G8/G20: Failed commitments, broken lives

Here is a media release by folks organizing against the G20 summit in Toronto in June, sent out as the G8 ministerial meeting in Halifax is wrapping up. As one of the organizers is quoted as saying, "The G8 is saving the banks, while ignoring lives." Let's see if we can do something about that in June...

Toronto— At the conclusion of the Halifax demonstrations against the G8 Development Ministerial, Toronto activists are finalizing plans for a week of similar events during the June G20 Summit, to mark the G20's unwillingness to meet its own commitments to global equality.

Halifax activists denounced the ministerial for claiming to improve the lives of working people, women, and indigenous populations across the world while prioritizing the growth of industy and trade which directly threaten them. In Toronto, Anna Willats, long-time social justice organizer and Professor at George Brown College highlights this hypocrisy, “the G8 Ministerial speaks of women’s rights while hundreds of Indigenous women continue to disappear in Canada, they speak of economic growth while more and more Canadian workers – now over 40% - are in contract, temporary and insecure jobs, they speak of supporting people in the Global South at the same time as they subsidize dams, factories and mines that displace 10 million people each year”.

“The G8 is saving the banks, while ignoring lives”, said David McNally, Professor of Political Science at York University, earlier this morning in Toronto, noting the groups failure to meet the 2005 Gleneagles aid commitments. "In spite of the global recession, banks around the world continue to report enormous profits -- while the price of basic goods in the Third World skyrockets. Yet, the G8 refused to impose a tax on banks."

"Two years after promising $20 billion to deal with the world food crisis -- a pittance compared to what they have put into banks -- the G8 has delivered only one-tenth of what it pledged," McNally added. "Meanwhile, hundreds of millions are on the edge of starvation." McNally pointed to a recent OECD report outlining a scale back in aid from rich countries as evidence of a "demonstrable lack of effectiveness in (the G8) implementing its own supposed policies."

The poverty and injustice caused by the policies of the G8 and G20 both at home and abroad are being challenged. Activists and community-based organizations working through the Toronto Community Mobilization Network have called for a massive demonstration on June 25 at 2:30pm, beginning at Allen Gardens. Details of this and other planned events will be announced through the Network’s website, http://g20.torontomobilize.org. “The G8/G20 is a self-selected, unaccountable traveling circus”, says Claudia Calabro, a member of the Network. “It clearly has no legitimacy in its management of the global economy and financial system, nor does it represent the best interests of people or the environment.”

Only community controlled initiatives can end global inequality, not the top down approach of the G8/G20 that favours business over people. In direct contrast to the failed G8/G20 model, the TCMN is a grassroots network from a diverse range of community groups, social and environmental justice organizations. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network is working with allies across the country and internationally to facilitate education, creative actions, rallies and demonstrations leading up to and during the G8/G20 Summits.

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For more information about the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, please contact us at community.mobilize@resist.ca

Video: Visioning Otherwise: Imagining a World Without Capitalism

It feels a little tacky to be posting video from the same source twice in a relatively short period, but I feel I have to repost these two talks (via LeftStreamed) from a recent event in Toronto.

The first is by renowned Canadian left historian Ian McKay. He's a smart guy, he does some important work, and some of his core points about how to think about history deserve to be taken very seriously, though there are certainly areas where I think about things a bit differently than he does. In any case, he talks about making Canadian left history relevant to current movements -- if you have read his two most recent books, you're probably familiar with most of what he says here, and if not, it's a good introduction to what he's all about.

McKay's talk is worth listening to, but for me the real point in posting the videos of this event is the other talk, the one by third generation Palestinian refugee to Lebanon, doctoral candidate, spoken word artist, and activist Rafeef Ziadah. If you are only going to watch a little bit of these videos, watch the first section of part 2, where she is speaking. She is an amazing speaker -- I've been lucky enough to hear her in person a couple of times. She talks here about concrete questions of how we make movements happen and she does so with incredible insight and a groundedness that is far too rare. Listen to her!

Visioning Otherwise from LeftStreamed on Vimeo.

Fundraising for the Old Market Autonomous Zone in Winnipeg

I just received this notice that the tenants of the A-Zone space in Winnipeg have an opportunity to purchase and then collectively own and manage the building in which they are housed. I've never been to the A-Zone -- I've only ever been in Winnipeg once -- but I know that it is a rare concentration of cool political projects and experiments and it would be great to support them as they expand to this new level:

Please distribute to your networks:

The Old Market Autonomous Zone, or the A-Zone, has provided affordable space to activist collectives, worker cooperatives, and small businesses since 1995. Beyond access to space, the A-Zone has brought together a diverse and complementary range of people and organizations with commitments to ethical, equitable, and sustainable business practices, the cooperative movement, radical organizing, anarchism, and grassroots cultural projects and events. The A-Zone has fostered values such as non-hierarchical organizing, anti-racism, workplace democracy, solidarity with Indigenous peoples, feminism, refugee support, anti-police brutality work, and prisoner solidarity, becoming known locally and internationally as a vital and inspiring site of leftist dissent, collective organizing, and resistance to all forms of oppression and exploitation.

In the autumn of 2009, the tenants of 91 Albert Street were presented with the opportunity to collectively own and manage the A-Zone. Natural Cycle Courier, Natural Cycle Cycleworks, Winnipeg Copwatch, Canadian Dimension Magazine, Anarchist Black Cross, Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse, the Rudolph Rocker Cultural Centre, and the Junto Local 91 radical library, among other tenants, have come together to form a non-profit, democratically-run tenant cooperative. We come together as a diverse set of organizations that, in different ways, provide energy and spirit to Winnipeg’s radical community. We aim to build a co-op that fosters self-sufficiency and mutual aid – not only for ourselves, but for a larger local and global commons. We hope to strengthen new and broaden existing social movements by continuing to make space available for public discussion, political organizing, and everyday mud-rucking.

Please help enable us to continue to provide this radical space for generations to come with your financial support.

We are embarking on a 4-month international fundraising campaign to raise funds toward the down-payment. Donations of any amount are welcome. Cheques can be made out to "Winnipeg Parecon Worker Council", and sent to the address and post box listed below. Please put our name ("A-Zone”) in the notes section of the cheque. We are also calling on groups to organize benefits and fundraisers as an act of solidarity with us.

Tune In on May Day to Support the A-Zone
We are holding a 24-Hour A-Zone International Fundraising Telethon, May 1 – 2, presented in conjunction with Winnipeg’s 2010 MayWorks Festival. The telethon will begin on the afternoon of the 1st and continue until the next day with non-stop live and virtual entertainment by local comedians, performance artists, musicians and poets at Mondragon on the A-Zone’s main floor. The event will conclude with a special Sunday brunch fundraiser on the 2nd. Tune in on the web at a-zone.org.


Contact us:
Email: azonefundcom@gmail.com
Address:
A-Zone Fundraising Cmte
2D-91 Albert St.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 1G5 Canada

For updates on our campaign, see our website at http://a-zone.org/

Video: Poverty and the Provincial Budget.

Video: Poverty and the Provincial Budget.

These are three short talks from an event held in Toronto a few weeks ago. The speakers -- John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Michael Hurley of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and Dr. Roland Wong -- talk about both the most recent provincial budget and the overall record of Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government when it comes to poverty. Both, as the speakers relate, are quite awful. Despite making noises about poverty reduction, and despite endless consultation with the naively hopeful moderates in the agency sector and social justice spaces in the province, the Ontario Liberals have never given any evidence whatsoever that they would seriously consider deviating form the neoliberal consensus, which is a guaranteed recipe for a society with deep and broad poverty. Poverty and attacks on welfare recipients have only become more entrenched on the Liberal watch. As Clarke points out, the 1% increase in general welfare rates seems like a tiny but positive thing, but the abolishment of the special dietary supplement to social assistance that is being implemented at the same time actually means that the total provincial money going into the hands of Ontario's poorest residents will be cut by about 3% this year. This is only the third time in Ontario history that welfare payments have been cut, and this act puts McGuinty beside such odious figures as Mitch Hepburn from the 1930s and Mike Harris from the 1990s. To reach the real spending power of social assistance rates in the early '90s -- and even then activists were pointing out how inadequate the rates were -- would require an increase of about 55%.

Here are the videos:

John Clarke on the Ontario 2010 Budget from OPIRG-Toronto on Vimeo.

Michael Hurley on the Ontario 2010 Budget from OPIRG-Toronto on Vimeo.

Dr. Roland Wong on the Ontario 2010 Budget from OPIRG-Toronto on Vimeo.

(Found via LeftStreamed.)

Israeli Apartheid Week hits Sudbury

My latest article for Linchpin.

Israeli Apartheid Week hits Sudbury
by Scott Neigh

SUDBURY - March 4 to 11, 2010, marked the first ever Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) at Laurentian University in Sudbury, a small city in Ontario's near north.

According to Marwa Dimassi of the Palestine Solidarity Working Group (PSWG), which organized the event locally, they wanted, "To educate people about what Israeli Apartheid Week is and to get a mobilization for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns."

IAW was first organized in 2005 in Toronto and has grown rapidly. This year more than 50 cities around the world are hosting events. The campaign's goal is to raise awareness of the apartheid character of the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinian people and to build support for the 2005 call by more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a BDS campaign against Israel, reminiscent of the international solidarity work conducted against apartheid in South Africa in earlier decades.

Though IAW was a new event and Laurentian tends to have relatively low levels of student activism, PSWG pulled off an ambitious slate of activities. This included seven films, talks by professors in several classes, public lectures by both local speakers and guests from out of town, and a spoken word performance. Reuben Roth, a professor in sociology and labour studies and another member of PSWG, said, "I've been teaching on this campus for about five years and I've never seen anything like this."

Alan Sears, who teaches sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto and is one of the founders of the group Faculty for Palestine, was one of the guest speakers. He said, "The exciting thing from my perspective is the closeness of students, faculty members, and unions in the effort".

He compared this to Toronto, one of the global hubs of the campaign where there is a much higher level of activity but where the vast majority of the energy to make it happen comes just from students.

Organizing on this issue in Sudbury was also distinct because of the relatively low level of existing awareness. Dimassi pointed out that in cities in southern Ontario there is "More multiculturalism." In contrast, she said, "Here, people are almost isolated from what's going on in those bigger cities."

Roth concurred, saying, "When I think of my students, who are typically working-class northern Ontario kids...[with IAW] they get to engage with voices they would not have an opportunity to engage with otherwise."

Another difference noted by Sears is that, "In Toronto there is an organized counter-current that at times is disruptive," but in Sudbury organizing by supporters of Israeli state policy was much less present.

It was not completely absent, however. Posters put up on campus advertising IAW events were consistently defaced and pulled down. The PSWG also experienced censorship from the university administration. An email announcing IAW events was sent out on a university events list but within several hours the administration had erased it from people's inboxes and sent out an apology for the possibly "incendiary language" of the original email. This is in the context of efforts in the broader society by supporters of Israeli government policy, including a motion passed by the Ontario Legislature, to condemn and attempt to stigmatize the language of 'Apartheid'.

Chris Mercer, the chief of staff and director of institutional planning at Laurentian, insisted, "We're not in the business of censoring any type of discussion." He continued, "As a university, we are not on any side of the fence... If they want to talk about something, they are welcome to do it."

Part way through IAW, the Laurentian administration agreed to resend the email but only after they had removed part of the text. To the surprise of the PSWG, the administration had no problem with the use of the word "apartheid" but demanded that material which explained why that word is an accurate description be removed.

During her IAW talk in Sudbury, Toronto-based graduate student and spoken word artist Rafeef Ziadah listed the many ways in which the behaviour of the Israeli government met the definition of apartheid in the United Nations convention which criminalizes it.

As well, in their statement on the week of events, the Sudbury organizers wrote, "Palestinian life in the occupied territories and Israel includes separate roads, schools, neighbourhoods, identity cards and even separate Palestinian and Israeli license plates. The apartheid character of Israeli state policies is undeniable and has long been recognized by South African [anti-apartheid activist] Archbishop Desmond Tutu and by Nelson Mandela, among many others. Mandela once said: 'Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.'"

A local voice that has been critical of IAW is Dr. Jacque Abourbih, a physician and rabbi. Dr. Abourbih has written that though the organizers are careful about distinguishing their criticism of Israeli government policies from hostility towards Jews, "The lines become blurred and the distinction between the two becomes erased." He calls IAW a "fanatical, disproportionate focus on Israel" and "the unconscious instruments of an ancient hatred."

Roth, who is also Jewish, points to his involvement in this issue as a product of a long history of support for struggles against "colonial imperialism," including those by the peoples of Vietnam, Quebec, Ireland, and South Africa. He says, "When pro-Zionists suggest that we look elsewhere...it smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy, as if I had come to this issue for some other reason than concern for social justice."

He argues that the position that criticism of Israel itself is anti-semitic "...is a perverse argument to make, and confusing to people as to what the nature of anti-semitism is." Based on his own involvement in struggles against anti-semitism, he worries that this position by supporters of Israel will distort public consciousness, saying, "Should anti-semitism in its real form rear its ugly head, I wonder how seriously it would be taken after all of these false calls."

The Sudbury and District Labour Council, in an initiative brought forward by members of the Laurentian University Faculty Association, also sponsored an educational event for union members which was not part of IAW.

One of the speakers was Mark Evard, the national director of the central region of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which has passed a motion at the national level calling for Israel to comply with international law and for support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign until that occurs.

Evard explains, "If we are going to fight for freedom and democracy on the work floor, we need to be concerned with freedom and democracy everywhere. If we aren't, we weaken the struggle everywhere."

Quote: Against Prisons

In the government you call civilized, the happiness of the people is constantly sacrificed to the splendour of empires. Hence your codes of criminal and civil laws have their origin; hence your dungeons and prisons. I will not enlarge on an idea so singular in civilized life. Among us we have no prisons.

-- Mohawk leader Thayendanega, aka Joseph Brant, b. 1743 - d. 1807