[antiwar-van] Forum on the frame up of two Langara college antiwar student activists

[Kira Koshelanyk]

Public forum:

Democratic Rights!

Women's Rights!

Students' Rights!

Why Students Must Defend the Right

of Students to organize at Langara College

Wednesday November 10th

11:30am

Langara College

Lift the ban of Kira Daley and Nicole Burton from LSU property!

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On October 25th the Langara Students' Union Executive (LSU) passed a motion to ban Kira Daley and Nicole Burton from the property of the Students' Union. In the same stroke, the LSU banned Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) from organizing in the student union building and folded the LSU’s Peace and Social Issues Committee (PSI).

Why were Kira and Nicole banned from the property? Why was the most active committee of the LSU dissolved? The LSU answered these questions in a press release issued on October 27th:

"There was an apparent take-over of the PSI committee where work that had been done was scrapped ad a MAWO agenda was instead pursued."

However, the last minutes of the PSI committee had been from April 5th 2004, three months before Nicole Burton was elected as the coordinator of the committee. The PSI was not doing any work. There were no active campaigns to be "scrapped."

The MAWO "agenda" that is alluded to includes four straight days of organizing the "Student Week Against War and Occupation" in the beginning of September and another film showing, forum and discussion just two weeks later. If the PSI committee and MAWO shared an agenda, it was the agenda expressed by the Student Week Against War and Occupation - the slogan for which was "Educate! Organize! Mobilize against War and Occupation!"

The banning of Nicole and Kira, the "Langara 2," was a lynching of two of the most active organizers at the campus by the Langara Students' Union Executive. To carry out this lynching, the LSU called in Kinney Butterfield, the President of the Langara Israel Advocacy Club, to accuse Nicole Burton, a Jewish woman, of being "anti-Semitic" for speaking out against Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Beside her stood members of StopWar.ca, Bradley Hughes (also member of International Socialist and Langara instructor) and Rick Gordon (Langara College instructor) and former MAWO member Nic Brown, all of who came to the Kangaroo court to attempt character assassinate Kira and Nicole through attacks on MAWO (an organization of which they are members.) 

After the presentations, the LSU Executive meeting went 'in camera' for an hour and a half and emerged to pass a motion wherein Kira and Nicole were banned from the property, MAWO was banned from organizing in the Students' Union Building and the PSI committee was dissolved.

There was no explanation offered for the decision. Kira and Nicole were told to read about it in the LSU press statement. 

The banning was the final, grandest move against Kira and Nicole's organizing at Langara by the LSU Executive. Members of the LSU executive first attacked Kira and Nicole, as women leaders and political organizers on campus, through age-old methods of sexist intimidation and harassment campaigns. This harassment reached its peak with the attacks of LSU staff person Richard Bell on Kira and Nicole in the week leading up to the banning. Kira and Nicole responded to his intimidating, domineering and chauvinist behaviour by filing a written complaint with the LSU. They expected to have this complaint heard and an investigation into it launched at the executive meeting on October 25th; instead, the complaint was "tabled" and they were banned.

In their campaign to silence these two young women from "radicalizing" and "polarizing" the campus and creating "antagonism" between students around issues of war and occupation, the LSU have been willing to stoop to any level; from supporting sexist harassment against them to banning them from the property. Even since the banning has taken place, the LSU has published and distributed documents to students and even sending them to other Students' Unions. These slanderous documents focus their attacks on MAWO, calling the coalition that has organized educational events on almost every campus in the Lower Mainland an "extremist organization" and outlining Kira and Nicole's political work at Langara in a document titled, "Timeline of MAWO Deceit." This four-page timeline of events on Langara campus exposes one thing clearly; the consistent anti-war / anti-occupation political work of Kira, Nicole, the PSI committee and MAWO somehow threatens the LSU.

The banning of Kira and Nicole by the LSU is a clear attack on the democratic rights of students to organize themselves. It is an attack on the rights of women to lead this struggle, and it is an attack on the rights of students as women, young people and oppressed people to defend themselves against war, occupation, sexism, racism, chauvinism, ageism, and all oppression they face. 

Faced with this banning and the defamation campaign still underway against Kira, Nicole and MAWO by the LSU and all those who stand with them, it is important, in the interests of the right of students and all oppressed people, to defend the democratic right to organize at Langara college. 

We encourage all students, women, and people who believe in social justice and democratic rights to write to the Langara Students' Union Executive Board and protest the banning of Nicole Burton and Kira Daley, and to demand that the charges of harassment by Richard Bell be investigated.

LIFT THE BAN ON THE LANGARA TWO!

Attend our forum at Langara College:

Wednesday November 10th

11:30am

Langara College

The Langara 2 Defense Committee

thelangara2 at yahoo.ca

778-881-6156





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