[van-announce] April 15: It's Right to Rebel

[Martha Roberts]

It's Right to Rebel:
resisting criminalization of people's struggles at home and abroad

SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2PM
@ 601 KEEFER ST
(STRATHCONA COMMUNITY CENTRE)
Onsite childcare and light refreshments provided

Speakers:

Opening by former political prisoner Angie Ipong, who spent 6 years in
prison for her work in solidarity with peasants and Indigenous people
in the Philippines.

Dr. Merry Mia Clamor is Director of Health Education and Training for
the Council for Health and Development, which supports Community Based
Health Programs throughout the Philippines, and is one of the Morong
43, progressive health workers imprisoned for 10 months in 2010 on
trumped up charges.

Gord Hill is an Indigenous activist, organizer and artist based in
occupied Coast Salish Territory, and author of the 500 Years of
Resistance comic book.

Charlotte Kates is an activist with SAMIDOUN - Palestinian Prisoner
Solidarity Network, the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, and a
member of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee.

Steve Da Silva is a contributor to BASICS community newspaper
(Toronto), and Vice-Chairperson of the International League of
People's Struggles - Canada.

More speakers TBA

Our Challenge:

Repression of people’s struggles has always been part of Canadian
State policy, though the ideological cover has changed over time.  In
the 19th Century overt racism and white supremacy were mobilized to
justify genocidal state violence and terrorism against Indigenous
people, for example against the 1885 Northwest Rebellion and the state
sanctioned lynching of it’s leaders.  In the 20th Century while the
racist colonial policies persisted, anti-communism became the cover
for Canadian interventions – for example against the nascent Soviet
Union and in Korea – and suppression of struggles of workers and
oppressed people at home.  Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 the
"war on terror", labeling of people's struggles as 'terrorism', has
become a main propaganda tool of the Canadian State - used to justify
occupation of Afghanistan; support for Israeli occupation and
aggression; and surveillance, harassment and criminalization of
Indigenous people's movements, immigrant communities and activists
inside Canadian borders.

Our challenge is to figure out how we can expose and oppose the
particular ideological framework currently mobilized by the
imperialist states – the ‘war on terror’ – while building our own
positive position that not only do people have a right to rebel
against imperialism but that in the context of the systemic structural
violence of the system it is right to rebel!

Organized by: Alliance for People`s Health, Canada Philippines
Solidarity for Human Rights, SAMIDOUN - Palestinian Prisoner
Solidarity Network, and the International League of People`s Struggles
- Canada.


Fore more information, email: allianceforpeopleshealth at gmail.com

--
Martha Roberts, RM
Strathcona Midwifery Collective
www.strathconamidwiferycollective.com
http://thistinyglobe.wordpress.com/