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Cops as Criminals
by Don Colby
What makes cops go bad? Or is it just their job?
Cops are People in Your Neighbourhood
by Robert Hall
A look at how things went so terribly wrong for Neil Stonechild and other Aboriginal youth in Saskatoon
By Esteban Magnani
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2005
December 2001. The hatred, the poverty, the sadness and despair that had accumulated in Argentina for years exploded onto the TV sets of the whole world for a couple of days. People running around on the streets, fires, police, tear gas, five presidents who passed the presidency to each other like a hot potato.
Surely, in many parts of the worlds, viewers understood that their TV screens were also a mirror reflecting their future: Argentina had been the model country, the ideal student of an International Monetary Fund which had dictated instructions to the world for decades.
Among the many feelings that emerged during those months, there were at least two that would produce a qualitative change in our society. The first was the general certainty that if people themselves did not set things right, nobody would, and the second was that whichever way out was chosen, it would have to be taken democratically and as a group.
Out of this conviction there emerged new ideas such as the neighbourhood assemblies. But above all, these convictions served to generate the consensus that those who fought for a better world had the right to overlook the laws of a system which had lost legitimacy and only offered poverty and humiliation. This ingredient of social legitimacy, added to many workers’ firm belief that they would never find work again (facing a 25 percent unemployment rate) if their factory went bankrupt, gave momentum to a phenomenon which had until then been rare: the recovery of factories.
The Theory of Evolution
“Recovered factory” is a name which encompasses a diversity of factories of different types which in their own search for survival, open paths for those who follow behind. What the great majority of them have in common is the fact that they were put into production under some form of worker control (usually a cooperative), that they did so after the original owner declared themselves bankrupt, and that they had to confront the law in some way until they obtained a legal status that allowed them to produce for and by themselves. Most of them got a temporary expropriation from a State which had nothing better to offer, and a few of them were able to buy the factory thanks to their own work.
The oldest factories, those with more than 3 years under worker control, usually have average salaries which are above those of the employees of other factories of the same sector. Also, they have demonstrated, against all the preconceptions of capitalism, that neither owners nor super-specialized administrative staff are indispensable to manage a factory (the higher ranks in the staff usually leave along with the owners). This observation has spread and many workers have formed new cooperatives to recover a factory about to go bankrupt, or simply as a way to put pressure on a management which does not respect agreements made with the workers. Therefore, already more than 200 recovered factories are carrying out their productive projects under horizontal forms of organization.
Different investigations show that the degree of commitment and cohesion of each worker in the factories is usually related to the intensity of the struggle that they went through. Workers from recovered factories frequently tell stories of confrontation with a police force usually encouraged by shady political and economical powers. This same struggle tested and tempered the workers’ spirits to make them more united in confronting those who try to convert these factories to obtain cheap labour, a source of political capital or something else. Initially, for a good percentage of the workers, the responsibility of deciding for themselves is a traumatic one, and they are tempted to give themselves over to whoever poses as a savior. If to this we add the fact that most factories come from a process of being emptied out and lack start-up capital, the possibilities that they will end up selling their labour cheaply are high.
From Nowhere to Somewhere
Nowadays, recovered factories which have been able to get through the first and hardest months of production and generate their own resources are being able to think about the future for the first time. They begin to discover that there are many more who did similar things in Argentina and other parts of the world. There are factories which start to understand that being a cooperative, something which at first was only a legal form, means that they have thousands of sisters and brothers willing to help them out all over the world. Those just starting or struggling to accumulate the capital which in time allows them to become independent, are surprised that someone might consider what they are doing not crazy, but trustworthy.
In many cases, the workers of recovered factories also suffer internal crisis because of the shifting environment of a working class which was first targeted with all the strength of the military dictatorship and then stimulated towards a competitive and consumerist selfishness in the last 20 years.
Among the many questions left to answer, one of the main ones is whether recovered factories will be able to overcome the internal enemy, the selfishness learned for decades, to continue building another form of relationship. We will also have to observe what happens with the social legitimacy that these struggles had now that there is a more normalized political climate in which a good part of the middle class has gone back to demands for order and the protection of private property above the right to work and self-expression.
Beyond the questions facing the future, recovered factories already represent a victory: decades of repression and lack of social struggle evolved into a concrete answer for the generation of jobs and production under a new form; they are a factor of counter-power able to defy the establishment; they are already feeding thousands of families which would otherwise have no livelihood.
Can we ask more of these workers who in a few years of struggle have been able to begin producing, almost without any help? They come from a land in which hope and struggle were bad words; they are coming from nowhere and with their everyday exercise of horizontality they are building new paths to somewhere–nobody knows exactly where they are going to, but they are moving; they are building the many paths which may turn into the roads to a better future.
Esteban Magnani is’ an Argentinean journalist who wrote the book El Cambio Silencioso on recovered factories, published by Prometeo in Argentina. He was one of the local producers for the film The Take by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein.
By Yves Engler
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2005
Many Canadians know that on February 29, 2004 Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sent into exile. But few of us realize that most Haitians believe Aristide was overthrown by a coup d’etat orchestrated by the USA, France and Canada. Or that most of the country’s elected officials were forced from office. Or that in subsequent political repression of Aristide’s party, Lavalas, thousands have lost their jobs, been jailed or killed. Few Canadians understand that our country’s good name has been besmirched throughout the Caribbean by our government’s involvement with the USA and France in this project to once again tell Haitians what is good for them.
Most Canadians would be appalled to learn that our country has sided with Haiti’s small elite against the majority of its population. In order to really understand what is happening in Haiti, I recently travelled there and to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where hundred of thousands of refugees have fled.
Un-elections
Semereste Boliere is the elected mayor of Petit Goave, a town of 15,000. After being arrested in March by the new authorities, he escaped his captors and is hiding out in Port-au-Prince. While we sipped cola from ’50s-style pop bottles in a run-down labour hall near the city centre, he told me that since his departure from office Petit Goave has mostly been in the hands of former military officers who led the rebellion against the constitutional government. (The army, notorious for murderous repression, was disbanded by Aristide in 1995.)
Boliere and Ronald St. Jean, a human rights activist, say that throughout the country hundreds of elected mayors, council members and senators were forced into hiding or exile. Those officials who have kept their positions have made accommodations with the USA-armed paramilitary thugs, many of whom are convicted murderers and drug runners. Boliere and St. Jean are very disappointed with Canadian involvement in undermining Haitian democracy.
Wages and Food
Rea Dol is a 38-year-old mother of three who worked for the District of Petionville, which is an upscale (in Haitian terms) suburb of Port au Prince. When the “interim” government installed Marie Renee, a new un-elected mayor, Dol found herself out of work; fired without cause, with no compensation and owed back wages. Dol says she is just one of thousands (more than 2000 at the state telecom company alone) fired for their perceived political affiliation. She tells me about unemployment lines in a country with no social assistance and where most of the urban population is looking for work. It appears that some of the recently unemployed, especially the hundreds of police officers purged over the past ten months, have taken to crime.
Dol says that the rising cost of rice and beans is also driving people to lawlessness. The cost of these staples, imported by a handful of wealthy families who supported Aristide’s removal, has increased by 40 percent since the coup. Undoubtedly there has been a marked rise in malnutrition, but in the chaos who is keeping track?
In Hiding
Incredibly, for some people food isn’t their top priority. Not getting shot outranks eating. Jeremy is a twenty-year-old who formerly worked for the government TV station. A couple weeks after the coup, armed men came to his house. He wasn’t home, Jeremy tells me with fear still in his eyes, so they killed his aunt. He fled to the Dominican Republic and still does not dare return home. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) have documented hundreds of killings of Lavalas supporters by paramilitary death squads and the police. On October 26, Haitian police rounded up 12 young men in the Fort National slum. They were forced to lie down and then were shot in the back of the head.
Two days later, under similar circumstances, four more were murdered in the Lavalas stronghold of Bel Air. It is almost impossible to ascertain how many have died from political violence and repression since last February. An IJDH report covering the period until the end of July documents (with pictures of over 50 bodies) hundreds of murders, mostly of Lavalas supporters.
During a pro-Lavalas demonstration on September 30th, the anniversary of Aristide’s first USA-backed removal from office, the national police fired into the crowd. At least four unarmed demonstrators were killed under the watchful eye of United Nations peacekeepers.” The next day installed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue announced, “We shot them, some of the them fell, others were injured, others ran away.”
Prison Riot
On December 1, two weeks after the government fired more than a dozen experienced prison guards, a deadly riot broke out at the heavily fortified national penitentiary. At first the government claimed seven prisoners were killed. Subsequent investigations by Reuters, the Toronto Star and IJDH suggest that this number is likely a gross underestimate. The actual figure could be as high as 110, according to the IJDH.
I tried to interview prisoners but since December 1 the downtown Port-au-Prince national prison has been off limits to family members and most outsiders. The government admits, however, that of the 1,100 held in the prison when the riot occurred, only 17 had been convicted of any crimes. Hundreds of the detainees still languishing in the overcrowded cells are Lavalas activists, including elected politicians and numerous senators.
Inside the women’s Petionville prison I meet two prominent political prisoners: internationally acclaimed folk music singer, So anne and the former head of the Haitian Senate, Yvon Feulle. So anne is a feisty 70-year-old who brings the music of Haiti to the world and is also a political organizer committed to improving the lives of ordinary people in the poorest country of the Americas. She says, incredibly cheerfully, that she has been behind bars without being charged since May 10, when USA marines barged into her house during the night. The marines killed two dogs and arrested everyone, including a couple of children. Seven months after her arrest, So anne is defiant. She flexes her arm muscles and shouts out, “they won’t intimidate me.”
Port-au-Prince stretches up a mountain from a Caribbean bay. The higher one climbs, the wealthier the neighborhood. At the top is Petionville where the latest SUVs are on display and Western banks are never far away. Luxurious mansions line the peak looking out over the city of two million. But even in Petionville poverty is rampant; at a sprawling market hundreds of women “entrepreneurs” spend their days selling candies and other products we might see in a Canadian dollar store.
Attacking Schools
I visited SOPUDEP school, which educates hundreds of children whose parents are unable to pay. Although demand for the school rises by the day, in September Petionville’s new (unelected) mayor attempted to shut the school down because she associates it with Lavalas. She sent in machine-gun wielding police during school hours. Ultimately the school remained open with the help of outside pressure, but how long can it continue to operate under these trying circumstances?
Fifty feet below the house where I am staying, a shantytown begins. One evening I lose my direction and find myself in this neighbourhood where it is unclear to me if a burned out car or a pile of garbage are actually dwellings. As children jump from rock to rock in the desolate landscape, I worry about the effects of growing up here.
How to help?
“Canada is not helping by siding with the rich against the poor,” said So anne, the folksinger. “If outside forces would just respect our democracy and give us aid, we can improve our country,” said Boliere, the former mayor. “The Aristide government cut the illiteracy rate from 80 per cent to 50 percent,” said my host. “Poor people understood the government was on their side; that’s why Aristide is so popular to this day. I just want to believe a better life is possible,” said Jeremy. “Can you offer us that”?
As well as a lack of accurate reporting reporting, Canadian media rarely acknowledges that the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) refuses to recognize Haiti. To do so would bring into question the legitimacy of Canada’s operations in Haiti. Reporting on CARICOM’s rationale for freezing Haiti’s membership–they don’t want to support an illegitimate government–would lead Canadians to ask, “Was my government involved in removing an elected head of state? Have their actions lead to the death of hundreds, if not thousands of people?” An empathic “Yes” would undoubtedly be the informed conclusion.
Instead, the media (and Liberal government) cite Canada’s military mission in Haiti as a good reason to increase funding for the armed forces. Barely any information (or prominent people) contradicts the government’s position on Haiti. The Left argue that military funding ($13 billion annually) should be cut and the money spent on social programs, yet Canadian unions, mainstream left-wing columnists, and the NDP have been unwilling to challenge Canada’s military (political) involvement in Haiti.
Why? Certainly there is substantial compassion for Haiti’s impoverished population, as evidenced by the outpouring of aid after Haiti’s recent floods. In addition, how can we (the Left) argue that military funding is a waste when we are unable to stand up and say “No, Canada’s military is not a force for good in Haiti?”
Yves Engler is studying political science at Concordia University in Montreal.
