Fundamental questions about human nature are thrust upon us when we remember slavery. How could a slave owner psychologically afford to inflict such extreme violence and pain, and so wilfully disregard another person’s humanity? How was the physical, legal, and economic violence and subjugation of slavery normalized and accepted by multiple societies? The possible answers to these questions are diverging.

One commonly held view is that humanity was at a less “enlightened” historical stage and simply did not realize that slavery was wrong. According to this line of thought, it was inevitable that humanity would see the light and progress from the dark age in which racism and commodification decided and limited people’s humanity. This view of humanity is flawed and somewhat arrogant – it projects the present conception of progress onto the past without regard for historical context.

The reality is that, in practice, slavery was not incompatible with modern ideals of freedom – after all, the world was steeped in enlightenment ideas of liberty and equality at the apex of the slave trade. Even as those ideals violently asserted themselves in the American and French revolutions of the late 18th century, slavery remained in place. This is because the root of slavery is to be found not in a moral misunderstanding, but rather in the exploitative human tendencies whose presence is a historical constant – despite the “backwardness” narrative’s best efforts to consign them to the past, as if they no longer exist. It is also worth noting that large-scale resistance efforts, such as the successful 1791 revolution led by enslaved Haitians, played a much more important role in ending transatlantic slavery than any kind of “moral progress.”

An alternative and more convincing view is that this 400-year period characterized by the theft and enslavement of 12 million people was, in fact, a display of a constitutive aspect of humanity. The view that humanity is by nature predisposed to raw violence and prone to distrust and hatred of the Other disgusts us. It tells us nothing that we want to hear about ourselves, and offers no flattering redemption narrative.

I do think, though, that this is a more honest view. Columbia University professor Saidiya Hartman explains that, when seeking to understand humanity through a study of slavery, we must “consider the forms of life that exceed and challenge our understanding of the human, because they transgress and defy our basic predicates of decency, rationality, belonging, care and community.” Seen in this light, perhaps the most frighteningly “inhuman” parts of our nature are more human than we’d like to think.

At times, history offers no obvious contemporary lessons, and instead asks simply to be understood on its own terms.

Aside from these vexing questions of human nature, the story of transatlantic slavery highlights the central role of both physical and psychological power, as well as resistance to it, in human relations. Different levels of power operated here, such as the physical power of slaveholders or the more subtle, enduring, and silent power of the legal system that helped entrench slavery.

Enslaved people constantly navigated these power relations through acts of resistance and subterfuge. In her autobiographical novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, escaped American slave Harriet Jacobs recounts how she staved off sexual predation at the hands of her master by expertly navigating his desires and, by having an affair with another white man, using her own sexuality to protect herself from her master. Olaudah Equiano traded small trinkets and goods until he had enough money to buy his freedom, while Nat Turner turned the U.S. upside down in 1831 by leading a large-scale slave rebellion in Virginia. In countless more acts of daily resistance and survival of which we have no account, enslaved people confronted the power that was exerted over them.

For all that the history of slavery is, there are many things it is not. For one, it is not an oracle of revealed truth. At times, history offers no obvious contemporary lessons, and instead asks simply to be understood on its own terms. This can frustrate our desire to instrumentalize the past, but this is the reality of coming to terms with it. Secondly, history is not an uninterrupted story of endless suffering. It is a human story, one fraught with inspiration as well as pain, resolve as well as horror. Finally, history is also not a parable, nor a moral arc that bends inevitably toward freedom or justice. Slavery is still present in many parts of the world, and the racist relics of transatlantic slavery have taken shape in the form of mass incarceration of people of colour, racially targeted police violence, and social and political marginality and poverty in racialized communities.

This column has attempted to present the living history of slavery and its residual aftershocks. It has sought to remember the lives of enslaved people and bring light to the dark corners of the human experience. The shadows of slavery linger on. Instead of running from them, we must turn toward them with deep humility in an effort to better understand not only parts of ourselves, but this chaotic world around us.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post The lessons of slavery appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Organized by law students Lana Belber and Alice Mirlesse, with support from the Aboriginal Law Students’ Association and SSMU Indigenous Affairs, the event specifically sought to shed light on an often neglected aspect of sentencing in Canadian criminal law — the Gladue principle — which seeks to alleviate the over-incarceration of Indigenous people.

Among the panelists was Aidan Johnson, a former lawyer at Legal Aid Ontario who has regularly represented Indigenous people in the past. Johnson explained that the Gladue decision of the Supreme Court of Canada led to a change in the Criminal Code which requires judges and lawyers to pay particular attention to the unique history and circumstances of Indigenous people. It particularly requires that alternatives to jail time be considered when an Indigenous person is sentenced following a conviction.

“Concern for the over-representation of Aboriginal peoples in jails is a factor underpinning Gladue law,” Johnson explained. “Aboriginal people don’t get a fair shake in the justice system, the rules are not applied equally to them, so Gladue is an equalizing measure.”

The panelists expressed frustration with the legal community’s response to implementing the Gladue principle. Vivien Carli, program manager of the Ungaluk Safer Communities Program at Makivik Corporation, explained that there are few people properly trained to write Gladue reports, and that those who are face time constraints.

“To give you an idea, the Gladue writer is given 20 hours to write a report. […] You have 20 hours to go in, often in a detention center, and talk to someone who you have never met before, and get them to open up and tell you about all their trauma and family history – maybe for the first time in their life. You can imagine the challenges.”

Wayne Robinson, who, with Carli, recently founded the First People’s Justice Centre (FPJC) of Montreal, explained the importance of community organizations filling in the gaps beyond Gladue reports.

“You have 20 hours to go in, often in a detention center, and talk to someone who you have never met before, and get them to open up and tell you about all their trauma and family history – maybe for the first time in their life. You can imagine the challenges.”

“After the Gladue report [is written], the writer leaves, and we’ve opened up a trauma there and there’s no continuum of service,” said Robinson. “The FPJC provides a continuum of service from pre-offence to post-incarceration for Indigenous offenders, ensuring that Gladue is not just a tool to talk about sentencing, but as a more holistic approach.

Mirlesse, a second year law student at McGill, explained to The Daily that the original idea for the event emerged from an assignment that second year law students were given regarding Gladue principles. The organizers wanted to “give an opportunity to reflect on these principles and what they meant for the community,” Mirlesse said. Mirlesse added that, without sufficient context, through which students could be made aware of the colonial and racist legacies of Canadian legislation, there was “too big of a risk for students to perpetuate stereotypes of colonization and racial prejudice.”

André Moreau, a Metis student in his first year of McGill law school who attended the event told The Daily, “I thought it was really nice to see different points of view, from the policing side to the community side, even a more legal side.”

“Gladue is definitely a starting point. There has to be some sort of method to address this issue when it comes to justice. However it is a broader issue with access to healthcare and education as well, because they all go hand in hand at the end of the day,” Moreau said.

The post Panel discusses over-incarceration of Indigenous people appeared first on The McGill Daily.

***

“After the alarm caused by Nat Turner’s insurrection had subsided, the slaveholders came to the conclusion that it would be well to give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep them from murdering their masters. The Episcopal clergyman offered to hold a separate service on Sundays for their benefit. […] Pious Mr. Pike brushed up his hair till it stood upright, and, in deep, solemn tones, began: ‘Hearken, ye servants! Give strict heed unto my words. You are rebellious sinners. Your hearts are filled with all manner of evil. ‘Tis the devil who tempts you. God is angry with you, and will surely punish you, if you don’t forsake your wicked ways […] God sees you. You tell lies. God hears you. […] Your masters may not find you out, but God sees you, and will punish you. O, the depravity of your hearts!”

—Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

***

“The fact that the church of our country (with fractional exceptions) does not esteem ‘the Fugitive Slave Law’ as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love, and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. […] But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. […] For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!”

—Frederick Douglass, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

***

“Whilst I thus struggled, there seemed a light from heaven to fall upon me, which banished all my desponding fears, and I was enabled to form a new resolution to go on to prison and to death, if it might be my portion: and the Lord showed me that it was His will I should be resigned to die any death that might be my lot, in carrying his message, and be entirely crucified to the world, and sacrifice all to His glory that was then in my possession, which His witnesses, the holy Apostles, had done before me. It was then revealed to me that the Lord had given me the evidence of a clean heart, in which I could rejoice day and night, and I walked and talked with God, and my soul was illuminated with heavenly light, and I knew nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

—Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Coloured Woman

***

“‘Did any of the black people on his place believe in the teachings of their master?’
No, my child; none of us listened to him about singing and praying. I tell you we used to have some good times together praying and singing. He did not want us to pray, but we would have our little prayer-meeting anyhow. Sometimes when we met to hold our meetings we would put a big wash-tub full of water in the middle of the floor to catch the sound of our voices when we sung. When we all sung we would march around and shake each other’s hands, and we would sing easy and low, so marster could not hear us. O, how happy I used to be in those meetings, although I was a slave! I thank the Lord Aunt Jane Lee lived by me. She helped me to make my peace with the Lord. O, the day I was converted! It seemed to me it was a paradise here below! It looked like I wanted nothing any more. Jesus was so sweet to my soul! Aunt Jane used to sing, ‘Jesus! the name that charms our fears.’ That hymn just suited my case. Sometimes I felt like preaching myself. It seemed I wanted to ask every body if they loved Jesus when I first got converted.”

—Octavia V. Rogers Albert, The House of Bondage

***

“When the glad tidings came that we were freed, and the war was over, such rejoicing and weeping and shouting among the slaves was never heard before, unless it was the time that the Ark of the Covenant was brought back to the children of Israel. Great numbers of the slaves left their masters immediately. They had no shelter, but they dug holes in the ground, made dug-outs, brush houses, with a piece of board here and there, whenever they could find one, until finally they had a little village called ‘Dink-town,’ looking more like an Indian village than anything else. There they sang and prayed and rejoiced. Later on, the soldiers began to come through, returning from the war. They brought many negroes with them who were searching for members of their families. I remember my mother, with me holding on to her skirts, standing watching the soldiers as they passed in their blue suits, and the colored people all shouting ‘Hurrah for Marse Abe,’ and cheering the Union boys as they passed. That was a glad day. That certainly was a year of jubilee for the poor black slave. They had heard about the Liberation from Bondage of the Children of Israel from the Egyptians and their prayers were always to the Almighty God, and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that they too some day might be delivered, and now it had actually come. Oh! What joy!”

—Emma J. Smith, Twice Sold, Twice Ransomed

***

God and religion were crucial to the experiences of enslaved people in the Atlantic World, whether as targets for anti-abolitionist discourse or as a genuine means to make sense of an unbearable reality. Yet unlike the unbridled political, economic, and legal forces defending slavery, religious rhetoric assumed a more personal voice, authoritatively appealing to people’s deep-seated beliefs and fears of the world. All the while, enslaved people found their own way of negotiating faith to serve their own needs, resisting the very ideas and practices that daily sought to subjugate them. Indeed, the distance between the pulpit and the plantation was never great.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Chains and the church appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Remembering the history

Chantelle, who grew up in Jamaica and studied in the U.S. and France before coming to McGill, spoke about the varying levels of awareness about the history of slavery that she has encountered. “In high school, growing up in Jamaica, we did Caribbean history more than world history, and a lot of that was talking about slavery – it wasn’t a hidden part of curriculum. In terms of my identity, I was a lot more aware of what a past slave society would look like when I came to the U.S.. [Here] I interact with people who are just not as aware, and hear people in Canada say ‘I didn’t hear about Canadian slavery, I didn’t know about it,’”

She said that her visit to former slave depots in West Africa – namely, Cape Coast Castle in Ghana and the Maison des Esclaves in Senegal – as well as to a slave museum in the major slave port town of Nantes, France, highlighted the vast scope of the impact of slavery. “There’s no way that you can escape it, it’s part of everyone’s history. Even if you weren’t dealing in slaves, its effects crossed the world – it was a triangular trade connecting Europe, America, and Africa. […] But even then, I didn’t think that the awareness in [Jamaica] was that great.”

Anne-Sophie is Cameroonian; though born in France, her childhood was split between time in Niger and Uganda, and she eventually came to Canada to pursue her studies. Anne-Sophie spoke about a personal connection to the history of slavery. “I feel very touched and linked to this period of time. I was not directly impacted, of course, I did not suffer from slavery, but I just feel like the remnants of this historical period are still visible today. When I think of the history of slavery, I think about my history, my family history, my grandfather’s history. My ancestors were impacted in some way or another. I think about reconnecting with my past and learning about how low humanity can stoop.”

I asked both students how they thought slavery could best be acknowledged and remembered. “Black History Month shouldn’t just be a month,” said Anne-Sophie. “It’s all our histories, and they should be learned throughout the year. Why is only a month used to remember the past? It’s world history, it can’t be condensed.” Anne-Sophie, who currently lives in France, added that French society must confront Black history more than it currently does. “During high school in France, my cultural heritage was so condemned. They would say, ‘Racism? What are you talking about? This doesn’t happen here.’ I feel like [in France] there is a shame about Black history, they like to cover it up. The moment you talk about racism, a French person is literally scared shitless.”

Anne-Sophie expressed that discussing slavery and race today continues to be difficult. “I feel that the African community in France is muffled,” explained Anne-Sophie. “The French pride themselves on being united, but we’re not united. Snarky comments and micro-aggressions – my goodness – happen on a daily basis.”

The situation is different in Jamaica. “We don’t have a minority status, as people in positions of power are Black,” said Chantelle. “What we have in Jamaica is more colourism or classism. Even within the Black community it’s like, ‘Okay, you’re lighter-skinned, so you’re more likely to be successful, more likely to be considered beautiful, more likely to be considered intelligent.’”

For Chantelle, remembering slavery begins in schools. “Commemorating is good, and having spaces to learn more outside of the classroom [is good], but if you don’t learn about it at an early age, then you won’t have an interest in exploring it later on in life. It’s a general consciousness, it’s hard to awaken people when they don’t want to think that discrimination still exists.”

Justice after slavery

Anne-Sophie and Chantelle differed somewhat on the topic of redress for slavery and payment of reparations. “I sometimes think, would [reparations] really change anything?” said Anne-Sophie. “It seems a way to cover something up that I don’t think can ever be mended. Still, I think it can be helpful.” For Anne-Sophie, acknowledgement is ultimately more important than reparations. “It’s about accepting that you have a privilege, on this earth, that we will not have for a long time. I’m not sure, but I think reparations should only be given to the older generation who was impacted, or to the [descendants] of slaves who were obliged to live in squalor – because that is still the case in ghettos.”

Speaking to the history of Jamaica, Chantelle explained that she supports reparations, as the harms of slavery were never recognized nor redressed. “In Jamaica, even after emancipation, people were working as slaves because they didn’t have the freedom to move off plantations for the most part. It was when slavery became unprofitable that the abolitionists got their way. It was a profit thing, not because slavery was morally wrong. It was all a balance of economics.”

Chantelle highlighted the hypocrisy of the British reaction to the call for reparations. “They were only willing to let go when it wasn’t profitable, and they paid off the people who were responsible for allowing that [by compensating former slaveholders]. Then, David Cameron, the prime minister of the UK, comes to Jamaica and shakes hands with people and says, ‘Oh, you know, reparations aren’t really necessary.’ No, we think you owe us.”

Chantelle also spoke about her experience studying legal traditions – such as French civil law, English common law, or Roman and American law – that have historically served to entrench and legitimize systems of slavery. “As the critical race theory scholar Mari Matsuda has said, you have to approach it in two ways: outside the courtroom, or outside law school, and inside. There is speaking about these issues in a public forum, on the street, et cetera. But minority populations or poor populations don’t have access to justice because it’s not affordable and then you’re being discriminated against,” Chantelle said. “Then there is inside the courtroom, or inside law school. If law is going to be used as an instrument of power against me, then I should know how to use it as well. That’s me taking back the power that was taken away from me.”

For Chantelle, the study of law serves to empower her community. “There’s no way I’m not going to give back to the community that I’m from. That’s important. If you come to these positions you can’t be like the nice house slave and forget your brothers in the field. Using law school as a stepping stone, on the back of those who came before you and had to make sacrifices for you to be here – I take that very seriously. I take my country’s history and my family’s history very seriously. Being Black, being Jamaican, and an international student, I think it’s true: I have to work twice as hard to be half as good as white students – and so I’m here, working hard.”

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Black History Month and remembrance appeared first on The McGill Daily.

326 years before the murder of Scott, the South Carolina slave code of 1690 gave birth to the slave patrol. Grounded in what legal historian Sally Hadden refers to as “an unequivocal manifestation of white fear” that enslaved people would revolt at any moment, the slave patrol was one of the first formal state institutions in slave societies around the Atlantic. Patrols roamed country roads and plantations by night, looking for potential fugitive slaves and searching the living quarters of enslaved people for contraband goods like liquor or books.

Crucial to the slave patrol enterprise was the pass system. Patrollers, or “paddyrollers” as termed by enslaved people, had the power to stop and question a slave for any reason, especially if the latter was travelling without a white person accompanying them. A pass document signed by a master or overseer typically indicated the enslaved person’s business and provided safe passage. Though the pass system was at times subverted by literate slaves who could forge their own passes, it ultimately represented complete control over the bodies and mobility of the vast majority of enslaved people.

Although the physical policing of enslaved bodies was integral to upholding slavery, the deep psychological effect of slave patrols played an additional role. Slave patrols travelled on horseback, and were thus physically placed above eye level. They represented an omnipresent force with sweeping authority conferred by law, which allowed for extensive searches of the person and personal spaces. The darkness of the night took on new meaning as the potential threat of danger was always present anywhere beyond the plantation. In this way, the power of slave patrols exerted itself even in spaces where they were not present.

“Policing in [the U.S.] has always had the dual purpose of maintaining social order and enforcing the racial hierarchy.”

Journalist Salim Muwakkil writes that “policing in [the U.S.] has always had the dual purpose of maintaining social order and enforcing the racial hierarchy.” Muwakkil’s analysis of policing can also be extended to other contexts. For instance, a pass system in Western Canada, put into place in 1885 and lasting for sixty years, confined Indigenous people to reserves, with the goal of stifling access to urban areas and communication with other Indigenous communities. Indigenous people were required to have a pass indicating the reason and duration of the person’s absence approved by the colonial Indian agent on the reserve.

Decades later, racist discriminatory policing is alive and well in major Canadian cities. The practice of carding is a hallmark of Toronto police, whereby individuals, primarily of colour, are stopped and questioned on the street, without charge, and asked for identification that is then entered into a database. The racist policing of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) is also well documented. An internal SPVM report compiled by criminologist Mathieu Charest in the wake of the 2008 police murder of teenager Freddy Villanueva in Montreal North, outlined the extent to which racism was entrenched within the Montreal police. Among incidents cited in the report are officers telling people of colour to “go back to your country,” or even that “we prefer to be colonizers than slaves.”

In the U.S., police brutality is rampant. The recent deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and so many others are only a fraction of a long line of police murders in the country’s past.

Slave patrols not only perpetuated white supremacy, but functioned more specifically to protect the economic interests of the propertied elite, which was then the slaveholding class. Police today continue to brutally carry out the latter role in addition to the former. In Montreal, police consistently use excessive force against explicitly anti-capitalist demonstrators who threaten the current economic system, for instance during protests against tuition hikes or austerity policies, as well as during the city’s yearly marches against police brutality.

What are we to do with this understanding of law enforcement’s past? History does not prescribe a course of action to take, but what is clear is that when state entities are granted vast authority to profile, surveil, and inflict violence upon certain groups of people, a dangerous structural power imbalance is created. It is an imbalance that is difficult to overcome despite the most thorough forms of oversight and accountability. All this is aggravated by the fact that police forces in both Canada and the United States are becoming increasingly militarized with sophisticated weaponry and equipment despite dropping crime rates. As we move forward, an awareness of the police’s past can help us move toward a better understanding of what their future role should be instead.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Policing the racial hierarchy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Pakistan and India are no strangers to bonded labour: various sectors of their economies, such as agriculture, carpet-weaving, mining, tanning, handicraft and glass bangle production, as well as domestic work, are predicated upon it. The Global Slavery Index estimates 14 million enslaved people in India and 2.1 million in Pakistan; along with China, they are the three countries in the world with the highest number of people enslaved.

In Pakistan, specifically in the Punjab and Sindh provinces, over half of the country’s bonded labourers currently find themselves labouring in brick kilns. As journalist Haroon Janjua has highlighted, many are held against a debt and end up living permanently on the kiln. Anti-Slavery International defines bonded labour as a situation where a person’s labour is demanded in the repayment of a loan. Such a person is trapped into a situation where they earn very little or no pay, resulting in an indefinite time of forced labour and often in the passing on of debt to the next generation. Many are children, often sold or loaned by families facing extreme poverty.

Bonded labourers at brick kilns can spend up to 14 hours per day working with dangerous machinery and transporting heavy bricks, surrounded by toxic smoke and the intense heat of the endless burning of coal used to fuel the kilns. Labourers are commonly subjected to violence, sexual harassment, and torture by overseers. Overall, the scenes at brick kilns in India and Pakistan placed side by side with, say, a 19th century Caribbean rice or sugar plantation yield a striking resemblance as similar working conditions and power dynamics play out. Kiln owners essentially control the lives of labourers through violence, rendering escape difficult, if not impossible.

Bonded labourers at brick kilns can spend up to 14 hours per day working with dangerous machinery and transporting heavy bricks, surrounded by toxic smoke and intense heat.

The large presence of children in slavery in South Asia is not a new phenomenon. Historian Richard B. Allen estimates that in the 18th and 19th centuries, 20 to 35 per cent of enslaved people on ships sailing from ports around the Indian Ocean, such as those in Madagascar, Southeast Asia, and East Africa, were children. Moreover, in Children in Slavery Through the Ages, historian Fred Morton explains that a third of children in the 19th century East African slave trade were sold by families in debt, mainly with the death or the absence of parents necessitating the sale.

In plantation-era slavery, however, children did not play the same role as they do in kiln sets in modern South Asia. Throughout circum-Atlantic slavery, children were always widely sought by the planter elite, mainly due to the low life expectancy of enslaved adults and the ease with which children could be controlled. Despite this, they were not as heavily relied on for labour as they are in modern South Asian brick kilns. Today, a quarter of all kiln workers in Pakistan are children, while in India, four-year-olds have been found smashing coal for the kiln fires.

Moreover, unlike in traditional institutions of slavery, the practice of bonded labour, though prevalent, is not currently sanctioned by law. In fact, both India and Pakistan abolished bonded labour through legislative statutes in 1976 and 1992 respectively, and the constitutions of both countries explicitly prohibit forced labour; article 11 of the constitution of Pakistan further asserts that “slavery is non-existent.” In contrast, under chattel slavery regimes such as Ancient Rome or the U.S., the law designated slaves as personal movable property and viewed enslaved women as continual producers of enslaved children through the Roman legal principle of partus sequitur ventrem (“the offspring follows the womb”). Slave status followed the mother and thus defined the child before the child even existed.

As scholar A.B. Maity explains, forced labour in India is a relic of colonialism and feudalism, rooted in the power wielded by landlords over peasants under conditions of land scarcity and only worsened by colonial relations. The system of bonded labour has endured, expanding to other areas, and is sustained today in part by a neoliberal economic policy, introduced in India in 1991 under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. By funneling benefits from economic development to a narrow class, neoliberalism has perpetuated poverty while heavily relying on cheap labour. The brick kiln industry in particular has grown in importance due to ongoing rapid urbanization.

Though existing under different social and legal conditions, the institution of slavery remains alive today. Far from being confined to the past, slavery continues to be a reality for millions around the world.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Labouring for unpayable debt appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It was in the midst of the American slave economy’s 18th century shift from a central cash crop of tobacco to cotton that Whitney invented the cotton gin. This device rapidly separated the seeds from picked cotton, decreasing processing time by a factor of fifty and accelerating the highly labour intensive and slow process of planting, cultivating, and picking cotton. Faster processing meant more cotton could be shipped, and with foreign demand rising, use of the cotton gin became widespread among planters. Cotton productionthereby increased exponentially, as did the demand for slave labour in the Lower Mississippi Valley. The impact was immense – the number of enslaved people would swell from 700,000 in 1790 to 4,000,000 by the dawn of the American Civil War in 1860. As slavery became even more firmly entrenched in the American South, the economic and political powerhouse of the “Cotton Kingdom” took root.

With Enlightenment ideas travelling across the world, Whitney was not alone in plucking what could be assumed to be the harmless fruits of human ingenuity. By 1811, engineer Robert Fulton had designed and launched the New Orleans steamboat – a vessel never before seen on the waters of the Mississippi. For the first time, steam-powered boats could go up, instead of just down, the crucial Mississippi river, which fed into New Orleans, a focal point of the transatlantic slave trade. Steamboats literally raced up and down the waterway, as historian Walter Johnson recounts in River of Dark Dreams, frantically transporting cotton from the Mississippi Valley to the bustling market in New Orleans. Upriver, the lands that were previously thought to be too far from the market suddenly became viable places to have plantations, as steamboats could now deliver agricultural goods.

The history of technology and slavery helps debunk the myth that innovation can be disconnected from violence exacted upon oppressed people.

The American Empire was ascending as the unprecedented cotton boom rattled across the world by the 1830s, but different minds continued to devise ways that would make the Cotton Kingdom more efficient. After careful experimentation, a hybrid genetic strain of cotton named Petit Gulf was created. This strain of cotton hardened the already gruelling work regime of enslaved people. According to Johnson, not only did Petit Gulf resist cotton rot and produce finer fibres, it also grew in a variety of climates and soils, bloomed earlier, which lengthened the picking season, and was easier to pick quickly, thereby almost quadrupling the daily workload of enslaved adults.

Today, we tend to think of technological innovation as a universal social good – rapid technological change is often touted as a great benefit of capitalism. The history of technology and slavery helps debunk the myth that innovation can be disentangled and disconnected from violence exacted upon oppressed people.

Recent technological development in the areas of transportation and communication have made it possible to globalize production, displacing labourers and driving down wages.

Take, for example, Apple and Samsung’s ever-evolving consumer electronics, the unparalleled convenience of which is in such high demand that production can scarcely keep up. At the Foxconn factories in China that manufacture the companies’ products, people work 12 hours per day for weeks without rest, and do hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime. Exploitation of children is also rampant. These abhorrent working conditions have led to a wave of suicides in recent years, with workers jumping from the windows of the factories at the Foxconn City Industrial Park.

The trope of the pioneering captain of industry fearlessly driving society forward deeply pervades the modern consciousness. But between glorifying the likes of E. I. du Pont, Steve Jobs, and Henry Ford, something important gets lost: the potentially brutal legacy and human impact of technological ideas like those exemplified by Whitney, Fulton, and others. We should remember, then, that for all that technology brings to the world, it comes at an unjustifiable cost to those most deeply oppressed by the capitalist system of production.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post The human cost of innovation appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It was eight months after being kidnapped by slave catchers, in what is now Nigeria, before the young Olaudah Equiano caught sight of the towering slave ship that would transport him across the Atlantic Ocean. According to his 1789 autobiography, he was “greatly astonished,” and was quickly convinced that he “was in a world of bad spirits.”

He was somewhat right in his assessment. An Atlantic slave ship was certainly a site of human suffering and depravity, but it was equally a place of defiant resistance – the type that forces us to pause when reflecting on resistance in the world today.

The scene below the decks of a slave ship was a grisly one. Captured people lay shackled and packed tightly side by side in small compartments. Equiano, whose autobiography was the first published account of the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas and was widely read across Europe, described the conditions on the ship that carried him.

“The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome […] now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate […] almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspiration, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness amongst the slaves, of which many died.”

“This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains […] and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole scene of horror almost inconceivable.”

All this was the backdrop to the disorientation and grief amongst the captured. Siblings, parents, children, and friends had been left behind. The familiarity of community quickly became a faded memory as strange white men yelled and gestured unintelligibly while brandishing all manner of weaponry. What world had they entered?

It was from this nightmare that the ethic of slave resistance precariously emerged. As American historian Marcus Rediker desribes in his book The Slave Ship: A Human History, finding a means of communication was key. Enslaved people quickly created pidgins – temporary, makeshift languages – to bridge the linguistic divides amongst the diverse array of West African languages on board. These pidgins gave birth to new ties of kinship, and laid the foundations for coordinated resistance.

The hunger strike was one tactic employed consistently throughout the transatlantic slave trade. Already intensely malnourished, enslaved people spat out food, at times refusing to eat for days at a time. The hunger strike was an act that directly challenged a captain’s authority by re-asserting enslaved people’s own agency and snatching back their humanity. The slave ship captain was suddenly faced with a stark choice: to change the treatment of those onboard, or suffer a loss of ‘capital.’

Others, however, engaged in the most dangerous and risky act of all – violent insurrection, which involved numerous hazardous steps: surreptitious late-night planning, escaping from shackles, somehow using knives (or nothing at all) to battle sailors armed with muskets, all in the hopes of reaching the weapons locker (deliberately located on the far end of the vessel) and taking control of the ship.

These modes of struggle are even more astounding given that the slave trade was designed in every way to prevent resistance of any kind. A physical barrier divided the centre of the ship and a cannon constantly faced slave quarters. Fetters, clasps, neck rings, chains, spikes, and other purposely built technological objects were routinely used to constrain and torture enslaved people. Yet, they consistently resisted in the face of this hell, and often in violent ways.

Today, the prevailing paradigm sees violent resistance as unseemly – too confrontational and direct for even the most liberal sensitivities. While few would condemn enslaved people for their resistance, modern liberal rhetoric demands that oppressed people protest in ‘the right way,’ engage in ‘constructive dialogue,’ and generally follow the tricky doctrine of nonviolence, even in the face of violent oppression.

This optic encourages, for example, one to admonish Ferguson protesters for destroying property and Black Lives Matter activists for disruptive tactics, while in the same breath remaining silent on the social misery brought about by the militarized police and the carceral state, or the legacy of segregation in the Jim Crow South and a hundred years of Klan lynchings. It is language that both binds and forgets, that dictates and condescends.

Although the paradigm of respectability and non-violence may seem reasonable at first glance, in reality, it simply draws a line around permissible forms of resistance in order to fit the needs of those who oppress, and ease the insecurities of those who sit idly by as blatant injustice unfolds. They tell oppressed people to wait for their oppressors to benevolently recognize their humanity. In this way, to demand that resistance be acceptable to the liberal framework is to demand that people set aside their intrinsic agency and inherent right to self-determination.

The history of slavery reveals that resistance is an organic and bottum-up process that does not wait for recognition. It is spurred on by those who are most acutely aware of the particular web of injustice that they are entangled in, and who thus know the best way out. To try and dictate how people resist, then, is to misunderstand the nature of the act itself.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Atlantic World and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Defiance on deck appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Human beings were enslaved in Canada. I just have to say it bluntly, because most Canadians either forget, ignore, or simply do not know that this took place. Canadians get lost in seductive legends like the Underground Railroad and the ‘rescuing’ of Black loyalists from the American Revolution, and all the enticing and comforting rhetorical power that comes with them. We need to come to terms with the reality of what Canada is – a country whose national consciousness has managed to erase the fact that over some 200 years, the lives and labour of thousands of Indigenous and Black people were stolen by white settlers.

This national erasure means many things. For one, it means that we forget the real experiences of enslavement as well as the practical realities of how slavery operated in Canada. However, it also means that we must pull back the curtain on our tendency to weave artificial myths about who we are as a nation.

One such myth is that slavery in Canada was “kinder and gentler” than in other parts of the world. To debunk this, it is useful to recall the story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved woman in Montreal.

With a burning city at her back and flames lighting up the night sky, Angélique ran down cobblestone streets for her life and freedom on an April night in 1734 – though, like many fugitive slaves, she was quickly caught. Accused of starting a fire in her mistress’s home that spread to 45 other houses, she was promptly jailed and repeatedly tortured until she ultimately confessed to the act under duress. A court judgement sealed her fate:

“She shall make amends naked in her shirt, with a rope about her neck, holding a burning torch in front of the main entrance to the parish church of the city of Montreal. […] There, bareheaded and kneeling, shall declare that she maliciously set and caused the said fire for which she grievously repents and begs forgiveness from God, after which she shall have her hand cut off and raised on a post planted in front of said church, and then be conducted to the public square, to be attached to the post with an iron chain and burned alive, her body reduced to ashes and scattered to the winds.”

Though perhaps an exceptional case, this historical moment represents the very core of Canadian slavery: a process of colonial white domination, rooted in a voracious capitalist greed, seeking constantly to dehumanize and commodify the ‘other,’ while premised always on the implied threat of violence or its actual use.

This is what nearly 4,200 slaves in Canada experienced – a figure which, according to historian Marcel Trudel, almost certainly underestimates the true number of enslaved people. Mid-17th century settlers first argued for the ownership of slaves in Lower Canada for agricultural production, domestic service, and home defence, which the French monarchy recognized in 1689 by royal decree. Though a plantation economy never developed in Canada, chiefly due to climate, the lives and experiences of enslaved peoples were profoundly similar to their counterparts around the transatlantic world.

The French Code noir of 1685, the comprehensive slave law of the French Caribbean, was informally applied in Canada by shaping local practices related to punishment and legal status. After the 1689 royal decree, the first Canadian slave ordinance of 1709, an enslaved person in Canada, such as any one of the 1,525 in Montreal, was considered to be personal property. They, just like an enslaved individual from Barbados, Haiti, or the Thirteen Colonies, could be bought and sold at public auctions in Montreal and Quebec City, serve as security for debts, be loaned or rented through contracts, and inherited through wills and estates. Through the cold, ruthless and abstract fiction of the law, human beings were reduced to “movable property.” Charmaine Nelson, a scholar of the transatlantic slave trade and Mcgill professor, explained in our interview that “a slave was essentially like a table or any other moveable personal property. The law not only made it so it was actually impossible for a slaveowner to rape their slave – because one cannot rape property – but incentivized rape and sexual exploitation, given that any children born to an enslaved female were themselves slaves regardless of the race or status of the father.”

Demographically, slavery in Canada involved more Indigenous people than Black people – a full 65 per cent of all enslaved, according to Trudel – who hailed mainly from the Mississippi valley trade routes, but also from the Great Lakes, the western territories beyond Lake Superior, and the northern territories. Many were from the Pawnee nation near Kansas and Missouri, which over time inspired “Panis,” a catch-all term for enslaved Indigenous people in Canada. Canadian colonization was not simply a process of appropriating Indigenous land and violently displacing peoples, but also of exploiting Indigenous people’s bodies and their labour.

An intimately public enterprise, slavery in Canada was linked to several iconic public institutions. Here in Montreal, the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, the General Hospital, several priests and bishops, the canonized saint and founder of the Grey Nuns of Montreal Marguerite d’Youville, governors Charles and Paul-Joseph LeMoyne de Longueuil, and merchant James McGill all owned slaves.

To my knowledge, no physical commemoration of these facts exists. Instead, a nondescript government building and a public square in Old Montreal now bear the name of Place d’Youville. Longueuil is the name of a suburb on Montreal’s south shore. Charles-LeMoyne is a hospital, and McGill is a university, which, both insultingly and defiantly, insists on placing the statue of its slave-owning founder at its entrance for all to see.

Still, Canada has many other difficult histories. The internment of German and Japanese people; the Chinese head tax and the immigrants who toiled and died on the national railroad; the horror of residential schools; and the 1869 Métis Red River Rebellion are only some of the histories which directly confront, interrupt, and frustrate the adoption of commonly propagated Canadian tropes of a supposedly harmonious, multicultural, and peaceful nation. Like these moments, the history of slavery in Canada is erased and repressed from the popular consciousness.

What does this erasure mean as we approach 2017, the date upon which we are told to celebrate 150 years of Canada? I believe it means slave narratives and history must no longer be what Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke has properly called “a silently painful wound, an anthology of the unspeakable that cannot enter into our anthologies.”

The self-congratulating parades, celebrations, and public monuments will not reflect what Canada has been and where it should go, but our conversations can. To be of any use, these conversations and debates must go beyond blithe gesturing to ‘sad chapters of Canada’s past’ and must be more than an exercise in national myth-making. Perhaps by venturing instead into the uncertain terrain of uncomfortable truths can we truly wrestle with the historical injustices so foundational to this country. Perhaps it is only there, with all the unsteadiness that comes with bearing witness to the past, that we can imagine a new national project that truly respects everyone’s humanity.

Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Our myths, our country appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The new food operation will serve salads, soups, pizza, burgers, french fries, sandwiches and more. Burgers and sandwiches cost between $6.75 and $8.50, depending on the toppings, while soup and salads run in the $3 to $4 range. Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP Finance and Operation Zacheriah Houston explained that the food will be affordable, underscoring that the mission of the SRC is “to provide high-quality meals at an affordable price.” However, McGill meal plans are not accepted.

The decision for a new student-run food service follows a mandate set out by a motion passed at SSMU Council in March. Confidentially discussed, the motion resolved that “the SSMU remove all commercial tenant activity in the University Centre,” in an effort to “prioritize student endeavours above any other taken up in the SSMU space.”

At the moment, however, the extent to which this motion will be implemented is unclear. SSMU VP Clubs & Services Kimber Bialik explained to The Daily that “the motion had no established timeline outlined when it was originally passed,” and that “any plans for logistics or implementation would also need to be reviewed and discussed by Council prior to making any decisions.”

With regards to commercial activity in the Shatner Building and the corporatization of campus in general, Bialik said she would not be able to comment at this time.

Houston argued that the new initiative has both positive and negative financial consequences. In an email to The Daily, Houston explained, “The removal of the second-floor commercial tenants had an unfavourable impact on the building budget, as it resulted in decreased revenue. In February, ‘business rent’ was budgeted for $216,000 in revenue. Now, in the July revision of the 2015-16 budget, it is budgeted for only $145,000 in revenue.” Still, Houston believes that the decrease can be offset by revenue generated from the new food operation, which is budgeted to earn a profit of $64,000.

“It allows us to be a more tight-knit community, it allows us to give things to students, allows us to improve.”

Edward McCrady, a cashier among the approximately 35 staff members which include Gerts kitchen staff, welcomed another student-run food initiative on campus. “It allows us to be a more tight-knit community, it allows us to give things to students, allows us to improve,” McCrady told The Daily.

On implementing the SSMU Council resolution and removing the remaining commercial tenants, McCready argued that “as long as they’re good business, I wouldn’t say anything about having them removed. As long as they’re making money for SSMU and McGill, and being successful businesses that provide students with healthy options and cheap options, that’s good.”

According to information from a presentation to Council by last year’s VP Finance and Operations Kathleen Bradley, commercial tenants account for approximately 86 per cent of annual sales in the building. Now that Bocadillo and Bamboo Bowl have left the Shatner Building, La Prep (approximately 55 per cent of annual sales) and Liquid Nutrition (approximately 8 per cent of all sales) are the only commercial tenants left, excluding the vending machines.

Jonathan Taylor, the owner of Liquid Nutrition, when asked about the place of private commercial activity in student-run spaces, said, “Franchises like ours have a lot to offer. […] I think it would be a shame if we [were] pushed out.”

“At the end of the day, people like diversity. […] If you force something on somebody, you’re going to end up with a pretty empty building […]; that’s my gut feeling,” Taylor said.

Taylor would like to renew Liquid Nutrition’s lease, which expires in June 2016, but has yet to begin negotiations with the incoming SSMU executive. La Prep’s lease is also set to expire in June.

For now, the future of the SRC remains unclear. Given that the renovation of the second floor of the Shatner building “required a significant capital investment,” Houston “would like the SRC to remain for the foreseeable future.”

Houston noted that ultimately, “as is the case with all other SSMU projects, the future of the SRC is still contingent upon positive feedback from students and the financial feasibility of the cafe.”

The post Student-run cafeteria replaces Bocadillo appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Held on March 10 and organized by the Centre for Gender Advocacy as part of its Thick Skin event series on race, gender, and political resistance, the panel discussed the connections between police violence in Palestine and in Canada and the U.S..

This was done by inviting the unique perspectives of three activists – Nargess Mustapha, activist from the Montréal-Nord Républik collective; Ahmad Abuznaid, a co-founder of the Miami-based Dream Defenders; and Cherrell Brown, from the juvenile and criminal justice advocacy organization Justice League NYC.

Two of the event’s organizers, Talia Joundi, a law student at McGill, and Maya Rolbin-Ghanie, from the Centre for Gender Advocacy, introduced the event and explained the importance of drawing parallels between these different experiences.

Joundi noted that “making the connection to people in North America is important to make the lived reality of Palestinians more understandable.”

Rolbin-Ghanie added, “We are by no means saying the struggle is the same – the differences need to be respected. But there are definitely parallels between who the police is profiling and what kinds of colonial mentality are produced by the police in general.”

As the audience filled the Moot Court room in Chancellor Day Hall, some were excited to learn practical skills.

“I came to increase my knowledge of racial profiling and get some tactics to apply to my own life,” explained U1 Biology student Alice Salim.

Others came out of curiosity. “I was in Ferguson in the fall, and saw the early solidarity with Palestinians,” explained Julie Norman, professor in the Department of Political Science, whose research focuses in part on prisoner resistance and prison and detention policies in Palestine.

“Though they are different contexts, there are definitely similar situations in terms of mass arrests, mass incarceration, profiling certain populations, difficult interrogation tactics, and the pressure to confess for a lighter sentence. All these things are very similar,” commented Norman.
Mustapha, speaking in French with live translation, began by discussing the difficult realities faced by Montreal North residents, saying that “police harassment and racial profiling [are] a part of everyday life.”

Mustapha next discussed how the murder of Freddy Villanueva in 2008 – who was shot by Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) officer Jean-Loup Lapointe, who confronted Villenueva and his friends as they were playing dice in Parc Henri-Bourassa – was an example of the worst of the SPVM’s practice of profiling in minority communities.

“In 2010, the internal SPVM report by criminologist Mathieu Charest, which La Presse acquired, showed how common [racial profiling] is,” said Mustapha. “Since 2001, identity checks in Montreal North had gone up by 126 per cent. In 2006 and 2007, 30 to 40 per cent of young black men were being stopped and frisked, while non-racialized Montrealers were stopped and frisked at a rate of 5 per cent.”

Brown spoke next, discussing state violence by sharing stories from a recent trip to Palestine with members of Black Lives Matter – a movement dedicated to combatting racist police violence against black people – and emphasizing the power of social media in sharing tactics.

“That’s the beauty of social media, we have people in another country [who] some folks in Ferguson [have] never heard of, but these are the people tweeting us and telling us how to survive this occupation right now, [with advice like] ‘walk with the wind and not against it,’ or ‘use milk of magnesia and not water when tear-gassed,’” Brown explained.

Having witnessed police brutality and profiling in Palestine firsthand, Brown stressed, “We have to imagine safety and security for ourselves. […] We must imagine something entirely different for ourselves and our children. It will probably be our greatest art project – to imagine a truly liberated world, outside of the scope, definitions, and parameters given to us by our oppressors.”

Next, Abuznaid shared his personal story of returning to Palestine, his birthplace, and rediscovering his roots after a childhood in the U.S..

“At Ben Gurion airport, I was seven years old, and we were taken to a back room where myself and my mother were strip-searched,” Abuznaid recalled. “There were guns and military soldiers everywhere. Immediately, alarms went off in my head that something was not right.”

A lively question and answer period followed, covering the problem of charismatic male leaders in movements, attitudes toward violent resistance, and the on-campus mobilization for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to increase pressures on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory.

After a standing ovation at the event’s conclusion, one student, beaming, told The Daily, “It was absolutely amazing. I loved it.”

The post Police violence from Ferguson to Palestine appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Current state of affairs

The ‘tough on crime’ agenda is increasingly becoming a central pillar of governments around the world. Its central aim is to use harsh punishments that put people away for as long as possible, which allegedly functions to deter crime. Governments often deploy this strategy for its political attractiveness. Pass draconian crime bills, jack up sentences, and voilà, the streets are now magically safe. Meanwhile, crime prevention, rehabilitation of prisoners, and dealing with the underlying causes of crime are all just funny ideas best left to academics and policy experts.

Mandatory minimum sentencing works in a very simple way. When someone reaches the sentencing process, the law replaces the judge in determining what an appropriate sentence should be. This form of sentencing thus forces a judge’s hand in administering a sentence for a time no less than a minimum amount stipulated by the law – that is even if, according to their judgement and experience, the judge believes that the guilty party deserves less than what is prescribed.

One of three forms of mandatory minimum sentences are typically employed. The first is the most rigid, as it allows no discretion for judges to go above or below the mandatory minimum. The second permits judges to go above the minimum, and the third – and most flexible – allows judges to go below in exceptional circumstances. In an interview with The Daily, Raji Mangat, a human rights lawyer and the author of a report for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) called “More Than We Can Afford: The Costs of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing,” explained that, “Among comparable jurisdictions, Canada is the only country that does not provide judges with any residual discretion to sentencing below a minimum sentence. Our minimum sentences are truly mandatory. Judges are forced to either sentence to at least the minimum, or to find the sentencing provision unconstitutional.” The BCCLA also found that the use of this practice is now at an all-time high in our criminal justice system, with “the number of offences attracting a mandatory minimum sentence jumping from 29 to 50 since 1999.”

In light of all this, one might think that we are in fact living in an unprecedented era of crime. One where danger lurks around every corner and where criminals roam free to wreak all manner of havoc on our unsuspecting and law-abiding citizens. Thankfully, the picture is quite different and not nearly as grim.

Bad public policy

In 2013, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, a branch of Statistics Canada, reported that the crime rate (i.e., crime reported to police) is in fact at its lowest rate since 1972. This includes violent crime and a host of offences ranging from armed robbery to youth crime. The report also found that that the Crime Severity Index (CSI), which measures volume and severity of crime, has decreased for the tenth straight year and is 36 per cent lower than a decade ago. Though crime statistics are not always the be-all, end-all of determining the true level of criminality due to underreporting, it does indicate a general trend that crime is falling. Yet, amid the drop in crime rates, mandatory minimum sentencing has been skyrocketing.

Today, Canada is second in the world (surpassed only by the U.S.) for the number of offences that attract mandatory minimum sentences. Most recently, the 2012 passing of the Safe Streets and Communities Act (SSCA), a sweeping and extensive overhaul of Canadian criminal law, indicates that our criminal justice system is becoming even more punitive. This is a worrying development, particularly in light of the fact that mandatory minimum sentencing is a policy that does not work.

The most basic flaw with mandatory minimum sentences is that they do not achieve their stated purpose of reducing crime. A 2003 review looked at the tired question of whether harsher sentences reduce crime rates in Western populations. It concluded that there is no evidence that sentence severity has an impact on crime rates. Furthermore, there is evidence that long periods of incarceration actually increase the odds of previously sentenced people to commit another crime. After thirty years of academic study on the question, and mountains of evidence, the study also stressed that it must be accepted that the sentence-severity-crime nexus is a mirage, and that it is time to move forward in aggressively challenging its use in justifying bad crime legislation.

Legalized discrimination

Indigenous people and those who struggle with addiction are disproportionately impacted by mandatory minimums in what basically amounts to legalized discrimination. According to the BCCLA report, as of February 2013, 23 per cent of the federal prison population was Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, or Inuit), despite Indigenous people making up just over 4 per cent of the Canadian population. This drastic overrepresentation is even more dire for Indigenous women, who represent a full 33 per cent of all female prisoners.

This phenomenon is the result of racist and discriminatory colonial practices as well as ongoing discriminatory policies toward Indigenous people, which have led to low levels of education, employment, and income, as well as substandard housing and healthcare. Policies such as measures of control and assimilation, which were intended to terminate Indigenous culture, included the theft of land, non-fulfillment of treaties, forced relocation, attacks on traditional culture, systemic neglect and paternalism, the Indian Act, and an abusive residential school policy, which has caused intergenerational trauma. These are just a few acknowledged by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

Mangat explained to The Daily that Indigenous prisoners experience incarceration differently. “Aboriginal [people] experience prison disproportionately adversely than other offenders. An Aboriginal person is more likely to be classified as high risk, to be denied parole, placed in solitary confinement and in maximum security, and to be involved in use of force incidents and incidents of prison self-injury.” Professor Marie Manikis, who teaches criminal law at McGill’s Faculty of Law, explained to The Daily that “studies on systemic racism and discrimination have found that for similar offences, in similar circumstances, Aboriginal offenders are more likely to be sentenced more harshly by the criminal justice system.” She adds that for Indigenous people, “it was made clear that imprisonment should be the last sentencing option, and that alternative options need to be prioritized.”

Section 718.2(e) of the Canadian Criminal Code, which outlines principles of sentencing, requires judges to give “special attention to Aboriginal offenders.” However, the Canadian mandatory sentence regime prevents judges from giving the special consideration to Aboriginals, that they are required by law to give, during the sentencing process. In an interview with The Daily, University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach explained that “mandatory sentences by definition hurt and do not fit the circumstances of more sympathetic offenders including Aboriginal offenders.” Instead, the link between a history of discrimination and their criminality is conveniently erased, as Indigenous prisoners are quickly whisked away despite their unique circumstances.

Furthermore, mandatory minimum sentencing is increasingly capturing non-violent drug offences. This can have harmful consequences for those who suffer from addiction, such as increasing drug dependency. Brent, an individual who has been in and out of jail for the last decade, explained this concept in a report called “The human and social cost of mandatory minimum sentence” by Pivot, a Canadian legal society which attempts to fight poverty and social exclusion. “I’m a little surprised at the whole system. Didn’t they recognize addiction for what it is? Why is there never any intervention? Are they just happy giving them jail sentences and when the time is up, releasing them back to themselves?” He added that, “jail aggravates the situation and it reinforces itself. The addict starts believing they deserve it. After a while they believe they deserve to be jailed and there is no hope. It reinforces the addictive behaviour when there is no mechanism in place to help them with their disease.”

One can hardly imagine the impact on the 20,000 children whose mothers are torn away from them every year in Canada by the far-reaching hands of incarceration.

Crippling costs

Mandatory minimum sentencing carries even larger and more damaging human and social costs – for instance, on children and families. The BCCLA found that “when parents are incarcerated, their children are negatively affected not only in the immediate term due to the loss of a parent in their lives, but also in more complex and long-term ways that influence whether or not they are likely to become offenders themselves.” One can hardly imagine the impact on the 20,000 children whose mothers are torn away from them every year in Canada by the far-reaching hands of incarceration. Research by Shimica Gaskins for the Georgetown University Law Center suggests that these children are more prone to withdrawal symptoms, low self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, and aggressive tendencies. How do we measure the cost of the harm and pain that is caused? Are we prepared to pay it as a society?

Mandatory minimums have an especially harmful impact on family environments with female heads of household or a single mother. In their report, Pivot interviewed a woman named Jacqueline who explained that “one reason it is hard to go to jail is, if you are a parent, you get separated from your kids. They go to a social service foster home. So your kids get traumatized by that, it’s a life experience that can’t be reversed.”

In addition to the skyrocketing social costs, the economic cost of mandatory minimum sentencing is prohibitively high. The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) analyzed a small portion of the SSCA and estimated increased costs of $156 million, of which the federal government will only pay $7.9 million, leaving already-indebted provinces to pay the rest. Due to the overwhelming number of other changes in the bill, in addition to the government refusing to provide the agency with information, the PBO concluded that the final costs of the entire act are difficult to predict.

There is, however, another cost. Not only is money wasted on a policy that doesn’t even reduce crime, but as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) explains, money is also diverted away from policies that do efficiently diminish crime. The CCPA explains that these funds would more effective if they were spent on investment in employment, education, public housing, addictions treatment, and mental health support services – all social services thathave been proven to reduce crime.

Manifested injustice

Mandatory minimums also open the door to serious errors in the judicial process. The practice violates long-held Canadian principles of sentencing. The Canadian Criminal Code explains that sentencing and punishment must reflect two components: gravity of the offence and the moral blameworthiness of the offender. The Supreme Court recently clarified this in the case R. v. Ipeelee, explaining that a fair punishment is one that “reflects both perspectives on proportionality and does not elevate one at the expense of the other.”

Mandatory minimums, however, run roughshod over these principles. Manikis explained that “the removal of judicial discretion to the judge can be extremely harmful since it does not provide judges with sufficient latitude to assess the moral blameworthiness of the offender or specific circumstances of the offence and offender. Mitigating factors that are hugely important in sentencing might therefore not be given adequate weight which creates disproportionate and unduly harsh sentences.” Ultimately, what results is a highly punitive system that casts aside the unique individual circumstances of every offender and imposes punishments that rarely fit the crime.

Yet perhaps the vilest element of mandatory minimums is the distortion of the plea bargaining process. Plea bargaining is where the accused and the crown prosecutor reach an agreement for a lesser charge in exchange for an admission of guilt, thereby avoiding a trial. This process is distorted, however, when the accused is induced into pleading guilty to a lesser charge for the sole reason of avoiding the potential risk of receiving a much longer mandatory minimum sentence. The frequent occurrence of this process denies individuals justice and creates an extreme power imbalance between the accused and the state. Justice is denied because the lurking mandatory minimum ratchets up the cost of having their guilt determined in court. Individuals with children, unstable housing situations, or precarious job, simply cannot afford the luxury of having a trial and losing. So when they are shoved into a corner by the state, they face the inconceivable choice between admitting guilt to a charge without a trial or taking the risk of defending themselves knowing they could be slapped with a mandatory minimum.

The extreme power imbalance this creates is exactly how the system is designed to work. Osgoode Hall law professor and leading criminal lawyer Dianne L. Martin explains as much in a 2001 article for the Osgoode Law Journal. She writes that “fewer than 10 to 20 per cent of all cases proceed to a contested trial” and the legal argument in the Nur case adds that “nothing encourages guilty pleas more than the potential for a mandatory minimum sentence.” Michelle Alexander, author of the seminal book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindless, also confirms this. Her sweeping study reveals that “the pressure to plea-bargain and thereby ‘convict yourself’ in exchange for some kind of leniency is not an accidental by-product of the mandatory sentencing regime.” She cites the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which explains that “the value of a mandatory minimum sentence lies not in its imposition, but in its value as a bargaining chip to be given away in return for the resource-saving plea from the defendant to a more leniently sanctioned charge.” All the while, this plea bargaining process eliminates the possibility having an individual’s guilt or innocence assessed before a court.

Finally, this process also transfers huge amounts of power from the hands of judges to crown prosecutors. Roach explained to The Daily that “for some offences, mandatory minimums can make the prosecutor the de facto sentencer and increase their leverage in plea bargaining.” Alexander explains that “prosecutors hold all the power as they can force people to plead guilty, and they routinely admit that they charge people with crimes for which they technically have probable cause, but seriously doubt they could win in court.” Moreover, Mangat explains that “this distortion raises the spectre of wrongful conviction, leaves constitutional safeguards in the hands of decision-makers whose conduct is nearly beyond review, and removes the sentencing process from open court to a plea negotiated behind closed doors.”

Indigenous people and those who struggle with addiction are disproportionately impacted by mandatory minimums in what basically amounts to legalized discrimination.

The future of mandatory minimum sentences

The Canadian Constitution can be quite a confusing thing. Understanding it fully is similar to playing Scrabble in a foreign language with a pack of rabid and highly literate talking hyenas: nerve-wracking, to say the least. For the most part, there are written and unwritten elements. For starters, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a central written document that forms part of the Canadian Constitution. Since 1982, it has guaranteed, protected, and limited the political and civil rights of all citizens. The Supreme Court of Canada is charged with enforcing the Charter, and the Court is empowered to overturn and declare unconstitutional Parliament laws.

For the most part, constitutional challenges of mandatory minimums have been rare. Most recently, however, opponents of the mandatory minimum regime have taken to challenging its constitutionality in the courts. Two recent Supreme Court cases, Charles and Nur, argue that these sentences violate section 12 of the Charter, the right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, as well as section 7, the right to life, liberty, and security of the person. The Court has often had an ambiguous and high standard on what constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” thus making it hard to successfully argue for the repeal of mandatory minimums under section 12. In this way, the Nur and Charles cases are unique in that they directly ask the court to clearly define and lower the standard for section 12, as well as articulate how section 7 (life, liberty, and security of the person) is affected. Mangat explains that “the Nur and Charles cases provide the Supreme Court of Canada with a long-overdue and very important opportunity to clarify the legal analysis required to test the constitutionality of a mandatory minimum sentence. The Court has an opportunity in these cases to explain the relationship between mandatory sentencing regimes and proportionality in sentencing as the fundamental principle of sentencing.” With an opportunity to pave the way for future legal challenges, or possibly even to categorically strike down mandatory minimum sentencing, the court’s decision could be a watershed moment for criminal justice reform.

Moreover, legal experts seeking criminal justice reform are preparing other court challenges and eyeing other parts of the Charter to challenge this sentencing regime. For example, they argue that it violates equality rights (in section 15) because of its disproportionate impact on people who are already vulnerable and subject to prejudice. With the Conservative majority government in Ottawa, Parliament is increasingly becoming an obsolete arena for bringing about meaningful criminal justice reform. Instead, the battle over the future of mandatory minimum sentencing will take place in the long and slow grind of the court system.

Mandatory minimum sentences are a stark indicator of the crisis we are currently facing in the Canadian criminal justice system. Rather than build a system based on values of fairness, rehabilitation and compassion we are turning towards a model which calls for more and more punishment. Amidst a time of decreasing crime rates, successive governments have been increasing the use of mandatory minimum punishments. Yet, the evidence and experts have been screaming that this regime is not only bad public policy in that it fails to reduce crime, but also that it is socially harmful, expensive and unjust. All the while, under the guise of ‘law and order,’ our society’s most vulnerable are being rounded up and locked away. Still, the fight to roll back these harmful sentences has already begun. Though it may be a long and difficult one, riddled with obstacles and challenges, it is an important one. And for justice to truly mean something in this country, it is not a fight we can afford to lose.

The post Mandatory minimums, maximum harm appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It is telling that the “no” campaign never even remotely intended to debate the motion calling on SSMU to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Under the guise of “Don’t Divide McGill,” students were encouraged – even told – to keep their mouths firmly shut. The “no” campaign assumed that university-educated students could not be expected to vigorously debate a sensitive and pressing subject in a civilized way. Fearing the sensibilities that would be offended by mere discussion of the topic, appeals to suppress freedom of expression rang out merrily across campus.

It is hard to imagine a campaign that is more degrading to McGill students. But the beauty of freedom of expression is that it protects the spread of all ideas, save for those that promote violence or hatred. Despite the absurdity and deceitfulness of their claims, the “no” campaign and all students opposed to the motion fully deserved the freedom to express themselves as they saw fit. At the GA, however, those finding themselves on the ‘wrong’ side of the motion were denied that same right.

Was it fair that an organized movement successfully suppressed the right to free speech so fundamental to a university campus?

The very purpose of the GA is to give all students a voice. The decision to indefinitely postpone the motion denied them exactly that. Students who sought to put forward arguments for and against the motion were denied. Curious students who came to hear different viewpoints were denied. This denial occurred simply because the question at hand was deemed by some to be too ‘touchy’ or ‘divisive.’

It is clear that based on the support for the “no” side, the motion would not have been adopted regardless. Defeating the motion on its merits was not the purpose of those who sought to impose their will to silence the minority. The purpose was to send a message: there is a line that is not to be crossed. Students should not even attempt to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You just shouldn’t. We will strip you of your rights to speak and express yourself, if that’s what it takes. We will stop at nothing to silence all dissenting voices. That message was sent loud and clear.

Regardless, in a time where political leaders fail us, it is the duty of youth to stand up and unleash their diverse voices for all to hear – particularly when it concerns the state of an oppressed people. Yet as some brave students stood humbly with their motion in hand and voices at the ready, the crushing weight of censorship struck a blow to their right to expression. They were muzzled simply because they had views that didn’t align with the prevailing tide of public opinion on campus. They were denied the opportunity to speak because they dared to make their views public and attempted to debate them in an official way. The small faction of students who orchestrated this deliberate violation of freedom of expression, as well as every single individual who voted in favour of postponement, have degraded this freedom’s value on campus. They have demonstrated their contempt for opposing ideas and their cowardice toward debate. Their actions are an embarrassment to the values a university should espouse.

There will no doubt be people who scoff at this and suggest that the rules of order for the GA formed a sound basis for indefinite postponement. They are wrong. We as a student body have no obligation to blindly follow rules that undermine our freedom of expression.

Indeed, the act of silencing a dissenting minority also runs afoul of the principles that the Supreme Court of Canada has enshrined in our constitutional law. In R v. Keegstra, a seminal freedom of speech case in Canada, the court explained, “Attempts to confine the guarantee of free expression only to content which is judged to possess redeeming value or to accord with the accepted values strike at the very essence of the value of the freedom. […] If the guarantee of free expression is to be meaningful, it must protect expression which challenges even the very basic conceptions about our society.”

There will no doubt be people who scoff at this and suggest that the rules of order for the GA formed a sound basis for indefinite postponement. They are wrong. We as a student body have no obligation to blindly follow rules that undermine our freedom of expression. Indeed, as the great Martin Luther King once said from the dark shadows of a Birmingham jail, “An unjust law is no law at all.”

The act of indefinitely postponing the motion in question was a grave and most reprehensible violation of the freedom of expression of students at the GA. It insulted the very premise of democracy on campus. I, along with many other students on campus, refuse to accept this. I refuse to be silenced for views that I am legitimately entitled to hold and express. I refuse to be told to sit down, shut up, and go home, because someone disagrees with my ideas. However, in the wake of the GA, many students are left with nothing but the deafening sound of silence. In the meantime, I ask students to have faith. For the celebrated King also told us that “no lie can live forever” because “truth crushed to earth, will rise again.”

Nadir Khan is a U3 Political Science student. To contact him, please email nadir.khan2@mail.mcgill.ca.

[gview file=”https://www.mcgilldaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Protocol-Vote-No.pdf”]

The post Organizing against free speech appeared first on The McGill Daily.