suffer from it.”

Turner agreed, adding, “To me, solidarity is recognizing that we’re actually all in this together. The future that Wet’suwet’en land defenders want, a future without Coastal Gas Link, is not only a much better future for the Wet’suwet’en community and Wet’suwet’en children, it’s also a much better future for everyone.” Turner also cited Molly Wickham, who she said has similarly urged people across so-called Canada to “realize that we’re all in this together, and that so many of the ways in our lives that we are oppressed is actually all due to the same cause. And for working people all over the world, it’s all due to the horrible legacy of colonialism in this country and imperialism elsewhere in the world. If we can get to that level of solidarity, then I think that’s game over for oligarchs and the banks that are supporting them.”

Turner said, “Our vision is to create a network of settlers all over Canada who are ready to throw down when the Wet’suwet’en land defenders issue a call to action. … And we take very seriously that we are accountable to the land defenders. This network is a network of settlers who are ready and willing and able to be accountable to land defenders. So, you know, if they change strategy, if they want us to focus in a different direction, if they want us to stop or go in another direction, that’s what we’re here to do. So I think that’s one way that we’ve tried to be good allies and act in solidarity for this campaign.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Ongoing Wet’suwet’en resistance to the CGL pipeline

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Scott

Jennifer Wickham is a Cas Yikh (Grizzly Bear House) member in the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en people, and the media co-ordinator for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint. Scott Neigh interviews her about her people’s ongoing fight against the Coastal Gas Link (CGL) pipeline.

Wet’suwet’en territory encompasses 22,000 sq km in the north of what is colonially known as British Columbia. Like most Indigenous nations in BC, the Wet’suwet’en have never signed a treaty with the Crown, and even Canada’s colonial legal system has, through the 1997 Delgamuuk-Gisday’wa decision, recognized that Wet’suwet’en (and neighbouring Gitxsan) territory are unceded and that the rights to that territory continue to be held by the traditional governance systems of those nations. Despite this, however, Wickham said that from pretty much the day after that decision was issued, “It’s been a very active campaign of all levels of government and industry to continue to steal our resources and trespass on our territory, even though they knew and still know full well that the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people have never given up their rights and title.”

The CGL pipeline would carry fracked gas from a point near the Alberta/BC border to a massive proposed LNG terminal in Kitimat on the coast, crossing Wet’suwet’en territory along the way. Since it was first proposed, the traditional governance system of the Wet’suwet’en has repeatedly made clear that they oppose any and all pipelines crossing their territory. Band councils are not part of traditional governance and are constituted by the Canadian state, do not hold the rights to the land, and have only municipality-like authority over the tiny portion of territory designated as reserves. While some band councils have signed impact benefit agreements with Coastal Gas Link, Wickham says that the number of Wet’suwet’en people who support the pipeline is actually “very few.”

She continued, “The reserve system was put in place to remove our people from our territory so that we wouldn’t be able to defend it or protect it from extraction and industry.” While emphasizing that they would not speak against Wet’suwet’en who support the pipeline, she said, “It’s a very underhanded, tricky game that the industry and government are playing in trying to pit elected band council systems against our hereditary system… Obviously, they will try and get access [to our resources] any way they can. And the divide-and-conquer tactic is alive and well, just as it has been since the beginning of colonization.”

For more than ten years, a number of Wet’suwet’en house groups and clans have been re-occupying the different parts of the territory for which they are responsible. One of the first of these was the Unist’ot’en, who set up a camp in the path of multiple proposed pipelines, including CGL. In 2018, an injunction was issued against the Unist’ot’en, and it was at that point that the Gidimt’en decided to show support by setting up a checkpoint on the road leading to the Unist’ot’en Camp.

Over the subsequent years of struggle, there have been many important actions – including the massive, cross-Canada uprising of the #ShutDownCanada movement in early 2020 – as well as police responses and other changes on the ground but the overarching dynamics have been much the same. On the one side have been Wet’suwet’en land defenders occupying their own territories, in accordance with their own laws, with the support of allies. On the other have been the company and the Canadian state, using every mechanism at their disposal, including militarized police and outright violence, to force the pipeline through, in the name of profit.

According to Wickham, both in the context of the periodic massive raids and in their relentless everyday harassment of Wet’suwet’en people, the RCMP in particular have played the same colonial role that the force has played since its founding. “The RCMP are doing exactly what they were designed to do. When colonization first started, the RCMP was created in order to deal with the ‘Indian problem.’” She said, “There’s probably a lot of folks within mainstream society that see the police as, like, keeping the peace or keeping people safe. They have never interacted with Indigenous people that way… Their job has always been the same. It’s always been to contain and suppress and oppress the Indigenous people so that the Crown – so-called Canada, the corporation of Canada – can have access to all of the resources that it wants.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, it interfered with resistance, but the company and the government made sure that work on the pipeline continued full steam ahead. But resistance has, of course, continued as well. In late 2021, for instance, people associated with the Gidimt’en Checkpoint occupied a site that the company was planning to use in the process of drilling under the Wedzin Kwa, the main salmon-spawning river in Wet’suwet’en territory. The occupation lasted for two months, before being ended by a brutal RCMP raid.

According to Wickham, “Since then, it has been just increased RCMP harassment and intimidation.” In response, earlier this year, the Gidimt’en clan and a number of its members launched a civil lawsuit against the RCMP, CGL, and CGL’s security company. That lawsuit is still before the courts. Wickham said that CGL and their security company have responded by denying everything, while the RCMP and the federal Department of Justice have not responded to the suit at all. Given that, the Gidimt’en intend to apply for a summary judgment against the RCMP.

As for the pipeline itself, construction continues. Drilling underneath Wedzin Kwa seems to have begun, and Wickham said that at the moment the magnitude of the RCMP presence in Wet’suwet’en territory and the intensity of the ongoing repression “is really limiting any actions that we’re able to take.” But in recent months, they have been making renewed calls for solidarity actions. In particular, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs recently “did a cross-country, nation-to-nation tour where we went and met with a lot of our allies, all across so-called Canada.”

That and other recent calls to action are, Wickham said, “starting to maybe remobilize folks that have always been supportive of what we’re doing.” That includes both allied Indigenous nations and also “the broader community of citizens of so-called Canada that are starting to realize that we’re doing what’s right and we’re doing it for everybody.” Because of the climate crisis, she said, “we’re seeing all across North America the floods, and the fires, and the droughts, and the hurricanes, and, and, and, and, and.” Resistance by Indigenous nations, including the Wet’suwet’en, to fossil fuel infrastructure has been the leading edge of the fight against the climate crisis.

Wickham concluded, “It’s really important for listeners to know that just because they’ve started to drill underneath Wedzin Kwa, that it’s not over. The Wet’suwet’en will always do whatever it is that they need to do to protect their territory… So get involved.”

Next week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio will feature two people active in grassroots solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in other parts of the country, talking about what the actions they have been taking and exploring what solidarity means.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: KABerglund / Wikimedia

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Anti-racism in smaller cities and towns

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Scott

Saleh Waziruddin is an anti-racist activist in St. Catharines, Ontario, and an executive committee member of the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association (NRARA). Scott Neigh interviews him about doing locally-focused grassroots anti-racism work in a place like Niagara – comprised of smaller cities, towns, and rural areas – and how it differs from anti-racism in larger cities.

Waziruddin was born in Montreal, but grew up mostly outside of Canada. As a Canadian citizen attending university in Pittsburgh in the US, he was wary of becoming politically involved. But in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, he was drawn into grassroots political work in the face of the kinds of racism, Islamophobia, and harassment driven with particular intensity in those years by the national security states of Western countries. In one way or another, he has been engaged in anti-racism work ever since. In 2006, he was barred from returning to the US, so he settled in Canada, in southern Ontario’s Niagara Region.

If you were to judge based on what shows up in the mainstream media, you would think, in Ontario, that racism is mostly a problem in the larger cities, like Toronto and its environs. But according to Waziruddin, things are actually worse in smaller centres – the issue just does not get the same attention. In recent years, he has particularly seen this because ballooning housing costs have led many Black, Indigenous, and racialized (or BIPOC) people to move from the Greater Toronto Area to Niagara, and he said that when they get there, “they’re experiencing racism that they’ve never seen before, at levels they have never seen before and never imagined.”

The NRARA was founded four years ago. Up to that point, there had been a different organization doing anti-racist work in Niagara. However, as a result of anti-Black racism within that organization, three individuals left and founded the NRARA, and the original organization soon disbanded. (Waziruddin was not one of those three founders, but has been active in the organization since its first meeting.)

Partly as a consequence of these circumstances, the NRARA has been committed from the start to being led by BIPOC people themselves. Waziruddin pointed to “behaviours that happen in activist organizations that are exhausting to BIPOC people,” including “our experiences being invalidated” and various things that “derail the discussion” but have “nothing to do with the work of countering white supremacy.” The NRARA has clear guidelines for conduct that are presented at the start of each meeting, and an organizational culture in which “you will be called out if you do this kind of behaviour that’s derailing the meeting, derailing our work, and has proven exhausting to BIPOC members.”

Under the broad banner of anti-racist activism, different organizations can have a wide range of goals and approaches. For the NRARA, it means a quite specific set of things. It means, for one thing, supporting individuals who are facing direct experiences of racism. And it means pushing local institutions to change their policies and practices in anti-racist ways. Waziruddin said, “The direction we’re going, we hope, is actually challenging white supremacy.”

The work of supporting individuals who are facing racism varies a lot, depending on the circumstances. In a recent case, a Black woman in Fort Erie received anonymous letters threatening to burn her house down, supposedly because of loud music, and the NRARA held a public rally in front of her house, took up space, and made it clear that her neighbours from across the Region would support her. A lot of the time, though, it is much lower profile – for instance, just having one or a few people quietly accompany the individual in risky contexts in their neighbourhood or when they are dealing with organizations that have been treating them in racist ways.

Challenging local institutions has meant pushing for police reform and for changes in the practices of municipal governments. He said, “The police and many other institutions in Niagara are far behind what other places are doing” when it comes to anti-racism. To push this work forward, the NRARA does things like delegating, lobbying, participating in official processes, and doing media work, as well as participating in protests and similar activities.

When it comes to police reform, Waziruddin contrasts the NRARA’s efforts with two other broad approaches. On the one hand, he is quite dismissive of how some community groups make minimal or no demands for change and act as willing participants in police public relations efforts. On the other hand, he says that while he is in favour of police abolition in the long term, the group is also open to a wider range of reforms in the meantime than some abolitionist groups. He said, “We are for both small changes and big changes, because we believe the small changes are what you need to build up the support to where you can get the bigger changes.”

Currently, they are making demands for an end to racial profiling and to police involvement in mental health and wellness checks, as well in favour of the use of body-worn cameras and a more robust system of locally-controlled civilian oversight. In the past, they have won changes like the disaggregation of the reporting of hate crime data. In the near future, they will be releasing a report outlining the disproportionate use of force by police in Niagara against Black and Indigenous people, which they say is even more stark than in places like Toronto.

Beyond their work for police reform, a lot of the NRARA’s work is focused on local governments. Niagara has two-tier municipal government, with responsibilities split between the Regional Municipality of Niagara and multiple city, town, and township governments within it. Waziruddin said, “We are focusing a lot on what municipalities can do because municipalities and cities do have a role to play in anti-racism. And it kind of lets them off the hook if you focus only on provincial and federal action.”

One of the NRARA’s key demands is that each municipality have a citizen advisory committee specifically focused on anti-racism – as well as an LGBTQ+ committee and other committees focused on other issues – rather than a catch-all diversity committee. Waziruddin said that folding anti-racism advisory committees into broader diversity and inclusion committees is something that is happening across North America. And he said that while “diversity and inclusion are very important,” in tasking a single committee with the entire gamut of such issues, very often “you don’t get the time to focus on anti-racism.” And this is in a context where “a lot of municipal governments don’t want to touch anything with the word racism in it.”

The NRARA has succeeded in getting the cities of St. Catherines and Niagara Falls to set up separate anti-racism advisory committees, and are likely to succeed with the Niagara regional government, though that has not happened yet. They also want to see local governments make better use of other tools within their power, like purchasing and hiring policies that will address barriers faced by BIPOC people, and the use of by-laws to respond to racist symbols and harassment.

According to Waziruddin, a key difference in fighting racism in a place like Niagara compared to the big cities is that the latter tend to “have established anti-racism organizations and BIPOC organizations and institutions,” often with paid staff, in a way that Niagara just does not. Despite the severity of racism in the region, in terms of anti-racism work, “We don’t have the resources. We don’t have the organizations, we don’t have the institutions. We don’t have the funding. … We have a bigger need, I would say, but we don’t have the resources to meet those needs.”

Nonetheless, he is optimistic about what grassroots groups can accomplish. He encourages people who want to do anti-racism work in areas similar to Niagara to start by getting a few like-minded people together and focusing on those institutions that pretty much all places have – local government, school boards, and police – by using the example of reforms that have been won elsewhere as a starting point. He said, “You can even just simply take what’s being done in let’s say Toronto, or Peel, or Brampton in Ontario, or the big cities in other provinces, and say, look, they have this, why can’t we have this, and push for that kind of policy.”

As well, he encourages groups to make themselves publically visible online, so that people who experience racism in their area might get in touch to seek support. When they do, he said, you should support them – partly because it is just the right thing to do to help people in need, but also as a way to build the organization. He continued, “If you get more and more volunteers working on those kinds of situations, you may find that one case where the person wants to go public and where it’s really a compelling case where people will get it. And then you can use that to change people’s understanding of white supremacy and racism in your area.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Ubahnverleih / Wikimedia

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter
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Radio — Migrant worker organizing in Nova Scotia

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Scott

Stacey Gomez lives in Halifax (aka Kjipuktuk) in Nova Scotia, within Mi’kmaqi, and she is a migrant justice organizer with No One Is Illegal – Halifax/Kjipuktuk. Scott Neigh interviews her about the group’s origins and about its work as the first grassroots effort in Atlantic Canada focused on organizing with migrant agricultural workers.

No One Is Illegal first existed in Halifax many years ago. As happens sometimes with grassroots groups, it went dormant for awhile. And then a few years ago, Gomez and a friend decided to revive it, initially with a march calling for racial and migrant justice. After that, the group’s work focused for a period of time on the needs of undocumented people in the Halifax context. It involved lots of public education and advocacy, around specific issues like undocumented people’s exclusion from access to the public health care system. But in discussion among members of the group and people in the community, they decided to shift their focus. Gomez said, “We were thinking it’s important for us to do more engagement and outreach with migrant community, and for our work to actually have some kind of material benefit to migrant communities. So this is really where we decided that our focus would be in terms of solidarity with migrant worker communities,” mainly in the agricultural sector.

In other parts of Canada, particularly Ontario and British Columbia, there are multiple groups that organize with migrant farm workers, some of which have been doing so for decades. But in Nova Scotia, there had never before been an organization focused on this work. So as the members of No One Is Illegal began getting out to the many smaller communities where migrant farm workers live – they sussed out where workers go to shop and to socialize, and struck up conversations – they knew it would be a long, slow process.

Since 2021, they have spoken to thousands of migrant workers. In the beginning many, quite understandably, were cautious about a new group with no track record. Gomez said, “People, obviously, were nice. But there just wasn’t a lot of receptiveness.” But many were also pleased to see that such an initiative was getting started, and No One Is Illegal has been working hard and showing up consistently, to show migrant farm workers that they are in this work for the long haul. They have been gradually building trust and relationships with migrant workers across many different Nova Scotia communities.

Most migrant farm workers come to Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, which for more than five decades has been bringing people from countries of the Global South to work for part of each year on Canadian farms. (These days in Nova Scotia, according to Gomez, most migrant farm workers are from Jamaica and Mexico, with smaller numbers from St. Lucia and Guatemala.) Advocates have long argued that the design of the program itself, and the ways in which it enshrines the precarious character of migrant workers’ status in Canada, is the central factor in making workers vulnerable to heightened oppression and exploitation by employers.

Workers do not get to choose their employer, and they are bound through their work permit to a single employer – they cannot exercise the basic right of workers to seek employment elsewhere. There is a process for workers in extenuating circumstances to temporarily get a permit that allows them to work a different job, but it is cumbersome and relies on the discretion of federal officials. Workers that Gomez has talked to have faced things like wage theft and other pay irregularities, terrible conditions in employer-provided housing, physical violence, and blatant racism from employers and community members. They also are prevented from accessing public health care, and the private insurance that is a mandatory part of the program does not always cover what they need. In practice, No One Is Illegal and other groups observe that workers who speak up for their rights, who file labour standards complaints, or even who apply for workplace compensation after an injury can be at risk of retribution from employers. Sometimes, for example, they might be sent back early to their home country and not called back by the same employer the next year, and perhaps not allowed back into the program at all.

Gomez said, “Because of these closed work permits, this puts workers in a situation of vulnerability. Also, because they have temporary immigration status. This is the primary reason why migrant workers are in a situation of vulnerability. So on paper, migrant workers have the same rights as Nova Scotians, as Canadians. But in practice, we see that that’s not actually the case…. So it’s really through the structure of this program, which relies on their temporary immigration status – this really puts them in a very difficult situation, where it’s hard to speak out for their rights.”

Along with basic relationship building, a lot of No One Is Illegal’s work so far involves a range of mutual aid and solidarity. They meet regularly with individual migrant workers, and with groups of them, and provide whatever support they can – translation, advice, support dealing with the paperwork and institutions of the various systems they have to navigate in Canada, help publicizing issues, and so on. In practice, because of the risks involved, they have encountered far, far more workers who need support in dealing with mistreatment from employers than feel able to speak publically about it.

No One Is Illegal also recently did a food box program for migrant workers. They regularly do know-your-rights workshops. They have increasingly been collaborating with groups in the communities where migrant workers live to hold events that bring migrant workers and Nova Scotians together and that support migrant workers, and they are keen to do more of that in the future.

The group is also part of larger advocacy campaigns such as those led by the Migrant Rights Network calling for permanent status in Canada for all migrant workers. At the moment, they are building a base of support in the riding of federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, to put pressure on him around these issues. As well, they are engaging in advocacy around a range of demands at the provincial level, including the need for paid sick days, a higher minimum wage, access to public health care and to statutory holiday pay for migrant workers, and better access to provincial programs that would give migrant workers a path to permanent residency.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of No One Is Illegal – Halifax/Kjipuktuk.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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