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

[Frieda Werden]

Apropos of the new Harper Majority, WINGS is releasing Sylvia Richardson's
interview with Sunera Thobani about her book Exalted Subjects: Studies in
the Making of Race and Nation in Canada.  Find it at this link:
http://previous.ncra.ca/exchange/dspProgramDetail.cfm?programID=112059

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Harsha W. <harsha at resist.ca> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wamvan mailing list
> Wamvan at lists.resist.ca
> https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wamvan
>



-- 
Frieda Werden, Series Producer
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/wamvan/attachments/20110516/89f207ae/attachment.html>