Organizational report for previous year and what must be done in the next year

To be presented on Jan. 3rd to local committee

Comrades and Friends

This new year is a time of contemplation and reflection, what have we done in the past year, what obstacles have we encountered and how must we move ahead.
This year was a year a struggle and victory, from our legal battles, won on a political basis with no conciliation, to our fights against the cut to social services, to our occupations, sit in and disruptions
one may say that the spirit of this year was a spirit of resistance and rejection of class conciliation. Our Peoples programs such as the wed. food programs have been launched, our work in factories like Schneider’s to distribute and politicize the people has been successful and our anti colonialist work has reached new heights.
Despite state attack, criminalization and attempts to marginalize our struggle we have held our flag of revolution and have not conciliated, winning victory that people have said are impossible. We participated in the creation of international solidarity networks stretching from sea to sea, have participated in setting up peoples media to get our voices heard and for the first time in post GFA history of KKKanada brought an Irish Republican speaker to tour across the country and break the silence on what is happening in the occupied six counties.
This has also been a hard year as many of us lost loved ones and friends due to the drug scourge that is effecting our city and the criminality that is associated with that as well as to reasons beyond our control.In terms of the drug issue we must re start our peoples programs that create alternatives. Our enemies are not the addicts nor the people in destitution who score a pill for a friend but to those who flood our communities with poison and use the funding for nefarious reasons. The close ties between the ruling circles of drug dealers in our cities and various right wing fascist groups is well documented and the fact that they forces feel that they can attack members of our group, and in the case of other fascist forces actually show up to our court dates shows cockiness on their part. Our way of handling it politically by reclaiming the spaces where they sell and making them community spaces has been somewhat successful and we must intensify our efforts.
The fact that they are openly organizing and feel comfortable to carry out mass acts of vandalism, like what happened in Cambridge, or walk proudly down our streets with hateful insignia further demonstrates the need for us to confront them wherever they are on a political basis.Eg. we take our stand and then defend, the same way we work with our projects by they sit ins squats tent citys etc. This stems from our beliefs that our rights are inalienable and that when we express them and are attacked we have an inalienable right to defend them.Still its not enough to stay fuck the NAZIS Loyalists etc. but rather put forward our program through organization and by creating an alternative cut off their recruiting. Furthermore its not enough to say that this scum is responsible for what is around us in terms of the drug problem but we ourselves, myself included, must look at our failings at creating an alternative and creating well rounded ways of dealing with this problem. There blood is as much on our hands as political organizers as the dealers because we say we are defending our community yet it is clear that in many ways we have not done all we can do to implement our program, That is why the relaunching of dealing with drugs as a social issue is so important, as well as confronting and intensifying our struggle against fascist scum

Furthermore we must intensify our work in creating our own politics so as not to be used by social democrats and other reformist that want to tinker with the system and make it more humane.Any system built on genocide cannot be humane and attempts to tinker with it stems from settler privilege. This does not mean we shouldnt hold the state accountable and demand decent conditions fot humans etc. but it means that we must never lose site of the bigger picture, the over throw of colonialism here and abroad.Furthermore we need to intensify our support for our own prisoners here many who are locked up for defending themselves from a criminal state. ABC cant do everything.I dont mean to sound overbearing and scare people about the tasks that lie ahead, we cant all be doing everything, the key is organization and this year that should be our watchword. The main problem this year for us in the downtown core is the attempts of the gentrifiers to destroy the core to build condos, we have been fighting this for years but despite our efforts at slowing them down they have broken dirt. How are we to move forward and stop them?This is not impossible as our victorys with the Mayfair hotel and other such things has shown but we need a clear plan to move forward. If this goes through our base of support will be scattered and left to fend for themselves. We have several proposals to discuss ranging from this to other issues. Let us move forward collectively and make this the year of organization and resistance.

Victory belongs to the people!!!

Fighting Gentrification

By Mark A. Corbiere
This article by my friend was written for a local magazine that alas is not around i have taken the liberty to reprint this,

Gentrification: the process of renewal and rebuilding, accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents. Regardless of what a city calls it “revitalize”, “redevelop”, or “rejuvenation”, the end result is an organized attack on the vital services and housing units that poor communities depend on. It seems funny to me that it is always a concentration of low-income people that comes under attack and never the wealthy neighbourhoods. This article explores the gentrification of downtown Kitchener (DTkitchener) focusing on Cedar Hill and the east end of Toronto focusing on Regent Park, from my personal experiences, and observations.

Over the past decade I have noticed businesses come and go from DTkitchener. I remember there being a movie theatre, SEARS, Zappers, and numerous bars. Then I started noticing coffee shops popping up. Then the Faculty of Social Work was on the scene. Then the influx of major condo developments into the downtown core began. Of course with the major demographic switch of people downtown from homeless to students and new condo owners. Police needed to be increased to “clean-up” the core and provide a safer downtown for the changing residents. The stigma from the greater population of Kitchener-Waterloo has you believing, “after sundown you don’t wanna be there”. So when there was a higher police presence the new comers to downtown felt safer, but they didn’t see the constant harassment and brutality suffered by the “other” residents of downtown at the hands of the Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS). Two really good examples have recently caught local media attention, here in Waterloo region. The arrest of Jeffery Garland, a local lawyer, was arrested when he was walking thru downtown after work to buy laundry soap. Mr. Garland was followed by two armed officers for many blocks who made comments that “they had all night and were going to follow him all the way home”. Upon exiting the Shopper’s Drug Mart downtown he was shoved against a wall, handcuffed and placed under arrest, after the officers determined they had no legal grounds for arrest he was released from custody. He later sued the police and reached an out of court settlement of $5,000. Then, there was the brutal arrest of youth Matthew Probert. Again, walking to a store, Mr. Probert was followed by an armed officer who violently escalated their interaction. Mr. Probert suffered lacerations to his face, when dragged on the sidewalk; he was punched, kneed, and struck repeatedly by three officers. As if that wasn’t enough he was strip-searched at the police station and forced to walk half-naked thru the station. The Small Claims court awarded $9,000 in damages and deemed that the arrest was illegal. Both people were arrested because they refused to show ID to police officers that were unlawfully requesting it.

I also remember, almost a decade ago, walking around the Queen East area of Toronto, spending some time in Regent Park and the surrounding community. The media told me horror stories about how unsafe this area was. I agree there was a high concentration of cops in this area! Granted there was a general belief that there was a “high-level” of violence/crime in this neighbourhood, but what do you expect when 68% of this neighbourhood lived below the national poverty line and 41% of the population is under the age of 18. This negative image intensified considerably in the last few decades. By the 1990s, Canada’s largest housing project became virtually synonymous with socio-economic marginalization and behavioural depravity. In June 2002, a Toronto Star reporter characteristically referred to the housing development as a “poster child for poverty”. According to one observer in Toronto Life magazine, it had become “thoroughly ghettoized” and had “accumulated a sense of almost mythical ruin”. Indeed, the broader social identity of Regent Park has become the accumulation and escalation of the stigma of its residents.

Now one might wonder what could the possible parallels of a Toronto neighbourhood to one in DTkitchener but the social history and the pattern of gentrification are eerily similar. The model and implementation of Kitchener’s gentrification was to attract new businesses (i.e. coffee shops), Universities, a higher police presence, attacks on low-income affordable housing, an influx of condo developments, and the new Shoppers Drug Mart. This is almost the exact way I observed Queen east of Toronto being gentrified.

During the 1970’s Kitchener like many other cities jumped on board of the fad of brining mini-malls into the downtown core. The effects of this decision were drastic for DTkitchener, from which it is still recovering. Two malls were built in the core. One of them being Market Square, located at King/Frederick, where Kitchener’s original City Hall was located. The city opted to demolish the aging city hall and move it to where it is presently located at King/Gaukel, while attempting to preserve some of its heritage by saving the clock tower and relocating it to Victoria Park. The other mall was the King Centre, located at King/College, now converted into an office building for Manulife.

The area of “Cedar Hill” was a predominately working class neighbourhood, located near the downtown core and the factories that once populated it. The reason for the high concentration of low-cost housing is because of yet another failed city plan in the 1960’s. “Housing shortages were grave in most cities during the war and for several years afterwards. Veterans’ groups, unions, and other social groups pressured the state to provide low-income dwellings for their constituents. In addition to concern about increased class conflict, there was a wider opinion in policy circles in Canada, as in other Western countries, that the postwar economy would fall back into depression as it had in the 1930s. While the vast majority of Canadian government assistance in the housing field after the war was directed to homeowners, financial institutions, and developers, there was a constrained political space in the late 1940s through the 1960s in which limited state investment in low-income housing was considered a viable option. ” This very policy is still very much alive today. Instead of building low-income housing units and solving the issue, governments are subsidizing the private sector to build affordable housing.

In 2005 the City of Kitchener passed a bylaw that specifically targeted Cedar Hill, Kitchener’s “original” neighbourhood. This bylaw restricted any new dwellings built in the area to single family home; with the exception of Duplexes/Triplexes but only if the landlord lives in a unit, and banned any new group homes and other social services from setting up there. The City justified this bylaw citing a “crack epidemic” in the 90’s, almost ten years after complaints from Cedar Hill homeowners. The bylaw was enacted as a means of “social cleansing”. Cedar Hill is predominately low-income, working-class families; as such the area has a high concentration of low-cost housing. Anybody who is familiar with DTkitchener is aware that a lot of the social service agencies are centrally located. (i.e… ROOF, soup kitchen, Lutherwood, House of Friendship, The Working Centre, etc.) The bylaw specifically targeted already marginalized communities (fixed and low-income) and sought to “force” them into other areas of KW. The City had concluded that there was more social housing, poor people and poorly maintained properties than any other neighbourhood in Kitchener. This bylaw has found to have been in violation of Ontario Human Rights Code by the Ontario Municipal Board in 2010.

In the 1940’s a new project unfolded from the City of Toronto, born was TO’s first “social engineering” project known as Regent Park. Regent Park’s residential dwellings are entirely social housing, and cover all of the 69 acres which comprise the community. The Toronto neighbourhood then known as “Cabbagetown” was razed in the process of creating Regent Park. The nickname “Cabbagetown” came about because of the cabbage that was grown in front yards as a way to offset food costs, but it is now applied to the historical, upscale area north of the housing project. Regent Park before the 1940’s was a shanty town and was the centre of “Cabbagetown”.

“Since both sections of Regent Park were the result of slum clearance and redevelopment schemes, those on the top of the priority list for rehousing in the 1940s and 1950s were families of low and moderate income who were living in the “slum” areas at the time of clearance. The Housing Authority of Toronto estimated in 1948 that 80 per cent of residents in the area cleared for the northern section would apply for rehousing in the new project. By the time the project was fully constructed, however, more than half of the apartments and houses were occupied by families who had not lived in the area before. Only 23 per cent of the original 638 families in the southern section of the redevelopment area relocated in the project by completion date… From its inception, the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority also explicitly attempted to limit the number of families receiving public assistance to 20 per cent expressing “the desirability of developing a balanced community.” There was no formal policy in the Housing Authority of Toronto to curb families relying on social assistance, but officials told the Globe and Mail in 1965 that they attempted to keep them at 10 to 15 per cent…Despite claims to the contrary by housing officials, the archival records reveal clear personal, political, and moral considerations on the part of housing managers with regard to tenant selection.” What this shows is that when it is a poor neighbourhood that is being “redeveloped” it is the marginalized community that comes under attack. . When cities redevelop poor communities they don’t build more units of affordable housing it is either less or the same amount. The idea of a mixed-income housing strategy is unsustainable because it doesn’t deal with the core issues of poverty but attempts to hide the issue by dispersing the concentration of poverty into the broader community.

The only type of funding, that didn’t need to be advocated for, that saw any increase in the Regent Park neighbourhood was the police budget, which brought with it the racist attitudes of “some” members of the Toronto Police Services. These conditions created a powder keg, which exploded in 1995 with the “Riot in Regent Park”. Only through intense community organizing, were the tenant’s able to acquire fairer rents, address maintenance issues and introduce the concept of “tenant management”. The Regent Park community was close-knit and believed in members of the community beings the ones to make decisions that affected their community. One of the major tenant struggles was the fight to build the Regent Park Community Centre. The community first proposed the idea of a Community Centre run by and for residents in 1969. For 17 years, tenants signed up to pay a $2 monthly surcharge on their rent to raise money for the community centre, raising $17,000. By 1974, the advocacy work of the RPCIA (Regent Park Community Improvement Association) resulted in new ice rinks and the Jody Phillips Pool in North Regent. The recreation centre was built in 1986, but it took 17 years and countless volunteer hours and processes before the residents’ vision was realized. Only to eventually lose control of the projects to either Toronto Parks and Recreation or Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

Both Kitchener and Toronto have a diverse ethnic community and deteriorating industrial economy directly affecting both communities with most factories closing or moving facilities. In the 90s Toronto and Kitchener had active neo-Nazi, white supremacist groups that were openly organizing. In Regent Park you had the Heritage Front recruiting the white residents of Regent Park, after racial tensions had reached a critical peak when two white kids were stabbed by people of colour during an altercation at the baseball diamond. Prominent holocaust denier Ernst Zundel lived at Carlton/Parliament and used his house as organizing space for White supremacists in Toronto. It was burned down in the late 90s, those responsible were never found! Kitchener also had its own neo-Nazi group, The Tri-City Skinheads’ who had ties to the Heritage Front and the KKK, was actively organizing in DTkitchener. In response to the active white-power organizing both Toronto and Kitchener had very active Anti-Racist Action chapters that confronted and reclaimed the streets from this nazi scum!

In both Regent Park and Kitchener there is an immense amount of “community organizing” that happens. In the 90’s you heard a little about the ARA organizing against the neo-Nazi movement in both cities. What I am now going to focus on is the history of the Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Collective (KWYC). The KWYC started in the late 90’s as an organic response to the harassment street youth were facing from security guards at city hall. “Don’t Blame the Youth” was the first demonstration organized by the KWYC. They had taken over City Hall with couches and tents. Outta this action a callout for a 24 hour drop-in centre, by the street youth was issued. Ignored by City Hall, Mayor Zehr had stated “not in the cards”, the youth took it upon themselves to open their own space, a drop-in centre for street youth by street youth. On May 1st 2000 after a couple years of fundraising the doors to “The Spot” were opened. Located right in the heart of downtown at ???King Street, a stone’s throw from City Hall. “The Spot” was governed by weekly meetings of street youth who accessed the space. This method of organizing really emphasized a sense of responsibility and ownership of the space by the youth! All the “staff” were elected by the youth and could be recalled if the youth felt they weren’t living up to the standards outlined by the KWYC. Because “The Spot” was governed by the youth directly this also meant that the rules were set and enforced by the youth. In 2002 “The Spot” was given an award by Kitchener’s Crime Prevention Council for the outstanding work they were engaged in that helped improve community safety. Numerous programs were created and initiated by the KWYC through the years, after school peer tutor program, “each one, teach one” program, and in response to the increasing amounts of harassment/brutality faced by the street community at the hands of the WRPS a “Cop Watch” patrol. Numerous demonstrations were also organized outta “The Spot” focusing on combating the gentrification plan “Urban Evolution” of DTkitchener, Anti-Poverty protests and Anti-Police Brutality mobilizations. Due to the political nature of the KWYC police attempted infiltrate the group on a couple occasions and when that tactic didn’t work they began a campaign to arrest the “leaders” in an attempt to destabilize organizing efforts. One of the youth arrested had an officer tell them, as they were being loaded into a paddy wagon on their way to jail, that it was so and so’s fault. The youth replied “they weren’t the ones who put on the cuffs, pig”. “The Spot” was open till May 1st 2004 when it had to close its doors due to financial constraints, but the KWYC continues organizing!!!!

If there is anything that should be learned from the history of gentrification is that it is an attack on all aspects of an already marginalized community. They break apart poor communities to bring in a middle class to enhance the neighbourhood, not deal with the root causes of poverty. The role of the new middle-class is to be that shining example of what an “ideal“ tenant and a contributing member of society should look like.

A state within a state

Last night i was dreaming about my mom. In my culture dreams about dead people are important because they are seen as having some sort of important message, or communication.
We were at our old drop in centre and we were with some old friends discussing, what else , politics. We were talking about the futility of petitons and how not only are they pointless but actually serve the state because you give them
names addresses and phone numbers of those that dont agree with their politics so they know who to watch. We also talked about reformism and how social movements that dont have their own agenda are week because they are easy to be misused
by political parties or NGO’s to be used as pawns is the game of politics, serving as rent a mobs in the political game. I smiled because that sort of talk is how my mom use to think. My cat woke me up and i went for a smoke, made some coffee and chatted with my mate in donegol,who was making fun of me for sleeping through all of yesterday.

I started to think about this dream while i was sipping on my coffee and remembering back in the day when we started the first youth run youth drop in centre in KKKanada.Gary Askins, an intelligence officer once stated that we acted as a state within a state and that was true. We had our own rule, our own laws and the police had no authority or were not allowed inside.
This did not mean it was a party house, as many assumed it would be, but rather a place where we discussed the problems that we faced and came up with solutions.For example we realised that there was aliteracy problem so we started our free schools, with the help of progressive profs and others who would come and educate. We realized that the state was fucking people over in terms of welfare disability and such, so we started direct action case work taking over offices and such until people would get there checks. We fought against CAS, winning many victory and studied the works of Mao, Che, Ho Chi Minh. Lenin, Gerry Adams (this was back in the day before we realised what was what) and others to have an understanding of revolutionary theory with the purpose of practise.
Through our copwatch program we fought police tooth and nail,and through our squats, tent citys on the mayors lawn and other such things we won many victory getting the city to create many units of affordable housing. We saved the Mayfair a few times, and in terms of anti social behaviour we had programs to get youth off of drugs, as well as a people’s court to deal with fucked up things that people did, never relying on the police or state. All our politics . including our international solidarity like supporting the FARC-EP or fighting the blockade came from the understanding that it was important for us to come together discuss our politics and set our own agenda.All of this was done by fighting both the state and there agents who have infiltrated us time and time again but could get nothing due to the fact that we worked on a need to know basis and attacks from their lackeys neo nazi scum who acted as their paramilitary wing. Smashing our windows and attacking and jumping us. We dealt with both of them from a principled position, never let the nazis have the street and meet force with force. If they attacked us with words we would respond as such, if they would attack us with fists we would respond in kind.(it should be noted that in terms of operation vis a vis infiltration, this was before conspiracy charges have been started to be used on activists, so we could all get together and decided we would do a squat, and a small group of people would see that it got done, now due to the states new modus operandi we have adapted, though the cost of this lesson was pretty high).

Our political work came for our experience and analysis setting our own program, and at the hight of this police could not make an arrest in the core due to our influence without expecting a fight and they would take at least five officers to do this.Despite the attacks from the state we enjoyed considerable support in the community winning a crime prevention council award and having the courts validate the importance of our work by allowing us to maintain our functioning of the centre, eg. not to l;eave your house except to go to the centre not to associate with this or that person except inside the centre etc. and all the positive impact we have had on our community was always acknowledged creating this dichotomy that cops would nab us crowns would persecute us and judges would be like what the fuck.
This also stopped us from being like other activists that go from cause to cause, we had our program which came from our discussion where we stated what we believed was right and when attacked we would defend it, physically if necessary. Years later, with the centre closing we still have the same ideology in terms of our problems and solutions. We recognise that the state will not solve our problems so we ourselves must do it, and even though we dont have a place that we run due to the impact of our work we meet in community spaces that acknowledge the positive stuff that we do. Though the repression is still here and in some ways the surveillance has intensified, though we have no funds and are working out of our pockets and due to those factors are peoples programs are not as organized as they could be, though we cant put up FARC-EP posters or pictures of Che in our meeting places, we still carry on because at the end of the day our politics doesnt come from money or resources,nor do we need propaganda posters to remind us who we are, nor do we need to pander to middle class intellectuals who like our work on paper but are shocked when they actually meet marginalized people and they dont fit up to the streotype of the “glorious proletariat” found in the socialist wanker because our politics come from discussing the problems and setting our own politics, and although Che does not hang on the wall of our meeting space that is fine because he is in our hearts.

In this context, my dream could be seen as my mom reminding me not to lose focus or get caught up in various petitions etc. which lose sight of the bigger picture, defend the rights of the people by examining the problems we are facing, take a stand and defend it unconditionally.This is what our politics have been and what our politics are. (To be on the safe side though i will donate some money to my friends who are broke just in case that’s what she was telling me…..yes i am a marxist but one of the most superstitious materialists you will ever meet ……..lol)

We Will continue fighting you Milloy!!!!

emailed to John Milloy today on Christmas

This Christmas while you feast and have plenty people in your riding are left hungry cold and homeless. This is not some accident but rather
a result of the policy’s of the Liberal party that you are the head of. When you were minister of social services
your government enacted cuts to social services and disability that are being felt today, cuts that are continuing as your party mergers Welfare with
disability screwing many people over.As people in Ontario are feeling the effects of the major storm which cut off heat and hydro to hundreds of thousands of people across
the province, people are starting to realise the effects of the Liberal storm that has been doing this to poor people since you took office.

Putting a new face on the old package of neoliberalism doesn’t work, neither does the denial or slander that you level at activists resisting your attacks on poor people.
This coming year prepares for a new wave of resistance, as we refuse to take your shit. So while you are enjoying your Christmas dinner prepare to be confronted by those who as a result of your policy are not.
We will fight you and we will win!!!

Phone jam to British Consulate, Free Colin Duffy and Irish POWS, end political policing!!

!

Friday Dec. 27th 9:OOam-5:00pm

This holiday season while we sit with our families and enjoy the festivities, many family’s in the occupied six counties will not be able to do so as a direct result of the attacks of The British state against those who refuse to allow their culture history and identity be erased.
Over the last several weeks the PSNI/RUC and their Guardia lackeys have been targeting and arresting Irish Republicans with the express purpose of not only trying to intimidate people and stop them from being political. but also as a way of punishing their family’s and loved ones who instead of enjoying the holidays will be worried about there loved ones locked in the belly of the beast.
Particularly horrible is the arrest of Colin Duffy and two others, who are interned by remand ripped away from the friends family and community that loves them. Duffy in particular has been arrested time and time again only to be released when it has been proven in court that he is innocent. This type of psychological war against Irish Republicans and there loved ones is unacceptable and us on the outside, as humanists and internationalists have a duty to take a stand and let the brits know enough is enough. I ask all people to join in this phone jam and let the brits know that these crimes are not going to be carried out in silence and that people all over the world are watching.

Here is the phone number of the british consulate in Toronto

416 593 1290.

H- Block To MagHaberry-Pol Mac Adaim

I remember the day when I turned 10
Our men in the H-block was starving again
The struggle for freedom in Ireland had crossed a new line

Two hundred and seventeen days passed by,
10 Young brave men starved, I’ll tell ye why..
Colonial Britain had labelled our cause a crime.

I know this is now and that was then
But the same situation is looming again
As British intransigence drags us back through the slime

How long will we let the brits dictate
What is a crime in this illegal state
As they’ve raped, murdered and pillaged their way through time

Chorus
Have we come from H-Block
To Maghaberry – ohhh
Have we come from H-Block
To Maghaberry – ohhh
H-Block to Maghaberry, you beat me
Stripped searched me, and ill treat me,
Maghaberry -my daily reality,
Maghaberry, while you beat me
And stripped searched me, and ill treat me,
Maghaberry – no, you’ll never defeat me
For my mind is free

It’s only natural I suppose,
For there to be a refusal of those
To swallow your black propaganda media show
Through eight hundred years of turmoil and strife
My people have lived on the edge of your knife
Will your colonial grip ever let go?

Chorus
I will smash H-Block and Magahberry
And everything you throw at me
No matter what you’ll never break me
I will smash H-Block and Magahberry
And everything you throw at me
No matter what you’ll never break me
I’ll fight on to be free.

What Do I Know

Today after a very successful phone jam of British Consulates I was supposed to interview someone from the Irish Freedom Committee about the case of Colin Duffy. As soon as The program started, the phone screwed up and then the station went off air for the duration of my time slot.
To state that it is the state interfering without study or analysis may be paranoid, especially if another explanation is available. One must take into consideration the fact that community radio is underfunded and the equipment is not the best. In light of this all one can do
is follow the famous saying seek truth from facts. What are the facts?The facts are that mail that has been sent to me continuously goes missing and does not arrive, esp. if it political in nature. A banner went missing as well as CD’s, Books, Letters and other such things. This has
also happened when they have been sent to address’ that are not my own but know to affiliate or associate with. Political material mailed to my comrades has also gone missing with no good explanation. Mail that I have sent has not arrived at its destination, and the same thing goes
for my comrades. This includes letters that I have sent to political prisoners here. My facebook, blog and other forms of electronic methods of communication has and is still being monitored by state agency’s. This has come up in my court as well as other people’s court, as well as
been confirmed by officers on the street through their snide remarks.Pressure has been put on former employees as well as places that I write for me not to work there or not to publish shit I write. I am under physical surveillance esp. before any protests actions etc. that I have
participated or organized or help promote as well as have been the victim of infiltration and attempts to turn people I am around into snitches.This has been proven in court and corroborated by people on the streets as well as cocky cops such as stover who have stated “I use to
attend the public meetings you helped organize on campus” in front of witnesses. The same has happened to many of my comrades.People who are my friend and i associate with have been target for harassment surveillance and arrest by the state, and CAS has intimidated single mothers
with intervening and possibly taking their children for what appears like to me for being political. We also know that I appear on people’s non association despite the fact that at this point in time I have no charges pending nor am I involved in these people’s legal problems in any way.
We also know that I have in the past been charged for what I write and the state has tried to get the server that hosts my blog to take it down. (i beat these charges and the host did not take it down)

What do we know about functions and other such actions of international solidarity. We Know that fundraisers etc. are heavily monitored by police and artists venues etc.have been harassed for performing etc. We Know that during two functions people who were suppose to play could not
due to legal reason brought on by the state. We know that people who have visited have been interrogated and grilled at customs. We also know that police have harassed activists here in KKKanada asking them their affiliation with political movements that are not proscribed. The list goes on and on.

In light of this the issue is not whether or not there was state intervention today, but rather that there is a pattern of political persecution and accidents that continuously happenned.As well in the past it has come up that our most paranoid delusions could not imagine the level of surveillance and state fuckery really going on.
We could speculate but that would miss the point, which is that there is a pattern of repression aimed at people for being political.

The other facts that we must examine is the fact that despite this there is still a movement, their has been a movement and their will be a movement no matter what they do and they are powerless to stop this!!!!So if it was state intervention I really dont care because one thing that unify people and strengthens our movement
is their attacks and them exposing what they are doing just strengthens us.So interfere away our conviction and resolve cant be broken!!!

From Turtle Island To Romania End Fracking Demo A success!!!

Today people in Kitchener got together in front of city hall to take a stand against fracking and the destruction and plunder of the environment for profit and to entrench colonialism. Food Not Bombs joined us and provided food and winter clothing. The event had several speakers including a Mi’kmaq speaker and a speaker from Romania and issues of colonialism and environmental degradation done by fracking on their land was raised. All in all the event was a success and awareness was raised.

Letter Writing Night For Irish and Basque POWS

Monday Dec. 23rd 6 PM Queen St. Commons 43 Queen St. S, Kitchener

Come out and support those who are currently being held in brutal conditions for defending their right to determine their own destiny. We will be writing to Colin Duffy, Akec McCrory, ,and Harry Fitxsimmons who are currently being held in MagHaberry, Interned on remand for the crime of refusing to betray thier principles. As well we will Be writing to Basque prisoners whose health is deteriorating due to the recent hunger strike they just finished demanding basic rights. There will be Coffe and Christmas treats. All Welcome

All Your Flegs are belong to us, Gary Mchale, The JDL. UVF and the culture of siege!!!

Several years ago when i was in Cuba there was a group of JDL type Zionists staying at the same place as i was. Given the crimes of Zionism and what Cuba stands for I was pretty surprised and engaged some of them in discussion.
What really struck me was when we were talking about Palestine and there right to determine their own destiny, they were convinced that the reason i didnt support them was because i was brainwashed and if only I know the truth
then I would side with them. They spent hours explaining to me that they were under siege and in a sea of Arabs that ment to exterminate them it was important for them to resist. After several hours of discussion and debate it became clear to me
that they suffered from some sort of siege mentality and that they truly believed that as Gods chosen people they felt some sort of manifest destiny, similar to the ideology used by Christian settlers to wipe out the Indigenous people here.
The other thing that struck me was their crazy fear that if freedom was granted to Palestinians their culture and way of life would be destroyed.

Back in KKKanada, I spent quite a bit of time watching and opposing Anti Native activist Gary McHale making the same arguments. White people’s way of life was threatened by these “lawless” Indigenous people at Six Nations, a double standard was enforced and
unless they resisted their way of life and culture was at risk. With some sort of “divine mandate” Him and his goons would go on Native land with KKKanadian flags, provoking violence, hate and attacking and criminalizing people whose only crime was expressing their hereditary rights to the land that they own.
Under the guise of equal rights for white, this hoodlum and his goons portrayed themselves like the “white Martin Luther King” fighting to defend his culture and identity by imposing his views through violent demonstrations where his goons would march on Native land and wave flags of a occupying country,
inciting violence and hatred against indigenous people.

Currently in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland, Wullie Frazier, The UVF and other loyalists under the guise of culture and maintaining their identity have created a climate and hate with their flag protests, terrorising Belfast due to decision of the city council to fly the union jack, the flag of occupation only on selected days.
Claiming that their culture is under attack by “Irish Terrorists” they have engaged in acts of violence bringing the city to a stand still. This is not new, The UVF and others during marching season, in the name of culture set bonfires where they burn Irish flags as well as anything that symbolises Irish identity, only to demand the
right to march through the Ardoyne and Irish neighborhoods with their sectarian and hate fill songs and banners in the name of culture and identity. Ironically these people who crushed the civil rights movement in Ireland and cheered when paratroopers shot civil rights marchers during bloody Sunday now call their encampment a “civil rights camp”

When discussing this we must ask ourselves what is this culture that they are talking about and what is this identity that they see under threat? It’s quite obvious that the siege mentality that they live under and that they themselves have created stems from the fact that they are occupiers and settlers and as such they see all the colonized as a threat.
Those who have used violence and terror to maintain power over others can only see things in terms of violence and their fear stems from this.When they talk of culture they are not talking about customs or beliefs but rather their right to commemorate acts of conquest such as the battle of Boyne and to remind those who are colonised that they have power and are not going to give it up.

When Gary Mchale and his like are talking about their culture being under threat what they are talking about is the threat of them losing power over those whom through the use of arms and terror they have subjugated. When he marches on the territory at Six, he is stating that this history of conquest and terror is not over and is doing it to remind people of the settler power entrenched in the system.
When wullie Frazier and his like create havoc over the sacred flag and the orange order and the UVF march through the Ardoyne it is to remind Irish people that they still are living under occupation and that there is nothing that they can do about it since the institutions of the state back this colonialist project.

Their culture entrenches their identity as settlers and colonizers, an identity that they grasp and when they talk about their identity being threatened, they are talking about the identity as colonialists and as such any expression of the colonized to express their identity and right to be is a threat to their world view where there colonialist project defines who they are.
It is within this context that the colonizers, be they Zionist, white settlers or loyalists, when they are “fighting for their culture and Identity” are fighting to maintain the power structures that strengthen their power and privilege. When they say “No Surrender”, “Equal Rights for Whites” or other slogans what they are saying is that they will never give up the power they have over the colonized and
will do whatever it takes to crush anything that threatens their privilege. This is due to the fact that their culture rests on the destruction of the culture and identity of those whom they occupy and colonize. Like Zionists building settlements in the west bank they believe that they have a god given right to continuously expand and steal more and more territory and when the Palestinians resists this
they place themselves as the victims calling them terrorists while ignoring the terror and violence that they themselves impose.

By placing themselves as victims and appropriating slogans like civil rights etc. they entrench in the popular discourse the idea that they are the ones whose culture and identity is under attack, not having to answer the question what is this culture and identity that they profess and what does that mean as people living on stolen land.By placing themselves, the occupiers as victims,they not only dont have to answer these uncomfortable questions, but attempt to legitimize an identity and culture based on fear and terror.