Aug 2008: Olympics vs. the Downtown Eastside

From an investigation of the impact of the Olympics on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to an exploration of Buddhism’s looming schism, from an in-depth look at the confrontational tactics of anti-racist activism in urban Alberta to Derrick Jensen’s thoughts on the liberatory potential of despair, this issue of Briarpatch seeks out tales of grace and courage in the unlikeliest of places.

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“We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind. . . . The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it.”

Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

What happens when large numbers of people give up on the paradigm of “progress” — the idea that each generation will invariably live in greater material comfort and prosperity than the generation before?

On a recent bus trip through the plaque-clogged heart of Middle America, that is the question I kept returning to. It probably didn’t help that I was reading peak oil theorist Dmitry Orlov’s new book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, which, I must say, made for a fascinating travel companion through the flooded corn fields of Nebraska and across the suburban sprawl and urban wasteland of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I crossed back into Canada with both a new sense of admiration and respect for the almost unnervingly friendly Americans I’d met, but also with a sinking sense that the country’s poorly designed urban infrastructure, mind-numbingly superficial and deceptive media and blind attachment to private solutions to public problems leave them woefully unprepared for a lower-energy future. Back home in Canada now, I can’t really say that we’re significantly better prepared.

In response to a recent flurry of bleak economic and environmental reports from almost every direction, the public mood on both sides of the border seems to be darkening. From the proliferation of books like The Long Emergency and The Upside of Down to blogs like The Automatic Earth and Casaubon’s Book, from the widening recognition that mitigating climate change will require much more than just changing our light bulbs to the growing realization that peak oil will shake our economy to its very foundation, from the still-unfolding credit crisis we explored in our May 2008 issue to the emerging global food crisis we foretold in our February 2007 issue, many people’s sense of what the future holds in store for them is increasingly clouded by uncertainty and doubt.

For the first time in living memory, young middle-class Canadians can’t reasonably expect to lead healthier, wealthier lives than our parents led. Our grandchildren’s lives may more closely resemble the lives of our great-grandparents than of our baby-boomer parents. That’s a bitter pill for a generation raised in overmediated, overmedicated comfort to swallow, and it’s hard to know how we will react.

What happens when our swollen sense of entitlement crashes headlong into our dangerous lack of preparation for any future that doesn’t look more or less like the present? Will people lash out in anger? Embrace xenophobia and false populism? Turn to fundamentalist religions or doomsday cults or conspiracy theories? Or will a loss of faith in industrial capitalism’s ability to bring us happiness and provide for our needs open up new and healthier possibilities for alternate economic and social formations? Will we rediscover simpler pleasures and more modest ambitions, rooted in our own neighbourhoods and communities?

Of course, prognostications on a deeply uncertain future can’t be boiled down to a simple question of glass-half-empty versus glass-half-full pronouncements. Facing the enormity of the challenges before us requires that we familiarize ourselves with a lot of new information that can’t be reduced to simply “good” or “bad” news. Indeed, to dwell exclusively on either will only leave us dangerously unprepared to respond appropriately to a rapidly changing situation.

The point, I suppose, is to recognize that the massive shift we face has great potential for new opportunities and threats of every sort, and that in some ways the best we can hope for is to face these changes proactively, with grace, integrity and a sense of humour, and with as many allies as we can muster. It’s a truly fascinating time to be alive-that’s one thing, at least, for which we can be thankful.

This issue of Briarpatch has no overarching theme, but whether it’s Sadiqa Khan’s essay on confronting racist assumptions in everyday conversation, Ava McDougall’s account of the fight to drive white supremacists out of urban Alberta, or Derrick Jensen’s thoughts on the liberatory potential of despair, what unites many of the contributions to this issue is an openhearted search for the grace required to face the challenges before us.

As always, we welcome your thoughts on what you read in Briarpatch. If you’re thinking of writing us a letter, please do-we always love to hear from our readers.

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By Dave Oswald Mitchell
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2008

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? . . . what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”

Franz Kafka

Derrick Jensen has been called the philosopher poet of the ecological movement. His books include The Culture of Make Believe, the two-volume Endgame, and most recently How Shall I Live My Life?: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization. Common to all his work is a fierce commitment to expose the roots of the violence and destruction that underpin the comforts and privileges of civilization.

Jensen’s work is “disillusioning” in the best sense of the word: it forces us to confront the illusions with which we’ve been inculcated, allowing us to see clearly the world as it is so we can assess the choices we face as thinking, feeling beings. Reading a Derrick Jensen book is a deeply challenging process of confronting the lies that others tell us and the lies we tell ourselves.

In March of this year, Derrick Jensen joined a Regina, Saskatchewan, audience via videoconference for a wide-ranging conversation. As usual, he challenged the audience to focus on protecting life rather than lifestyle, and urged them to recognize the breadth of the changes necessary to protect life on earth. The event was sponsored by the Regina Public Interest Research Group and Regina EcoLiving, and was introduced and moderated by Briarpatch editor Dave Oswald Mitchell. This interview is adapted from that conversation.

Briarpatch: One of the key premises of your book Endgame is that civilization-especially industrial civilization-is not and can never be sustainable. I want to ask you about that, but first of all, how do you define civilization?

Derrick Jensen: I define civilization as a way of life characterized by the growth of cities. So what’s a city, then?

A city is a group of people living in numbers large enough to require the importation of resources. As soon as you require the importation of resources, two things happen: one is that your way of living can never be sustainable, because if you have to import resources then it means you’ve depleted the land you actually live on. The other is that your way of living must be based on violence, because if you require the importation of resources, then trade alone will never be sufficiently reliable. If you need a particular resource and the people the next watershed over aren’t going to trade you for it, you’re going to take it if you can.

I mean, just imagine what would happen to U.S.-Canada relations if Canadians were to stop allowing transnational corporations based in the U.S. to steal oil from the tar sands? I think you’ll find out what a real “good neighbour” policy is pretty quick.

So civilization can never be sustainable because it depletes resources faster than they can be replenished?

That’s part of it. Any way of living based on non-renewable resources won’t last. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about copper or iron or oil, because a finite amount of it is eventually going to run out.

But that’s not all. Any way of living that’s based on the hyper-exploitation of renewable resources won’t last, either. If fewer salmon return year after year because they’re being overfished, eventually there won’t be any left.

In fact, I would say that any way of living that’s based on resources won’t last, either. “Resources” don’t actually exist: salmon don’t consider themselves a fishery resource, and trees don’t consider themselves timber resources. They’re just trees and they’re just fish.

How you perceive the world affects how you behave in the world. A Canadian lumberman once said, “When I see trees I see dollar bills.” If you look at trees and see dollar bills, you’re going to treat them one way. And if you look at trees and see the particular, individual trees that you derive shade, shelter or food from, you’ll treat them another way.

And incidentally, just because I look in the river and see fish rather than dollar bills doesn’t mean that I can’t eat those fish. I was doing a radio interview in Spokane a number of years ago, and the interviewer said, “You know, Indians exploited salmon too.” And I said, “No they didn’t. They ate them.”

He said, “What’s the difference?”

In the moment I said, “They gave them respect for the spirit in exchange for the flesh.” But I knew that answer was kind of bullshit, so that afternoon I went and sat next to a tree and I asked that tree, “What is the fundamental predator-prey relationship?” The tree gave me the answer right away: if you consume the flesh of another, you take responsibility for the continuation of the other’s community. If I consume the flesh of salmon in the river near my home, then I take responsibility for the continued existence of salmon in the river. I would say that’s true on both a cosmic level and a straight carbon-cycle level. It’s true on every level.

What do you say to people who think that industrial civilization can adapt to the environmental limits we face and make itself sustainable?

Well, where’s the energy going to come from? I mean, right now we burn 10 calories of oil for every calorie of food that’s produced. That can’t go on forever. And sure, it’s eco-groovy to put solar panels on the roof, but where are you going to get the copper for the wiring? It requires mining and it requires infrastructure. You can’t just pick and choose among these things.

When people talk about “sustainable development,” they actually aren’t talking about maintaining life on the planet. What they’re talking about is maintaining this culture to the bitter end. What do all the proposed solutions to global warming have in common? They all take industrial capitalism as a given, and the natural world as that which must adapt. That is literally insane. I mean, it’s not possible on a physical resource level. It ain’t gonna happen.

People shy away from using the word apocalypse, but it needs to be said: we are in the midst of an apocalypse. There is 10 times as much plastic as there is phytoplankton in the ocean. The planet is undergoing the largest mass extinction since the disappearance of dinosaurs. The climate is changing. There is dioxin in every mother’s breast milk. The oceans are being murdered. And we go about our days as though nothing is going wrong. What will it take for us to finally start calling this an apocalypse and responding accordingly?

Many environmental activists struggle with the hypocrisy of participating at all in a culture that’s so destructive. Does that bother you at all?

Sure, I feel hypocritical sometimes, but so what? There’s this idea among so much of the resistance that the role of an activist is to manifest some sort of moral purity. But the truth is, I don’t care about purity; I care about living in a world that has more salmon and more migratory songbirds each year than the year before. The job of an activist is not to manifest moral purity, but to confront and take down oppressive systems of power.

Several years ago I got in a big argument with a guy who said that because I use toilet paper, I am just as culpable for deforestation as the CEO of Weyerhaeuser. I didn’t know how to answer him for quite a while, but finally the answer came to me. The answer is that, yes, I am culpable, but not because I use toilet paper. I’m culpable because I consume the flesh of the tree without fulfilling my end of the bargain by stopping Weyerhaeuser.

So, sure, I can help by consuming less. Frankly, I live pretty cheaply, but that’s because I’m a cheapskate, not because I’m morally pure. There are much longer levers I can use to dismantle these systems of oppressive power than not using toilet paper.

I mean, so what if we’re hypocrites? Let’s admit that, and then let’s go break down a system of oppressive power. Let’s absolutely use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. I’m happy to do that.

“The job of an activist is not to manifest moral purity, but to confront and take down oppressive systems of power.”

A reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly once said that your work “accomplishes that rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader’s heart.” But, frankly, I know a few people who haven’t made it through to the “mending.” What do you say to readers who fall into despair when they read one of your books?

Personally, I’ve actually found it quite liberating to simply feel despair. Despair is an appropriate response to a desperate situation.

One day I was just sobbing, and I called up a friend of mine, Jeannette Armstrong, who is an Okanagan Indian activist. I said to her, “This work is just killing me. It’s breaking my heart.” She said, “Yeah, it’ll do that.” And I said, “The dominant culture hates everything, doesn’t it?” She said, “Yeah, it does. Even itself.” And I said, “It has a death urge, doesn’t it?” She said, “Yeah, it does.” And I said, “Unless it’s stopped it’s going to kill everything on the planet, isn’t it?” She said, “Yeah, it is. Unless it’s stopped.” And then I said, “We’re not going to make it to some great new glorious tomorrow, are we?” She thought for a moment and then she said the best thing she could possibly say, which was, “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”

The reason it was the best thing she could say was that it normalized my despair. It let me know that despair is an appropriate response to a desperate situation; the sorrow is just sorrow and the pain is just pain. It’s not so much the sorrow or even the pain that hurts as it is my resistance to it. It let me know that I can feel all those things and it wouldn’t kill me. I could feel that pain and still feel love.

There’s this idea that if you really recognize how bad things are you have to go around being miserable all the time. But the truth is, I’m really happy. I am full of rage and sorrow and joy and happiness and contentment and discontent. I’m full of all those things. It’s okay to feel more than one thing at the same time.

Some people say, “If things are so bad, then why don’t you just kill yourself?” Part of the answer is that I’m having a lot of fun. It’s tremendous fun to fight back. What a gas!

I think most people resist despair because they see it as a surrender, a letting go. You’re suggesting that letting go might not be such a bad thing?

If it means letting go of our hope that civilization can save us, then yes. You see, Jeannette helped me realize that not only could I feel rage and sorrow and despair and it wouldn’t kill me, but even better, I could feel all those things and it would kill me. There’s a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that once you’re dead they can’t touch you anymore. Not through threats or violence or promises or buying you off. You can still sing and dance and make love and fight like hell, but they can’t touch you.

When I was writing The Culture of Make Believe, I wanted to call it “The Other Side of Darkness” because what that book is about-in fact, what all my books are about-is death and rebirth. What I want to have happen when people read my books is that I want for them to die, and I want for them to be reborn. I want for the “them” that dies to be the enculturated them. And I want the “them” that emerges to be the animal them, the animal who needs habitat to survive, and who has family and community who they love and would fight to defend.

“An American five-year-old can recognize hundreds of corporate logos, but I can’t name 10 species of edible plants and fungi within 100 yards of my home. That’s insane.”

You write a great deal about “bringing down civilization” as the only means of saving the planet. Is that our only option at this point?

First of all, when I talk about bringing down civilization, a lot of people hear “ending human existence,” because this culture has managed to conflate itself with life itself. We need to recognize that they’re not the same thing-quite the opposite, in fact.

So what would bringing down civilization actually entail?

It’s a billion different acts by a billion different people. At its core, bringing down civilization entails depriving the rich of their ability to steal from the poor, and depriving the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet.

In practice, that looks like everything from writing books, to filing timber sale appeals, to fighting like hell against the transnational oil corporations by using the courts or public opinion or any other means. It involves acting singly and in organizations. It involves fighting for our lives, because those are the stakes at this point.

Bringing down civilization is about aligning ourselves with the real world, and redefining ourselves as human animals that need habitat. And that means putting the planet first. If you or your children can’t breathe the air or drink the water, then nothing else matters. That’s the bottom line.

It’s stunning how ignorant we are about the land bases that support us. I can talk about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and probably most people will know who I’m talking about, but do you know the indigenous name for the place where you’re sitting right now? An American five-year-old can recognize hundreds of corporate logos, but I can’t name 10 species of edible plants and fungi within 100 yards of my home. That’s insane.

We must recognize that the culture is a culture of occupation. The planet needs to be defended against this occupation. You know, if there were space aliens deforesting the planet or releasing tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, we would know what to do: we’d use any means necessary to stop them.

I want to be clear, though, that when I’m talking about “fighting back” I’m not just talking about physically fighting back. I’m talking about everything. I don’t believe in the revolution-versus-reform dichotomy. If we all just wait for the great and glorious revolution, there’s not going to be anything left when we finally get there. On the other hand, if all we do is defensive work, if all we do is fight to slow the pace of development, then this culture is going to continue to grind away at us until there’s nothing left.

The split isn’t between revolution and reform or violence and non-violence; the split is between action and inaction. So the first thing bringing down civilization looks like is people getting off their asses and doing something-anything. What would Tecumseh do? What would members of the French and Russian resistance in World War II do? What would members of the Danish resistance, who had a much nicer government of occupation, do? The Danes used non-violent resistance, because it would work there, and the Russians didn’t, because it wouldn’t. Use whatever tools are appropriate to your situation to protect the land where you live.

I know some people who went to Mexico to join the Zapatistas and help them, and what the Zapatistas told them was, “If you really want to help us, start the same thing at home.” We are blessed to be at the centre of the machine. We have access to vulnerabilities that the people in southern Mexico or the Amazon rainforest don’t have.

As for what people in Regina or anywhere else should do, I don’t want you to listen to me, because I don’t live there and I don’t know how to live sustainably-here or there. What I want you to do is to go to the nearest forest and ask it what it needs. Go to the nearest river and ask it what it needs. Go to the nearest soil; ask it what it needs. Go to the nearest indigenous nation; ask them what they need. And just be of service.

If you ask the land you live on what it needs, it will tell you. And then really the only question is, are you willing to do it?

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By Christopher A. Shaw
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2008

“I’m watching things speed up in my own city, Vancouver, as legislators tighten the noose around society’s most defenceless members. In the lead-up to 2010’s Olympic orgasm for developers, the city council has passed laws to keep street people from sitting on park benches or reclining in parks. Behind this crazy-making effort to create a ‘civil city’ is a conception of humans as rubbish.”

Geoff Olson, “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be,” Common Ground, July 2007

“The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.”

Anatole France

Home to legions of homeless people, drug dealers and users, sex trade workers and the working poor, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside suffers levels of disease that are comparable to the worst found in the Third World and crime rates on persons and property that exceed all of the rest of Vancouver combined. A sense of defeat hovers over much of Hastings Street like a fog. But in defiance to circumstance, there is pride here, too, and community. It’s more than possible to imagine that the Downtown Eastside with its vibrant history would blossom in thousands of ways if only the various levels of government cared enough to help. That government doesn’t care speaks volumes to social priorities in Vancouver’s headlong rush to be a “world-class” city, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the handling of the Downtown Eastside and its inhabitants in the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics.

Those who only drive through the Downtown Eastside en route to somewhere else tend to see only the long lines at the soup kitchens, the addicts congregating in alley ways, the hookers on their stroll and the homeless sleeping on benches and in doorways. Some, though, don’t see Third World misery, but rather opportunity and a brighter future-for themselves, the developers. Instead of a vast urban wasteland filled with the homeless lining up for food, they see a queue of yuppies ready to live on the edge, buying upscale $500,000 one-bedroom condos overlooking the squalor in the streets below.

All these developers needed to make their dreams a reality was a spark to light the fire that would drive out the rabble. The eternal flame of Mount Olympus served the purpose quite nicely. In 2003, the spark caught and dreams became reality: the Olympic machine was coming to town, and with it, the power to gentrify the Downtown Eastside.

“All the developers needed to make their dreams a reality was a spark to light the fire that would drive out the rabble. The eternal flame of Mount Olympus served their purpose quite nicely.”

Closures, evictions, and other forms of “economic cleansing”

Before the 2010 Games were Vancouver’s, the bedbug-ridden hotels in the Downtown Eastside were fairly strictly policed; city inspectors routinely cited the owners for safety and hygiene violations. To avoid fines, the owners had to comply with what were really the most minimal of regulations. After the 2005 civic election, with the pro-Olympics Non-Partisan Association triumphant, the city’s attitude abruptly seemed to change. Now, rather than fine the owners, the city began closing the offending hotels.

Often, with only hours’ notice, residents were dumped onto the streets to join the thousands of others who wander the alleys by day and sleep on the sidewalk by night. Anti-poverty groups such as the Pivot Legal Society, the Anti-Poverty Committee and the Downtown Eastside Residents Association say a number of hotels have closed in this manner, adding many more people to the legions of the homeless. According to David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society, a total of 1,314 rooms that formerly housed low-income individuals have been closed or converted to other uses since the awarding of the Games to Vancouver in 2003.

*These figures are drawn from the Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness’ triennial homelessness count, and are widely acknowledged, even by count organizers, to underrepresent the true extent of homelessness in Vancouver.

The city claims that the hotel closures are the simple result of enforcing bylaws for the safety of the residents of the closed hotels, but the Pivot Legal Society, the Anti-Poverty Committee and the Downtown Eastside Residents Association have a more likely explanation: the city is helping landlords close the hotels deliberately because they want to flip the property so that it can be sold to developers. The developers, in turn, plan to tear the old buildings down and put up hotels to fill with Olympic tourists in 2010. After the Games have gone, the upscale hotels will be converted to condos for the urban upwardly mobile, and many believe Vancouver will see more of the urban gentrification that accompanied the city’s fabled Expo ‘86.

“Economic cleansing” is the ticket, and Mayor Sam Sullivan has the plan. If the Downtown Eastside is ugly and drug infested, he can sweep it all away courtesy of Project Civil City, Sullivan’s less than subtle manoeuvre to rid Vancouver of the relics of years of institutional neglect. Or maybe the city could ship the homeless out to other parts of the province “for treatment,” as the province’s Liberal Forests Minister recently suggested, the idea eerily reminiscent of the wholesale urban clearances of the poor in the run-up to Atlanta’s Olympics in 1996. The statement seemed likely to be a trial balloon, sent up to gauge public reaction.

Mayor Sullivan, the Non-Partisan Association, the provincial government and their real estate developer backers can see a new Kitsilano (an upper-middle-class enclave that was once dominated by artists and activists) arising out of the drug dens of the Eastside. Did the Olympics and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) do this? Not directly, but those involved knew it would come to pass. Indeed, the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation knew, too, even as it and the city made their empty promises that no one would get left out of the Olympic legacies. The promise of “inclusivity” was not really meant for the city’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Vancouver’s red zone

By Ava McDougall*
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2008

*Author’s note: With the exception of Jason Devine and Bonnie Collins, all anti-racist activists quoted in this article have been given pseudonyms. The writer’s name has also been changed. The reason for this should be obvious: neo-Nazis are dangerous, and those who organize to stop them put themselves at risk.

Even more dangerous than neo-Nazis, though, is the prospect that the actions of a few extremists could distract attention from the systemic discrimination and violence that indigenous peoples, people of colour and queer people (to name just a few of our society’s marginalized groups) encounter every day.

Blatant racism may infuriate or disgust us, but so too should elevated rates of poverty, violence, and poor health among members of oppressed groups-the real-world consequences of systemic racism and discrimination. Neo-Nazi organizing in our communities demands our attention, but so do these more subtle but far more widespread manifestations of racism.

Jason Devine and his fiancée Bonnie Collins live with their four sons, ages three to nine, in a cluttered townhouse on a quiet side street in Calgary. Both Devine and Collins are active members of the Communist Party of Canada and Anti-Racist Action (Calgary). On February 12, 2008, while the boys slept upstairs, Devine heard a crash and saw a flash outside his kitchen window. He knew immediately that someone had thrown a firebomb at his house.

Luckily, the Molotov cocktail was poorly constructed and most of the gas burned up in the air between the back fence and the corner of the wall it struck. No one was hurt and property damage was minimal, but the message was clear, at least to Devine and Collins. Their anti-racist organizing had drawn the ire of local racist skinheads.

According to media reports at the time, the police suspected neo-Nazis in both this and another firebombing that occurred earlier the same day in another part of Calgary. Though no one has yet been charged, Devine is convinced the attack was undertaken by members of the Aryan Guard, a white supremacist group that had recently set up in Calgary.

To Devine, the only surprise about the attack was that it was so long in coming. “I’ve been waiting for it since Western Canada For Us.”

Western Canada For Us (2004)

Founded in 2004 by Glenn Bahr and Peter Kouba, Western Canada For Us was an Alberta-based group founded on the ideology of white nationalism, which the white nationalist website Stormfront defines as “protecting” white people from being “snubbed” by “burdensome racial preference schemes in hiring, racial preference schemes in university admissions, racial preference schemes in government contracting and small business loans.” White nationalists commonly place blame for any social ills (crime, unemployment, poverty) on non-whites. They blame Jewish conspiracies for controlling government, the media and educational institutions, and they are also generally disdainful of queer people, people with disabilities, and leftists. While they claim to be “proud, not prejudiced,” posts made by Bahr to online forums make this assertion hard to believe: according to Bahr, First Nations people are “vermin” and all homosexuals’ lives should be “terminated.”

Western Canada For Us was very active during the few months it existed. Between January and May 2004, members organized a meeting in Red Deer, which was attended by notable neo-Nazis Paul Fromm and Melissa Guille. They also held a rally in support of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and operated a popular website and forum. However, all was not well within the organization. Power struggles split the group and Bahr became the target of an aggressive campaign initiated by Anti-Racist Action (Calgary). After being exposed as a neo-Nazi to his neighbours and employers in early March, 2004, Bahr lost his apartment and job in Red Deer and moved to Edmonton. In May 2004, police raided his home and seized numerous items bearing Nazi symbols, including two computers that were hosting the Western Canada For Us website. This seizure effectively dissolved the group, after which Bahr moved back to his parents’ home in Langley, B.C., to await his 2005 trial for promoting hatred and a 2006 appearance before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. This commission found Bahr and Western Canada For Us guilty of violating the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibition against distributing hate propaganda through the Internet. Each was fined $5,000 and ordered to cease the discriminatory practice.

Because Devine was the public spokesperson for Anti-Racist Action (Calgary) and was named as the group’s “leader” on white nationalist websites (even though Anti-Racist Action is non-hierarchical), he was an obvious target. Anti-Racist Action (Calgary) had not only cost Bahr his home, livelihood and freedom, but had also shut down a white supremacist group that seemed to be gaining ground. Devine’s name and image were familiar to racist organizers, so it was a fearful time for him. “I’d wear my winter coat in the summer with the hood pulled up. The cops would look at me weird, but whatever. I didn’t want [the racists] to recognize me and follow me home.”

After the dissolution of Western Canada For Us, things got pretty quiet-at least until late 2006. That’s when the Aryan Guard marched into town.

“The rally was met with fierce resistance, with approximately 200 anti-racist demonstrators pursuing a few dozen Aryan Guard members and supporters through downtown Calgary.”

The Aryan Guard (2006-present)

Living in Kitchener, Ontario, Aryan Guard founder Kyle McKee and his roommate Nathan Touchette gained notoriety by flying a Nazi flag outside of their apartment. In April 2005, upon hearing the two men were interested in moving to Alberta to take advantage of the hot economy and labour shortage, Calgary mayor Dave Bronconnier told them to “stay home.” They didn’t.

The Aryan Guard formed as a group in late 2006, primarily recruiting and organizing via the Internet. Founders McKee and Dallas Price put out calls to fellow Calgarians on white nationalist websites like Stormfront and held their first meeting on March 21, 2007, a date widely known as the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that has also been declared “White Pride World Wide Day” by white supremacists. The next time the group came together was April 20, 2007, when they celebrated Hitler’s birthday with dinner, drinks and a swastika-shaped birthday cake.

Since then, members of the Aryan Guard have put up posters, handed out leaflets and responded to anti-racist rallies with their own protests. They hold regular meetings and continue to use the Internet to recruit and organize. Their numbers, judging by public appearances, have grown from approximately 15 in October 2007 to 40 in March 2008. The Aryan Guard uniform-shaved heads, jackboots, tattoos, swastika and SS T-shirts-is becoming a fairly common sight around Calgary.

“A year ago, it would be rare to see these neo-Nazis walking around,” says “Bernard,” an anti-racist activist from Calgary. “Now you can find them on buses and trains, in parks and at bars. They’re all over the place now and their numbers are growing.”

The Aryan Guard organized their first public protest in August 2007 as a counter-protest to an anti-racist march. Since then, they have organized a demonstration against Muslim women’s right to wear head coverings when voting and a “White Pride World Wide” rally in March 2008. The rally was met with fierce resistance, with approximately 200 anti-racist demonstrators pursuing a few dozen Aryan Guard members and supporters through downtown Calgary. Heavy police presence ensured that the confrontation didn’t escalate beyond a heated screaming match.

The Aryan Guard’s mandate is based on the “14 words,” a phrase coined by David Lane in the 1980s while he was serving a 190-year sentence for racketeering, conspiracy and the 1984 murder of journalist Alan Berg. The “14 words” read “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” The group claims to be family-oriented and opposed to violence and illegal activities. They say that they are “White Pride,” not “White Power.”

Anti-racists don’t buy it, though. “White Pride is clearly and solely a euphemism for hatred,” Devine says. Their website “is completely disingenuous. They say they’re non-violent, but they pose with weapons. These people have violent tendencies, at the very least.”

Bernard agrees. “I would classify them as racist terrorists. They use fear tactics to spread their political beliefs.”

If videos posted on the Anti-Racist Canada blog are any indication of the kind of non-violent family values the Aryan Guard espouses, Devine and Bernard have a right to be skeptical. In a profanity-laced diatribe, Aryan Guard member Jason Harley explains that multiculturalism is like putting a red sock “representing the communists” and a blue sock “representing the Jews” into a washing machine with a white load of laundry. “Everything turns fucking fruity and purple and fucking gay. Fucking retarded. There you go. Fucking white supremacy.” In another video, two Aryan Guard members fight bare-chested in the snow on a quiet residential street.

“”It had never happened before that people were being jumped for the colour of their skin. I pretty much stopped going downtown. It didn’t feel like my hometown anymore.”

The Final Solution (1989-92)

Intimidation and violence by racists is nothing new to Alberta. The province has a history with the Ku Klux Klan that dates back to the 1920s. Neo-Nazi skinheads, their rhetoric and their uniforms are not new, either.

Between 1989 and 1992, a group of skinheads calling itself the Final Solution (referring to the Nazi plan to exterminate the European Jewish population during World War II) moved into Edmonton and brought with it a culture of fear and violence.

“They seemed to appear overnight,” says “James,” a former member of the Anti-Fascist League, which was active in combatting the spread of racist propaganda and violence at the time. “A couple of them landed in Edmonton and next thing you knew there were 15 to 20.”

“They were quiet at first,” he adds. “I think they came to Edmonton because there was no history [of skinhead activity] here and they were getting run out of other towns. I think they probably told themselves that no one was paying attention so they didn’t want to fuck it up. But you get a few drinks in them and they’re a pack of rabid wolves. If they were out drinking and someone of a different colour looked at them the wrong way, that was it.”

According to James, once Daniel Sims arrived in town and Terry Long started funding the group sometime in 1989, it became a movement. They began actively recruiting, organizing and distributing propaganda. Sims and Long are infamous in white supremacist and anti-racist circles alike. Sims was one of two neo-Nazi skinheads who brutally attacked journalist Keith Rutherford on his doorstep in 1990, leaving him blinded in one eye, while Long was the leader of the Aryan Nations in Canada and a father figure to many young skinheads, allegedly providing money, training and literature for their membership drives and campaigns. Long was brought before the Alberta Human Rights Commission in 1991. When served with a notice of claim on behalf of Rutherford, he skipped the province and went into hiding-first in California, then in B.C.

“One thing that’s important is how it changed the city,” James says. “It had never happened before that people were being jumped for the colour of their skin. I pretty much stopped going downtown. It didn’t feel like my hometown anymore. I had never felt unsafe before, but it really split the community.”

In an effort to clear their city, anti-racist organizers launched a three-pronged campaign. According to “Jean-Claude,” a long-time anti-racist activist, “We had three main focuses. One, know as much as possible about them. Two, make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Three, target substitution.”

The tactics Jean-Claude refers to have been used by Anti-Racist Action organizers since the early 1980s. Using the information they’ve gathered, anti-racist organizers let the leaders’ co-workers, schoolmates, neighbours and friends know about the person’s racist beliefs and activities through posters, flyers and phone calls. Then they try to make themselves the focal point of the group’s frustration. As Jean-Claude puts it, “get the racists focused on us instead of random taxi drivers.”

“Back then, you could find out whose name was on, say, the phone bill,” says James, referring to the days before PINs and security questions. “You could phone EdTel and say you were so-and-so and you were moving to Vancouver tomorrow so could they cut off your phone service-and EdTel would.”

The climax of the campaign happened in the summer of 1990 when about 50 anti-racists gathered in downtown Edmonton to blanket the city centre with posters. Within a few minutes, however, police seized their supplies. So they got on their walkie-talkies and decided to gather again.

“We were standing around wondering what to do,” says James. We had all these people and we were all riled up. Then someone said, ‘Let’s go to their house!’ So, we appointed a couple of spokespeople, gave everyone else instructions not to shout or say anything, and went over” to a popular white supremacist hangout known as the “Skin Bin,” the downtown home of several Final Solution skinheads.

According to James, the anti-racists gathered on the sidewalk while the neo-Nazi skinheads levelled shotguns and made it very clear what would happen if the anti-racists set foot on their property. The spokespeople and neo-Nazis argued, but James said it was a calm exchange. In the end, the anti-racists’ main point was made. Racists weren’t at all welcome in Edmonton.

“It took about a year,” says James. “When they did leave, though, they left pretty quick. They must have realized that they could get their asses kicked to Vancouver and back. Between that and their electricity, water and phone being cut off, I think they were getting uncomfortable.”

“‘We had three main focuses. One, know as much as possible about them. Two, make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Three, target substitution.’

The shelf life of a neo-Nazi

It’s widely agreed that most neo-Nazi skinheads are youth. Even the most cursory investigation of the membership of groups like the Aryan Guard and its predecessors supports this perception. McKee, for instance, is 23 years old. Most other Aryan Guard members and supporters are under 30.

“A lot of them were from less-than-ideal situations,” says James, referring to the Final Solution skinheads he encountered. “They were introduced by kids their own age, but groomed by older men-father figures who were drastically missing from their lives.”

Jean-Claude is quick to point out that perhaps the reason that most of the members of the Aryan Guard are so young is that “the average ‘shelf life’ of a neo-Nazi is one to three years.”

“Harry,” who was heavily involved in the punk and skinhead scene during the Final Solution era and friendly with many of the skinheads, agrees. “The ones who were really hard into it either moved away or were thrown into jail.”

Daniel Sims is perhaps a perfect example. Once the most prominent Final Solution skinhead and, according to James, “one of the few who scared me because he was a lifer,” Sims has spent several years in prison in both Canada and the U.S. Sims has recently disavowed his involvement with neo-Nazi skinheads in television and magazine interviews.

As Sims puts it, “they put themselves on the fringes of society by choice.” This isolation from the mainstream coupled with aggressive anti-racist campaigns seems to cause young recruits to eventually burn out or bow out, particularly when key members are imprisoned or forced to move due to hostile conditions.

What‘s next?

Since the March 21, 2008, rally, the Aryan Guard has been fairly quiet, but members are still active on Stormfront and there has been talk of creating an Edmonton branch of the Aryan Guard. Meanwhile, anti-racists across Alberta are putting their heads together on how to drive the new crop of white supremacists out of their province. They are exchanging information and keeping each other abreast of developments in their respective cities.

“Leaving them alone is not an option,” says Devine. “We can’t just sit around and wait for the police, because essentially the police’s hands are tied. It’s not a crime to hate Jews or Blacks or whatever. Until you say ‘Jews are all evil and need to be killed,’ it’s not a hate crime. Until they break the law, it’s our job to alert the community.”

“We show up to let them know that we’re watching them and that the community doesn’t have to be afraid,” he says.

Devine’s community isn’t alone. Cities across Canada, in fact, are affected by white supremacist groups. Saskatchewan is home to the Brotherhood of the Klan and the Saskatchewan Aryan Nations. Ontario has the Canadian Heritage Alliance and the Northern Alliance. Stormfront members come from every corner of the country. Members of these groups know each other, attend each other’s events and move from city to city. Calgary is just the most recent gathering place, largely due to economic and political conditions.

“Alberta is generally pretty right-wing,” says Bernard. “On top of that, there’s the boom, so it makes it a hotbed for anyone trying to make money, which includes neo-Nazis.”

If anti-racists have their way, though, the neo-Nazis won’t stay in Alberta for long. Unfortunately, that means they may soon be attempting to regroup in your community. Anti-racist activists believe that if you maintain a vigilant anti-racist stance, they won’t stay for long.

Ava McDougall is a freelance writer and activist based in Alberta. She has several publication credits under her real name, but this is her first-and hopefully last-published under this pseudonym. Due to personal safety concerns, that’s all the information she’s willing to provide.