If you are a comic illustrator interested in contributing original artwork rooted in a radical analysis of social, environmental and political issues, please send three samples of your work along with a brief description of the concept of your comic series to editor<at>briarpatchmagazine<dot>com.

Briarpatch is offering a modest honorarium of $50 for each halfpage comic, to be published bimonthly. Honorariums ranging from $20 to $200 are also available for submissions of cover art, interior illustrations and photography.

About Briarpatch:

Briarpatch is a nationally-distributed contemporary issues magazine with a chip on its shoulder and a fire in its belly. Fiercely independent and frequently irreverent, Briarpatch tackles today’s most pressing problems from a radical, grassroots perspective. Founded in 1973, Briarpatch conspires to provoke, inspire and empower its readers in their efforts to build a better world.

“Spiritual change, psychological change, and ethical action go hand in hand, forming together an interconnected path of awakening.”
-Michael Stone

How do our inner revolutions fuel revolutionary action, and vice versa?
What motivates us to fight for positive change?
What role does our inter-connectedness with other people and our environment play in the struggle for social and environmental justice?
Does activism need more soul? Does spirituality need more action? What do the two have to teach each other?

Briarpatch’s January/February 2011 issue, “The Soul of Activism,” will explore the intersection between spirituality and activism. We’ll trace the work we do back to its deepest, most intimate origins, uncover the inner-most motivations for activism, and examine how awareness of our inner world can inform the work we do in our outer world, and vice versa.

In a world with such colossal injustice, inequality, destruction and apathy, the work of an activist is never done. It’s easy to find a cause that’s worth fighting for, but it’s also easy to become overwhelmed and burnt out by the severity of the imbalances and injustices around us, and the amount of work needed to repair them. In our pursuit of balance, harmony and justice in the world, what role, if any, does our capacity to find balance within ourselves play?

If you’ve got something to contribute to this discussion, then we want to hear from you. We are looking for articles, essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles, interviews with luminary thinkers, reviews, poetry, humour, artwork & photography that shed light on issues related to spirituality and activism. We are particularly interested in contributions informed by an anti-capitalist and anti-oppression analysis.

We also invite organizations and groups who could use this issue of Briarpatch as an organizing/educational tool to get in touch to discuss opportunities for shared distribution, bulk issue orders and possible in-kind exchanges.

Possible topics include (but are by no means limited to):

• The role of religion and spirituality in movements for social and environmental justice, self-determination and national liberation
• Feminism, gender and religion/spirituality;
• Spirituality and indigenous activism;
• Liberation theology and land reform in the Global South;
• Activist burnout and spiritual remedies;
• Dance, art, music and creativity as activism;
• Peace vs. anti-war activism: diversity of tactics and the role of spirituality;
• The link between quantum physics, spirituality and activism;
• Yoga: commercialized fad or path to enlightenment?;
• Spirituality and cultural appropriation;
• Queer activism in religious institutions;
• Religious and spiritual practice in prisons;
• Religious and spiritual practice in schools;
• Case studies or profiles of spirit-based activism or action-based spirituality, either locally or internationally;
• Profiles of or interviews with revolutionary change-makers in religious or spiritual communities;
• Reviews of relevant books that tackle these or other related issues.

Queries are due Sept. 9. If your query is accepted, first drafts are due Oct. 18. Your query should outline what ground your contribution will cover, give an estimated word count, and indicate your relevant experience or background in writing about the issue. If you haven’t written for Briarpatch before, please provide a brief writing sample.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to shayna AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.

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People move across borders from necessity or desperation, providing the citizens of the territory they enter with an unfree workforce that is often used to undermine the rights of more established workers. More than race, more than class, more than gender - but interacting powerfully with all three - the colour of one’s passport, or the misfortune of having been displaced from one’s country of origin, can do more to limit a person’s opportunities than almost any other single factor. Declaring war on walls of all kinds, Briarpatch explores the politics of migration in our “freedom of movement” issue.

To subscribe or order a copy of this issue, call 1-866-431-5777 or visit our secure online shop.

features

a border runs through it
Mohawk sovereignty & the Canadian state
By Henry Martin

letters across borders
Two brothers separated by the U.S./Canada border reflect on what unites and divides them
By Authman and Zidan Mushtaak

exiled for love
Arsham Parsi’s long journey
By Marc Colbourne

immigration double jeopardy
One strike, you’re out?
By Angela Day

creative class struggle
Gentrification & sex work in Hamilton’s downtown core
By Sarah Mann

sex work, migration & anti-trafficking
Interviews with Nandita Sharma & Jessica Yee
By Robyn Maynard

the aeolian recreational boundary institute
Artists pushing the boundaries of boundaries
By arbi

finding our own voices
A profile of Migrante Ontario
By MaryCarl Guiao

departments

letter from the editor

letters to the editor

contributors’ bios

comic: luz
“Fur, food ‘n’ fertilizer” by Claudia Dávila

quotes from the underground
Arnaldo Jabor & Chris Hedges

parting shots
Cashing in on the border: The ugly economic calculations driving Canada’s immigration policy
By Annette Przygoda

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photo by Sandra Cuffe

The line that runs through Akwesasne territory divides the United States from Canada,  and cuts the Mohawk nation in half.

By Henry Martin
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2010

At midnight on May 31, 2009, the guards who manned the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) station on the Mohawk (Kahnienkehaka) reserve of Akwesasne, near Cornwall, Ontario, abandoned the Canadian side of the U.S.-Canada border and went home. The guards were to be issued 9-mm Beretta pistols on the following day as part of Canada’s border security policy, but had been warned by Akwesasne community groups that armed agents of the Canadian government would not be tolerated on their land. Despite appeals from the CBSA, Cornwall mayor Bob Kilger and the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne for third party intervention, the federal government ignored the issue and pressed ahead with the policy. The Border Service agents, not wishing to be put in the middle of a major crisis, chose to walk off the job.

A year later, the border station, for all intents and purposes, remains abandoned.

Beneath the Canadian concerns over border security and the community’s fears of irresponsible gun use by border agents lies the far more fundamental question of who has sovereignty over Mohawk territories. “No Guns on Mohawk Land” is a prominent slogan in use by activists and community groups on the Akwesasne territory, reflecting the idea that ultimately Akwesasne, as a community belonging to the Mohawk nation of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy, is part of a sovereign country that is neither American nor Canadian. Armed agents of these governments on their territory are often regarded as occupational forces. On May 29, 2009, two days before the federal government intended to impose armed border guards on the community, Chief Larry King told the press: “[The Canada Border Service Agency] is a foreign oppressive force who occupies our sovereign community and territory. [They are] unwelcome, uninvited and now carrying firearms. For lack of a different description, that is considered by some an act of war.”

Despite the fact that the Mohawks of Akwesasne consider their community to be one single entity, they are divided nearly down the middle by the border between Canada and the United States, with the Akwesasne reserve on the north side of the border and the St. Regis reservation on the south. The border station, known as the Kawehnoke Port of Entry, lies on this line, and stands as a symbol of intrusion of government authority in the community. When I visited the station last summer, the government signs were covered over with Iroquois Confederacy and Warrior flags.

When the government of Canada informed the community of its intention to arm the border guards in March 2009, the Mohawk Council responded swiftly with a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper declaring their opposition to the policy, which they warned would result in a “number of negative consequences,” including “risking irreparable damage” to the Border Services/Mohawk relationship.

The Council expressed concern that arming the border guards would increase the power imbalance in the relationship and result in an increase in human rights violations. According to a study done by Transport Canada in 2002, members of the community constitute 70 per cent of daily traffic across the border. The Mohawks’ primary objection was that Akwesasne is a residential area and armed border services officers would create a menacing environment. But in their statement the Council also pointedly referred to the actions of “your country” - meaning Canada - indicating that while the dispute involved respect of the human rights of Akwesasne community members, it also centred on competing sovereignty claims. The letter cited a resolution passed by the Council that declared that “the Mohawks of Akwesasne have the existing and inherent right of self-determination, which includes the inherent jurisdiction over their lands, peoples and territories.”

The dispute has now dragged on for a year. The Harper government insists it is vital to post armed guards at all entry points across the U.S.-Canada border as part of its post-9/11 enhanced security policy. The border station rests empty but is carefully watched by community members. The bridge that connects the Canadian city of Cornwall to the Akwesasne reserve is tightly controlled by local police, with long waits to enter the reserve and claims of harassment and unjustified vehicle seizures. The federal government claims progress is being made, but on the ground nothing has changed since the dispute began, and one of the few definitive statements made by the government was then-Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan’s comment to the press last year: “they’ll have to accept armed border officers there.”

“Ten feet above our heads”

The issue of territorial sovereignty at the heart of the dispute is a sensitive one for both the Mohawks and the government of Canada. Conflicts regarding jurisdiction over territory have sparked numerous crises over the years, sometimes producing violent confrontations. In 1968, the government of Canada provoked major resistance from the Akwesasne community when it attempted to impose duties on goods bought in St. Regis on the American side of the border, despite having no legal basis for doing so. Akwesasne’s resistance to the policy compelled the government to grant duty-free status to the Mohawks by the next year, a concession that put the matter to rest without addressing the issue of the border - did it divide the United States from Canada, or cut the Mohawk nation in half?

From the point of view of the Canadian and American governments, to discuss the issue of territorial sovereignty is absurd: the land is unquestionably Canadian and American on their respective sides of the border by right of treaty and the consent of the Iroquois ancestors. During the Oka Crisis in 1990, then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney described Mohawk sovereignty claims as “bizarre,” while last year, Prime Minister Harper declared at a G20 press conference that Canadians “have no history of colonialism.” With that one statement Prime Minister Harper rejected most of Canada’s history as a colonial power, as well as most of the Iroquois understanding of their own history.

From the Iroquois point of view, the treaties that form the basis for Canadian and U.S. claims to sovereignty over their territory are perceived as fraudulent, misinterpreted or signed under coercion. According to Sakoietah, a representative of the Akwesasne’s Men’s Traditional Council, in an interview with rabble.ca (June 10, 2009), the historical context of the dispute goes back to the Jay Treaty of 1794, which established the original border between the U.S. and Britain’s remaining North American colonies: “our people perceived that border line as being 10 feet above our heads, it didn’t matter to our people that it was there, this was a line dispute between Britain and the U.S., and this is how they settled that dispute. . . . That’s the reason our people fight, because we don’t actually believe that there is a border here.”

There is a strong sense in Mohawk communities that the lands of the Confederacy, a vast territory extending from Lake Erie to Montreal and covering parts of Ontario, Quebec and New York state, cannot be ceded by treaty, nor can their sovereignty as a people be revoked. Mohawk activist Jessica Yee argued in an article written days into the border dispute, “we belong to Mother Earth in whom no one has claim over - and where there aren’t any borders.” A representative on behalf of the Iroquois as a self-determining confederacy of peoples, Doug Anderson, delivered a request to the United Nations that UN officials be sent to observe the events at Akwesasne days before the government deadline.

The six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy recognize the Two Row Wampum Treaty (Guswentah) as the basis of the Iroquois/European relationship. The 1613 treaty with the Dutch established nation-to-nation relations, and as a self-determining people they consider it the basis of all their dealings with colonial powers to the present day. The two rows of the wampum belt symbolize the coexistence of the two distinct peoples on one land. Since 1613, there has been no treaty or declaration between a European people and the Iroquois that has changed that relationship.

Neither side appears willing to push these issues to the point of a violent confrontation, but certainly that potential is present. There are ample historical precedents of the potential for conflicts to boil over into crisis and violence. The Warrior Society, a paramilitary organization that historically acted as the defence forces of the Iroquois Confederacy, is mentioned only infrequently in the community’s public statements, but their presence can have an enormous impact on events. In 1974, armed members of the Warrior Society seized territory in New York state at Moss Lake, which they recognized as their traditional land. Naming the land Ganienkeh (”Land of the Flint,” from the Akwesasne name for Mohawk, Kahnienkehake: “People of the Flint”), the Warriors asserted full sovereignty over the territory and forbade non-Natives from setting foot on the land. The reclaiming of Ganienkeh led to a number of incidents in which exchanges of gunfire took place between the Warriors and locals, resulting in a tense standoff with National Guard and New York State Troopers from 1974 until 1977, when the dispute was settled by a concession of a 700-acre territory near the Kahnawake reserve.

The 1990 Oka Crisis in Quebec further emphasized how seriously some Mohawk groups take the battle for Iroquois sovereignty. When members of the Warrior Society occupied sacred ground considered to be part of Kanesatake territory threatened by a golf course expansion, the action was conducted not as a civil protest, but with the military planning and diplomatic protocols of a nationalist revolutionary movement. The 78-day standoff with units of the Quebec provincial police and the Canadian military ended with a moratorium on the development of the land and the arrest of many of the Warriors, but the events at Oka showed how serious many Mohawks are about defending their nationhood, even to the point of revolutionary action and armed resistance.

Despite the relative caution and inactivity of the federal government in the current conflict over the arming of the border guards, the conflict continues to simmer. In March 2010 members of the Akwesasne community brought complaints of harassment and unjustifiable seizures by police on the Cornwall bridge to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, although to no avail. The federal government, for its part, has publicly contemplated moving the border station off the reserve entirely, but has made no decisive statement on the matter.

An atmosphere of siege continues to hang over Akwesasne.

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photo by Saeed Parsa

By Marc Colbourne
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2010

“As the train crossed the border into Turkey, I looked out the window at the Iranian flag illuminated by the border lights. More than ever I felt a connection to the waving cloth. Despite all I had endured it was still my country - my home - that I was leaving behind. I leaned back in my seat, grateful for its coolness, closed my eyes and waited for the sense of relief I longed for.
Leaving, finally, I had expected to feel light, comfortable, safe. Instead my stomach tightened with sadness and anger. Why was I forced to flee? To leave behind my family, friends and home just because of who I love? As the flag disappeared in the darkness I vowed I would continue my work. I would work on behalf of the gay men and women left behind, living in fear of torture and execution.
I promised myself that one day I would return to my country free to be who I am. Until that day I would live in exile.”
- Arsham Parsi

Arsham Parsi is a tireless organizer for queer rights, both internationally and in his native Iran. He is proud to call Canada home, but in the wake of proposed changes to Canada’s refugee status determination system and the elimination of any reference to gay rights in the new version of Canada’s citizenship guide, some wonder whether Parsi would be admitted to this country if he claimed asylum here today.

Arsham Parsi has lived most of his life in silence and fear. Like many gay men, he felt from a very young age that he was different from his peers. As a teenager he began to associate this sense of difference with his attraction to men. He had little access to information about homosexuality but he soon realized that in order to survive he would have to hide his true feelings and conform to the conservative expectations of his family and his culture.

“A friend of mine loaned me a book that had a short chapter about homosexuality,” Parsi recalls. “It was the first thing I had ever read about it. It described the sin of sodomy and said that under Sharia law it was punishable by execution: hanging, being cut in half by a sword, stoning.

“I became obsessed with stoning. Would it hurt? How long would it take to die? I began to imagine myself buried in sand to my neck waiting for the rocks to hit me. I believed this was how my life would end. I was 14.”

In Iran, homosexuality is illegal. Punishment for engaging in sexual behaviour with someone of the same sex includes imprisonment, flogging and execution. Socially, the stigma attached to homosexuality carries the consequences of isolation, forced heterosexual marriages and exclusion from one’s family. As Parsi says, it means a life lived in fear.

Parsi finished high school, completed his mandatory military service and worked several jobs in Iran and Dubai. Despite his efforts to ignore his attraction to men, his sexual orientation was always at the forefront of his thoughts. He tried to deny his feelings through a series of increasingly severe forms of self-punishment. Nothing worked. Finally, he came to accept that this was who he was and that he had little control over it. What he could control, he realized, was the isolation in which he lived. He became driven by the need to find others in similar circumstances. Through the Internet he was able to reach out to other gay Iranian men and his feeling of being alone began to lessen.

As his circle of friends grew, however, he became increasingly concerned about the stories he was hearing. People forced into loveless marriages to preserve their family’s honour; gay men entrapped by Iran’s secret police force through the Internet or in city parks; friends arrested and tortured until they agreed to provide the names of other gay men. When two of his friends committed suicide out of desperation, Parsi felt he had no choice but to act. He would start by tackling the social isolation felt by many queer Iranians and then begin to challenge the culturally and legally sanctioned homophobia impacting their lives.

Relying on the relative anonymity of the Internet, he started Iran’s first underground queer organization. Starting with the email addresses of his gay friends and acquaintances, Parsi began to disseminate positive information about homosexuality.

“It started small. Mostly it was me sending encouraging emails and information to our subscribers. As I learned more and I saw how important it was for these people to find connection with others, I expanded my work. We developed a website and finally, with the help of a friend in Norway we registered the organization there. I started to give interviews with international media to share our stories. I wanted others to know that we existed and that we were struggling. One of my proudest moments was when we held our first Celebration of Voice.”

Celebration of Voice emerged when Parsi and others involved in his organization recognized the importance of creating a space for queers in Iran to come together, share their stories and understand that they are not alone. It was impossible, however, to hold such an event in a physical location - the risk of being discovered and arrested was far too great. Instead, a private Internet chat room was created and invitations to attend this virtual event were distributed to the organization’s subscribers. More than 50 people participated in this first community forum. Parsi had broken the walls of silence that had isolated gay Iranians. More than six years later he still receives emails thanking him for organizing the forum.

Parsi’s organization continued to expand, providing support and opportunities for connection for the Iranian queer community. His international media profile increased as he strove to educate those outside of the country about the Iranian situation. He understood the risk he was taking, but his fear was outweighed by the sense of responsibility he felt to his community.

It wasn’t long, however, before the risks became too great to ignore and his fears were realized.

In 2003, Iran’s secret police raided a party attended by members of Shiraz’s queer community. Several of Parsi’s friends were arrested, tortured and “outed” to shamed family members. Capitalizing on the detainees’ fear, officials collected additional information that led to a series of raids over the next several months. The police harassment and intimidation drove the community further into silence and isolation. Parsi was able to learn from those arrested that he was a target and that his organization was a topic of many interrogations. As the days and weeks went by he could feel them getting closer. He knew that if he was to protect himself and his family he had no choice but to flee.

Telling his family nothing of the true reason he was leaving, Parsi boarded a train, crossed the border into Turkey and claimed refugee status. After almost 18 months in limbo, he was finally granted refugee status by the UN Refugee Agency. In 2005, he was resettled to Canada.

Immediately upon arriving in Canada, Parsi resumed his work. He is now the executive director of the Toronto-based organization Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees (www.irqr.net).

Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees is actively working on behalf of more than 200 Iranian refugee claimants living in limbo throughout the world as well as those hiding in Iran. “This work is so important,” says Parsi. “It is what I was meant to do.”

“It is essential that the international community knows about the human rights abuses against the gay and lesbian community in Iran. We work to increase public awareness of these issues. We also provide support - emotional, legal and financial - to refugees and immigrants who have been forced to leave Iran because of persecution on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The persecution Parsi speaks of is legally sanctioned in Iran. The Iranian Penal Code explicitly defines the crime of Lavat as a sexual act between males that includes penetration or the rubbing of thighs or penis against thighs. Lavat carries a punishment of death; the method of execution is left to the discretion of the presiding judge. If one or both of the accused is a minor, the punishment is 74 lashes of a whip. The law also outlines the consequences for non-penetrative offences: kissing brings 60 lashes, while lying naked with another man under a blanket earns 99 lashes.

This is not just a case of an obsolete law remaining on the books. It is exercised regularly and its effects extend further than to those being punished.

“Each time a person is publicly denounced and punished for being gay, the entire community suffers,” Parsi says. “Fear and silence grow and queers in Iran are made to feel the desperation of their situation. No one protests. We are made to feel invisible. Despised yet invisible.”

According to Parsi, one of the biggest challenges facing refugee claimants is the requirement to prove their sexual orientation to the Immigration and Refugee Board deciding their case. Forced to live in silence in Iran, many seek refuge in heterosexual marriages to escape family and societal scrutiny, and many refugee claimants do not have any official connections to a queer community. Even after fleeing the country, a lifetime of fear does not quickly leave a person and many do not seek out membership in gay or lesbian organizations or feel immediately comfortable disclosing their orientation to authorities. In light of this, proving they are gay or lesbian can be difficult.

“It is a delicate situation. One of our roles is to support refugee claimants in proving their sexual orientation. But it is often difficult even for us to determine who is queer or who is making a false claim. If we have confidence in the individual’s case we support their claim with a legal affidavit and provide evidence of the reality for the queer community inside of Iran.”

The burden of proof facing queer refugee claimants will get even heavier if proposed reforms to Canada’s refugee system announced at the end of March by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney are implemented. Included in these reforms are shorter timelines for cases to be heard and the denial of access to an appeal process for claimants from countries determined to be “safe” by the Canadian government.

While it is unlikely that Iran will be deemed a safe country with its well-documented history of human rights abuses and the growing threat of war with the West, these reforms may still impact claimants’ ability to successfully prove their case. Because a positive outcome of a claim depends on the individual’s ability to convince a Board of their sexual orientation, a successful determination of these challenging cases often requires a longer period of trust-building between the claimants and their legal representation as well as the option to appeal.

Parsi is confident in the positive relationship his organization has built with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “We have a good relationship with Minister Kenney and his department. He is aware of our situation and is supportive. Decreasing wait times for claimants may be a good thing if the Refugee Board members are well informed of the unique situation facing queer refugees. We need to continue to educate the Canadian government and its representatives to ensure that each case is adjudicated fairly. We have more work to do in this area.”

Parsi believes strongly in the prospects for change in Iran and states that it is this belief that allows him to continue his work. He sees the opposition movement that arose during and after the 2009 summer elections as one example of a growing social consciousness in his homeland.

Many Iranians were looking to the elections as a means to reform the country’s political system and to reclaim rights promised under the country’s own constitution. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner on June 12, reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s supporters immediately took to the streets in protest. Wearing green (the colour of Mousavi’s campaign), the protesters demanded that Ahmadinejad be removed from the presidency. This was the first large-scale demonstration of its kind since the country’s 1979 revolution. A swift and violent response from the government only served to strengthen the growing unrest. Diverse segments of the country’s population were united under a common desire for change.

According to Parsi, the Green Movement provided an opportunity for Iranians to acknowledge their differences in a new way. Instead of creating barriers along lines of gender, religion, political belief and sexual orientation, a greater understanding of common experience began to emerge. The regime’s denial of basic human rights for everyone became the dominant discourse, and people began to share their diverse experiences of oppression with one another. While he recognizes that reforms to the penal code may take some time, Parsi believes that this cultural shift in understanding and the increased willingness to learn from one another is perhaps even more important if homophobia is to be challenged.

“I have heard from many queers in Iran that the protests have allowed them to share their experiences with others. People are saying: ‘It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is or what your religious or political beliefs are. The important thing is that we are here together as Iranians and we want change.’

“We need to bring discussions of homosexuality in Iran out of the closet and put them on the kitchen table. This is where real change will happen.”

It is to this possibility of change that Parsi has dedicated his life. Canada has provided him with a safe environment in which to live and continue his work, while the Internet has enabled him to reach across borders in an effort to overcome the isolation facing many queer exiles. Like many refugees with a dream of returning home one day, however, his heart remains in Iran with his family and community.

“Change will come to Iran. I know it will. Some day queers in Iran will have their human rights respected. They will be free to be who they are - love who they love - and not be afraid of retaliation or torture or execution. I hope to be a part of that change.”

Parsi smiles as he thinks about this. “One day I will no longer have to live in exile. One day I will go home.”

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An ad hoc Montreal-based support group for Honuran-born Quebecer Dany Villanueva, whose permanent residency is under threat of revocation for a crime he committed and served time for four years ago, demonstrate outside of his Immigration and Refugee Board hearing.

By Angela Day
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2010

Imagine  you were born in Honduras and spent your childhood days on the dusty streets of Tegucigalpa. When you’re 12, you and your parents emigrate to Canada. You’re granted permanent residency and the stability it offers. By the time you’re 20, Canada is home and Honduras a distant memory.

But permanent residency in Canada is not necessarily permanent. According to the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which came into effect in 2002, if permanent residents are implicated in “serious criminality” or sentenced to six months or more in prison, they may be deported to their country of origin, regardless of the length of time they’ve lived in Canada.

Jaggi Singh, a Montreal-based migrant rights organizer, says that this measure amounts to “double punishment,” since a permanent resident convicted of a crime is penalized once through the justice system and then again through the immigration system, with immigration officials weighing in on issues of criminality that have already been addressed within the judicial system. But whereas the courts dictate that a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime - a legal concept known as double jeopardy - no such principle protects immigrants from similar double punishment.

Simply put, the inadmissibility provision in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that allows permanent residents to be stripped of their status based on criminality amounts to double jeopardy specifically for migrants. “If someone is accused of something, charge them. Put them on trial. There are policies and procedures in place for this,” Singh says. He considers the revocation of permanent residency an “extra measure steeped in racism and discriminatory attitudes towards migrants.”

Singh is part of No One Is Illegal-Montreal and Solidarity Across Borders, groups that organize around demands for status for all non-status persons as well as an end to deportations and detentions. In Montreal, organizing against double punishment has become a primary focus of late.

Dany Villanueva, a 24-year-old Honduran-born Quebecer, has experienced first-hand the double punishment of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act’s inadmissibility provisions. Villanueva, who served an 11-month prison sentence in 2006 for armed robbery and faces another pending charge, is being threatened with revocation of his permanent residency. On April 21, Villanueva was given a removal order at an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing which, if enforced, would see him sent back to a country he left 12 years ago, when he was still a preteen. The order comes four years after Villanueva was convicted of his criminal charges, crimes for which he already served his prison sentence, and less than two years after his brother, Fredy Villanueva, was shot dead by officer Jean-Loup Lapointe of the Montreal police in an incident that is still under investigation.

Members of No One is Illegal and Solidarity Across Borders demonstrate outside of Dany Villanueva’s Immigration and Refugee Board hearing in Montreal on April 21, 2010.

Dany Villanueva is currently a key witness for the public inquiry into the killing of his unarmed, 18-year-old brother in a public park on August 9, 2008. He has also been described in the media as a gang member, although he insists he hasn’t been involved with gangs since his release from jail.

After Villanueva’s April hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board, which lasted only five minutes before his removal order was handed down, Villanueva’s lawyer, Stéphane Handfield, told reporters that the four-year lapse between Villanueva’s conviction and deportation order was an “unreasonable delay.” Handfield said the timing of Villanueva’s deportation order - which came in the midst of the public inquiry into his brother’s death at which Dany was testifying - was an “odd coincidence.”

A written statement issued by an ad hoc Montreal-based support group for the Villanuevas, handed out outside the hearing, was less circumspect. “That these procedures are happening so many years later suggests that it is a blatant attempt by the [Canadian Border Services Agency] to meddle in the public inquiry.”

The support group’s declaration claims that “the removal proceedings also serve to increase the stress on Dany and his family, who must concentrate not just on the coroner’s inquest into Fredy’s death, but also the potential threat of a deportation to Honduras.” The Villanuevas have declined media comment.

The campaign against double punishment, or the misuse of the immigration system to address criminal behaviour, is growing in Montreal, with public support for the Villanuevas from groups such as No One is Illegal, Solidarity Across Borders, the Immigrant Workers Centre, the Fédération des Femmes du Québec and the local youth organization Head and Hands. Groups opposed to double punishment have also emerged in Toronto and Vancouver, in the U.K. and across the U.S., where similar deportation provisions exist. In response to the negative impact these kinds of deportations were having on immigrant communities in California, in 2004 the Oakland youth group Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership hosted a rally declaring their communities “deportation free.”

There are, in practice, no deportation-free zones in Montreal. In fact, some areas are more prone to this trend than others. On an unseasonably warm April afternoon I visited the community organization Maison d’Haïti in the St. Michel area of Montreal. Kids from the after-school program were mingling in the hallway. A couple of men waited to speak to staff about immigration, and colourful murals of Haiti and the Caribbean Sea stretched down the hallway. Marjorie Villefrance, a community worker at the Maison d’Haiti, told me that the Haitian community is particularly familiar with the deportation of residents due to criminality, as they are “overrepresented” in Canadian courts and prisons.

Villefrance says that to understand criminality among immigrant populations from a holistic perspective, we have to take into account the circumstances that immigrant youth may find themselves in and the pressures they may face. As in the Villanueva case, Villefrance says that when youth are accused of “serious criminality,” the reality is often more complex than it may seem.

Immigrant youth are most often subject to deportation based on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act’s inadmissibility provision, she explains, and not because they are more likely to engage in criminal activity. Rather, it’s because they are often targets of street-gang stereotypes and racial profiling.

As I was interviewing Villefrance in the waiting room of Maison d’Haïti, a Haitian man who was waiting to meet with staff about immigration spoke up to voice his opinion on racial profiling. He said that when youth of colour are stopped and questioned, they are often provoked by the police, which in turn elicits an impulsive reaction from the youth. “Then,” he explained, “there may be grounds for a criminal charge.”

In a 2008 study published by the Centre de recherche de Montréal sur les inégalités sociales and les discriminations (CREMIS), a research organization affiliated with the University of Montreal and the University of Québec at Montreal, researchers Léonel Bernard and Christopher McAll report that black youth in Montreal are at least twice as likely to be stopped by the police as white youth.

According to the CREMIS study, black youth are also less likely to access a lawyer. And Villefrance explains that even if they do consult a lawyer, when there is a lack of understanding of Canada’s judicial system and few resources to access trustworthy legal advice there are myriad opportunities for a small criminal charge - or a case of racial profiling - to escalate from arrest to deportation.

Regardless of whether one agrees with permanent residents staying in Canada despite serious criminality for which they have done jail time, the fact remains that residents of Canada may be sent to places they barely remember. More often than not, these deportations are of youth who have been raised in Canada and may know very little about their country of origin.

Villefrance argues that deportation just displaces the problem. “The biggest fault with this strategy” she says, “is the fact that rich countries with so many resources are deporting youth to countries with very few resources to deal with it.” Rehabilitation for these youth then, is invariably non-existent.

At a time when drastic changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act are imminent, with Bill C-11 seeking to limit who can access Canada’s refugee system, let alone succeed in it, Villefrance’s words ring clear: “I don’t see any justice in these kinds of deportations.”

Villefrance says that the injustice of these deportations needs to be addressed. “We send youth away who need support. We send them to places where there aren’t the resources for this support. So, we send them to die.”

There has been a moratorium on deportations to Haiti for the past several years but, until the January 2010 earthquake, this moratorium did not apply to those who were deemed serious criminals or members of street gangs. This means that before the quake, youth were being sent back to a country the Canadian government explicitly deemed unsafe. Now, no one is being deported to Haiti, but Ville-France has doubts as to how long this will last.

The political instability and gang violence in Honduras, meanwhile, have not impeded the removal order for Dany Villanueva. Handfield has said that the family plans to appeal the current removal order. If the first appeal is unsuccessful, the decision may be taken to federal court. And, as Singh told reporters outside the hearing, “this is just the beginning of the fight.”

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The Mixed Media gallery

Words and photos by Sarah Mann
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2010

Two downtown neighbourhoods in Hamilton, Ontario - James St. North and Landsdale - have recently been the site of several skirmishes in a gentrification war waged in the media, art galleries and on the streets themselves.

James St. North is the vibrant hub of a burgeoning arts community. Busy cafés and bars owned by Portuguese and Italian immigrants who have called the neighbourhood home for decades sit next to swanky new art galleries showcasing the work of local artists. Just east lies the Landsdale neighbourhood, home to some of Hamilton’s poorest residents, including sex workers and other people living or working on the streets. These two neighbourhoods have become focal points of a fiery debate on surveillance, gentrification and the division of public space within Hamilton’s downtown core.

James Street North

Exemplified by two art exhibits and the media coverage that surrounds them, the debate over the right to space in Hamilton reflects similar gentrification struggles being waged in cities across the country in pursuit of sanitized downtown cores pandering to a “creative class” of young urban professionals (for more info on the “creative class, click here).

In May 2008, creative class theorist Richard Florida was the keynote speaker at Hamilton’s day-long economic summit. The Hamilton Spectator reported his proclamation that “you can’t help but be part of a boom, you can’t really miss,” given Hamilton’s location in the cross-border “mega-region” that Florida described as stretching from Waterloo, through Montreal and Toronto, and into New York state. It was the city’s first economic summit, with more than 125 of “Hamilton’s most powerful voices in business, the arts, government, social services, health and education” in attendance, who called for a reinvention of Hamilton’s image within three to five years, according to the Spectator. The city of Hamilton began full-force promotion of the Hamilton Creative City Initiative to support the creative economy in 2009.

Gore Park.

Gentrification in Hamilton’s core

To support the business of art, Hamilton’s downtown core has been subject to various efforts to “clean up” the streets, including the introduction of 24-hour video surveillance, increased police foot patrols, and legal and illegal evictions from heritage buildings to make way for businesses serving young, hip consumers. As developers work to re-create space for the incoming creative class, people living in poverty, who have long resided in the downtown core, are being forced out. The neighbourhoods of James St. North and Gore Park, the heart of downtown Hamilton, have borne the brunt of these changes - both neighbourhoods feature a special police foot patrol, 24-7 video surveillance and more assigned police presence than any other area of the city.

Acclamation Bar and Grill, James Street North

Public discussion around the cleansing of the downtown core has been especially disdainful towards sex workers. Articles in the Hamilton Spectator have cited sex workers, along with other perceived evils like high crime rates, panhandling, unsightly businesses and loiterers, as barriers to a thriving downtown economy. One Spectator article, describing the eviction of tenants from the historic Hotel Hamilton to make room for creative entrepreneurs and a trendy coffee shop, noted that the building “had ended up as a rundown boarding house that spawned numerous complaints from nearby merchants and residents about prostitution and hardcore drugs.” Similar articles, notable for the consistent exclusion of the voices of the people implicated, have suggested more policing, a ban on social services and the creation of a pedestrian mall as possible solutions.

In nearby Landsdale, prostitution and drugs have been cited as problems of “epidemic” proportion, and blame for everything from low property values to building abandonment and demolition has been attributed to the “decay” of the downtown core. In an article for H Mag in May 2010, landlord Julie Gordon expressed her sense of urgency in pursuing efforts to cleanse the downtown: “the status quo in Hamilton is unacceptable. . . if we do nothing the social climate in Hamilton will not stay the same. It will deteriorate.” Gordon went on to express her desire for “a safe home, good neighbours and pleasant surroundings” in the inner city. Like many of downtown’s wealthier and more powerful citizens, she cited the threats to this ideal as “prostitutes, drug-users and the homeless.”

Amber Dean, a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University and resident of the Landsdale neighbourhood, described her experiences with the neighbourhood association as alienating. “It felt like to voice an opinion that differed from the majority there was just too risky, and that my input wouldn’t be valued,” Dean said. She recalls her impression that their goal was “to clean up the neighbourhood, and that this meant getting rid of anyone the association deemed ‘undesirable.’ There seemed to be little understanding of the effects of poverty or injustice, and little willingness to consider the bigger issues that were at stake.” After a few meetings, Dean stopped attending. “Their law-and-order agenda seemed unshakable,” she explained.

It’s an all-too-common case of gentrification, where class divisions determine the division and use of public space. Gentrification displaces poor and marginalized populations from physical and cultural spaces, and transforms them into spaces used exclusively by the more affluent. In a city where class divisions between white and racialized groups, men and women, able and disabled persons and cisgendered and transgendered persons are magnified, the wealthier class that moves into a gentrified space is inevitably predominantly white, male, able and cisgendered. While it is difficult to count the number of people displaced by gentrification - they are necessarily not around to be counted - it can be helpful to examine the ways that space and the discourses around space have been transformed to meet the needs of the wealthy.

Young men pose beneath the video surveillance warning sign on James St. N. They spoke about resistance to, and white privilege within, surveillance culture, acknowledging the systems of classism and racism that criminalize their assembly in this space.

The creative crass: Moral outrage as art

The transformation of space by and for a wealthier class in Hamilton is exemplified by the recent work of local “poverty porn” artists, most notably Gary Santucci, whose surveillance and slide show project “The Hood, The Bad and The Ugly” was exhibited at You Me Gallery in September 2009, and Larry Strung, whose April 2010 exhibition at a nearby gallery was called “A Child of God.” Both exhibits consisted largely of photos of women presumed to be doing sex work. Both were collections of images of women in the Landsdale neighbourhood, exhibited in the James St. North neighbourhood. And both shed light on the invasive, forceful and colonizing nature of gentrification in the city.

Santucci’s exhibit was a slide show presented on several TV screens which displayed photos of several different women - some whose faces could be identified - who were photographed standing alone on the corner near his Landsdale gallery and performance space, The Pearl Company. One photo showed a partially nude woman seeking privacy to urinate behind a building. The photos were taken from surveillance cameras mounted on the walls and roof of the gallery and from Santucci’s personal camera, shot from the third-story window of the gallery. “Something must be done,” exclaimed a caption on one screen.

The Pearl Company

Strung’s exhibit included a series of framed portrait-style photographs of a woman whom he met on the same corner outside The Pearl Company, using drugs in her apartment. The accompanying narrative described the woman as a prostitute and addict who could be saved from her destructive lifestyle by faith and prayer. It included her home address and described Strung’s disappointment in her reluctance to model for him after he offered her $20. The narrative accompanying the photos struck a familiar chord with one local sex worker I spoke to, who likened Strung’s description of the photo shoot - watching the woman so she wouldn’t “run off,” and being unwilling to leave after an hour because he didn’t get the photo he wanted - to the disrespectful ways clients talk about street workers on Internet message boards.

It was a stunning juxtaposition of the experiences of women who do sex work and the experience of a privileged male artist who saw a sex worker as a blank slate for his artistic and ideological expression. What for sex workers is an issue of labour and human rights - negotiating with clients, maintaining privacy, adequate pay for their work, the right to refuse service - was transformed by the exhibit into an attitude of ownership and occupation. Given the dynamics of a white man photographing a black woman in the context of gentrification and the criminalization of sex work, the colonization of sex workers’ cultural space is palpable in these images and the spectacle of their display.

In both cases, the demeaning portrayal of women doing sex work in the Landsdale neighbourhood was presented for viewing by people frequenting the James St. North neighbourhood, where the ownership of public and private space by the affluent has been more or less secured. The surveillance style of the art in both exhibits juxtaposes the privileged position of the artists as entitled to the space with the sex worker subjects as persons whose right to privacy in public space and even their own living quarters has been usurped. This invasion was coupled with a lack of consent. In the case of Santucci’s exhibit, the sex workers he photographed were unaware of his surveillance. Those who found out were very distressed, whether they were featured in the exhibit, or just familiar with the corner as one of their workplaces. The woman in Strung’s exhibit consented to be photographed after what his own narrative described as months of pressure: he asked her to model for him every time he saw her, and eventually she agreed to do so for a paltry $20 payment. Activists contested the ethics of displaying Santucci’s images without the models’ consent, and in the case of the “Child of God” exhibit, were successful in convincing the artist and the gallery to remove the photos.

The controversy surrounding these two exhibits brings to light the politics of space, location and displacement at play in the surrounding communities. Keeping in mind that “space” is often as cultural and emotional as it is physical, we see gentrification at work in these images. From the streets where sex workers and other unvalued or criminalized labourers work to the cultural dialogue about the display of images of sex workers’ bodies, space is made over to attract wealthier and more powerful classes.

Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act

“The Hood, the Bad and the Ugly” remained in the gallery for its full run of about a month. As it was an exhibit intended to open dialogue about crime in the Landsdale neighbourhood, it generated discussion - and publicity - in the media. There was also reaction within the community. While sex workers were horrified by their representation in art, the Landsdale Area Neighbourhood Association was teaming up with nearby neighbourhoods for a community meeting at Wentworth Baptist Church.

The meeting followed hot on the heels of Santucci’s September exhibit, and provided a forum for the scapegoating of sex workers and drug users as the causes of the community’s perceived crime problems. Posters and a petition were circulated to advertise the meeting. “Drug dealers and Prostitution,” read the bold lettering. “Working together to get them off our streets and out of our neighbourhood!” Community members at the meeting were visibly hostile, describing sex workers as predators of children, dangerous and violent criminals, and insane drug users who, if you talk to one, will “stab you with an AIDS needle.”

In many communities, propaganda campaigns against sex workers and other “illegitimate” users of public space culminate in legislative solutions to the perceived threat of urban decay. These can take the form of anti-loitering bylaws, building code crackdowns, police sweeps against sex workers and panhandlers, or a piece of legislation that has recently become popular called a “SCAN” Act. Safer Communities And Neighbourhoods Acts have been enacted in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Yukon, and a SCAN was recently proposed and defeated in Ontario. The legislation allows “problem” properties to be emptied via municipal and provincial court authorities. Targets are crack houses and common bawdy houses, many of which are rental properties used as living and working spaces, and evictions can be completed in as little as two weeks.

SCANs take different forms in different provinces, but the system for identifying “problem” properties is usually complaints-driven, and community members are encouraged to observe and report their neighbours. The acts of surveillance and social control become a cycle: surveillance makes some people more visible than others, amplifies perceptions of danger and threat, and the method of eliminating that threat incorporates more surveillance. The spaces occupied by outsiders in the community are continually squeezed by scrutiny and displacement efforts.

Sex workers are people in your neighbourhood

Recognizing sex workers as legitimate members of communities with the right to earn a living in public spaces may expand their opportunities for support and self-protection. In New Zealand, where sex work is decriminalized - prostitution is not a violation of the criminal code and is subject to the same labour and business laws as other forms of employment - a five-year review of sex work’s new legal status revealed that the number of people doing sex work stayed about the same, while opportunities for coercion and exploitation were reduced and most sex workers reported being better off.

According to Crystal, a former outdoor sex worker in Hamilton’s Landsdale neighbourhood, sex workers are “safer when we’re together [on the streets].” When sex workers are displaced through imprisonment or rehabilitation programs, they are often scattered across the city, which breaks down their system of mutual support. Decriminalization is an important goal, but defence of basic rights cannot wait until “after the revolution.” The needs of street labourers can be met now within the existing political, economic and social frameworks that protect other workers’ human, civil and labour rights. The work of activists and concerned community members should be first and foremost to promote the rights of sex workers and other street labourers to the spaces they occupy, and then to tear down the walls that prevent illegitimate labourers from accessing that right.

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The “creative class” is a concept developed by Richard Florida that proposes a new way of understanding the engines driving wealth creation. Florida charts a shift in North America away from manufacturing economies focused on mass production to “post-industrial” economies where the new drivers of economic development are creative professionals, specifically a “super-creative core” (including artists and designers) and “creative professionals” (including managers and lawyers).

According to Florida, the creative class chooses to locate themselves in cities with cultural amenities and favourable environments including diverse populations. It follows that urban policy should invest in attracting creative professionals, with the assumption that creative industries and broader economic growth will follow. Communities that have embraced Florida’s approach have seen public resources channelled toward cultural consumption and a reduced emphasis on economic redistribution or the development of local wealth. For example, resources may be spent on art galleries and museums designed by world-famous architects while public housing and other basic services experience tightened budgets.

Florida’s critics respond that creative economies still rely on inputs from manufacturing industries in the Global South premised on low-wage, precarious work. Furthermore, creative class policies are often accompanied by rising inequality, as a wide range of low-paid and precarious service work is needed to meet creative professionals’ consumption practices. Others point to the process of gentrification that tends to accompany creative-class policies, whereby public funding is funnelled into producing safe and welcoming spaces for a more affluent class.

According to the Toronto-based activist group Creative Class Struggle’s mission statement:

“‘Creative class’ policies are designed to build money-making cities rather than secure livelihoods for real people. These policies celebrate a society based on inequality, in which a select group of glorified professionals is supported by an invisible army of low-wage service workers. Seduced by the promise of prosperity and growth, governments around the world are reorienting their economies along these ‘creative’ class lines without consulting immigrants, women, people of colour, low-wage workers, and others directly affected by their decisions. Divisive ‘creative class’ policies, implemented in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, serve only to increase the vulnerability of the vulnerable and further empower the powerful.”

For more information, see creativeclassstruggle.wordpress.com.

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Nandita Sharma is an activist, scholar, and the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006), and “Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a Global Apartheid” (NWSA #17, 2005). In this interview, she addresses the effects of anti-trafficking on migrant women doing sex work. She critiques the notion of “trafficking” in the context of the increasing necessity of global migration and the tightening of borders in the global North. According to Sharma, border restrictions, rather than “trafficking,” are the biggest impediment to the self-determination of (im)migrant women in Canada.

Jessica Yee is the director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network. In this interview, she describes the conditions of ongoing and under-reported exploitation of Indigenous women in Canada, critiques the conflation of “trafficking” and sex work, and explains the oppressive effects of the anti-trafficking movement on Indigenous women’s self-determination.

Robyn Maynard interviewed Sharma and Yee in February 2010 for No One Is Illegal Radio’s edition “Sex Work, Migration, and Anti-Trafficking.” Edited excerpts of that interview were published in Upping the Anti #10, and are reprinted here with permission.

Nandita Sharma

"If we want to end the exploitation of women, we need to challenge capitalism, which is the basis for all our exploitation. . . We don't give more power to the state to criminalize workers, we give more power to workers to end their exploitation."

How do the government and media use the idea of “sex slavery” to create moral panic? What are the consequences for migrant women doing sex work?

Without a doubt, the moral panic against sex work is fuelling the push for anti-trafficking legislation. Most people who are pushing the anti-trafficking legislation also want to eliminate the option for women to enter into sex work. And they want to do that by further criminalizing sex work activity, especially by criminalizing the entry of migrant women into the sex industry.

For example, in Canada the migration of women into sex work is increasingly scrutinized by the state. Not only are there police who continuously raid sex work establishments like strip clubs and massage parlours under the guise of “protecting public morality” or public health; we also have immigration police who are raiding sex work establishments looking for so-called “victims of trafficking.”

Of course, the vast majority of women who migrate do not enter into sex work. But for those women who do, one of the greatest vulnerabilities they face is their status in the country. The lack of legal or permanent status makes migrant women involved in sex work more vulnerable. Many women who are migrants in the sex industry are employed on temporary work visas in the entertainment industry - the visas given to sex workers were recently squashed by the government - or they are forced to work illegally. It is impossible to legally get into Canada as a sex worker and enter as a permanent resident. You don’t get “points” for being in the sex industry, even though there is high demand. The anti-trafficking legislation is another way to attack women’s ability to work in the sex industry, and it does so in a way that further legitimizes (and relies on) the idea that no woman should ever be engaged in sex work. Ultimately, the moral panic against sex work makes migrant women more vulnerable in the sex industry.

What does anti-trafficking legislation fail to address in terms of women’s rights and agency? What are the root causes of what gets called “trafficking”?

The key issue is to understand why, over the last decade, national governments around the world have been pushed to pass anti-trafficking legislation. There is increased migration in the world today, largely resulting from practices of dispossession and displacement through political and economic crises and war. And yet, alongside increased migration, most states - especially in the so-called “First World” - have implemented restrictive policies that prevent more and more people from entering these states legally. The result is that most people who enter these states are considered to have “illegal” status.

Anti-trafficking legislation is used to target so-called “illegal migration.” Instead of placing the blame for migrants’ vulnerability on the restrictive immigration policies of national states that force people into a condition of illegality, it blames those who are actually facilitating their movement across borders. In today’s world, where it is increasingly difficult to enter First World states legally, it is also next to impossible to enter without someone’s help. It’s impossible to simply get on a plane, get on a boat, get into a car, or walk across the border, without some kind of official identity papers. It’s very difficult to get forged visas or forged passports, and to cross without someone helping you across that border. For many of the world’s migrants, the urgent need is assistance with their movement. Anti-trafficking legislation criminalizes people who facilitate migrants’ entry into national states. I think this is the underlying agenda behind anti-trafficking legislation. It offers ideological cover to target both the migrants themselves and the people who facilitate their movement. In this way, anti-trafficking legislation strengthens border policing.

How can we fight the exploitation of women that takes place in sex work without resorting to anti-feminist hysteria and characterizing women engaged in sex work as victims of trafficking?

I think that we need to take our cue from sex workers themselves. Sex worker organizations are very clear on the steps needed to ensure safe, dignified, decent working conditions for women in the sex industry. At the top of the list is decriminalization. The anti-trafficking agenda moves in exactly the opposite direction. It actually further criminalizes sex work by targeting those people, especially in the case of migrants, who are facilitating women’s entry into sex work. Basically, there is a fundamental disagreement between those who want to end sex work and those who want to make sex work safer for women. The fundamental disagreement is whether or not women have the right to engage in sex work. Most people in the anti-trafficking camp believe that there is no way that women can ever engage in sex work without being fundamentally exploited. I disagree with that, as do most sex workers’ organizations. Most of them point out that sex work can be made safer, can be made more dignified - and the way to do that is to stop demonizing those who are engaged in it. Along with decriminalizing sex work, we can support union organizing within the sex industry. This is exactly what some sex workers’ organizations in India, Bangladesh, San Francisco, and elsewhere have attempted. We need to understand sex work as one of the options available to women in a capitalist economy. We need to work, and sex work is a viable option for many women.

Ultimately, if we want to end the exploitation of women, we need to challenge capitalism, which is the basis for all of our exploitation. Whether we’re working in the sex industry, a restaurant, or in a university, we’re being exploited by those who are benefitting from our labour. So, if we want to end exploitation, we don’t give more power to the state to criminalize workers, we give more power to workers to end their exploitation. Of course, being a university professor is not demonized like sex work is. So we also need a major attitude adjustment. Feminists have long been demanding freedom for women, including control over their own bodies and sexuality. Supporting women in the sex industry and recognizing them as part of the broader collective of workers is part of this struggle.

Those of us who are critical of anti-trafficking rhetoric and legislation are often accused of not caring about women. We’re accused of not caring about women who are kidnapped, women who are beaten up, women who are enslaved or not paid wages, women who have their passports and other documents withheld from them so that they’re rendered immobile. In response to these accusations, the important thing to remember is that all of those crimes are already addressed in the Criminal Code of Canada. It is illegal to kidnap people, to beat them up, to rape them, to not pay them wages, to withhold their documents without their permission, etc. Why do people think new anti-trafficking legislation will make women safer when the police seem completely disinterested in enforcing Criminal Code measures that already exist to protect women? Instead of anti-trafficking legislation, we should be demanding that workers in the sex industry are protected under occupational health and safety regulations, as all workers should be. We should demand that illegalized workers have access to the same rights and entitlements as any other worker in the country, which would of course require that we eliminate the distinction between illegal and legal workers. There are many things we can do that do not rely upon further criminalizing people’s movement across borders. This is the challenge we must pose to people who tell us that the only way to protect women - especially in the sex industry - is to criminalize the people who facilitate their entry into it.

Restrictive immigration policies are causing much of the exploitation of “trafficked women.” How do we fight for migrant women’s safety?

Ultimately, the only way that migration is going to be safe for anyone is to decriminalize it. We need to ensure that people have the autonomous right to move whenever they decide it is in their own best interest. If women today could be assured that when they needed to move they could do so freely - without being criminalized, without needing forged papers, without having to get smuggled into the back of a boat or the underbelly of a car - then they would be much safer.

Let me give you two examples of how anti-trafficking legislation actually increases the vulnerability and exploitation that many women migrants face. First, anti-trafficking legislation targets people who are helping women cross borders. This raises the cost of moving across borders and, as a result, women have to go further into debt in order to do so. Second, by imposing these enormous penalties - which, in Canada, can include a life-sentence and in the United States can include a death sentence - those facilitating movement make migrants use routes that are less safe. People are being forced to cross borders in very vulnerable places like deserts and mountains, places where hundreds of migrant bodies are found dead every year. Anti-trafficking legislation is thus making migration less safe for women.

Jessica Yee

"The government and the media are using the ideas of the left – ideas of human rights and labour rights – to advance right-wing projects."

Please speak about the situation faced by Indigenous women in Canada in terms of forced labour and exploitation. What do you think about the use of the term “trafficking” given that “Canada” is actually Indigenous territory?

Indigenous women have faced forced labour and exploitation for 500 years. What is interesting is that this seems to be a revelation for the media right now; all of a sudden, people are aware of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and aware that young Aboriginal girls under the age of 18 are eight times more likely to experience sexual assault than other women in Canada. I find it interesting that suddenly this seems to be a priority for both mainstream and alternative media. If you were to ask any Indigenous person if it is new that women are being displaced from communities and beaten out of positions of power and political significance, they would tell you it’s not.

I think that the term “trafficking,” and the way that it’s used in Canada, doesn’t speak to the reality that Aboriginal women face in our own communities. I see a lot of ongoing internal oppression and lateral violence as an Aboriginal woman. Forced labour and exploitation is a reality for many Aboriginal women. It’s not new and it happens in many different forms. As an Aboriginal woman, I don’t think I’m less likely to be sexually assaulted working in an office than working on the street - I feel like there’s an equal chance that I’m going to be assaulted, maligned, and subjected to violence, and that there’s an equal chance that the government, the police, will not help me.

It is important to consider how women are valued on the basis of race in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal society. Violence committed against Aboriginal women is normalized. Aboriginal women are deemed less important than non-Aboriginal women. This is something that we’ve internalized, and that is mirrored in society.

Women around the world, especially racialized women, shoulder the burden of labour that doesn’t get acknowledged or reported. Forced labour and exploitation are reported even less. When we’re talking about “trafficking,” people assume we’re talking only about sex work, and only about cross-border trafficking. We need to remind ourselves that sexual slavery and the forcing of sexual acts are not the only kinds of exploitation, even though they seem particularly salacious compared to other forms of forced labour. We also need to understand that “trafficking” takes place within nation states, and against Indigenous people.

Many people uncritically accept the conflation of trafficking and sex work. The same people who think it is taboo to talk about sex are the first to suggest that this is the number one issue of forced labour, but it’s not. And people who are actually being trafficked and moved against their will receive no attention because the state is so focused on raiding massage parlours and arresting women who are sex workers. This neglect occurs in the name of righteousness and “saving” women, yet it is merely the further colonization of women’s bodies, women’s spaces, and women’s choices.

Can you talk about how the anti-trafficking movement affects Indigenous women who do engage in sex work? What is your analysis of the government’s efforts to present anti-trafficking as support for “women’s rights”?

Recently, Saskatoon Conservative MP Brad Trost attempted to de-fund the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health and the international Planned Parenthood Fund because they perform abortions and support sex workers. In defence of de-funding, it was suggested that he really cares about women and is concerned with how men are attacking women, forcing them to use sex work as a means of employment, and thus have abortions. I think that this is important because it seems like the government and the media are using the ideas of the left - ideas of human rights and labour rights - to advance right-wing projects.

The common misconception that “trafficking” refers only to sex work reflects people’s ignorance of the realities of sex work. A lot of anti-trafficking campaigns aren’t organized by sex workers. The campaigns involve re-victimizing.

In Toronto, we’re really lucky. The Native Youth Sexual Health Network has partnered with Maggie’s (The Toronto Sex Workers Action Project) to form the first harm reduction pro-choice project - pro-choice means that we respect women’s choices to engage in sex work - called the Aboriginal Sex Worker Outreach and Education Project. It is the first project in Canada by and for Aboriginal women that isn’t exit-focused; it doesn’t solely tell women to get out of the trade. As someone who has engaged in sex work over the years, I know that exit-based programs are not working.

I think it’s dangerous that the government tries to present “anti-trafficking” campaigns as advocacy for women’s rights. And I think it’s really important for people to not only stand up against it, but also to challenge prevailing misconceptions of sex work. These misconceptions are affecting Indigenous women throughout the world. A crude example of these effects is MTV’s “MTV Exit” campaign, in which they team up with UNAIDS and go to countries where they think there is a lot of “sex trafficking” to try to rescue women. Indigenous women in these countries are then arrested on suspicion of being sex workers. Their human rights are under assault by this western imposition in the name of “anti-trafficking.” So, in addition to the impact on Indigenous women in Canada, we’re also responsible for stuff that’s happening throughout the world to other Indigenous countries and people.

If criminalizing sex work is not a solution, what is a more meaningful way to struggle for justice?

First, a meaningful way to struggle for justice is to actually work with sex workers. Take their lead, just like you would with any other ally-based movement. Second, we have to address people’s great unwillingness to talk about sex and sexuality more generally. Without these conversations people will have a difficult time coming to terms with real trafficking and real exploitation.

We need to have frank discussions about sex work, and about sex and sexuality more generally. These topics are particularly taboo in Indigenous communities. This is because colonization is such a real presence for us. And if you’re going to take away a people’s most powerful abilities, you’re also going to take away their sexuality, which is why I think we have members of our own communities who conflate “trafficking” with sex work and assume it is all “bad for women.” We’re in survival mode and trying to keep our communities together, trying to keep our communities free of violence, and ain’t nobody helpin’ us! And if nobody’s helping us, then we get left to our own terms and our own measures to deal with things.

There is a lot to discuss. I get many questions from people asking about youth and sexual exploitation, for example. Even within the sex worker movement, people do not agree that young people have the right to engage in sex work. I recommend that people check out the Young Women’s Empowerment Project in Chicago, which is the only organization for young women engaged in sex work between the ages of 13 and 24. We work with them quite a bit in the United States. They just produced an amazing research report on your question: what’s a more meaningful way to struggle for justice? Their answer is that we should listen to to the people who are impacted, and shut up a little bit more! Respect the ways we decide to organize. People need to recognize that there are so many spaces that aren’t safe for us, as sex workers, to be real and frank about our lives and our struggle. In the meantime, correct people who are confused about what really constitutes trafficking and exploitation. More importantly, teach people about self-determination - not just over land, but over our own bodies.

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