It was announced in December that Ollivier Dyens’ will not pursue a second term as McGill University’s Deputy Provost Student Life and Learning. After his now-infamous “hygiene de vie” comments, there has been renewed interest in the state of mental health care on campus, which up until now had seemingly taken a backseat to other controversies on campus.

Of note is the conversation surrounding McGill’s implementation of the “stepped care model,” a “two doors, one service” system wherein students can visit the university’s Counselling and Psychiatric Services after being “processed by a single combined system” meant to appraise their needs.

Changes in McGill Mental Health

Many have criticized the reorganization of McGill’s mental health services, amongst them Norman Hoffman, a Montreal-based psychiatrist and former Director of McGill Mental Health Services from 1992 to 2007. In an interview with the Daily, Hoffman talked about recent changes in McGill Mental Health, comparing the “stepped care model” reforms to the way the service was previously organized when he was the Director.

While the stepped care system was created with the aim of eliminating waitlist times, Hoffman says the older system demonstrated a steady and sustained increase in the number of students treated, and the new triage-based system of the stepped care model can fail to do so by referring students to non-clinical resources, such as counselling and online support programmes.

“Between the years of 1998 to [19]99, and 2006 to 2007, McGill Mental Health had a 300 per cent increase in the number of students seen,” Hoffman explained. “We went from 800 students a year to 2,400 students a year over a nine-year period, and during that period […] everybody was seen one to one [and] expert level psychotherapy was the primary treatment. Medication was used only when necessary.”

Hoffman emphasized that 85 per cent of the time, the first psychiatrist a student saw continued the student’s treatment.

“We did not have a triage system, it was direct to care services. You called up, you got an appointment with a psychiatrist. When our waiting list built [to] more than two weeks […] when we had usually more than 25 people on the waiting list, we had a [weekly] team meeting […] where we discussed clinical care, [so] when our waiting list built up to more than 20 to 25 people […] we would cancel our team meeting and have what I called a flying triage. […] If we had 18 people working on staff, we would book in 18 people.”

“When our waiting list built up to more than 20 to 25 people […] we would cancel our team meeting and have what I called a flying triage. […] If we had 18 people working on staff, we would book in 18 people.”

The stepped-care model, as seen by a student

However, not everyone feels the same way Hoffman does. The University has stood by the stepped-care model to this day, believing it to present students with a more straightforward approach to mental health, in which they don’t have to worry about where specifically they have to go to receive treatment.

The Daily spoke with Susan*, one student who has experienced both the stepped care model at McGill and the previous organizational scheme, and asked how she felt about the reorganization.

“My personal experience [with the stepped care model] has been relatively positive and I have found that since having the stepped care program, it’s been easier to get appointments. There’s less of a wait,” she continued, although she admitted that her being in the system prior to the transition might have helped her.

Susan has explained how prior to the stepped care model, the process of booking appointments was rigorous and required students to immediately book an appointment in the same month they had reached out.

“Recently [with the stepped care model, students] didn’t have to book an appointment in a certain month, and then everybody has to kind of quickly call in that first month,” she elaborated. “That actually made me stop calling in and I became very unwell because I would miss an appointment, and I wouldn’t be able to make another one, and there was such a huge waiting list that if I was in crisis, waiting three weeks to a month if not longer, that was just simply too long.”

Susan also praised the supplemental tools that the stepped care model have instituted, including Therapist Assisted Online (TAO) and the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) program, which consists of group sessions led by a staff member of McGill’s CHMS and a student, with eight to ten students in each group. However, she agrees with concerns though that such supplemental resources should be accompanied by more concrete access to counselling.

“I think it’s more effective as a supplemental tool,” she began. “I think if you need to wait for a clinician, as least the TAO can be useful because it goes into why you experience the symptoms the way you do and it allows your clinician to read the responses, and have a really good idea of where you’re coming from, so you’re not starting from base.”

“Definitely individually, it’s not going to solve your crisis,” she clarified, “but pairing that with action-based programs like WRAP or a therapist, I see it as a very useful tool.”

Raised concerns over the role of the administration

However, the implementation of the stepped-care model still raises question about the extent to which the administration has its hand in access to treatment. “With the creation of the office of the Deputy Provost Student Life and Learning,” said Hoffman, “McGill took away administrative and financial responsibilities from the director of Mental Health.”

“With the creation of the office of the Deputy Provost Student Life and Learning, […] McGill took away administrative and financial responsibilities from the director of Mental Health.”

Touching on how the work environment at McGill Mental Health Services has changed since the reforms, Hoffman mentioned the palpable effects such an atmosphere could have on the quality of treatment: according to Hoffman, a tense working environment at McGill Mental Health promotes a stressful working culture, which undermines the quality of the treatment.

“One person who still works at Mental Health now calls the atmosphere within student services ‘paranoid.’ Everybody is […] frightened to talk,” said Hoffman. “People were told after they fired Nancy Low last year, […] ‘Nobody has the right to object to anything that we do. You object to anything, you’re out.’”

“One person who still works at Mental Health now calls the atmosphere within student services ‘paranoid.’ Everybody is […] frightened to talk,”

Last year, Nancy Low, the former Director of McGill’s CHMS was suspended, apparently for insubordination. A representative for the administration told The Daily then that “the University cannot comment on the personnel dossiers of employment records of any of its staff members,” so much remains unclear about how the reorganization of CHMS has impacted access to treatment.

According to Hoffman, the administration’s involvement in Mental Health services is the initial cause of apparent tension in the department.
McGill however still touts ever-increasing numbers of students seen each year of the program’s effectiveness. Many have pointed to the difference between students seen and students treated as reason for this not being conclusive however.

Moving forward

Many questions remain unanswered regarding the implementation of the stepped care model; Susan feels that the implementation meets the needs of students requiring immediate attention, but might overlook those with ‘less-serious’ need for treatment.

“If you’re having a severe crisis, [the stepped care model] is getting the help that you need quicker, but I think for milder cases, it’s maybe more difficult,” she explained, “especially during crunch times [midterms or finals]. They should remind students who are likely to experience it to get into the system quicker so you don’t have to wait so long.”

“If you’re having a severe crisis, [the stepped care model] is getting the help that you need quicker, but I think for milder cases, it’s maybe more difficult, […] especially during crunch times [midterms or finals]. They should remind students who are likely to experience it to get into the system quicker so you don’t have to wait so long.”

*Name changed to preserve anonymity

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The Task Force is focusing on “respectful and inclusive debate” in the university context, and how the university can develop the “best practices” to handle conflict over issues of free speech. Detailed information is available on the McGill website.

“The specific term of reference […] begins with the statement: ‘the university values the variety of opinions and experiences of members of the McGill community and encourages the open and respectful expression of that diversity.’ So our mandate is to explore and create concrete recommendations and frame that statement, to operationalize that statement,” explained Lennox.
Ramanujam spoke about her earlier research on enabling environments and how that work is related to the mission of the task force.

“We have been working around the concept of enabling environment for a civil society, and theorizing about […] what makes a civil society flourish [and] engag[ing] with the process of institution building in a democratic setting,” said Ramanujam. “When I was asked to be part of this task force it resonated with me because I do care about an enabling environment, an inclusive, respectful enabling environment.”

The task force is under the office of the Principal, meaning that it will report to senate once it has completed its research and determined its recommendations. It has no direct power to enact policy change; however, it serves as an advisory body for the Principal moving forward.

“The nature of task forces are working groups, and they have a finite timeline with a set of recommendations and, if possible some, sort of a plan of moving forward on how universities could operationalize or implement these recommendations. […] Until our committee meets for the first time we won’t be able to assess our capacity in the tight timeline to assess some of these issues,” said Ramanujam.

The task force is currently in the organizational phase and the committee has not met yet. However, they are currently working on a survey which will be sent out to the entire student body. Lennox summarized the timeline of the task force and the various steps to be undertaken in the coming months.

“We have a deadline of completion of a survey […] by December 7, [then] we will be undertaking a series of focus groups throughout January and February. […] Now we’re just getting people on the ground who can organize that. We will be undertaking a town hall at the end of January. […] We’ll [then] have the progress report to senate, which will be about process, not content, by the end of February, and a status report, which will have elements of content, at the end of March senate meeting.”

A news editor from the McGill Tribune, Calvin Trottier-Chi, asked whether the task force is related to the investigation by the administration into events that transpired at the Fall General Assembly, which sparked allegations of anti-semitism.

Lennox responded, “we’re not linked to that, […] and any reporting that’s done we will receive it as the university public does. So this task force is not related to that initiative at all.”

“This sort of task force [and] the discussion that the task force is undertaking has been a topic of discussion at the university for years, as far as I’m aware […] having a group such as us to work in the university community about [this topic]is far more than a year old discussion,” continued Lennox.

“At the Faculty of Law level we have been talking […] for a long time about safe spaces or inclusive spaces, respectful spaces,” said Ramanujam. “I see this as something which is neither the beginning nor the end of this process. I think we’ve had task forces before that have looked at issues of freedom of expression […] it’s almost like a burgeoning exercise for the university and so I just feel that our work is part of a continuous process in the university space.”

Following this discussion, a writer from the Bull and Bear asked how the task force will define the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. Lennox reiterated that the task force is not precisely related to this issue.

“I’d say that the granularity of that is something that is unlikely that we will be addressing. Again, the level of discussion of this task force is about the role of respectful debate in a university. […] So there are issues, you’ve touched on a couple of issues, that are issues that are the subject of debate, but we’re not going to be dealing with [these] topics […] we will be steering the discussion into how does one engage in a respectful debate in order to discuss whichever topic.”

“There’s an obvious coincidence, but […] this has been identified as a need, this university wide discussion about inclusion and respectful debate. The time is now. […] Several Canadian universities, they’re dealing with incidents and they are reacting […] without policy, without having the discussion.” Lennox continued, “we can’t allow this topic to be one that surfaces only when there are issues of concern. […] It’s part of the DNA of this institution, freedom of expression, and how do we how do we manage it? […] Right now we will assure you that this is not about an incident or a crisis, it’s about who we are as an institution.”

When asked to elaborate on what he meant by “incidents,” Lennox referred to the recent controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University, where a teaching assistant was reprimanded for showing her class a video about whether or not people should use gender neutral pronouns.

“So this week, [there’s] been a very prominent news story [at] Wilfred Laurier University. […] It’s a situation [about] what can be presented in the classroom setting, and it’s pretty complex,” said Lennox.

“It’s an example of where you haven’t had the discussion that we wish to undertake, an example that if you’re not working within a framework, that you can be dealing with situations rather than best practices.”

“The more diversified we get as a community the more we ought to be reflecting and creating a space for fostering diversity, enriching diversity and creating pathways for people to connect,” said Ramanujam.

“The overlap between respect and inclusion is respectful debate, respectful discussion, and I think that intersection, the venn diagram of those two entities, I think that’s where we’re going to operate. That’s where the concerns in every North American university lie. It’s not just McGill. How does one apply the concepts of freedom of expression within an academic environment as a society’s safe space as an entity, how does one operationalize that? How does one make it a reality? So we’re going to continue to come back to the terminology of respectful debate,” said Lennox.

Towards the end of the press conference, the Tribune asked about a conflict at McGill that happened a few years ago in which faculty member Andrew Potter resigned after publishing an essay that criticized Quebec.

“What would you say the limits and benefits of free speech are? For example, with Andrew Potter resigning last year, would you say he should have been protected under free speech or was his article critiquing Quebec not respectful debate?”

Lennox replied, “I’m not going to comment on that incident. What’s the role of free speech? Free speech is how we share in knowledge. A lot of knowledge is created by understanding one another. If you can’t do it in a university environment, you can’t do it anywhere. [O]ur society expects people to be able to express their point of view, to debate it, to listen. That as a method, as a construct, has incredible value.”

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The McGill contingent convened at the Roddick gates and walked down Avenue McGill College to Rue Sainte Catherine where they joined the Concordia contingent. The two groups then marched east on Sainte Catherine, about fifty individuals taking up the street and chanting phrases such as “A qui la rue? A nous la rue!” and “Refugees in, racists out!”

The Daily talked with an anonymous demonstrator from McGill BDS who spoke about how important demonstrating solidarity is for groups that advocate for marginalized peoples everyday.

“I think it’s really good that everyone can unite in one time and place and see that solidarity because it’s what keeps us going at the end of the day,” they continued. “It’s also [important] to remind people that Palestine is an ongoing issue and that we can’t forget [about] it in our struggles.

“Right now, the global political climate more than ever needs us to stand against all kinds of fascisms and racisms” they said. “We see or we think of Canada as this liberal paradise and that’s kind of it’s issue. In its liberalism it’s racist, it’s sexist, it funds war regimes […] so more than ever we need to not fall for that.”

“We see or we think of Canada as this liberal paradise and that’s kind of it’s issue. In its liberalism it’s racist, it’s sexist, it funds war regimes.”

Most of the bystanders were supportive of the protest, with some people honking their horns in solidarity. However, on Sainte Catherine and rue Aylmer, a disgruntled driver had an aggressive exchange with a protester and drove into the back of their bike, nearly hitting the individual.

“She sped up to try and pass them but really misjudged how much space there was and hit his bike” said SSMU VP External Connor Spencer. “Then [she] got out of her car and yelled at him for not taking up just one part of the street, which is not a thing.”

Protesters and bystanders gathered around the car and confronted the woman for the dangerous situation she had created, some people threatening her with calling the police. No one was harmed.

On Jeanne Mance the group met up with the Milton Parc community contingent. Sascha Astles, a representative from the community, spoke to the Daily about why she was out marching. “My family has been victimized […] I’m in an interracial relationship, I have five kids, they’ve all felt and been targeted at certain times and just bullied, really nonsensical stuff that saddens me more than angers me because I would hope at this point in our evolution that we would be beyond that.”

These contingents joined with the larger demonstration at Place Émilie Gamelin at 2 PM, where thousands of individuals had already gathered and were preparing to begin the march. There were many different factions, all joining together to protest racism and hatred. For a Montreal protest there was a relatively low police presence, and little to no violence over the course of the three hour long demonstration.

In an interview with the Daily, Mariana Sosa, a social work student at McGill, talked about her reasons for protesting, and the issue of complacency.

“Honestly, if not me then who? It’s my job as a future social worker and a human being on this planet to go out and make noise for the people [who] can’t be here for any reason” she said. “I think this is the perfect place to make as much noise as possible for an intersection of problems that are happening in the world and in this city particularly.”

“There’s a lot of people out here, more than I was expecting, to be honest, because I feel like, when it comes to protests, a lot of people are complacent and they let other people take the brunt of it, but I’m really happy to see such an amazing turnout.”

One of the organizations that signed onto the broad call of action for the march was the Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ). There were a number of representatives from the Association marching, and the Daily spoke with one individual who wished to remain anonymous.

“The association […] strongly condemns racism, Islamophobia, and any forms of oppression towards visible minorities, whether it is due to their race, ethnicity, their sexual orientation. We strongly stand against it and we believe that through the grassroots we are able to [make] changes in our community and our society. So we’re here, we mobilized, we’re here to show support with marginalized people, with all these groups that have endorsed this march, and to just stand against oppression, stand against racism, stand against hatred.”

They went on to discuss the issue of oppression and marginalization in Palestine, clarifying that these were his personal views and that AVEQ has no formal stance.

“I’m a Palestinian, and I identify a lot with the cause of Palestinian people. […] I believe that what’s going on in Palestine is one of the greatest tragedies. We’re looking at oppression at different […] levels whether it is [of] the Palestinians living in 1948 Palestine […] or whether it is in the West Bank and Gaza, […] whether it is that universities are underfunded, or whether it is racist policies when it comes to what some people would call, groups such as Amnesty call, the ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. […] We’re looking also at the disproportionate use of force in Gaza which is based out of racism and out of supremacy.

“We believe there’s a global structure of racism built out of white supremacy, built out of dominance of a certain class over another, […] whether it is oppression of Palestinians, or whether it is here in Canada where discriminated groups are oppressed by the privileged class, by privileged people.”

“We believe there’s a global structure of racism built out of white supremacy, built out of dominance of a certain class over another.”

The march continued north on Berri, then turned west on Cherrier, then south on Saint Denis. The protestors marched west again on Sherbrooke. They continued west past McGill University, where some protesters shouted chants addressing the university’s administration.

The march continued south on Peel and ended just before 5 PM at Dorchester Square.

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The Students Society of McGill University (SSMU) Fall General Assembly (GA) convened on Monday, October 23. Over 200 students attended. The GA convenes once each semester and is the main forum in which students who are not directly involved in student government can make their voices heard.

Motion of non-confidence in SSMU President

The night began on a contentious note, with Arts Representative Kevin Zhou proposing a suspension of Robert’s rules in order to adopt all late motions to the agenda. Normally, this would not be in order, but due to a failure on behalf of the SSMU President, Muna Tojiboeva, to notify the public of deadlines for submitting motions, all of the motions were sent in late.

The proposed motions included a motion advocating for SSMU to urge McGill to support and participate in the International Institute of Education’s Syria consortium for higher education in crisis, a motion for SSMU to condemn the disciplinary action which was then being taken against Masuma Asad Khan by Dalhousie University, a motion regarding changes to the SSMU Sustainability Policy, and a motion of non-confidence in the SSMU President. Later during the assembly a motion was proposed by a member regarding the SSMU building closure.

The audience voted to suspend Robert’s rules and adopt the agenda as a whole, however, SSMU Director, Jonathan Glustein, took issue with the method of counting the vote and demanded a recount. This led to a protracted debate about the method of voting, Glustein asserting multiple times that he could not accept a vote that wasn’t counted by hand. Ultimately, after considerable delay and confusion, the vote passed and the agenda was not adopted.

All motions were added to the agenda, however, except the motion of non-confidence in SSMU President Muna Tojiboeva. After a vote by secret ballot that took roughly half an hour to administer, the motion was rejected, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to adopt it onto the agenda despite earning the support of more than half the students in the room. Some members expressed frustration with this decision, voicing concerns about the lack of information Tojiboeva made public about the deadline for submitting motions.

due to a failure on behalf of the SSMU President, Muna Tojiboeva, to notify the public of deadlines for submitting motions, all of the motions were sent in late.

Catherine, a U3 Arts student, urged the Speaker to reconsider the vote.

“I’m wondering why this is our voting procedure when the only reason why we have to do this is because of Muna’s incompetency,” said Catherine. “This reinforces the motion that was proposed because she messed up.” This proposal was not in order, however, and the motion of non-confidence was not debated.

Nominating the new Board of Directors

Following this contentious vote, the agenda was adopted, and the assembly moved on to ratifying the 2017/2018 Board of Directors.

The Board of Directors is the highest governing body in SSMU, with the power to ratify motions passed in Legislative Council and references from the Judicial Board. According to the Constitution, it must be made up of 12 members: four SSMU executives, four legislative councilors, and four members-at-large. The question of whether or not this combination of Directors is the only permissible composition for the Board is currently the subject of a tense debate in the upper echelons of SSMU. This is because until late September, when VP Student Life Jemark Earle took office as a Director, there were only three executives and an overwhelming nine members-at-large serving, throwing the Board’s decisions during this period into questionable legal territory.

On November 15, however, the Board for the new academic year is scheduled to take office. As such, the nominations up for debate at the GA included President Muna Tojiboeva, VP Finance Arisha Khan, VP Internal Maya Koparkar, VP Student Life Jemark Earle, Vivian Campbell, Madeleine Kausel, Noah Lew, Mana Moshkfaroush, Josephine Wright-O’Manique, Jessica Rau, Alexandre Scheffel, and Kevin Zhou. The four executives are currently serving on the Board, as are members-at-large Lew and Scheffel. The President and the VP Finance are constitutionally mandated to serve on the Board, so the nominations of Tojiboeva and Khan were not up for vote, and they were automatically ratified.

What followed was a debate about whether or not to divide the question of ratification for the other ten nominees, meaning the audience would have to vote on each nomination separately instead of ratifying the list in its entirety. VP Internal Maya Koparkar motioned to divide the question, and despite vehement opposition from a few students, the motion passed.

Vivian Campbell, Madeleine Kausel, Maya Koparkar, Jemark Earle, Mana Moshkfaroush, Jessica Rau and Kevin Zhou were all voted onto this year’s Board with overwhelming support. Noah Lew, Josephine Wright-O’Manique, and Alexandre Scheffel all fell short of the threshold to be ratified onto the Board of Directors.

Noah Lew was the first contentious nominee. When the Speaker announced that he had not been voted onto the Board, a large group of people stood up and filed out of the ballroom. It was subsequently announced via social media that the group had left in order to protest the vote against Lew, which they perceived to be motivated by anti-Semitism.

the group had left in order to protest the vote against Lew, which they perceived to be motivated by anti-Semitism.

Other business

Following the ratification of the Board of Directors, the audience voted in favour of the motion advocating for SSMU to lobby the university to provide scholarships and other educational supports to Syrian refugees. A U3 Arts student expressed support for the motion:

“2.2 million Syrian students outside of the country are not in school. […] It’s safe to say that the majority of refugees in the countries that are taking […] refugees aren’t being educated properly. […] You can understand why they are being called the ‘lost generation’ […] and why it’s being called an education crisis. And, despite these statistics, despite the fact that so many nations have taken refugees, there has been no form of institutional support for people who need to continue their post-secondary education.”

The GA also voted with overwhelming support to condemn the disciplinary action being taken by Dalhousie University against Masuma Asad Khan. VP External Connor Spencer gave context for the motion.

“This is a student executive at the Dalhousie Student Union who had a formal complaint lodged against her for her activism work within the union, and the university decided to entertain it, [accusing her] of discrimination against white people that she has perpetuated by speaking of white fragility in the context of anti-colonial Canada 150 events.”

The GA also voted to pass the motion amending the SSMU sustainability policy.

After these motions pass, U1 Arts student, Nadine Pelaez, an exec from the Player’s Theatre, brought a motion to the floor asking SSMU to draft a concrete action plan for dealing with the building closure. They communicated feeling abandoned by SSMU given the value of the Players Theatre to students, and stressed the failure of SSMU to make arrangements for temporary space during the scheduled Spring renovations.

Pelaez quoted from the SSMU website to stress the importance of this motion: “SSMU’s primary obligation shall be to support affiliated student groups and […] student endeavors shall be prioritized over any other sort of endeavor in SSMU’s space.”

Anastasia Dudley, a U3 student and representative from Midnight Kitchen echoed these sentiments. The audience passed the motion with overwhelming support.

During the question period, Arno Pedram, a Culture Editor at The Daily, asked President Muna Tojiboeva to respond to the fact that a majority of the students present voted in favour of bringing forward a motion of non-confidence in her. Tojiboeva responded by claiming that she is supported by the larger McGill community, and will not be influenced by the non-confidence of a comparatively small group, and then proceeded to accuse the audience of anti-Semitism.

“There are 24,000 people at McGill so clearly 160 people at the GA are not the majority. I would also like to point out the fact that today 160 people voted no for a director only for one reason, because he was Jewish. […] At the moment, I represent the minority in the student politics but I actually represent the majority at McGill. I’m sick and tired of the GAs being seen as the majority.”

Pedram responded, “Yes, this body isn’t the majority of students, but it still represents students who care.”

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Early last week, white supremacist posters were put up around Milton Parc on behalf of a group called “Generation Identity.” The posters advertise a book called “Canada in Decay,” encouraging anti-immigration sentiments. The subtitle of the book references the “ethnocide of Euro-Canadians.” Similar posters were found in Milton Parc and on campus in September. These earlier posters also advertised Generation Identity and featured the slogan, “defend your freedom,” in the context of multiculturalism.

Generation Identity is a group that started in France in 2002 and began organizing in Canada in 2014. They claim that ethnically European Canadians are “losing their identity” to immigration and diversity. On their Facebook page, they write, “Canada is a nation of conquerors and colonizers. […] We refuse to spit on the names of our ancestors and those who sacrificed everything to build this beautiful country only to protect the decaying ideals of political correctness and ‘diversity.’”

In an interview with The Daily, the Students Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP External, Connor Spencer, discussed why the dissemination of these posters has been isolated to the area around McGill. Spencer stressed that while it is unlikely that these posters were put up by students, they are clearly meant to recruit the McGill population. Moreover, the posters haven’t been posted on Concordia’s campus, which implicitly reveals that the McGill campus was perceived as more tolerant to white supremacist ideals. This exposes flaws in the way in which McGill has addressed white supremacist organizing in Montreal.

She argued, “There aren’t really widespread tools or conversation platforms about these kind of ideologies being on our campus and around our campus. So I think one of the first things that we have to do is include ourselves in the conversation,” said Spencer. “Concordia is much farther ahead than we are in talking about the alt-right as it happens in Montreal. […] They have workshops, they have info-sessions, they have a much more active and mobilized network and they have student groups that are specifically about addressing that, which we don’t really have, or at least we don’t have visibly. […] McGill students are talking about it, but not at a platformed level.”

In response to this lack of visibility, Spencer is organizing workshops in collaboration with the “Grande manifestation contre la haine et le racisme,” an anti-racist demonstration taking place on November 12. These workshops will focus on identifying the language of white supremacists, and discussing ways to combat the spread of their movements.

“There’s an alt-right toolbox, and you don’t necessarily need to be an alt-right group to use alt-right tools,” said Spencer. “I think that’s why it’s really important that we have those spaces where we can discuss that and teach each other what those tools are so that we can identify them, because things are a lot less scary when you can identify when someone is […] reworking arguments or using certain ways of coming at topics to confuse people or make them feel like they’re crazy.”

Spencer also stressed the connection between white supremacist groups in Montreal and the recent passing of Bill 62, which denies public services to women who cover their faces. This law proports to further “religious neutrality,” while targeting Muslim women who wear niqabs and burqas.

“There’s a lot of under-stirrings of the very Quebec mentality [that] neutrality is [synonymous with] white Christian, […] or white Catholic,” said Spencer. “The underlying racism within that sentiment is getting stirred all back up again with Bill 62.”

“Those kinds of sentiments that we see get reoccurred, they’re always hashed out by legislation,” she continued, “It’s not that police are going to go onto buses and force every woman to unveil, but now it’s going to empower citizens to feel like they are able to confront women who wear veils on public transportation, […] that they have that within their right, and that’s what’s terrifying.”

In response to this recent mobilization of white supremacist groups on both the local and provincial levels, Spencer is working with Matthew Savage, a SSMU Councilor from the Faculty of Social Work, to condemn harmful groups and ensure that they don’t have a platform on campus.

“The councilors gave me a mandate to bring this conversation up again and to prepare a list of the kind of alt-right, far-right groups that are active in the Montreal area to this council, which is tonight, and that’s exciting because hopefully we can actually address some of this,” said Spencer.
In an interview with The Daily, Savage raised concerns about these groups’ use of vague language, such as ethno-state, which allows them to disseminate dangerous ideas under the guise of free speech.

“Anyone that says they believe in an ethno-state shouldn’t have the power to assemble,” said Savage. “Just because you’re giving hate speech politely, still makes it hate speech. When you use terms like ‘ethnocide’ or we want to ‘peacefully assemble to create an ethno-state’, what are you saying with that? You’re saying that anyone that isn’t of European descent has less claims to the land than you. […] And then when you do achieve the power, what happens to people that have lived here for generations? What do you do with them then? Where does that question lead? You have two choices: you’re either going to have to force people out or you’re going to have to do something worse. Either way you’re using violence and just because you’re saying it politely doesn’t make it non-violent.”

Spencer and Savage are compiling a list of white supremacist groups that are active in Montreal. The list includes groups such as La Meute, Quebec’s largest white supremacist group, and Atalante, a group that “advocates openly for a ‘renaissance of the neo-French in Quebec,’” according to a January 2017 article in the CBC.

As of now, SSMU’s plan is to openly condemn these groups, making it difficult for them to assemble on campus. “If something isn’t said in policies, or in student conduct, or in any of those contracts between the faculty and students,” said Savage. “Then you can find a way in, and that’s why I really want to close these gaps.”

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The speakers at the information session included SSMU VP External Affairs Connor Spencer, Student Life Coordinator for the Concordia Student Union (CSU) Leyla Sutherland, and Our Turn national committee members. Representatives from student groups like the Sexual Assault Center of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS) and the Community Disclosure Network (CDN) were also present.

Spencer discussed the importance of the work already being done by grassroots organizations on campus, emphasizing that activism around this issue has always been student-run: “What was really exciting to SSMU about the Our Turn project […] was that it took grassroots initiatives that were already happening on campus […] and [gave] them the tools and the resources that they need.” Spencer said. “What’s really important within that is recognizing that on this campus especially the movement around sexual violence has always been student-led.”

“What’s really important within that is recognizing that on this campus especially the movement around sexual violence has always been student-led.”

Sexual violence at McGill

Spencer and the representative from the CDN addressed the McGill context, explaining why this conversation is especially important now, and why SSMU is taking steps toward a gendered and sexual violence policy separate from the university.

“Here at SSMU we have a very specific context. For those who are not from McGill you may not know but […] we had a rough year last year,” said Spencer, referring to the resignations of David Aird and Ben Ger in March 2017. Aird was last year’s VP External Affairs, Ger was SSMU President ­— both were publicly accused of sexual assault. “Like a lot of campuses across Canada we had a bit of a crisis, and it was decided […] that this needs to be a conversation now.”

The CDN was formed to specifically address the allegations towards David Aird and to pursue alternative justice for the women he assaulted.

“We initially formed as an ad-hoc group created by survivors and their allies in order to pursue action against a specific individual through a third-party reporting system after finding traditional avenues of justice to be insufficient, explained the CDN representative.

The representative who spoke at the event was also one of the women Aird assaulted. Her experience following the assault highlighted the continued failure of the university in holding students accountable for their actions.

“I desired anonymity but found that that wasn’t an option in traditional avenues,” she said, “and at the time as now I had no faith that the process at the level of the university as it stood would be survivor centered or guarantee my visions of justice, or would ensure my safety and comfort on campus and I didn’t know what to do and I felt really alone.”

“At the time as now I had no faith that the process at the level of the university as it stood would be survivor centered or guarantee my visions of justice, or would ensure my safety and comfort on campus and I didn’t know what to do and I felt really alone.”

Looking forward, she emphasized the need for a revised sexual assault policy at the university level, but also recognized that this will not be the complete solution:
“I hope that McGill and campuses across Canada can [improve] the mechanisms of justice and accountability. We know it’s going to take more than a policy to combat sexualized and gendered violence on university campuses […] but to our minds at the CDN, without a policy that supports survivors who seek out institutional processes, there can be no justice.”

McGill’s policy graded a C-

As a part of its launch, Our Turn graded the sexual violence policies at the universities that have signed on to the Action Plan. McGill received a C- because the policy is not a stand-alone policy, and does not provide any avenues for justice if someone is assaulted by a faculty member.

“I hope that McGill and campuses across Canada can [improve] the mechanisms of justice and accountability. We know it’s going to take more than a policy to combat sexualized and gendered violence on university campuses.”

Spencer referred to the risks of conflating sexual assault with academic infractions, as academic officers are not trained with dealing with sexual assault, “[The policy] refers to the code of student conduct, which means that the same people that are doing the discipline for academic infractions, are […] reviewing sexual violence cases, and that the sexual violence cases are going through a document that was written specifically for academic infractions, which is the code of student conduct” said Spencer.

The conversation then turned to the broad mandate of Our Turn, and the work being done to combat gendered and sexual violence. “We really want to work on continuity so being able to have a […] an action plan in place that can be used to process and function in different cities on different campuses,” said Caitlyn.

The discussion ended on a positive note, with the speakers looking forward to positive change in the future – “All students deserve to feel safe on their campus and all students have a right to a campus free from sexual violence.”

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Nahka Bertrand is a graduate of Concordia Journalism School. She is a member of Acho Dene Koe, of the Dene Nation in the Northwest Territories. She lived in the Northwest Territories until she was five before moving to Quebec, and now runs a catering company with her sisters. Called the Three Sisters, the name is both a play on the familial relationship of the founders, and a reference to a traditional Indigenous farming practice involving the “three sisters”: squash, corn, and beans. Together, they are working on publishing a cookbook of healthy recipes inspired by Indigenous food practices.

Kanerahtiio Hemlock is an adult education teacher in Kahnawake. He is a Kahnawake native and is interested in Indigenous food sustainability and sovereignty. Along with his students, Hemlock planted a garden in Kahnawake, which has served the community for three seasons.

Wayne Robinson identifies as an “urban Indigenous” person and is a social worker for Native Montreal. Robinson is also the president of the First Peoples Justice Centre, a resource that he helped bring to the community in 2016.

Indigenous food sovereignty

Bertrand discussed how healthy the traditional Dene diet was. Access to this diet has been compromised by environmental destruction.

“Traditionally, the Dene, […] the ancestors, the old people, used to live a really long time and they just lived off a diet of moose meat, fish, some berries and that’s it. It was really healthy for them and it was really adapted to their lifestyle. […] But today because of urbanization, because of proximity to urban areas and also because of pollution to the land […] there are stories of moose who have a lot of cancer and so they’re not really edible and healthy, and same with the fish too, as well as the water. […] How do we fix this issue? […] Well, community initiatives, and little projects.”

Robinson stressed that attaining Indigenous food sovereignty will be a tremendous uphill battle. The knowledge base is small, and many Indigenous people don’t understand the historical context of the foods that they believe belong to their culture. He illustrated this through the story of bannock.

“It’s a pretty simple bread that we made and it’s one of the most pan-Native American things ever,” Robinson explained. “How did this one thing become so identifying for Indigenous peoples? […] There were a lot of communities like my community where we were taken off our traditional hunting or farming grounds. […] You were given flour as a ration, you were given salt, you were given some lard, and when you put the flour and salt together with a bit of water and throw it in the lard, you could easily make a very rudimentary bannock. […] This thing is more a symbol of [the] genocide that was committed upon us.”

“How did this one thing become so identifying for Indigenous peoples? […] There were a lot of communities like my community where we were taken off our traditional hunting or farming grounds. […] You were given flour as a ration, you were given salt, you were given some lard, and when you put the flour and salt together with a bit of water and throw it in the lard, you could easily make a very rudimentary bannock. […] This thing is more a symbol of [the] genocide that was committed upon us.”

The panelists agreed that Indigenous food sovereignty is important because food is a universally recognized expression of heritage. The lack of a widely-known Indigenous food culture is harmful and isolating.

“Primarily, today, it’s about taking back our independence. To produce our own food, I think it’s empowering,” said Hemlock.

Kahnawake Community Garden

Hemlock spoke at length about the founding and growth of a community garden in Kahnawake. The garden was planted on land along Highway 30 that had been designated for “economic growth.” Initial suggestions for usage included building a casino or a gas station. The garden, however, was universally embraced by the community as a more sustainable means of economic growth.
“This isn’t a personal business, it’s to demonstrate to the community an alternative economic model than what’s being fed to us,” said Hemlock. “Whatever is produced from this garden goes back to the people. And […] it was completely unanimous: the whole community said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’”

When the time came for planting, about 40 community members showed up to help. Hemlock said he initially expected the planting to take all weekend, but the volunteers finished within three hours. The massive community turnout was indicative of overwhelming support for this initiative to improve Indigenous food sovereignty.

“Whatever is produced from this garden goes back to the people. And […] it was completely unanimous: the whole community said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’”

“Everybody commented on the feeling that they felt out there,” continued Hemlock. “It was a good feeling because it was random people from the community that came out. Some of us knew each other, but it was a lot of people that we didn’t know.”
That was three planting seasons ago. Since then, they have given food to the local hospital, the elders lodge, and the independent living center, and every school in Kahnawake has come so that the children can pick their own corn.
Looking to the future, Hemlock wants to explore the possibility of inter-nation trade. An elder from a nation in northern Ontario recently contacted Hemlock hoping to purchase food grown in the garden.

“He said they feel like they’re being taken advantage of from the trade store where they get their food, and they’re looking for other sources to get food,” explained Hemlock. “So I mentioned, well, we’re starting this garden. He said, as much as you can produce, send it up and we’ll buy it off of you.”

While this is not currently feasible for Hemlock and the Kahnawake community, there is room for growth.

“We can open those old trade networks that we had with all different nations,” Hemlock told the audience. “We have corn, beans and squash. There’s places that have fish, in New Brunswick they have elk. Different communities, different things. We can feed ourselves and we can trade with other nations.”

Indigenous food sovereignty

Robinson voiced support for the movement towards Indigenous food sovereignty while encouraging others to recognize the inherent privilege that, in his eyes, accompanied the discussion at hand.

“There’s a push […] to go back to a way of sustaining ourselves that might reclaim some of our sovereignty,” he said, “but I think we have to recognize there’s also a lot of privilege there. I think a lot of Indigenous families […] are dealing with a lot of challenges; a lot of barriers. […] And then saying ‘Ok, on top of this, you’re also going to go and somehow collect country food, […] you’re also going to serve food that’s nutritious,’ but we know there’s a reason why the supermarkets and the fast food chains are so popular because in our urbanized environment, I mean, it’s just easier.”

Robinson went on to emphasize that there is not just one way of embracing one’s Indigenous heritage.

“I think there’s some sort of balance there, you know, respecting traditional techniques and tools, but also understanding that we live in a different society, and there’s a place in here for being Indigenous that doesn’t mean that I have to completely live off the land, doesn’t mean I have to be living in northern Ontario, doesn’t mean that I have to fall under these romanticized stereotypes of what an Indigenous person might be. There is a way to be Indigenous in the city.”

“I think there’s some sort of balance there, you know, respecting traditional techniques and tools, but also understanding that we live in a different society, and there’s a place in here for being Indigenous that doesn’t mean that I have to completely live off the land, doesn’t mean I have to be living in northern Ontario, doesn’t mean that I have to fall under these romanticized stereotypes of what an Indigenous person might be. There is a way to be Indigenous in the city.”

Similarly, Robinson stressed that in the fight for environmental justice, Indigenous peoples must not bear the burden of the damage that has been done by settlers.

“There’s the whole stoic Indigenous media representation, where all native people are like mystical beings that live in the forest. That’s a lot to put on people who have had a very hard history. Growing up, I probably wasn’t the biggest environmentalist, I don’t think every Indigenous person has to be. […] People that recognize the privilege in being a settler, what are you doing?”

The post Building Indigenous food sovereignty appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On Tuesday, September 19, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit South Central Mexico. The epicenter of the quake was in the state of Puebla, located approximately 120 km from Mexico City. As of Friday, September 22, death tolls stood at 282, 137 of whom died in the capital. This number is expected to rise as efforts to clear rubble continue and more bodies are found. Victims of the earthquake also face the threat of aftershocks, which could be acutely harmful given the structural instability caused by the initial strike.

The quake also devastated infrastructure, leaving whole communities homeless. The Puebla area is facing the most damage with 1,700 homes declared inhospitable and in need of demolishing in the coming months. Desperate families affected by the housing emergency are making pleas on social media for humanitarian aid. The government is struggling to deal with the widespread destruction.

Destruction within Mexico City is widespread, and at least 44 buildings were levelled by the quake. The damage in the capital is partly due to the high population density, but the impact of the earthquake was magnified by its geography. Mexico City is built on an ancient lakebed made of clay, which amplify seismic waves. As a result, tremors reverberate through the area with a devastating effect. The Mexican army and navy entered the city in the aftermath of the quake to participate in the relief effort. People still need to be rescued from collapsed buildings, and unstable structures need to be demolished.

According to some, the army has caused added turmoil in the city by prematurely demolishing certain buildings, without adequately attempting to rescue people who may have been trapped.

The most recent quake occurred less than two weeks after the 8.1 magnitude quake, which was the most powerful earthquake in the country in over a century to reach the Southern coast of Mexico. While the timing of these events are very close, most experts claim that the timing is coincidence. Both quakes were caused by shifts in the Cocos plate, located just off the coast of the continent. The Cocos plate is gradually pushing underneath the North American plate, causing a massive pressure increase which is sporadically released in these destructive tremors. Shifts in these tectonic plates are a constant reality for Mexico, and while the cause of these two recent quakes are the same, their timing is coincidental.

With material from The Guardian, NPR, ABC, and Al Jazeera.

Tensions rise ahead of Catalan independence referendum

Catalonia’s government is scheduled to hold an independence referendum on October 1 which will determine whether Catalonia can leave Spain.

Spain has attempted to block the referendum by ordering suspension, arresting 14 senior officials from three government buildings, and raiding print shops to confiscate referendum ballots. Legal measures were taken to prevent advertisements from being released to media sources, and prevent delivery companies from distributing pamphlets. Madrid has declared the referendum unconstitutional, and warned that anyone who participates in the voting will be indicted.

In response to the crackdown, thousands of protesters gathered in the streets of Barcelona, followed by a solidarity rally in Madrid. The Spanish government and prime minister Mariano Rajoy have been criticized for being anti-democratic. Rajoy argues that the Spanish Constitution of 1978 makes the country is indivisible, and therefore, has no provision for a self-determination vote. This did not stop Catalonia from taking legislative steps to develop its own law on self-governance.

Recent tensions between Madrid and Barcelona have consolidated an image of unified pro-independence sentiment. However, unlike desire for the referendum, the separatist cause is fragmented among voters. In a public survey commissioned by the Catalan government in 2015, 41 per cent of Catalans were in favour of independence. During the 2014 referendum, the low turnout of 2.2 million out of 5.4 million voters showed that the ‘No’ voters boycotted the poll.

Support for an independent Catalonia began after 1939, when the dictatorship of Francisco Franco restricted the Catalan language. Separatist sentiment abated temporarily after Franco’s death, with the return of democracy, only to rise again in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Separatists believe that Spain’s central government allocates less to Catalonia than the province contributes financially to the rest of the country; while Catalonia makes up 16 per cent of Spain’s population, it accounts for 19 per cent of the national GDP.

Catalonia is proceeding with the referendum as planned, and will legally declare independence from Spain within 48 hours if the vote is won. It is unclear whether the Spanish government will eventually resort to article 155 of the constitution, an unprecedented move which would allow Spain to directly intervene with Catalonia by deploying national police.

With material from The Guardian, NPR, and The Financial Times.

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SEDE emphasizes the importance of building relationships with local community groups as a pillar of diversity education. As the largest initiative undertaken by SEDE to encourage community involvement, CED requires support from the administration, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), and a long list of local groups who want to strengthen the relationship between McGill and the wider Montreal community.

Monika Barbe, the CED Program Coordinator, spoke to The Daily about the importance of the event series and what to look forward to in the coming days. Barbe stressed that one of the most valuable things about CED is the opportunity to do hands-on volunteer work.

“[CED] is going to be a chance for people to see the everyday reality of a community organization and the importance of […] the manual work and [to see] that […] change happens there,” said Barbe. “Yes, it’s [CED] very interesting to sit down and reflect and criticize, which I think is super important, but there’s a lot of people working in the community organizations with actual physical jobs […] and interacting directly with the people who benefit from the different organizations, and I think that’s a powerful thing to focus on in terms of social change.”

“There’s a lot of people working in the community organizations with actual physical jobs […] and interacting directly with the people who benefit from the different organizations, and I think that’s a powerful thing to focus on in terms of social change.”

Barbe also described some of the workshops being organized, including the “Equity 101” event hosted by Shanice Yarde, an Equity Educational Advisor at SEDE. According to the CED website, the workshop “is designed to give participants a ‘101’ understanding of equity, and how society is shaped by power and oppression.”

“In a very introductory way [Yarde] is going to present […] the main issues that the office works on, so in that sense I would say that if you’re in any way interested in what SEDE does, that is that workshop is fundamental,” Barbe told The Daily, before finishing with a call for participants from the entre McGill community.

“In a very emphatic way I invite everyone to be part of Community Engagement Day,” she said. “Not only students, because I think with the profile of a student, […] the interest and the initiative to be part of this thing [follows], but also to faculty and staff, because McGill is not only students.”

SEDE has a website listing all the events taking place during CED. People can access the time, location, and description of the events, as well as register for the events they find interesting. The program covers a broad range of topics, from an outdoor movie screening of Demain, a film about the ecological and social challenges posed by climate change, to food distribution for the Welcome Hall Mission food bank. The events are happening all over Montreal and there are still spots available for many of the events.

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Crucial anti-racist programming

Culture Shock and Social Justice Days are event series run by the McGill chapter of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG), and co-funded by SSMU. While both have taken place annually on campus for the past 12 years, early versions of Culture Shock, originally run by SSMU alone, were described as misrepresentative of racial justice. In 2006, QPIRG offered to jointly run the program, with a mandate to focus on social justice issues. In recent years the event series has featured anti-racism workshops, as well as keynote speakers like Octavia’s Blood editor Walidah Imarisha, and spoken word artist Joshua Allen, a prison abolitionist and activist.

“Culture Shock and Social Justice Days are all about centering the stories and experiences of marginalized folks,” says Delali Egyima, who has attended and volunteered at the events in the past.

“At the end of each event series, I was always left with the feeling that there’s so much more learning to be done. What I love most about these event series is knowing that the folks facilitating or giving talks are being paid for sharing knowledge that they are usually forced to share for free. Knowing an organization like SSMU sees the importance of creating different avenues for the continuous support of marginalized folks at McGill and in Montreal speaks volumes about their commitment to equity.”

“What I love most about these event series is knowing that the folks facilitating or giving talks are being paid for sharing knowledge that they are usually forced to share for free. Knowing an organization like SSMU sees the importance of creating different avenues for the continuous support of marginalized folks at McGill and in Montreal speaks volumes about their commitment to equity.”

The threat of funding cuts

Until recently, Culture Shock and Social Justice Days have been the only available anti-racist programming on campus funded by SSMU. This social role has been threatened over the last several years due to funding cuts. Until now, SSMU has supported the programming on three fronts: providing monetary funding, co-hiring staff, and offering free space in which to hold events. The letter published by the UGE stated that as of 2015, monetary funding had been reduced from its initial $10,000 to $2,040. In a subsequent interview with The Daily, a QPIRG representative stated that “the ability for QPIRG to book rooms in SSMU for the event series might be taken away as well as the funding.”

In essence, several QPIRG board members expressed concern to The Daily that the withdrawal of part of SSMU’s support could severely reduce the scale and potential of Culture Shock and Social Justice Days. They feared that to lose all three elements of that support – funding, staff, and space – would effectively end the programming.

SSMU’s side of the story

In response to the UGE’s open letter, SSMU’s executive team issued a statement to The Daily. In it, the executives argued that, all things considered, SSMU currently provides QPIRG with an exceptional level of financial and logistical support.

“In the 2016/2017 school year,” explained the statement, “QPIRG was given $2040 from the SSMU Operating Budget, […] $1500 in additional funding for Culture Shock, $1182 and additional HR supports for the hiring and support of a Popular Education Coordinator for Culture Shock and Social Justice Days.”
The executives’ statement also mentioned the funding SSMU provides for QPIRG’s Rad Frosh, and claimed that overall they offer “more supports than provided to any other student group on campus and with a system that is outside the norm of that we offer other groups on campus, making our relationship with QPIRG an outlier in our standard operating procedures.”

Where should funding come from?

QPIRG currently receives funding both from SSMU’s operating budget and from the SSMU Funding Programme, the latter of which is financed through nine different student fees. It seems that SSMU is urging QPIRG to, instead, apply for all their funding for these event series through the Funding Programme.
QPIRG, however, doesn’t feel that this is an adequate solution to budgetary constraints.

“Applying through the Funding Programme is a very unstable model of funding,” a QPIRG representative told The Daily, “as QPIRG would have to incur expenses with no guarantee of what amount of funding we would receive. All of these concerns were expressed by QPIRG in our meetings with SSMU.”

The SSMU executives’ statement continues as follows: “We have also highly recommended that [QPIRG] increase their student fee if they do not feel it is sufficient to cover their operations and programming, and the SSMU would be happy to help support this campaign.”

In reponse, QPIRG staff members told The Daily that to raise their student fee would go against the mandates of both Culture Shock and Social Justice Days, which are intended to be collaborations with SSMU. Crucially, they argued, it would also represent an aquiescence to the very same austerity logic that QPIRG, as an organization dedicated to equity and accessibility, firmly opposes.

“We have also highly recommended that [QPIRG] increase their student fee if they do not feel it is sufficient to cover their operations and programming, and the SSMU would be happy to help support this campaign.” 

Seeking common ground

The future of Culture Shock and Social Justice Days is tenuous and it’s unclear when a final decision will be made. For their part, SSMU’s executive team has declined to comment further on this issue since releasing their initial statement.

Despite the tension between SSMU and QPIRG, however, both have expressed hope for upcoming discussions, and reaffirmed their commitment to anti-oppressive and anti-austerity ideals.
“We have to find solutions to ‘keep the lights on’ within these [budgetary] constraints, especially when efforts to increase our resource pool (such as the SSMU Base fee) are unsuccessful,” said the SSMU executive team in their statement. “While we would like to work towards finding the best possible solution, we need to be able to reach an agreement that works with the actual capacities of all parties involved. As marginalized people on this campus who are dedicated to the same issues, […] we must work together to find solutions to assist one another.”

The QPIRG board and staff expressed similar sentiments, writing in a statement to The Daily, “We know that these SSMU [executives] care about social justice programming and making changes at McGill. So it’s really sad that this is happening and we really don’t want to be fighting them! […] We’d love to work with them on [these programmes].”

“While we would like to work towards finding the best possible solution, we need to be able to reach an agreement that works with the actual capacities of all parties involved. As marginalized people on this campus who are dedicated to the same issues, […] we must work together to find solutions to assist one another.”

 

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Recent reports confirm that Michael Giroux, a convicted rapist released from prison in the fall of 2016, is currently living in the Milton-Parc neighborhood adjacent to McGill.

A National Post article about Giroux’s current residence, published on May 2, was shared within McGill groups on social media. One student, Julia Métraux, provided a link to the article and included a plea for students to stay safe.

In the days that followed, dozens of other students repeated Métraux’s sentiment, tagging friends and warning each other of the possible threat.

Giroux sexually assaulted women in Toronto in the 1980s, and became known as the “High Park rapist.” He stalked women ranging from 23 to 42 years old, broke into their homes, and sexually assaulted them after threatening to kill them.

Giroux sexually assaulted women in Toronto in the 1980s, and became known as the “High Park rapist.”

In 1996, Giroux pled guilty to five counts of sexual assault and over 30 related crimes. After serving 13 years, annual hearings of Giroux’s case were held, considering statutory release until the end of his sentence. Statutory release, which allows an individual to serve the final third of their term in the community, is applicable for federally-sentenced prisoners who have already served two-thirds of their term. However, the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) may issue a detention order, keeping the individual incarcerated, if it finds there to be a strong likelihood that they will do further harm.

Despite yearly hearings with the PBC, Giroux was denied statutory release all seven times. He served a full sentence of 20 years in prison, during which the PBC noted that Giroux demonstrated little remorse.

According to the National Post, “Giroux refused treatment during his imprisonment and continued to minimize the harm caused to his victims.”

Apparently, both the PBC and Correctional Services Canada found that Giroux was “considered at high risk to reoffend.”

According to the National Post, “Giroux refused treatment during his imprisonment and continued to minimize the harm caused to his victims.”

Giroux’s unwillingness to accept treatment sparked debate on social media. Some McGill students felt that Giroux’s sentence should have been longer in order to protect the public. Others felt that his lack of remorse demonstrates failures within the Canadian prison system.

“Prison needs to be as corrective as it is punitive. The fact that this guy didn’t change after 20 years can be rectified by locking him up for longer, or we can reform our system so that guys like this fundamentally change and can rejoin society,” wrote McGill student Tim Min.

Another student, Andrew Figueiredo, responded, “It’s easy to start pontificating about the ethics of punishment, but the fact of the matter is that a serial rapist who refused treatment is now living near McGill students.”

Since his release, the authorities have imposed 21 restrictions on Giroux’s behaviour under a peace bond. He must stay at the address informed to the court between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., and must obtain permission to leave Quebec. Giroux is forbidden from contacting his victims, or anyone under the age of 16 without supervision. Other precautions include restrictions on possessing or using firearms, weapons, alcohol, drugs, internet access, and pornography. However, Giroux will reportedly be under these terms for only two years.

“It’s easy to start pontificating about the ethics of punishment, but the fact of the matter is that a serial rapist who refused treatment is now living near McGill students.”

According to the National Post, Giroux is currently living in four-story building on the edge of the McGill Ghetto with a banner outside that reads “Welcome McGill.”

The Daily contacted Graeme Hamilton, who wrote the National Post article in question.

“Since the article was published,” wrote Hamilton, in an email to The Daily, “I heard from people in the McGill community who had established where [Giroux] was living, and have been informed by the landlord that he is moving out as early as this weekend so the information may soon be out of date.”

The McGill administration, meanwhile, is aware of the situation and has made an announcement to the university population.

“We [have sent] a message to our community reminding them of safety precautions they should take,” said Doug Sweet, McGill’s Director of Internal Communications, in an email to The Daily. “We cannot legally send a message around identifying a specific individual or sharing a photo.”

“I heard from people in the McGill community who had established where [Giroux] was living, and have been informed by the landlord that he is moving out as early as this weekend.”

This message to the community came in the form of an email from Pierre Barbarie, the director of Campus Public Safety. The announcement, sent to all students and faculty on May 4, detailed general safety precautions. While the email did not explicitly mention Giroux, the timing of the email indicates potential safety concerns for students in Milton-Parc.

The administration’s response is similar to another safety reminder sent last November, concerning “reports of a small number of incidents near the northern portion of the lower downtown campus.” That email referred to the experiences of several women who were verbally assaulted and, in some cases, chased by a sexual predator. In both cases, McGill’s email failed to mention the gendered nature of the violence involved.

Erin Sobat, VP University Affairs of the Student Society of McGill University (SSMU), responded to the administration’s handling of the situation in an email to The Daily.

“We are concerned that this information [about Giroux’s residence in Milton-Parc] was not communicated directly to students by either the police or the university,” wrote Sobat. “[SSMU] members should not be expected to learn about something like this through the press, social media, or word of mouth. If the authorities are expecting students to take their own security precautions, they at least deserve to have a real sense of the threats present.”

In both cases, McGill’s email failed to mention the gendered nature of the violence involved.

In a follow-up conversation with The Daily, Sweet stressed the difficult nature of this situation. Even though Giroux may pose a threat, he is a free citizen as long as he meets the conditions of the peace bond. While breaching conditions have legal consequences, thereby have a deterrent effect, peace bonds are not permanent. There is little the administration can do, said Sweet, as authorities are not required to inform the public of the convicted sex offender’s presence in their neighborhood.

Update: According to La Presse, Giroux was scheduled to report his new address at the Montreal Courthouse on Friday May 5. However, he failed to appear for unknown reasons. Under the Canadian Sex Offender Information Registration Act, the offender is obligated to report their new address within seven days of changing residence. Failure to comply can result in fines or imprisonment for up to two years.

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On Monday May 1, several hundred people gathered in Phillips Square to participate in a May Day protest through Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. This year’s demonstration was the tenth annual May Day march organized by the Convergence des Luttes Anticapitalistes (CLAC), a Montreal group committed to opposing capitalism through direct action.

Unlike other demonstrations held concurrently around the city, including a large union march in Côte-des-Neiges, the CLAC’s event was explicitly anti-capitalist. Most prominently, the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) and Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM) were in attendance, and handed out red flags symbolic of the communist movement.

Contingents from across Montreal and Quebec assembled to hear speeches from organizers prior to the march at 6PM. One speech addressed the intersections of capitalism, imperialism, and racism:

“People from the global south have paid the highest price of global capitalisms and imperialisms expansion, falling victim to not just the occupation in Iraq, not just the occupation of Palestine, not just what’s happening in occupied Kurdistan, not what’s happening in Yemen, and also now Syria.”

“When [immigrants] come here they’re met with racism and xenophobia to ensure that migrants and immigrants remain exploited simply for the needs of capital,” continued the above organizer. “Today, immigrant workers are not only just fighting for their dignity but they’re fighting against an entire system that pins them unfortunately with the greatest burden and social cost for capital’s interest for continued profit and for continued destruction of this planet.”

“Today, immigrant workers are not only just fighting for their dignity but they’re fighting against an entire system that pins them unfortunately with the greatest burden and social cost for capital’s interest for continued profit and for continued destruction of this planet.”

Diverse participation

McGill Against Austerity (MAA) was one of the many groups to participate in this year’s march, with a contingent of approximately a dozen students. The Daily spoke to a member of MAA who chose to remain anonymous.

“Being an economics student, I see how capitalism is made to look attractive, and I […] read a lot of other scholarship that really disagrees,” she said. “I feel that especially right now in the current [political climate] with […] head of states being right-wing, nationalist, and the rise of religious intolerance.”

“Where I come from, May Day is a recognized formal holiday. […] People openly talk about the history of May Day in the newspaper,” she continued, explaining that she referred to her Bangladeshi heritage. “I found it very surprising that Canada has a very different labour day and it’s not May Day. Even in America it’s called loyalty day which is weird. […] I find it strange that North America is so uncomfortable with the actual history of May Day. And that’s kind of another reason why I [am here] today: […] because I feel very strongly about workers’ rights and I feel it absurd that North America tries to distract people from a significant point in history.”

Another member of MAA who participated in the march, Kyle Shaw, spoke to The Daily about the event’s heavy police presence.

“As always, [the police presence] is excessive, but it’s sort of in the nature of these demonstrations,” said Shaw. “That’s because fascism doesn’t quite conflict [with] or contradict capitalism as thoroughly as communism or other anti-capitalist ideologies. May Day demonstrations are always the first to get cracked down on and the most brutally, let’s say relative to fascist demonstrations which often get protected by the police, whether here in Montreal or across the United States.”

“May Day demonstrations are always the first to get cracked down on and the most brutally, let’s say relative to fascist demonstrations which often get protected by the police, whether here in Montreal or across the United States.”

At around 6:30 p.m., the PCR  set off flares to mark the start of the march. They initially led the crowd east along Saint Catherine Street, before circling back towards the downtown core chanting anti-capitalist slogans and flanked by dozens of police officers.

As the crowd made its way through the Golden Square Mile, the Daily interviewed Nathan McDonell, a member of Rojava Solidarity Montreal.

“We’re here because we want to change the world and we’re inspired by […] the Kurdish movement in the Middle East and in particular the social revolution happening in Rojava which is in the northern part of Syria,” said McDonell. “It’s an incredible society based on direct democracy, ethnic harmony, women’s empowerment, and going beyond the state and capitalism, and it’s an example for all of us to be inspired by. It’s in such a delicate situation […] surrounded by the Syrian civil war, [Turkish attacks], ISIS […] so it really needs our international solidarity [and] it’s important for us to be here to show that.”

Another member of Rojava Solidarity Montreal, wishing to remain anonymous, also emphasized the importance of mobilizing support internationally.

“I am originally Kurdish from east Turkey,” he said. “The people who are here, they are the voice of the people right now under the occupation of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. […] I believe it is a very important issue, bringing their voices to the world. I see these people around here, and it’s making me so happy as a [Kurdish] individual and Canadian second.”

Confrontation with the police

Roughly half an hour into the march, a brief confrontation occurred between police officers  and a small subsection of protesters. The crowd had been moving west along René-Lévesque Boulevard when they encountered a cordon of police officers from the Sureté du Québec (SQ) in full riot gear, who appear to have been guarding a TD bank building. A few protesters began throwing projectiles at the police, consisting mainly of smoke bombs and rocks. In response, a group of officers attacked the individuals involved with batons and tear gas, arresting at least one person and violently dispersing the rest.

An anonymous protester who was injured in the incident described their experience in a message to The Daily.

“The cops charged on us and started hitting people with their batons,” they wrote. “I was hit several times and a bone in my arm was fractured. One of my comrades was hit on the head. They pushed us very hard, a lot of people were thrown to the ground and almost trampled in the commotion. As I was trying to get away, a cop tripped me up and I fell onto a staircase.”

“The cops charged on us and started hitting people with their batons […] I was hit several times and a bone in my arm was fractured. One of my comrades was hit on the head. They pushed us very hard, a lot of people were thrown to the ground and almost trampled in the commotion.”

Following the confrontation, the protest was temporarily scattered into several small parties, most of which eventually regrouped on McGill College Avenue. They were soon joined by another large group of CLAC supporters that had assembled at the Frontenac metro station, and had marched downtown from Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. The demonstration then continued without further incident, counting close to a thousand members.

Last year’s May Day was dispersed after a police station window on Saint Catherine street was smashed. The police used stun guns and copious amounts of tear gas in response, violently scattering the crowd. This year, police cordons were preemptively set up whenever the march approached a police station, but the march consistently changed course to avoid them, and no major stand-offs took place.

Indeed, apart from the altercation on René-Lévesque, police intervention was considered relatively minimal this year. Protesters marched for approximately two and a half hours despite heavy rain, before entering the metro at Place des Arts and dispersing peacefully after some exuberant cheering inside the station.

May Day as a McGill issue

Connor Spencer, VP External of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), and a member of MAA, spoke with The Daily about the importance of May Day and its relevance to McGill students.

“The austerity measures that the province is facing right now specifically target bodies that are already in precarious positions and makes profit off of them,” said Spencer. “So, today being May Day, […] this is kind of a day to reflect on what we’ve been able to accomplish but also look forward in the future at what we still have to accomplish. The biggest one of which is fighting the austerity measures that the police are complicit in.”

“This is kind of a day to reflect on what we’ve been able to accomplish but also look forward in the future at what we still have to accomplish. The biggest one of which is fighting the austerity measures that the police are complicit in.”

“It’s a McGill issue as well,” Spencer continued. “It’s so often that we think we live in this bubble that separates us from the rest of Quebec, when the things that these people are protesting right now and that we’re on the street protesting is something that affects McGill students directly.”

The post Hundreds protest capitalism on May Day appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Kiana Saint-Macary, the President of the McGill Debating Union, opened the event by introducing Cole, describing him as “a Toronto-based journalist, activist, and author whose work […] focuses on issues of race in Canada and abroad – including his much celebrated piece, The Skin I’m In: I’ve been interrogated by police 150 times, all because I am Black.”

The language of white supremacy

Cole began his talk with a ‘Be it resolved’ statement, a common format used in debates.

“Be it resolved that white supremacy informs all aspects of Canadian life, particularly our language,” he said. “The way that we use language informs pretty much everything that we do. It describes everything that we do. It influences and phrases our thoughts and our actions in this country.”

Cole explained that, in our society, individuals are conditioned to the language of white supremacy and often use it even when fighting to dismantle oppressive structures. This enforces the power of white supremacy by implicating its opponents in the very system they are trying to destroy. As Cole put it, “One of our big problems with white supremacy is that [its] power forces those of us who want to destroy it to engage in an endless debate with it.” Cole insisted that eliminating the harmful and insidious language of white supremacy is a necessary step in dismantling the system entirely.

“Be it resolved that white supremacy informs all aspects of Canadian life, particularly our language.”

He then discussed James McGill’s enslavement of Black and Indigenous people: “This institution, like so many institutions in Canada, was founded by somebody who […] actually owned, if you can say that, human beings.”

The way that people talk about influential figures such as James McGill, he explained, illustrates the power of the language of white supremacy; the word ‘slave’ itself is part of this language.

“Nobody is actually born [a slave],” said Cole. “A slave is not an occupation that you can aspire to, a job title that you can hold. The biggest problem with [the word] is that when we say ‘slave,’ […] we’re describing the condition of somebody who had something done to them rather than describing the condition of the person who’s doing it. […] That’s not really talking about the issue, that’s talking around it.”

Cole went on to point out that when people say “James McGill [and others like him] was a slaveowner,” they use the passive voice and fail to assign appropriate blame. In order to dismantle white supremacy, he argued, we need to be specific about these atrocities.

“As a reflex,” Cole explained, “people start saying, ‘Yeah, but that’s not all [insert slaveowner here] did […] how can you just limit their whole character and their identity?’”

Apologism in Canadian politics

He then provided a recent example of this phenomenon: Lynn Beyak of the Conservative Party and her recent remarks to the Canadian Senate about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“The biggest problem with [the word] is that when we say ‘slave,’ […] we’re describing the condition of somebody who had something done to them rather than describing the condition of the person who’s doing it.”

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission […] was an incredibly thorough investigation into the residential school system in Canada,” explained Cole, “that system which took untold thousands of Indigenous children away from their parents. About 6,000 children that we know of died in residential schools, but I would more accurately say they were killed. Those who were not killed […] were denied the ability to speak their own languages, denied the ability to practice their own spiritual and religious practices. They were denied the ability to have contact anymore with their communities […] The philosophy behind residential schools was to kill the ‘Indian’ in the child. That’s white supremacy.

Cole went on to quote Beyak’s speech to the Senate: “‘I speak […] mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants, …] whose remarkable works good deeds and historical tales of the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part,’ she said. And Bayak went on to say ‘Mistakes were made at residential schools, in many instances horrible mistakes that overshadowed some of the good things that also happened at those schools.’”

“This is how every politician is either taught to speak or learns how to speak” said Cole. “Its particularly effective as a tool in what I’m calling this language and logic of white supremacy. Who made the mistakes, Lynn? […] If she’s saying ‘I don’t want to erase that, I’m not trying to paper over that, I realize it’s horrible,’ why do you use this language of passive voice? Why do you hide the perpetrator if you’re not ashamed of it yourself? […] This use of language informs a whole way of thinking and dodging accountability and shifting blame and erasing genocide and huge atrocities that have happened around the world.”

Common arguments in defense of racism

Cole continued by outlining a series of defenses and concessions designed to maintain white supremacy.

“’Race has nothing to do with it.’ Now this is not a concession. This is actually the starting point for white supremacy,” he said. “This is white supremacy’s sweet spot. 95 per cent of the discussions that I see or am forced to engage in in this country about this issue start with this sentence. […] This is the denial that we always have to overcome with people, particularly people in power, who want to tell us that we somehow do not know what we’re talking about.”

“Why do you hide the perpetrator if you’re not ashamed of it yourself?”

Cole proceeded to share recent stories of police violence and brutality towards Black people. For example, he told the story of Andrew Loku, a Black man with a history of mental illness who was killed by Toronto police in his apartment building in July 2015. Loku had been carrying a hammer and having a conversation with his upstairs neighbours about a noise complaint when a police officer arrived at the scene and shot him.

Following the incident, the head of the Toronto police force’s most powerful lobbyist group wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star.

Cole quoted the op-ed: “The fact that he was Black had no bearing on the officer’s decision. […] Those who are promoting baseless accusations of race being a factor in Mr. Loku’s death have no legitimate place in this debate. Collectively, we need to ensure that the mentally ill are provided treatment by continuing to work to improve mental health care accessibility and support.”

This is an example of this logic of white supremacy in action, said Cole. Instead of acknowledging race as an issue in the incident, the lobbyist focused on mental illness.

“‘[It’s] not race, look over here, it’s the other thing,’” he said. “And in this case it’s mental health. We’ve heard this time and time again.”

Even when people concede that racism may be a factor in a given act of violence, said Cole, another common argument is “don’t judge until you have all the facts.”

“’Race has nothing to do with it.’ Now this is not a concession. This is actually the starting point for white supremacy.”

“White supremacy loves this,” Cole explained. “It’s one of its favorites. You can’t know anything for sure as long as white supremacy’s getting fingers pointed at it […] ‘Let’s not jump to the conclusion that it was about race. Let’s wait till all the facts are in.’”

This is a problematic mechanism which aims to run out the clock on an important issue, he explained. In most cases, the public never gets all the information, and denial by those supporting white supremacists can continue indefinitely.

Another part of this logic, Cole continued, is the suggestion that racists are ignorant and can’t help themselves.

“Well, doesn’t somebody have to teach you how to call a Black person a n****r or are you just born that way?” he said. “You don’t accidentally pick this stuff up if you don’t have contact with Black people. […] It is never a mistake. If you enable racism you are part of the problem. If […] you say that somebody who wants to come on McGill campus and give a talk who is advancing white supremacy, ‘Well I defend their free speech’, [then] you defend their white supremacist speech. Period. You’re enabling this to happen.”

“What we’re up against is willful ignorance,” Cole continued. “What we’re up against is the passive voice, ‘mistakes were made.’ We’re up against obtuseness, we’re up against people [feigning ignorance] when they know full well what we’re talking about because that allows them to keep running out the shock clock.”

Cole finished his talk by arguing that white privilege is a construct, and those who have that privilege must exist in a space of discomfort where they are forced to recognize and dismantle white supremacy.

“‘[It’s] not race, look over here, it’s the other thing.’ […] We’ve heard this time and time again.”

“I’m not saying ‘white privilege’ […] anymore,” he told his audience. “Again, it’s not something you were just born with and inherited. It’s something that you have to work everyday to protect and keep away from people. So I don’t want to talk about privilege. I want to put you in that uncomfortable place that you’ll be forced […] to interrogate yourself to turn the mirror back on yourself instead of asking me all the questions.

At the end of the talk Cole opened the conversation up to audience members.

“People are often in media and social commentary these days talking about racism as a disease,” asked one attendee. “What do you think about that in terms of how it shifts or removes responsibility from people for their own racism?”

“We have to be careful with that language,” answered Cole, “because […] you’re not a victim of racism by perpetuating it. […] [Racist logics] are also things that we do and introduce into the world as human beings that were not here before us. I think that a good way to deal with that is again to say, who is suffering from this disease and who is benefitting from it? […] What do the people who benefit do when they realize they’re benefitting from somebody else’s illness?”

The post Desmond Cole speaks at McGill appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Land grabs and extraction

Sassen began with a discussion of land grabs. Africa is the most affected by land grabs, she said. However, land grabbing, or large-scale land acquisitions, are spreading across the globe. Sassen brought up a few examples such as Bosnia’s Saudi-run wheat plantations, Southeast Asia’s history of foreign-run biofuel extraction, and water bottling companies’ amassing of real estate worldwide.

These land grabs are destructive because they push out long-term inhabitants and quickly drain natural resources. When this happens, the affected territory becomes what Sassen calls “dead land.” This practice of pushing people out for corporate profit is creating “a massive loss of habitat,” she said, “that is generating a certain kind of migration.”

“The [Indigenous inhabitants] have knowledge [of] how to keep that land alive for millennia, for centuries,” said Sassen. “When they’re thrown out of that land [they end up] in big slums in big cities. At that point, we – the scholars, […] the researchers – have lost track of them. We see them as urban slum dwellers. We have forgotten the fact that they have knowledge about how to keep that land alive.”

This cycle tends to repeat itself, said Sassen, to ever more destructive effect: people become invisible, their practical knowledge is forgotten, their land dies, and corporations move on to new and unexploited areas.

“We see them as urban slum dwellers. We have forgotten the fact that they have knowledge about how to keep that land alive.”

Sassen also discussed the recent phenomenon of countries making land grabs abroad. While this may be construed as a form of neo-imperialism, she emphasized land grabbing in foreign countries mainly concern extraction for financial gain. This contrasts older forms of imperialism involving political or religious agendas.

“If you think of the old imperial mode of the French […] they didn’t want to just control the whole of Africa, they also wanted everyone to learn French,” she said. “It came with a superstructure.” The same was true, she continued, of the Spanish invasion of Latin America: Spain had certainly pillaged the region’s natural resources, but it had also come with a “civilizing mission” rooted in Christianity.

Today, by contrast, extraction-based concerns are far more all-consuming, and this logic is the backbone of numerous modern commodities. Google and Facebook are both extractive of information, Sassen said, and “finance is an extractive sector: [finance] sells something it does not have.”

“So is this new type of foreign owner of land in a country that is not its own,” she concluded. “It just extracts.”

New migrants

The extraction and destruction of land, Sassen went on, has led to the development of a new kind of migrant: “a migrant who, when she appears at our borders […] is invisible to the eye of the law.”

“When you take the traditional subjects, the immigrant and the refugee, there are legal regimes. They might be highly imperfect, but they exist.”

“The immigrant is a strong subject. She leaves behind a place. She wants to contribute to further development […] This [new] subject is not necessarily a strong subject […] They’re being pushed out,” she said. “What throws out these migrants – plantation development, mining, the water bottlers – registers as GDP per capita growth in the countries where this is happening.”

This point, said Sassen, illustrates the ironic space within which the new migrant operates. On the one hand, their country of origin is benefitting financially from land grabbing and extraction. However, “you have to combine what is seen by the system as a positive […] with the fact that millions are expelled every year.”

Recently, there has been a profound increase in the number of unaccompanied children coming to the United States from Central America. Most of them are coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

“El Salvador and Honduras are considered among the most violent countries in the world” said Sassen. “When you ask the children ‘why, why did you [leave]?’ They always say ‘la violencia.’”

“They left because of violence but the point is that violence doesn’t fall from the sky ready-made,” Sassen continued. “Small farmers have been thrown out of their land by the development of massive plantations owned both by foreign capital and by old local elites.”

These small landowners are forced to go to the cities: “San Pedro Sula for example, in Honduras. a country reported to have the highest national murder rate in the world according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) in 2012.

“They left because of violence but the point is that violence doesn’t fall from the sky ready-made.”

The local economies in theses cities are struggling, and the drug trade is one of the only developing financial sectors. The parents of these migrant children often become involved due to a profound lack of opportunity, and in many cases, they end up being killed. This, said Sassen, is ‘la violencia,’

The Dinant Corporation is currently the largest landowner in Honduras. “The world bank just gave [the CEO] a prize […] he runs a very well-run plantation. He had to expel all kinds of people. So here again we enter this strange zone.” Sassen continued, “In the statistics of the country it all looks fantastic. [However] it actually rests on killing.”

Sassen implied that many people are unaware of the true cause of this destruction, and instead attribute the violence to racist preconceptions about the regions affected.

“You can’t just say ‘la violencia’ – you have to say land grabs, you have to say certain modes of economic development, you have to say the corruption of governments. […] Then you’re actually getting at some of the foundational facts.”

Urban expulsion

Recently, said Sassen, foreign buyers have been purchasing property in cities considered desirable, and developing luxury properties there.
“Atlantic Yards [in New York City] was [once] dense with all kind of activity,” she explained. “All the artists that were too poor to live in Manhattan wound up there. It was bought up by a Chinese company […] and they’re now building fourteen of these towers, luxury towers, apartment buildings. They are raising the density of the place enormously but they’re actually de-urbanizing […] You’re just eliminating mixed economies and cultures […] and replacing it with luxury apartments.”

Not only are foreign buyers building new high rises and de-urbanizing neighbourhoods, they are also buying up units in pre-existing buildings, Sassen went on. This means that a lot of urban space remains empty, becoming nothing but a symbol of foreign capital. This can be very destructive to the local economy because it drives up the cost of living for the people who are actually contributing economically. In the last ten years, fourteen million households have been foreclosed on.

They are raising the density of the place enormously but they’re actually de-urbanizing.”

“That’s almost forty million people thrown out” said Sassen. “That’s a lot of materiality [made] invisible.”

Sassen related this idea of loss of habitat and simultaneous gain of corporate profit to historical economic trends.

“It’s not like the Keynesian period after World War II [in which] the [middle class] grows,” she said. “If you’re doing better, you don’t care that much about the fact that the rich middle class is doing even better than you. But what we have now is loss, loss, loss, gain, gain, gain.”

“I can imagine an extreme period with two rising urban formats. […] Endless stretches, some of it becomes slums, some of it not, some of it is legal, some is not, but very very dense. All those people who are being expelled, many of them wind up here. And then massive expansion of these corporate centres.”

Sassen concluded her talk by showing a photograph of luxury highrises next door to a deeply impoverished neighbourhood. This, she implied, is our future.

The post Global capitalism and migration appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On Monday February 13, a group of students and community members gathered for a presentation by Délice Mugabo. Mugabo presented part of her research: “On Haunted Places: Encountering Slavery in 1990s Montreal.” The presentation was followed by an extended discussion focusing on the intersecting themes of Mugabo’s research.

Mugabo opened the panel by detailing the experiences of three Black people living in Montreal in the 1990s: Mireille Romulus, Pierre Moncius Étienne, and William Kafe. All three had faced some sort of violence while living in the city.

Being Black in Montreal

Romulus, a Haitian-born mother of two, was in her Longueuil apartment when two white male police officers busted in “on the pretext that her sister had an unpaid bill for $425 at the Simpson’s department store.” After handcuffing her, one of the officers choked her on the kitchen floor, then kicked and slapped her.

“[Romulus’] children reported being traumatized by the ordeal and remembered hearing the male officer calling their mother a dirty n****r and telling her to ‘go back to Africa’.”

After handcuffing her, one of the officers choked her on the kitchen floor, then kicked and slapped her.

Mugabo commented on the event, saying, “Africa, and not Longueil, is where Mireille Romulus was told she belonged. Africa is not only an elsewhere, but also an out of sight. This process of carefully placing Black people out of sight is a way of landscaping Blackness out of the nation.”

“It is rather unfathomable that they wouldn’t have known of her Haitian origin,” they added, “for not only are the vast majority of francophone Black people in Montreal descended from Haiti, the Quebec state had recruited many of them […] to help build a number of institutions.”

“Had the police officers wanted to emphasize her assumed immigration trajectory, they would have told her to go back to Haiti,” Mugabo continued “but I would argue that ‘go back to Africa,’ refers to the middle passage from Africa to the Caribbean and North America.”

“This process of carefully placing Black people out of sight is a way of landscaping Blackness out of the nation.”

Mugabo continued the discussion by recounting the violence perpetrated against Étienne, a 47 years-old Haitian father of two, when he was waiting for the bus inside the Pie IX subway station.

“A gang of fifteen skinheads ran into the station on the heels of a young Black man who had been trying to make a phone call,” said Mugabo. “The young Black man managed to get away, but the skinheads spotted Étienne and started yelling at him past the ticket booth attendant who did not intervene. The skinheads caught up to Étienne and beat him into unconsciousness. As they beat him they repeated ‘we don’t want n****rs here, go back to where you came from’.”

As a result of his severe injuries, Étienne spent several weeks recovering in the hospital and was fired from his job as a result.

“A year later, he said he still suffered from back pain, feared travelling at night, and had recurrent nightmares about the skinheads. Only four of his assailants were charged.”

Mugabo finally then went on to present the experiences of Kafe, an East Montreal teacher who immigrated to Quebec from Guinea.

“The skinheads caught up to Étienne and beat him into unconsciousness. As they beat him they repeated ‘we don’t want n****rs here, go back to where you came from’.”

“Having endured fifteen years of racial attacks from students at the Deux Montagne school board, the 54-year-old teacher submitted a complaint to the Quebec Human Rights Commission in 1992,” Mugabo explained.

“He testified that over the years students brought their excrement to throw at him and kicked him around in the classroom shouting ‘if the n****r dies what does it matter,’ and also ‘n****r crisis – the n****rs are everywhere’.”

As a result of his severe injuries, Étienne spent several weeks recovering in the hospital and was fired from his job as a result.

The children also repeatedly told Kafe that he was supposed to be their slave, not their teacher.

“The students’ claims to this Black man’s enslaveability are not due to their ignorance,” Mugabo made clear. “They seemed intent to make it clear to him either that slavery was as much a reality in Quebec as it had been in the states, or that if slavery hadn’t existed in Quebec that it should have.”

Mugabo called attention to the fact that this event was an instance of children expressing society’s thinly veiled prejudice: “Disruptive adolescents unconcerned with political correctness […] could shout ‘burn the n****r,’ voicing the feelings of an adult world which dared not to.”

The “haunting” nature of slavery in Quebec

Mugabo argued that these events illustrate how Black people today are haunted by slavery, even 184 years after its abolishment in Quebec. She also called attention to the lack of acknowledgement of the existence of slavery in Quebec and how that denial seeks to eradicate the experience of Black Quebecers.

“He testified that over the years students brought their excrement to throw at him and kicked him around in the classroom shouting ‘if the n****r dies what does it matter,’ and also ‘n****r crisis – the n****rs are everywhere’.”

“This province continuously denied or minimized its history of slavery,” she said, emphasizing that many in Quebec privilege Canadian slavery by claiming it was better than in the United States.

“Slavery in Quebec is said to be nicer because they were given Christian names, they were baptized,” Mugabo said.

Mugabo eventually returned to the theme of haunting, this time as proof of history’s existence. “What we learn from Beloved [by Toni Morrison] is that haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known […] especially when they are supposedly over and done with or when their oppressive nature is denied.”

During the discussion, Rachel Zellars, a professor at McGill, raised a common issue in articulating racism. “One of the things that we’re always pushing against is scale. So the case of William Kafe can be perceived as exceptional and deviant from the norm. In Quebec in particular that narrative is something […] I’m always working against.”

“Disruptive adolescents unconcerned with political correctness […] could shout ‘burn the n****r,’ voicing the feelings of an adult world which dared not to.”

Mugabo responded: “No violence is ever spectacular enough or bad enough for it to matter or register as violent.” She continued, “It obviously isn’t spectacular enough because the school board didn’t do anything about it.”

“When we talk about systemic racism we talk about it as if it’s something [and we] don’t know how it happens. No one’s racist but you have systemic racism. So for me, [through] these cases, we can really see that this is something that people do, it’s not something that’s in the air.”

Racism in Canada vs. Quebec

When asked about the difference in racism in Quebec and the rest of Canada, Mugabo responded, “Quebec wants [Black Quebecers] to continuously say ‘you’re not racist, you’re not racist,’ asking us to speak our history in relation to their own political […] aspirations because […] people will always claim Quebec-bashing from the rest of Canada and from the rest of the world.”

“The fact that Quebec has wider issues with Canada does negate the fact that I have issues with Quebec,” she continued. “Quebec’s aspirations are not mine, so I have no interest in defending it or promoting it in any way.”

Elaborating on the theme of Quebec’s denial of slavery and racism, Zellars said, “So we only had two cases of reported lynchings in comparison to 4,000. So we only had 4,000 slaves in comparison to 4 million.”

When asked about the difference in racism in Quebec and the rest of Canada, Mugabo responded, “Quebec wants [Black Quebecers] to continuously say ‘you’re not racist, you’re not racist,’ asking us to speak our history in relation to their own political […] aspirations because […] people will always claim Quebec-bashing from the rest of Canada and from the rest of the world.”

“Whatever numbers we have, we did the same exact things that the United States did […] you still enslaved the first Black people who came here. Your framework for understanding Blackness was identical to the United States,” Zellars concluded.

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