[Wamvan] NOII Statement: The Struggle for Justice under Harper’s Conservatives

[Harsha W.]

FYI...

http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=3828

No One Is Illegal: The Struggle for Justice under Harper’s Conservatives


“We are the wrong people of / the wrong skin on the wrong continent and
what / in the hell is everybody being reasonable about… but let this be
unmistakable this poem is not consent / I do not consent” – Poet June
Jordan

No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories is an anti-colonial
migrant justice collective. We are writing this statement only two weeks
into the recent federal election, where Stephen Harper’s Conservatives
attained a majority in Parliament. We understand that the whole electoral
system is flawed – from the façade of choice in liberal democracies to the
illegitimacy of the Canadian state that occupies Indigenous lands. We do
not simply advocate for “better” politicians or laws. Nonetheless, the
specific context of the Conservative government, who have been in power
since 2006, requires us to analyze our strategies and our struggles
accordingly.

Over the next several years, we can expect to see a more aggressive
anti-immigrant campaign by the Conservatives. Harper and Kenney have
already announced that they plan on reintroducing Bill C49 “without any
major changes”. Under the banner of combating ‘human smuggling’ – one of
the Conservative’s main election platforms – this bill subjects asylum
seekers, including children, suspected of using a smuggler to mandatory
detention for at least the first year after their arrival. The proposed
bill also denies these asylum seekers the right to appeal a negative
refugee decision and they will be prohibited from obtaining permanent
residency and from sponsoring family members for a five-year probationary
period. Yet criminalizing smuggling only increases the stakes in
irregular, often dangerous, migration.

Bill C49 is based on Australia’s internationally condemned policy of
mandatory detention and the Tories are increasingly looking towards
Australia, with high-level meetings between Kenney and Australian
officials taking place in November 2010. In the past few months alone,
there have been at least three major detainee hunger strikes, a number of
riots, roof-top protests, breakout attempts, incidents of detainees sewing
their lips shut, as well as two suicides at the Villawood and Curtin
detention centres in Australia. This is the kind of inhumane treatment and
repression that the Conservatives are willing to model.

The Conservatives will further perfect a system of containment and
commodification of migrants through racist fear-mongering parroted by the
corporate media, repressive laws and policies of exclusion, and enhanced
border militarization through surveillance collaboration with the US. The
number of refugees accepted will continue to decrease, deportations will
continue to skyrocket, more nonstatus people and asylum seekers – such as
queer undocumented artist Alvaro Orozco in Toronto – will face detention
and incarceration, fewer and fewer family sponsorships will be accepted as
immigrants are ripped apart from their parents and grandparents. Meanwhile
migrants will be pushed into precarious and exploitative temporary worker
programs to meet the needs of big business.

Across this country, built on occupied Indigenous land, we can
unfortunately predict the social, political, and economic terrain over the
next few years:

- Particular attacks on organizations promoting women’s reproductive
justice and queer/sexual liberation.

- Job losses especially for public sector workers and public service cuts
to social assistance, housing, healthcare, childcare, and education
programs. Meanwhile banks get bailed out and corporations get hefty tax
cuts in an era of austerity.

- Denial of climate change and unbridled resource extraction and corporate
development on Indigenous lands including tar sands and oil pipeline
expansion, mining, and logging.

- Support for policies of privatization of water, gas, recreational
services, housing, transit, postal services, and other basic necessities.

- Pursuing multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements including with
Colombia and Israel and the European Union.

- Millions more going into policing and prison expansion within the
country and unending global imperialist occupations and military missions
in Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine and elsewhere.

Alan Sears and James Cairns of the Toronto New Socialists write: “The
Tories want to redirect feelings of insecurity, suggesting that it is the
criminal, the terrorist or the refugee who is the real threat to our
well-being rather than the banker, the employer or the Tory cabinet
minister.”

Over the next few months and years, we strongly urge our friends and
allies across diverse social and environmental movements to come together
to effectively organize at the grassroots in our respective communities
for Indigenous self determination, environmental justice, a world free of
militarization, workers rights and income equity, migrant justice, and
gender, queer, disability, and reproductive rights. “Don’t mourn,
organize!” and dismantle these apartheid systems and structures of
sweatshops and prisons, borders and reserves. To all those in the struggle
ahead – we look forward to working together to build more sustainable,
more creative, more (pro)active, and more disruptive movements for a
humanity where everyone has the right to sustenance and the ability to
provide it, where we are free of oppression, misery, and exploitation, and
where we are able to live meaningfully in relationship to one another and
in reverence for Mother Earth that sustains us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

for every arbitrary detention, for every hour spent working in Canadian
sweatshops, for all the stolen lives – we rise up. against the ongoing
occupation of this land. against the racist police state. against the
exploitation of displaced migrant workers. against gentrification. against
imperialist domination. against dehumanization and oppression. we stand in
solidarity with all struggling for a liberated world. we stand for our
dignity as the poor, the displaced, the colonized. and for the Earth.
raise the ground up – ignite resistance.

www.nooneisillegal.org