[van-announce] Please Circulate Widely: Vancouver Statement of Support for Toronto G8/G20 Arrestees

[VancouverSolidarity WithToronto]

 *******Please Circulate Widely To Lists and Networks!*******

*
*

*Vancouver Statement of Support for Toronto G8/G20 Arrestees*

(Please see endorsements and how you can add your name or organization at
the end of this message)



*Background

*

We, a broad-based network of Vancouver civil society organizations and
individuals, call for the immediate release of all those currently being
held as part of the G8/G20 Summit police operations, and for all charges
against community organizers to be dropped.

Long-time organizers, many of whom were pre-emptively arrested before the
protests even began, are being particularly targeted; all must be freed
immediately.

*The government wants to have the power to crack down on dissent because the
G8/G20 policies are going to create it.*

While G8/G20 leaders met behind a steel cage and an unprecedented 1-billion
dollar police state operation, on Saturday June 26th and Sunday June 27th,
we witnessed police violence in the city of Toronto on a scale never before
experienced. Pre-emptive arrests and mass roundups led to a total of nearly
1000 people arrested, the largest number in any protest in Canadian history.
This weekend revealed to us all the daily violence of police and prisons as
they are experienced every day for Indigenous communities, people of colour,
low income neighbourhoods, street-involved youth, queer and trans people.

According to news reports, video, and firsthand accounts, protest
participants, journalists, and random passersby experienced indiscriminate
arrests, police beatings that led to broken bones and hospitalizations,
illegal searches and seizures, threats of gang rape, physically invasive
body cavity “searches” conducted on young women by male officers, lack of
food, water, adequate heating or medical care for serious injuries, denial
of access to legal council, and extended random detentions. Several
community organizers were pre-emptively arrested while asleep in their beds
and were nowhere near the protests.

Pre-emptive arrests and mass roundups are indicative of a heightened
Orwellian police state seeking to justify a bloated security budget. In
addition to freeing those currently detained and dropping all charges, an
impartial public inquiry into the conduct of the police is essential.

Tens of thousands of labour, anti war, feminist, migrant justice, Indigenous
rights, anarchist, environmental justice, anti-oppression, anti capitalist,
socialist, student, and community-based activists took to the streets to
stand up to the criminal policies of the G8/G20. The reasons they did so –
Indigenous self determination; environmental justice; a world free of
militarization; income equity and community control over resources; migrant
justice; gender, queer, disability, and reproductive rights – are just as
relevant today and tomorrow as they were this past weekend.

*The Harper government knows that the new G8/G20 austerity measures are
bound to cause unrest, and seeks to quell public dissent in advance by
increasing draconian state powers. *

This was the largest security operation in Canadian history, and the largest
bill for summit security yet. To put the security costs in context: The
Pittsburgh G20 Summit security budget was *30 million dollars* in 2009. In
Toronto*, 1 billion* was spent to keep the people of Canada under tight
police control as world leaders decided to let banks off scot-free and steal
from the public<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/sticking-the-public-with-the-bill-for-the-bankers-crisis/article1620729/>instead.

As the lessons of history show us, dissent is expected given the goals and
outcomes of G8/G20 meetings: further erosion of basic rights, and increased
divide between rich and poor via austerity measures. Police PR and media
attempt to distract us from the real violence: cutting deficits in half
while letting banks off the hook. Naomi Klein writes, “How else can we
interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax
on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their
deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be
very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public
educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose
hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated.
And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20
countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.”

The G8/G20 countries and their criminal corporations manufacture most of the
weapons on the planet, profit from war, subsidize oil corporations such as
BP, and are responsible for displacing millions from their homes and lands
into poverty each year.

The government is being heavily criticized from all
sides<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkQK9uP8ok0>both for the violent
policies of the G8/G20 and for this unprecedented
security budget that turned Toronto into a rights-free zone. The government
wants to deflect blame onto those who stood up to protect communities from
the daily violence of G8/G20 policies. We stand in support of all of the
brave people who protested the G8/G20 in Toronto, including the organizers
being targeted via pre-emptive and targeted arrests, who are our allies and
friends.

As we saw in the streets of Toronto, in preventative arrests of respected
long-time organizers, and in mass roundups and police violence, the state
wants to expand its power against the people. The government is targeting
community organizers, including several people of colour. These targeted
arrests and politically motivated, malicious charges are intended to make us
afraid to speak up, and to silence the dissent the state knows will follow
from the undemocratic decisions and austerity measures passed at the G20
meetings that will affect us all.



VANCOUVER STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR TORONTO G8/G20 ARRESTEES

·         We call for the immediate release of all those being held, most
notably of the much-loved and nationally respected community organizers who
are being targeted by politically motivated, pre-emptive, and malicious
arrests.

 ·         We call for all these politically motivated charges against
long-time organizers to be dropped immediately.

 ·         Police state tactics such as pre-emptive arrests, targeted
arrests, and mass roundups, seek to quash dissent against G8/G20 policies
that affect us all; Vancouver stands in support with all those being held in
Toronto.

*Statements of Support:*

*Ian Angus, Professor of Humanities, former Director of Canadian Studies at
Simon Fraser University, author of books on Canadian political culture A
Border Within (1997) and Identity and Justice (2009):*

“Canada is unravelling. The social and economic security net that was
constructed by the struggles of working people and community organizations
is being dismantled by the neo-liberal global economy that the G8/G20
represents. Homelessness, unemployment and marginalization are on the
increase. Canadian society wants to be able to debate these matters, to have
full information available to them, and to be able to present their views to
the wider public. Without such a national and international debate, citizens
are held captive by the private interests of wealthy corporations. The role
of the police in this situation is significant. Recent events in Toronto
suggest that the police are acting solely to protect the agenda of the
wealthy few and the Harper government that is their tool. Canadians must
stand together with their international allies to oppose the use of police
repression to silence the exploration of alternative socio-economic forms
and policies.”



*Rita Wong*, *Writer and Associate Professor, Emily Carr University:*

 “These arbitrary mass arrests are unconstitutional. Furthermore, mass
roundups and pre-emptive arrests serve a very unethical political purpose:
to deflect attention from the systematic and widespread violence caused by
the G20 policy decisions, which aim to slash public, social, educational,
and health infrastructure around the world instead of holding the private
financial sector responsible for its own errors and corruption. Those being
held should be immediately released, and the focus of our attention should
be to refuse the damage that the G20 attempts to inflict on democratic
public spaces and networks.”



*Dr. Stephen Collis, Professor, Simon Fraser University:*
“The pattern post economic crisis is becoming clear—not a move away from a
failing neoliberalism, but an unprecedented extension of its policies:
privatization and cuts; meet any dissent with billy clubs, pre-emptive
arrests and mass roundups. What we must do is just as clear: resist with all
our might; stand together in solidarity. Free all Toronto G20 arrestees
now!”

 *Charles Demers, Author of Vancouver Special and Comedian:*
“The same government that pleads powerlessness and poverty when it comes to
saving our environment, looking after retirees or ensuring that our health
and education needs are met seems to discover new virility and incredibly
deep pockets when it comes to cracking heads in defense of the most powerful
people in the world.  It's a shame.”



*Dr. Dave Diewert, Streams of Justice (a faith-based social justice group in
Vancouver), former Graduate Professor of Theology:*
"The death of democracy is upon us. The brutal criminalization of dissent
and the vicious police assault on protestors at the G8/20 reveals how
state-sanctioned violence is employed to protect the ruling elite from
hearing the legitimate concerns of people whose lives are deeply impacted by
decisions made behind the steel fence. When a massive security apparatus
aggressively shields the leaders from the people, and punishes them for
attempting to make their voices heard, we have an untenable political
system.”



*Endorsed by:* *Brad Cran*, poet laureate of Vancouver; *Council of
Canadians* (Delta/Richmond chapter); *Vancouver Status of Women;* *Ian Angus
*, Professor of Humanities, former Director of Canadian Studies at Simon
Fraser University, author of books on Canadian political culture *A Border
Within* (1997) and *Identity and Justice* (2009); *Jerry Zaslove*, Professor
and founding faculty member of Simon Fraser University, *Meredith
Quartermain*, award-winning BC poet;  *Gillian Jerome*, Professor at
University of British Columbia and award-winning author; *Samir Gandesha**,
*Professor and Graduate Chair of Humanities at SFU*; **Anthony Fenton*,
Independent Journalist and member, Canadian Freelance Union;  *Larissa Lai*,
Professor at the University of British Columbia and award-winning
author, *Stephen
Collis*, SFU Professor and award-winning poet, *Dave Diewert*, *Streams of
Justice *organizer* *and* *former Graduate Professor of Theology; , *Jeff
Derksen*, SFU Professor, critic, and award-winning poet,  *Simon Fraser
University Teaching Support Staff Union* (*TSSU*) Social Justice Committee;
*Rita Wong*, Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and
award-winning poet, *Mark Leier*, Professor of History at SFU, *Charles
Demers*, Author and Comedian, *Sid Shniad* of Independent Jewish Voices BC,
*Clint Burnham*, Professor at Simon Fraser University, *Peter Quartermain*,
Emeritus Professor of English, University of British Columbia



*None of us is free until all of us are free!*

For more info, email: vansolidarity at gmail.com

How you can help:  *Support the Toronto 1000*: Till every last one is free
and all charges are dropped.

Please send individual and group endorsements and short statements of
support to: *vansolidarity at gmail.com**
Please include titles or institutional affiliations*, *and indicate group or
individual endorsement where appropriate*

You can* send bail/legal support funds via paypal by clicking on the
'support us!' link at the bottom right of this page: **
http://g20.torontomobilize.org/* <http://g20.torontomobilize.org/>