Comparison of indigenous and trucker protest policing

9 posts / 0 new

Fri, 2022-02-04 08:54

Pondering

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/trucker-rallies-human-rights-rea...

Activists who have spent much of their lives standing up for basic human rights say they're hurt by the response they're seeing to the recent protests against vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions.

In Ottawa and elsewhere across Canada, protesters have been rallying and honking their horns for days now, trying to get their messages across.

Joan Jack is no stranger to protests. As a lawyer and activist, originally from Berens River First Nation in Manitoba, Jack has been on the front lines of many other occupations calling for justice and freedom from violence and aggression against Indigenous people.

She believes the response by police and government to the recent rallies against restrictions and vaccines would be different if Indigenous people were the ones protesting.

"Its a sad reflection of the Canadian state's response to us as Indigenous people," Jack said

"If our rights were as valuable — particularly as Indigenous women — to this government, this wouldn't even be happening. Yeah no, they would've called in the army on us."

Jack's frustration is shared by Elsa Kaka, another former Manitoban who has participated in Black Lives Matter rallies.

"I find it really infuriating," she said.

Kaka sees the mostly hands-off approach taken by officials in response to the COVID protest convoys as a tolerance for ignorance — to the fact that people of colour have been fighting against oppression for many generations.

Both activists acknowledge there are some people of colour in the rallies but insist that doesn't make it right to compare vaccine mandates to historical atrocities.

Kaka says she finds it "disheartening" to see some at the rallies compare their experiences over the past two years with lockdowns and vaccine mandates to slavery, genocide and violence.

"All that demonstrates to me is just an entitlement and that they're completely unfamiliar with what actual oppression is," concluded Kaka.

Jack and Kaka say the reactions to the trucker rallies by governments, police and all those who have contributed millions of dollars to support them, is hurtful.

Both predict the attitudes and actions toward the rally participants now will have lasting impacts on many who are trying to be patient with this movement.

"If politicians fail to oppose it, they're being complacent, and that is very dangerous but it also encourages racist rhetoric," Kaka said.

Fri, 2022-02-04 08:57

Pondering

https://www.hilltimes.com/2022/02/01/comparing-freedom-protest-to-other-...

The difference between the 'freedom' demonstration and other social movements is made clear by the presence of white supremacists and the lack of action taken by police, despite widespread feelings of unsafety and reports of hate crimes in the Ottawa community, experienced organizers say.

Fri, 2022-02-04 09:03

Pondering

https://pressprogress.ca/bc-rcmp-says-it-deployed-snipers-and-assault-te...

The BC RCMP is defending its decision to deploy military-style police tactical units – including snipers and heavily-armed assault teams – against unarmed Wet’suwet’en land defenders in Northern British Columbia, insisting it is “more practicable” to be over-prepared.

In response to questions about the deployment of snipers against the unarmed Indigenous group, the BC RCMP told PressProgress the Mounties always prefer to be over-prepared.

“It is more practicable to deploy resources and specialized units and then scale back if those resources are no longer required,” a BC RCMP spokesperson explained.

“As you can imagine, it is difficult to predict what types of skills sets / equipment we would require to attend to those calls.”

The professor explained ERT’s were “originally formed back in the mid-1970s to deal with hostage situations.” Today, they typically consist of snipers, supportive and logistics officers, and “assaulters” – the latter using military fatigues as seen in footage uploaded by the Gidimt’en camp.

Apparently that doesn't apply to our nation's capital.

Fri, 2022-02-04 09:05

Pondering

Fri, 2022-02-04 09:28

Pondering

Scary protesters

Not at all intimidating..

Fri, 2022-02-04 12:46

kropotkin1951

Indigenous people can do anything except demand their land back.

As a life long trade union activist I am gob smacked at the treatment. Who knew a few hundred of my members could shut down the government and demand its resignation for interfering in my right to strike, as guaranteed by the Charter, with back to work legislation. We always worked on the false assumption that we would be met with brute force and criminal law sanctions.

Fri, 2022-02-04 13:05

NDPP

Of course white people are treated differently in our racist, genocidal settler state. But how appalling to exploit Indigenous rights protests the liberal left continues to do little to advance, to stoke liberal malevolence, panic and rage over the Ottawa protest.

Fri, 2022-02-04 14:20

Pondering

Activists who have spent much of their lives standing up for basic human rights say they're hurt by the response they're seeing to the recent protests against vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions....

Joan Jack is no stranger to protests. As a lawyer and activist, originally from Berens River First Nation in Manitoba, Jack has been on the front lines of many other occupations calling for justice and freedom from violence and aggression against Indigenous people.

Jack's frustration is shared by Elsa Kaka, another former Manitoban who has participated in Black Lives Matter rallies....

Kaka says she finds it "disheartening" to see some at the rallies compare their experiences over the past two years with lockdowns and vaccine mandates to slavery, genocide and violence.

"All that demonstrates to me is just an entitlement and that they're completely unfamiliar with what actual oppression is," concluded Kaka.

What have these people done to deserve being disparaged by you?

What evidence do you have that anyone is panicked? Most voters are not cult like. We aren't in tribes. Who are you accusing of "liberal malevolence"? People are pissed off not raging. Either you are projecting or prejudice.

Fri, 2022-02-04 16:29

Pondering

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/who-is-tamara-lich-the-spark-t...

Tamara Lich, the main speaker at a protest media briefing in Ottawa Thursday afternoon, is one of the organizers of the controversial and currently frozen GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than $10-million for the demonstration. Lich was also involved with the Canadian “Yellow Vest” protests and the smaller “United We Roll” truckers’ protest convoy of 2019....

Lich resigned from Maverick this week to devote herself full time to the “Freedom Convoy” protest....

But Lich is also on the radar of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which has flagged her association with the “Yellow Vest” movement and her support of the anti-Muslim Clarion Project....

“I wouldn’t say she was a major player,” CAHN executive director Evan Balgord said Thursday. “But she’s in the far-right ecosystem.”

The Saskatchewan native was living in Medicine Hat when she became politically active three years ago with Wexit, which later merged into the Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta. When Lich and her husband moved to Manitoba, she left Wildrose and joined the fringe and fledgling Maverick Party as an original member of its governing council.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-organizers-hate/

There is a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $7 million for the trucker convoy. That fundraiser has two names on it: Tamara Lich, and B.J. Dichter.

Speaking to a cheering crowd at a People’s Party of Canada convention in 2019, B.J. Dichter warned listeners about the dangers of “political Islamists,” and said the Liberal Party is “infested with Islamists.”...

Another dominant voice within the convoy community is a man named Patrick King. King is listed as a contact for North Alberta on Canada Unity’s website, which hosts the memorandum of understanding that boasts more than 240,000 signatures.

King’s name was repeatedly mentioned on the convoy’s walkie-talkie app, Zello, on Friday — but he has ended up in the public eye for different reasons in the past, according to footage posted online.

In a video posted on Twitter in 2019, King suggests that unless Canadians “get up off your as—s and demand change,” they might want to change their names to “Ishmael” or “drop a bunch of change down the stairs” and “call yourself chong ching ching chang.”

In other video footage, King can be seen repeating racist conspiracy theories. In one clip posted to Twitter by another user, King says “there’s an endgame, it’s called depopulation of the Caucasian race, or the Anglo-Saxon. And that’s what the goal is, is to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines,” he said.

“It’s a depopulation of race, okay, that’s what they want to do.”

He then talks about men with the first names “Ahmed” and “Mahmoud” who he claims are trying to “not only infiltrate by flooding with refugees, we’re going to infiltrate the education systems to manipulate it” so there is “less procreation” which leads to “less white people — or you know, Anglo-Saxon. Let’s say Anglo-Saxon, because when I say white, all the ANTIFA guys call up the race card.”

In a Facebook Live posted directly to his page, King says that COVID-19 is “not a naturally occurring virus.”

“It’s not a naturally occurring virus, it’s a man-made bioweapon that was put out to make people sick, to push the narrative for all these jabs, is what it was,” he said.

“Because the jab is the, they want to be able to track you, follow you, know your every movement you do.”...

Jason LaFace — who at times uses the name “LaFaci” — is listed as the North and East Ontario organizer for the convoy on the Canada Unity website, and has been cited in other media as the main organizer for Ontario. In photos posted to his Facebook page, which were screenshotted by Global News, he shared an image titled “Canadian politicians who are not born in Canada” and included his own caption: “traitors to our country.”

According to a screenshot obtained by Global News, LaFace posted a selfie where he wore a hat with what appears to be the initials S.O.O., which is believed to stand for Soldiers of Odin — an anti-immigrant group first established in Finland.

The emergence of the far-right Soldiers of Odin group in Canada raised concerns about the potential for “anti-immigrant vigilantism,” according to a de-classified intelligence report obtained by Global News in 2017.

“One of the admins on their website is actually somebody who’s like the vice president of the Soldiers of Odin, a skinhead group in Sudbury, Ont.,” said Dr. Carmen Celestini, a post-doctoral fellow with the Disinformation Project at Simon Fraser University.

“His name is Jason LaFace. He also uses other names, but he is a vice president of this group, which organize events that will try to stop immigration, people who are BIPOC or people who are in LGBTQ communities.”

“Last summer,” she added, LaFace posted a message on Facebook indicating that he planned to “paint over a mural in Sudbury for (Black Lives Matter).”