activism

By Armine Yalnizyan
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

Progressives in Canada today have no shortage of ideas. What we lack is movement – any movement. There is no women’s movement, no labour movement, no peace movement. The antiglobalization movement fell apart in the wake of 9/11. Copenhagen notwithstanding, even the environmental movement has become more an exercise in individual consumer choice than a demand for systemic change.

This isn’t to say there aren’t many gifted and hard-working people fighting for women’s rights, labour rights, peace, environmental justice and other issues of interest. But there is no shared sense of purpose-filled momentum on the left, no sense of common struggle that connects one set of activities to another. Any “movement” in Canada today, in fact, is occurring at the other end of the political spectrum. Conservatives today have the numbers, the momentum and just about everyone’s attention. Why is that?

Conservatives are doing well in several tasks vital to movement building. They raise money. They do constant outreach. They appeal to people from every demographic and region. They reinforce messages that make people feel like their concerns and interests are being acknowledged and acted upon. Most importantly, they target their messages at you: You know best how to spend your money; governments don’t represent your interests; taxes are a burden; etc.

What the right understands so well is that even the most politically disengaged citizen has a set of values that form their personal ideology. Those core values influence what we think should or shouldn’t be happening, and will always shape our political choices more than loyalty to a party label. The conservative movement has never shied away from framing their thinking in ethical, moral, even religious terms – the things that should happen, if only the decision-makers in public life shared their convictions.

For the past 30 years, conservatives have focused on a few key messages: government regulations are the enemy; destroying the tax base is a “relief”; corporations should be permitted to do whatever they want. Progressives, meanwhile, have responded with policy prescriptions, attempting to formulate the perfect list of actions for the government to take.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with policy formulation. The problems we face are increasingly complex, and require bold thinking to solve them. But voters expect to see themselves in every frame, and big policy ideas like reducing poverty, investing in infrastructure or leaving Afghanistan are often about places or people they don’t know or, worse, don’t want to know. With fewer progressive intermediaries explaining why these things should matter to you, progressive policies and active governments appear increasingly irrelevant.

It isn’t that large numbers of Canadians have become inherently conservative. Poll after poll shows that Canadians and Americans alike are longing for a movement that will articulate their concerns that corporations have far too much power and that the middle class is being squeezed. The moment is ripe for voices that can respond creatively to these concerns.

What we need to do is speak to people where they are, and tap into the progressive values they hold at the very same time as more conservative values. Values of fairness and pragmatism; of the shared need for sustainability and security; meaningful opportunity for each and every one of us, particularly the next generation; and time to enjoy life, not just work.

People turn to movements because their concerns are reflected in the movement’s core values, not just – or even primarily – in its policies. We’ve got our work cut out for us to inspire and energize our base, not just with a sense of confidence and clarity, but also with a way of talking about politics that integrates the me and the we. After all, none of us really likes to be told what to do – but where’s the counterpoint to conservative messages that appeal only to our inner five-year-old? Who’s reminding us that we all want the same things, that we are all in this together, our fates intertwined? Are these messages not as satisfying as the instant gratification of conservative politics? Or have we just not learned how to communicate them effectively?

Here’s an obvious fact that the conservative movement will never use in their messaging: focusing only on individual advancement actually impedes what most of us are going to get, as individuals and as a society. The winner-takes-all approach leaves most people by the wayside. It doesn’t provide us, collectively, with a road map to anywhere. The road ahead, consequently, is wide open. As the African proverb says – if you want to travel fast, travel alone; if you want to travel far, travel together. It’s up to us to show how far we can get, if we just go down the road together.

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Illustration by Kim Sokol

By Penelope Hutchison
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

We once called ourselves Radical Obnoxious Fucking Feminists. When we meet again 20 years later, I discover that both f-words make us wince. What happened?

The day after the reunion, the subject line of Kelly’s email reads: “Did you hear?” On August 4, 2009, the same night as four university girlfriends and I had gathered for a 20-year reunion, a man walked into a gym in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, and opened fire. In response to what his online diary described as years of rejection by women and his inability to get a girlfriend, George Sodini shot three women, injured nine others – all unknown to him – and then killed himself.

The coincidence is surreal. My undergraduate girlfriends and I had planned the reunion as a memorial of sorts to mark the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. On December 6, 1989, 14 female engineering students were shot to death by a man who blamed women – feminists in particular – for ruining his life. The event shocked and scared us because we saw just how far the backlash against women could go.

I swiftly type my reply to Kelly’s email:

“The shooting and killing of those women on the same night as our reunion is unbelievable. Clearly misogyny is still alive and kicking. Getting together with you all made me realize that perhaps we still can make change. Instead of enlisting as junior members of the raging grannies, maybe we can morph into some fabulous forty-something gang? Something to ponder.”

Not a single one of my former fellow activists responds to my email. My disappointment turns to depression. How is it that as 40-something professionals, we don’t feel we have the same power and voice and ability to make change that we once believed feminism offered us? What has happened to us? To the world around us?

In the wake of this latest killing, we won’t be gathering in the Queen’s University Women’s Centre to plan a candlelight vigil. Julie won’t be making a sign that reads “Misogyny kills.” Nothing but a brief flurry of emails.

It is not that my girlfriends don’t want to speak out about violence against women anymore. It is, I tell myself, that in our supposedly post-feminist age, such outbursts from savvy professional women seem uncouth and unreasonable. Now that women are encouraged to pursue an education, a career, and be sexually independent, many see feminism as a thing of the past. To ease our way in the world, women like me have given up any public claims to feminism, or have at least tucked it away in an unobtrusive corner of our beings so as not to offend.

We have become lapsed feminists.

The rise of ROFF

Twenty years ago, my girlfriends and I, undergraduates all, formed ROFF – Radical Obnoxious Fucking Feminists. We gained notoriety in the media for our political protests. A Globe and Mail reporter described us in November 1989 as a “shadowy group” that shook “the serenity of Queen’s, a campus renowned as a hotbed of social rest.”

On Valentine’s Day we planted stop signs around campus to mark the places where, it was rumoured, women had been sexually assaulted. During Orientation Week, we whitewashed the “Golden Tit,” the speed bump engineering students decorate each year with a pink nipple, and spray painted “ROFF” over top in purple letters. We organized a 24-hour sit-in in the university principal’s office with two dozen other women. The sit-in was a response to the administration’s failure to discipline a group of first-year male students living in residence who had plastered their dorm windows with slogans like “No Means Kick Her In The Teeth,” “No Means Tie Me Up” and “No Means Harder.” The signs were the men’s response to a “No Means No” anti-date rape awareness campaign on campus.

My ROFF girlfriends and I had come to Queen’s in the late 1980s believing the battle of the sexes was over. Instead, we faced signs on student ghetto houses with messages like “Bring Your Virgins Here,” “Show Your Tits” and “Why Beer is Better than Women: Beer Doesn’t Run to Tell the Police When you Rape It.” We met one another in classes on feminist jurisprudence, women in politics, literature and philosophy, and made the Queen’s Women’s Centre our clubhouse.

We were empowered by the possibil­ities feminism offered to challenge society’s power structures. We devoured the texts of writers like bell hooks, Catharine MacKinnon and Carol Gilligan, and the lectures of our young, untenured female professors who sparked discussion about the exploitation of women in a male-dominated culture.

The gender politics at Queen’s and other campuses across Canada certainly reinforced this perspective. We read about panty raids at Wilfred Laurier University where male students splashed ketchup on women’s underwear and hung them out for display. Blindfolded and bikini-clad mannequins were paraded through Carleton University’s campus. We saw the world anew, and it seemed a threatening place, full of hatred towards all things feminine. In feminism we saw hope; a way to make the world a safer place for women.

ROFF reunited

The release of the film Polytechnique, a dramatization of the Montreal Massacre, in early 2009 inspired me to track down my ROFF girlfriends and host a reunion. I remember how devastated we were by the massacre, how it felt like the culmination of everything my ROFF girlfriends and I were fighting against at Queen’s. After reading a review of the film in the Globe and Mail, I decided to re-establish contact with my girlfriends and engage in some collective soul-searching about our university activism. I was curious to hear about the paths their lives and their feminism had taken.

As Kim, Kelly and I gather around Kim’s living room table, noshing on low-fat, low-carb crudités, white wine and Diet Coke, Jen and Julie join in the reunion by teleconference from British Columbia and Nova Scotia respectively. Once we are past the niceties, the conversation turns to our feminist activism as undergraduates.

We laud ourselves for our political protests and remind ourselves how the media attention we got for the sit-in sparked a national debate about sexism on campuses. Toronto Star columnist Michele Landsberg wrote at the time that “women from all over Ontario have written me letters of blazing indignation about the sexist hazing they receive at universities in this province. Some of the language they endured – language on banners and T-shirts – would make you faint with shock.” We talk about how our actions helped raise the issue of systemic discrimination against women in universities, and how that discussion spilled out into the workplace and onto the streets until it became a matter of public debate.

Despite the pride evident in my ROFF girlfriends’ voices, not a single one of us identifies professionally as a feminist today. “I don’t say I’m a feminist, but talk more about social justice issues. They are much broader than gender politics and that language,” says Jen, director of a network of HIV/AIDS organizations in B.C. After a brief stint articling at a corporate law firm in Vancouver left her miserable, she took on advocacy work in the predominantly gay HIV/AIDS community in the mid 1990s. There she used her legal expertise to help those with HIV/AIDS access Canada Pension Plan and B.C. benefits.

For Jen and many other women today, the discourse of gender politics is a thing of the past, its legitimacy giving way to other issues – social justice, the environment, antiglobalization, etc. Julie, now general manager of a non-profit arts organization in Nova Scotia, was ROFF’s leading agitator. She has continued to be a vocal proponent for change, working for a London, Ontario, homeless coalition and eventually running for the NDP in the riding of London North Centre in the 1990s. Now living in a hamlet near the Bay of Fundy, she describes her current political activism as more locally focused. Managing a theatre company, running artist retreats and art camps for kids where discussion centres on issues like the environment and mental health, she says she’s “gone from making bigger changes and contributions to smaller local things. I feel like I have more personal impact this way.”

As we aged, we began to choose more manageable goals, but the playing field also shifted. At the same time as we were launching our careers, falling in and out of relationships, acquiring mortgages and having children, society was rebranding feminism as irrelevant. Feminist scholar Angela McRobbie says this is not a straightforward right-wing backlash against feminism. Instead, feminism has been incorporated into this new “post-feminist” landscape through media depictions of independent, sex­ually liberated women like Bridget Jones and Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. These images of strong, educated and sexually independent women (who also happen to be white and middle-class) give the message that equality between the sexes has been achieved, and suddenly feminism is passé.

It is not that the feminist demands for equality have been met, however. It is that in this new social and cultural landscape, the language of feminism has been delegitimized. What happened for women like my ROFF girlfriends and me is that in one way or another, we have all had to make the bargain so many ­middle-class women come to make to find success in our personal and professional lives. The bargain is this: women can be powerful as long as they give up their claims to feminism and the notion that women are unequal and marginalized in society.

‘Post-feminist’ malaise

Kim, a single mother with a high-status job with the government of Alberta, outwardly personifies the changes feminism has undergone in the intervening years. She has transformed from a curvaceous, bohemian-dressed, unruly-haired brunette to a thin, blonde Gabrielle Reece look-alike in tailored suit and heels.

Bunking at her house for the reunion, I see how she organizes her life to meet all the demands on her time. Up at 5:30 a.m. to work out on the elliptical machine in her basement, she’s showered, dressed and feeding her boys by 7:00 a.m., shuttling them off to school to clock in at the office by 8 a.m. A full day at work is followed by a busy evening of attending to her kids’ after-school activities, meals, homework and bedtime. Her attention then turns back to the briefcase of work she’s brought home before her head hits the pillow at 11 p.m.

It is a rigid schedule but one that is reinforced through women’s magazines and TV talk shows that promote the message that working women’s demanding timetables show how competent we are because we can, and do, “do it all.”

Kelly and I have similar schedules to Kim’s. We’re both at the gym four or five times a week, working out with personal trainers to fit the thin, tailored professional woman mould. Kelly, the mom of twin boys conceived through donor insemination, manages a busy family law practice where as a legal expert to the federal government on assisted reproduction, surrogacy and ovum/sperm donor agreements, her services are in demand.

As a self-employed writer, I have the luxury of working in my home office but my day is still rigidly structured. Bouts of writing interspersed between meetings with clients, meal preparation, car-pooling my son between school and after-school activities, and trying to care long-distance for my aging parents.

By adopting these roles, Kim, Kelly and I have been able to achieve success in the still predominantly male workplace. The price we have paid for such success has been to have to distance ourselves from our earlier feminist identities, or at least from contemporary culture’s view of feminism as a juvenile, extreme dogma typically associated with hatred towards men. It is not that we believe that equality between the sexes has been achieved; it is that living the day-to-day practice of feminism in our professional and personal lives is much harder than we anticipated as young women. Feminism is a long historical movement; as individual women striving to find fulfillment in our personal and professional lives, it is hard to live that struggle on a daily basis in the face of a culture that tells you feminism is a thing of the past.

“In my circle of friends, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist but wouldn’t say I’m not. I talk about broader social justice issues. Despite feminism’s efforts to be more inclusive of other issues, it’s not,” says Kelly.

As we recount the trajectories of our various career paths, the joys and challenges of raising boys (Kim, Kelly and I all bore sons) and the ups and downs of our sexual relationships with men and women, we recognize the irony of our situation. Feminism has played a significant role in making our professional, ideological and identity choices possible. As a successful lawyer active in Toronto’s gay and lesbian community, Kelly can partially credit the gains made by the feminist movement. Yet, like the rest of my ROFF girlfriends, she has come to distance herself from feminist rhetoric in order to succeed in the legal profession.

While my ROFF girlfriends no longer identify as feminists, they readily acknowledge the ample evidence that exists showing how women have not overcome the problems feminism sought to solve. “I firmly believe that as much as women think they are sexually liberated now and sexual equals to men, it’s crap. At work, if a man sleeps around, he’s unremarked; if a woman does, she’s labelled the office bicycle. That has not changed one iota,” says Kim.

According to Statistics Canada, women are over six times as likely as men to be victims of sexual assault, the majority perpetrated by someone they know. Women working full-time still earn 29 per cent less than men employed full-time; the gap between male and female earnings has not changed significantly in the past decade. Women are still the primary family caregivers, far more likely than men to have to take time from their jobs because of personal or family responsibilities.

Recognizing the imbalances of power women still face, my ROFF girlfriends and I reflect on how important women’s studies courses were for us as young university women, offering us a critical lens and analysis about the place of women in the world. But today, young women are losing those avenues. The recent closure of the women’s studies program at the University of Guelph, the under-resourcing of women’s studies in general within Canada and the complete disappearance of women’s studies as an undergraduate degree in the United Kingdom highlight how the discipline is increasingly seen as a soft subject, lacking academic rigour and based on dated politics.

Not so radical

As the wine bottle empties and our reunion winds to an end, the discussion turns to our love lives: new relationships bubbling up for Kim and Julie, Jen making peace with being newly single, Kelly and I in long-standing relationships. Perhaps we are no different from Carrie Bradshaw: strong, independent, professionally successful, yet still, in the end, looking for life’s fulfillment through our relationships.

It is evident that the politics and passion for change that first brought us together 20 years ago are gone. We once felt so powerful in our efforts to make the world a better place. Now, looking back, I’m disappointed in myself, and to some extent in my ROFF girlfriends, for not holding on to our feminist principles as we aged; for not fighting against the inequality we met in our workplaces and in our personal relationships; for what many might call “selling out.” I don’t think we’ve necessarily sold out; there is just so much working against us in this struggle for broader equality.

As the fall deepened and the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre drew near, I managed to put aside some of my sadness about the reunion and my ROFF girlfriends’ loss of faith in feminism as a tool for change. I know now it wasn’t that we were naive or too radical to realize that the feminist project was some impossible dream. Rather, it was that we weren’t radical enough to stop the backlash that has sidelined feminism as a force for change – that keeping feminism meaningful for younger generations of women has proven a harder task than we ever imagined.

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By Lorne Brown
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

Canada’s 1960s (By Brian D. Palmer University of Toronto Press, 2009) is a magnificent achievement that distills the essence of the political and social upheavals that defined the 1960s in Canada. Palmer sets out to demonstrate that the 1960s transformed Canada in fundamental ways, and does so very convincingly. Canada, as it had previously been understood, “fractured and came apart in the 1960s.” When Canadian identity was put back together again after that rebellious decade, “it bore little resemblance to the Canada that many of the pre-1950 years thought they knew so well.”

Perhaps what had changed most significantly in the political identity of the country was the perception of Canada as a British self-governing Dominion with some subordinate regional and ethnic variations. Waves of non-British post-war immigration, the beginnings of the Quebec independence movement and the rise of a Red Power movement among Aboriginals would powerfully challenge this perception. British decline and the rise of American imperialism further contributed to changing the nature of nationalism in both Canada and Quebec.

Youth and labour in revolt

The revolt of the Québécois and Native peoples overlapped with a generalized revolt among youth, workers, women and the intelligentsia. In many respects youth were at the forefront of all these struggles, as revolutionary politics coincided with a broader transformation of the cultural and political mores of the country.

When many people think of the youth revolt of the 1960s they imagine university students. Palmer, however, demonstrates that youth revolt drew strength from all sectors and was very pronounced among the working class, women and Aboriginal peoples. Demographic changes fuelled this youth surge as the post-War baby boomers poured into the workforce and the educational institutions and, in some areas, swelled the ranks of the unemployed.

Between 1964 and 1966 the country was beset by a tremendous wave of strikes – many of them illegal, and often involving sabotage and violence. About 600,000 workers went on strike between 1964 and 1966. Young workers were at the forefront of most of these struggles, especially the wildcats, which were in defiance of not only capital and the state but the union leadership as well.

At the same time, the union movement underwent a transformation in which economic struggles intersected with nationalist anti-imperialist struggles in both Canada and Quebec. This was the beginning of a process where the “internationals” (American unions with branches in Canada) would eventually lose their dominance in the House of Labour and the broader concerns of social unionism would supersede the narrow interests of business unionism in many labour organizations. Much of the Quebec movement would become overtly socialist and radical-syndicalist for a time.

Palmer ends his chapter on the great labour revolt with speculation on what might have been if the many sectors in revolt had combined their forces. “Around the corner of the wildcat wave of 1965-6 was a growing left challenge. Had it co-joined youth of the university and the unions, the result could well have reconfigured the nature of twentieth-century Canada. Class difference is a difficult hurdle to leap, however, and as campus youth, women, and Aboriginal advocates of ‘Red Power’ joined the unruly workers of the 1960s in an explosive embrace of dissidence and opposition, they did so, ultimately, divided from one another, in separate and unequal mobilizations.”

Multiplying & divided movements

Palmer describes the growth in the 1960s of a predominantly youthful left, emerging with the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament but soon coalescing around a great variety of organizations, ranging from the relatively narrow Student Union For Peace Action to the much broader Canadian Union of Students. By the mid-1960s, marking the generational shift underway, participants in these groups would be referred to as the “New Left” to distinguish them from the “Old Left” of the CCF/NDP, Communist Party and other formations.

The New Left hit its high-water mark in about 1968, with most organizations disbanded or in the process of disintegration by the end of the decade. Some individuals went in anarchist, anti-Marxist, apolitical or crackpot directions. The more political joined the NDP or the traditional Communists or joined formations with a Maoist or Trotskyist bent. Many made their mark in academia or in progressive organizations not associated with any party. Three broad, often overlapping tendencies emerged, which Palmer identifies as Marxism, left nationalism and feminism.

The left nationalist tendencies that emerged at the end of the decade maintained greater ties with the Old Left, though many individuals with New Left experience would play important roles in movements that emphasized the connections between independence from U.S. economic dominance and socialism. The manifesto For an Independent Socialist Canada, launched by the Waffle movement in 1969, forwarded an anti-imperialist analysis that in­dependence could only be safeguarded by socializing the most important means of production, as only the working class and their allies had a vested interest in Canadian independence. The Waffle would exert considerable influence in the NDP, as well as some influence in trade unions and other institutions.

Feminism predated the 1960s, of course, but there were many new developments during the decade. The decade would witness campaigns including demands for daycare, equal pay for work of equal value, equality in the workplace and other institutions, education around birth control and a campaign against the antiquated abortion laws (which resulted in the first demonstration ever to shut down the House of Commons). Women’s issues became important in many trade unions and influenced both the organized and unorganized working class.

The organized women’s movement won or partially won some of their demands and influenced many institutions. They were strong in the Waffle movement within the NDP, and through them influenced the party as a whole. Feminists, like the broader Left, eventually split into different factions, with the two broad tendencies being the socialist feminists and the radical feminists.

Nations within the state

The struggles of the 1960s were fiercest in Quebec. The class struggle was sharper there and related much more directly to the national struggle than in English Canada. “Quebec’s particular oppression,” Palmer writes, “meant that it was in the forefront of both socialist and countercultural challenges to the mainstream of the Canadian nation in the 1960s.”

Palmer entitles his Quebec chapter “Quebec: Revolution Now!” for good reason. There were large numbers of Quebecois who felt that a radical transformation was both necessary and possible, and a small minority who actively worked at what they hoped would be a socialist revolution for national liberation. Palmer does a superb job of analyzing these years of struggle which in nearly all sectors were on a broader and deeper scale than in English Canada. Quebec did not, of course, experience a revolution but did undergo a more far-reaching transformation than anywhere else in North America.

The chapter on Aboriginal struggles is appropriately entitled “The ‘Discovery’ of the ‘Indian.’” It is appropriate because after the dispossession of Canada’s First Nations in the nineteenth century, col­onial society accorded them no economic or political rights. On many reserves, residents could not even leave without permission of the Indian agent. Status Indians were not recognized as citizens and could not vote until the early 1960s. The majority of First Nations people lived in deplorable economic and social conditions. Further, the government pursued a program of cultural genocide through prohibition of Aboriginal religious and political traditions in law and the suppression of language and culture through the residential school system. Colonial Canada assumed Aboriginal peoples would simply disappear from history as distinct peoples.

This began to change, however, as Aboriginal populations began to recover in the 1930s from the devastating impacts of the introduction of new diseases. This contributed to renewed struggles for their rights in the 1930s and 1940s. Aboriginal peoples asserted the necessity for treaties to be honoured, and economic, social and cultural rights, as well as Aboriginal title, to be recognized. Some Aboriginal peoples further demanded self-determination. As in other sectors the methods of struggle assumed many forms – petition, negotiation, public demands, political lobbying, and among the more militant, blockades, occupations, civil disobedience and the threat of violent resistance. The state response was varied and ranged from making concessions to co-optation or violent repression. Some progress has been made but many of the problems facing Aboriginal peoples remain unresolved; their struggles continue to this day.

Left legacies

While Palmer is obviously sympathetic to the movements of the day, for the most part he avoids romanticizing them. He takes note of the crude formulations, the anti-intellectualism, the disdain for theory and organization and the naïveté of elements of the New Left. He notes the macho posturing and left adventurism common to elements around the FLQ and other organizations. He quotes Métis radical Howard Adams on the dangers of opportunism and corruption in Aboriginal organizations. Palmer tells it like it was, warts and all.

I would be remiss in not mentioning a few criticisms of Palmer’s book. He could have put more emphasis on the anti-imperialist and class dimensions of the left nationalist movements, many of which were informed by a broadly Marxist analysis. I would argue that the Waffle (and similar tendencies in some trade unions and other sectors) had a more sophisticated class and anti-imperialist analysis than either the preceding New Left tendencies or the Marxist-Leninist groups that succeeded them. This analysis was buttressed by an organizational sophistication that managed to engage a much broader base in progressive politics. The evolution of trade unions in Canada might also have received more attention in the section on workers’ revolts.

A little more on the legacy of the 1960s would also have been useful. I would contend that much of what began in the 1960s bore fruit in the 1970s; this was true among women, labour, Aboriginal peoples, the intelligentsia and artistic communities. Palmer himself is an example of that legacy: he is now editor of Labour/Le Travail and one of Canada’s pre-eminent labour historians – a field of study that barely existed in this country before the 1960s.

But the above are minor criticisms indeed of a work that will be a standard reference for scholars, students and activists for years to come.

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Words and images by Elaine Brière
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

I have been covering demonstrations, protests and sit-ins as a photojournalist for many years. Documentation of protest was part of my work as the coordinator of the East Timor Alert Network between 1986 and 1992.

One of the salient features of the modern state is the disconnect between the centralized bureaucracy of government and its largely fragmented citizenry, who have very little influence on decision-making between elections. Western liberal democracies in particular, while championing individual liberties, have no concept of collective rights and feel threatened by large groups of people organizing to oppose government policies. Whatever form they take, whatever the issue, mass demonstrations are a unifying experience in a culture that thrives on feelings of isolation and powerlessness.

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When people are generally required to check one of two boxes - male or female - those whose gender identity falls outside the boxes are rendered invisible. (Illustration: Elisha Lim)

By Mandy Van Deven
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

The first step toward addressing an issue is to make it visible. An alcoholic will fail to get sober until he or she admits to having a problem. Slapping around one’s wife was not a punishable offence until it became socially and legally recognized as domestic violence. Visibility is gained through definition, and with visibility comes the power to create social change.

Transgender and gender nonconforming people are just beginning to shed the cloak of invisibility that has shrouded their participation in social and political life. The success of productions featuring middle-class transgender people, like the film Transamerica and the television show The L Word, is opening the door to public conversations that had previously been relegated to academic departments of women’s and queer studies. These popular portrayals are not always politically correct, but they do help to foster the development of an active and visible transgender citizenry working for public recognition of equal rights. Unfortunately, however, transgender visibility seems to be stalled along class lines, a problematic development that advances the rights of a privileged few at the expense of community-oriented movement building.

Similar to queer activism, transgender rights organizing appears to be gaining ground in major metropolitan areas including Washington, D.C., and Toronto. Legal victories for public bathroom access in New York City and anti-discrimination laws in Maine, as well as the election of a transgender mayor in Silverton, Oregon, are certainly cause for celebration. However, the focus on battles that require class privilege means that other battles that would make a significant impact on the majority of poor transgender people have scarcely begun. Would-be transgender activists must often favour their own material conditions above collective advocacy in order to simply survive – a position working-class feminists and feminists of colour have been arguing for decades regarding their place in the movement for women’s liberation. Given this reality, organizing around transgender issues should be viewed through an economic lens in addition to one of gender.

Transgender and gender nonconforming people in the U.S. list their three most important and immediate needs as housing, employment and health care. This is no different from the main preoccupations of low-income people generally, which is not a coincidence as a great number of transgender people live in poverty. (In the United States, a transgender person is twice as likely to live below the poverty line.)

A disproportionate number of transgender people are relegated to low-paying jobs, denied work, or fired for reasons directly related to their gender identity. More than two-thirds report experiencing verbal and physical harassment on the job. Since there are few legal protections against such discrimination, transgender folks have little recourse to address mistreatment on the job, and employers consistently fail to protect transgender workers; in fact, many times they contribute to the abuse. All of these factors contribute to the disproportionate numbers of transgender people experiencing chronic unemployment.

Transgender people who apply for public assistance face difficulties in obtaining the benefits they both need and are entitled to, particularly when they lack access to appropriate identification documents. Those who do receive benefits may do so in a program that has a minimum work requirement in an environment that proves to be dangerous for transgender people, creating a difficult choice between losing benefits and maintaining one’s personal safety. Given their limited employment options, many transgender people become involved in the illegal activities of the street economy – sex work, theft, selling drugs – and so may wind up entangled in the legal system, thus further marginalizing them.

Access to affordable housing is also a problem. Housing refusal is common, leaving many people to live in homeless shelters or on the street. Shelters, which tend to be sex-segregated, bring another unique brand of difficulty, particularly when transgender individuals are not allowed to bunk with members of their self-identified sex or given access to shower and bathroom facilities that suit their needs. Shelters can be unsafe and harassment from other residents and staff is common. Transgender people are frequently turned away from shelters (some even have policies barring their entry) or are thrown out when the staff finds out they are transgender.

Although class and gender intersect deeply and complexly for transgender folks, very little research has been done into the discrimination they face. Figures that are typically calculated by means of the census, public assistance intake forms or social service agencies are lost because transgender identity is not tracked. When people are required to check one of two boxes – male or female – those whose gender identity falls outside the boxes are rendered invisible. The same is true for laws that do not specify protections if a person’s transgender status makes them a target for a crime, such as workplace discrimination or hate violence.

This lack of data contributes to further barriers, as non-profit organ­izations that have trans-specific initiatives face an enormous challenge in obtaining funding. “Getting government funders to understand the risk and vulnerability that transgender people are at to be homeless and getting grants that apply to this work is the biggest challenge we face,” says Yasmeen Persad, the transgender program coordinator at Supporting Our Youth (SOY) in Toronto. A lack of finances is not simply a reality for transgender and gender nonconforming individuals; it is also a reality for the organizations that assist those individuals.

No one decides to do social justice work because they think it will be easy, but some areas are more challenging than others. Low-income transgender people are highly vulnerable to social isolation, abuse and violence – factors that make becoming an advocate or activist extremely difficult. According to Lynn E. Walker, the program director of the Transgender Transitional Housing Program at Housing Works in New York City, “One of the greatest challenges for our clients derives from the reluctance of trans and gender nonconforming people to advocate for themselves. Many clients have experienced long years of disempowerment and homelessness, sometimes complicated by physical and mental illness, and unfortunate encounters with the criminal justice system. Consequently, they tend to prefer to avoid advocacy events where they may encounter institutional and governmental authority, which for them are symbols of ignorance and instruments of oppression.”

The topics that get the most attention from transgender advocates and activists, therefore, are often those of primary interest to middle- and upper-class transgender folks. This is particularly the case in the U.S., where health care disparities are so pronounced: advocating for insurance companies to cover sex reassignment surgery will no doubt benefit transgender people with enough class privilege to actually have health insurance, but what about the need for basic medical care that low-income transgender people are unable to afford?

Organizing to provide free, comprehensive health care services for transgender people would prove to be a much more inclusive and effective organizing strategy. These services could include the provision of basic medical care and medications, including hormones and antidepressants; psychi­atric and psychosocial services like individual and group counselling; and HIV prevention and treatment as well as substance abuse treatment facilities for the disproportionate number of transgender folks who are afflicted with these ailments. A breakthrough in health care provision would represent a momentous step forward for the rights and well-being of transgender people, and would foster the conditions for more activists to step forward.

The Transgender Transitional Housing Program at Housing Works in New York exemplifies the kind of work organizations could be doing to address low-income transgender people’s needs. Tackling all three of transgender people’s most pressing needs, Housing Works provides “one-bedroom furnished apartments for gender non-conforming people and people of trans experience living with HIV/AIDS for up to twenty-four months. Along with appropriate medical, dental, and mental health care, [they] assist them in finding affordable permanent housing, and for those who are interested, the agency provides legal and administrative support as well as vocational training to enable them to obtain satisfactory employment.” Housing Works takes a holistic approach and works for transgender rights where it can make the broadest impact.

Increasing the visibility of low-income transgender people is a step in the right direction but it is not enough to make a sustained impact on their most pressing needs. For that, activism is needed.

Creative solutions can be implemented to solve the problems that are inherent in the current systems that serve low-income people. Transgender-only housing units or floors in existing facilities can be established with private, lockable restroom facilities and staff who are trained in transgender sensitivity. Exclusions of transition-related and gender-specific health care can be removed from the policies of medical facilities and health insurance companies. Governments can invest in transgender-specific workforce development and public assistance programs. Laws and policies that prohibit employment discrimination and workplace harassment can be amended to include transgender and gender non-conforming people. Although transgender organizing is newly emerging, the movement need not make the same mistakes as its well-meaning predecessors by ignoring the class-based needs of the majority of its members.

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By Jane Kirby
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

Is summit-hopping a dying tactic or the next Olympic sport?

Ever since tens of thousands of people converged on the streets of Seattle and successfully shut down the World Trade Organization in November 1999, convergences have been the tactic of choice for confronting global capitalism. It is no surprise, then, that those who see the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver as one more attempt by state and corporate elites to expand their own interests at the expense of the general population have called for a convergence from February 10 to 15, 2010.

Organizers have been working steadily towards the event for over two years, and have called for activists from across the country and around the world to descend on the Vancouver area to express their opposition to the social and environmental havoc wreaked by the Games. The convergence will consist of a two-day popular education conference followed by four days of action, focusing on the specific themes of indigenous peoples, land, poverty, women and the security crackdown on civil liberties. Countering the “corporate circus” of the Games with the spectacle of mass resistance, organizers hope to pack the streets with people engaging in diverse yet coordinated actions, disrupting the Games and sending a message of dissent to the world. But beyond this expression of dissent, what do activists actually hope to achieve with this tactic?

Organizers with the global justice movement have levelled substantial critiques of precisely this kind of mass protest, questioning both its effectiveness at achieving real change and its potential to distract or detract from more locally rooted organizing efforts. Those engaging in anti-Olympics resistance have had to grapple with difficult questions about the usefulness of convergences and consider whether the tactic can be modified to address both the concerns that have been raised and the specific circumstances of the event and the host community. Activists’ success or failure in dealing with these concerns in Vancouver will have significant implications for future organizing in the city, as well as the future of convergences as a tactic.

The rise and fall (and rise?) of convergences

Now emblematic of the heyday of the antiglobalization movement on the continent, Seattle saw the co-operation of labour groups, anarchists, NGOs, church groups and others in organizing a days-long gathering of resistance involving popular education, independent media training and an array of street actions ranging from marches to strikes to militant direct actions.

While mass demonstrations were nothing new, Seattle ushered in a new wave of mass protests in North America and beyond. Nearly every meeting of global political and financial elites over the past decade – the summits of the WTO, IMF, G8 and World Bank, in addition to numerous free trade agreements – has been met with resistance that organized itself according to the convergence model. For many, these convergences are celebrations of creative resistance and solidarity, direct threats to the state and corporate purveyors of global domination, and the primary voice of the antiglobalization movement.

However, such convergences have seen decreasing numbers of participants in recent years, as states increasingly win both the tactical and the public-relations battles.

Many explain the decreasing numbers seen at more recent convergences as one of the realities of organizing in the heightened security climate of the post-9/11 years. However, the antiglobalization movement had been demonized in the media from the start, with decontextualized coverage of the militant tactics of the black bloc in Seattle dominating mainstream coverage of the event. Likewise, intense state repression is nothing new for antiglobalization organizers, as thousands who braved the tear gas and rubber bullets saw in Quebec City in early 2001.

Indeed, the waning of the convergence model can be explained at least as much by activists’ own frustrations with the tactic as with state repression. With so much organizing effort directed at coordinating large one-off protests, convergences have increasingly been criticized for distracting from day-to-day, on-the-ground struggles that have more potential to achieve concrete gains. And while activists engaging in summit-hopping – the practice of following the world’s political and economic elite from global gathering to global gathering – saw themselves as contributing to anti-globalization solidarity, they generally remained detached from, or in some cases served only to alienate, the local communities in which they acted. The fact that summit-hopping is costly and time-consuming almost guaranteed that the activists that engaged in it had relative privilege, isolating them from those most affected by globalization’s ills.

As activists Manuel Pastor and Tony LoPresti aptly noted in an article in ColorLines magazine, convergence protesters could be found “swooping into town for the action, then departing, with the local community serving as a mere stage for the Kabuki play of protest and repression” (“Bringing globalization home,” June 2004). For critics both inside and outside the movement, convergences are little more than riot porn for activists seeking thrills, and have served neither to advance struggles against capitalism or other systems of domination, nor to win concrete gains in people’s lives.

Why, then, proceed with a convergence in Vancouver?

Global spectacle, local debacle

One of the most cogent challenges facing the anti­globalization movement in general, and the convergence tactic in particular, has been the difficulty of connecting the day-to-day issues of local communities to broader analyses of systems of global domination. With the Olympics, these connections have proven easier to make. Although the Olympics are a global phenomenon, the exploitation and marginalization that inevitably accompany them are rooted within an intimate and local context: global spectacle, local debacle. Anti-Olympics organizers have recognized that this connection between the global and the local has opened up opportunities for a convergence model more grounded in ongoing local struggles.

For many people who would have seen decisions made at meetings of the IMF, G8 or WTO as irrelevant to their daily lives, the anti-Olympics convergence has the potential to forge an explicit and real connection between global forces and local struggles. While the effects of the decisions made at global summits are dispersed in time and space and are not strongly connected to the communities in which the summit meetings occur, the impact of the Olympics on poor communities and nearby ecosystems is immediate and direct.

With nothing but broken promises of social housing hanging over East Hastings in Vancouver’s infamous downtown eastside, the fact that developers and the business lobby have shamelessly exploited the Olympics to their own advantage is widely recognized. New luxury developments have meant that rents have skyrocketed across the city, and critics have estimated that 1,150 units of low income housing have been lost in the years since Vancouver made its Olympics bid. At the same time that the numbers of homeless and impoverished populations have swelled, crackdowns on city bylaws have meant the de facto criminalization of poverty in an attempt to “clean up” the city in the lead-up to the Games. The Assistance to Shelter Act is the most recent in a series of policies that could be used to force the homeless off the streets and into temporary shelters, where the true social legacy of the Olympics will be invisible to international media. Public spending on Games-related infrastructure and venues is expected to reach up to $6 billion, leaving public debt as one of the more likely enduring legacies of the Olympics for local residents. (The province of Quebec only paid off its “Big Owe” 1976 Olympic debt in 2006.) And as the city gears up for the largest peacetime security force ever seen on Canadian soil and attacks on civil liberties ranging from the surveillance of activists to the establishment of protest zones draw criticism from even more moderate corners, the impacts felt by local communities will only intensify as the Games draw near.

As Anna Hunter of the Anti-Poverty Committee and the Olympic Resistance Network points out, “there is such a large number of Vancouver citizens that oppose the Games, not because of some political motivation, but because it has disrupted their lives, cost them money and invaded their communities.” This groundswell of opposition is significant, especially considering the sheer popularity of the Games and the multi-million dollar marketing machine supporting the Olympics. It also presents activists with the opportunity to encourage broader understandings of and resistance to capitalism, colonialism and other systems of domination.

Perhaps more significantly, this grounding within the local context allows preparations for a convergence to occur within the context of, rather than as a distraction from, ongoing local organizing. What can be cast loosely as “anti-Olympics organizing” has in fact been part of the day-to-day work of a wide variety of groups – from anti-poverty groups protesting evictions and gentrification, to indigenous groups as part of their centuries-long struggle against colonialism, to migrant justice organizers supporting the temporary workers engaged in building the venues and related infrastructure, to environmentalists resisting highway expansion. The quite literal convergence of these day-to-day struggles into a single, coordinated mass protest presents an opportunity for solidarity among multiple sectors that can serve as rich fertilizer for ongoing organizing in the city.

Resisting the Olympics has become intertwined with a variety of issues such that, for many activists, it is no longer just about opposing a one-time event. According to Harjap Grewal, an organizer with No One Is Illegal Vancouver and the Olympic Resistance Network, anti-Olympics organizing has in many ways strengthened rather than distracted from ongoing organizing. “It actually can add momentum, visi­bility, resources and energy to organizing already happening in the city and across the country,” he said.

According to Chris Shaw, author of the book Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games and long-time street medic at antiglobalization protests, the public, performative nature of the Games also makes them particularly vulnerable to protest in ways that other global gatherings are not. “All those financial meetings have become very adept at going to places like Qatar where you couldn’t get to. And what are you going to do in Qatar? The answer is not much. But if we can force the Olympics into that sort of thing, where they have to have their meetings in places where no one can get to, it destroys the entire machinery of the Olympics. How can you put tourists there and not protesters?”

This is not to suggest that a convergence in Vancouver does not have significant limitations as a tactic. Even if the Olympics were substantially disrupted, or even stopped through a convergence, the damage to the city and region is largely already done, with low-income housing demolished, unceded and ecologically sensitive land developed and surveillance and security measures already implemented. Whatever demands the organizers might hope to make, then, are largely moot by the time the Games actually take place. The best that convergence organizers can hope to achieve in this regard is to make a statement to the rest of the world, making it more difficult for the International Olympic Committee to stage Games in the future. In this sense, the benefits of an anti-Olympics convergence will largely accrue to future host cities (or those that manage to avoid becoming host cities), rather than to the local community.

Civil-liberty-threatening security and surveillance measures are a particularly troubling side effect of the locally rooted nature of convergence planning. While using large events like the Olympics to justify the implementation of security mechanisms is nothing new, the fact that the day-to-day activities of organizers are strongly connected to planning a convergence means that ongoing activities are now also subject to surveillance. This may have longer-term consequences for organizers in Vancouver, as the state mechanisms available to monitor and suppress dissent get stronger.

When the music’s over

After the Games are over, convergence organizers will face the challenge of using the momentum generated by the convergence to engage the local community and make concrete demands in responding to the mess they leave behind. While the willingness of the state to respond to most activist demands remains doubtful, there is some potential for this kind of mass mobilization to achieve real gains.

For instance, a groundswell of public outcry and threats of legal action prompted the modification of a draconian Vancouver bylaw in late November. This was a significant win for anti-Olympics organizers, as the bylaw would have severely restricted free speech and peaceful protest for the three-week period of the Games and set a dangerous pre­cedent for similar future legislation. Other demands of the Canadian state, sponsor corporations or the International Olympics Committee are less explicit or well-developed, and this may be one significant limitation for using the momentum of a convergence to strategically advance the aims of the movement.

Some activists, however, see convergence as a creative, oppositional tactic not dependent on making demands of dominating forces. Indeed, the spirit of convergences has always been one of building more democratic alternatives rooted in people – rather than state or corporate – power. While the goals of the convergence certainly include a significant disruption or shutdown of the Games that could mount an effective challenge to the institution, this is only one part of the picture. By building on the geographical rootedness of the anti-Olympics struggle, there is hope that the alternative expressed within a convergence can extend beyond the five days of protest and will serve to strengthen local social movements.

No Olympics on stolen land

Realizing this potential of convergences to truly build a rooted solidarity will largely depend on organizers’ ability to overcome the exclusions that have marked previous mass protests. Despite the fact that people of colour bear the brunt of globalization’s ills, the face of antiglobalization convergences has historically remained predominantly white. Overcoming this (perhaps unintentional) racist exclusion of people of colour from convergence organizing and protest has been a major goal of anti-Olympics organizers.

One of the more substantial shifts in organizers’ approach has been an explicit recognition that the Olympics, and any accompanying resistance, is taking place on unceded native land, and that this consideration should be central when considering the approaches and issues tackled within an anti-Olympics convergence.

“The convergence call of ‘No Olympics on Stolen Land’ is unprecedented in bringing to the forefront the recognition of Indigenous self-determination,” notes Harsha Walia, project coordinator at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre and an organizer with No One is Illegal Vancouver and the Olympic Resistance Network. “Rather than being treated as one of many issues, it creates the necessary anti-colonial foundation which has often been missing in previous mega-protests.”

This effort to root the protest in an anti-colonial framework represents a substantial shift not only in what is being talked about, but also who is doing the talking. Indeed, the anti-colonial focus came from the strength of native people organizing rather than any benevolence on the part of white organizers. Members of the Secwepemc and St’át’imc nations filed their official opposition to the Vancouver Games bid with the International Olympic Committee in 2002, long before the Olympics was on the mind of most other activists in the area. The convergence planned for February 2010, to a large extent, builds off the call made at an Intercontinental Indigenous Peoples’ Gathering in Sonora, Mexico, in 2007, where connections were drawn between resistance to the Olympics and ongoing resistance to colonialism across the continent.

The rooting of the movement in aboriginal demands for self-determination, rather than their mere inclusion within a set of priorities defined by non-natives, represents an important evolution in convergence organizing that has the potential to foster greater solidarity among natives and non-natives.

Unfortunately, putting this potential into practice has sometimes proven more difficult. As Walia explains, “At times it has led the movement to become paralyzed in a search for (often tokenized) Native leaders, feeling stuck in the dynamic of ‘conflicting opinions’ (as if Indigenous people are supposed to be a homogeneous group!), or the placing of an unrealistic and inappropriate burden for directing the movement on Indigenous people struggling just to survive. It is kind of the Leftist version of the white man’s burden.”

The need for non-natives to share the work of organizing the anti-Olympics convergence is particularly evident given the nearly $1 billion in security measures in place for the Games. While critics and activists of all races have faced harassment and intimidation by security officials in the months leading up to the Games, natives and other racialized individuals are likely to be the disproportionate victims of security and surveillance mechanisms. This presents a substantial barrier to participation in a convergence protest for many people of colour, and presents a particular responsibility for those who are involved to stay true to their commitments to support those most at risk.

Despite these tensions, there is nevertheless some hope that the anti-colonial foundation of the convergence will resonate in other cities and with future organizing efforts.

The future of convergences

If plans for the anti-Olympics convergence in Vancouver suggest anything, it is that the commonly repeated (though just as often ignored) refrain of “not using cookie-cutter tactics” does not imply that activists should simply throw out tactics that have been problematic in the past. The 2010 Olympics has presented organizers with the opportunity to adjust the convergence model in ways that address concerns.

“People say that convergences aren’t valuable, that we need to do something else, that it’s deflating, or it can’t be effective,” notes Grewal. “We could be fixing and improving things. Who is missing? What are the tactics we haven’t been using? As we address those things, convergences could keep having an impact.”

The anti-Olympics convergence has attracted interest precisely because it has taken a tactic known for being disconnected from communities and made it locally relevant, responsive to the demands of colonized people, and tactically attuned to the opportunities that convergence activism presents. In many ways, the plans for an anti-Olympics convergence have made use of the most effective elements of past convergences – the spirit of creativity and solidarity – to build a more grounded and more useful application of the tactic.

This reimagining of the convergence model will only become more essential as the opportunities for resistance multiply. “We’re not only going to be converging at the G8 and WTO anymore,” Grewal says. “We’re recognizing that systems of global domination and capitalism and colonization are rooted in these celebrations as well, these spectacles of sport.”

The success of the anti-Olympics convergence remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the convergence will not be judged exclusively by its success at disrupting the Games as a one-time event.

“Ultimately, our resistance over the last three years, and during the Olympics, will influence the next phase of resistance,” says Gord Hill, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw people and editor of No2010.com and WarriorPublications.com. “The post-Olympic scenario contains all the potential for greater social conflict.”

With the exacerbation of poverty from the Games and the public sector cuts and job losses that are likely as a result of massive government deficits, one can only hope that social movements will be up for the challenges – and opportunities – that the post-Olympic period presents. The legacy of an anti-Olympics convergence will ultimately be determined by its success at strengthening local movements – that is, by the relationships built and the people meaningfully engaged in the organizing.

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(Photo: Elaine Briere)

By Jenn Hardy
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

In the name of education, British Columbia has spent at least half a million dollars teaching wee ones the awesomeness of the Olympics. In response, Olympics opponents are trying to counteract what they call “pro-Olympic propaganda” by introducing classroom workshops of their own.

The $500,000 Sharing the Dream program provides every school in the province with an Olympics “teachable moments” DVD that includes videos, podcasts, teacher guides, hyperlinks and brochures for teachers to use in their classes – all designed to build excitement about the Games.

“Olympic and Paralympic themes span across all courses in the B.C. school curriculum – from language arts to science, physical education to mathematics, social studies to fine arts, technology to career planning,” reads the Sharing the Dream website. “We urge you to embrace these educational opportunities and bring the excitement of the Games to your classroom.”

Olympics opponents dismiss the Sharing the Dream program as a brainwashing tool. “It is a blatant propaganda effort to bolster support for the Games,” says anti-Olympic activist and author of Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, Chris Shaw. “The same government is cutting off school sports programs.”

The Sharing the Dream program was launched in the wake of massive budget cuts to public education. These same cuts are affecting public school maintenance, staffing, CommunityLINK (a program that supports students in low-income communities), Parent Advisory Council funding and, ironically, $130,000 worth of provincial grants for competitive sports.

Anti-Olympics organizers aren’t short on reasons for opposing the Games. According to Shaw, founder of the watchdog group 2010watch, the Olympics are an assault on the poor, the environment and the public purse. Detractors also point out that the Games are being held on unceded Native land (B.C. territory that was never signed over to European settlers) over the objections of local Native groups.

In response to the Share the Dream program, Shaw and other activists are doing a little educating of their own. In August, the Olympic Resistance Network introduced Teach2010, a workshop geared to elementary and high school students, which aims to restore some balance to the Olympics debate.

The goal of Teach2010 is to provide teachers with resources to do something revolutionary: provide some critical perspectives on a complex and relevant issue.

Unlike Sharing the Dream’s well-funded program, Teach2010 has a budget of just $3,000 (all donated), and relies on a great deal of volunteer labour. Through Teach2010, organizers conduct workshops that teach educators about the issues surrounding the Olympics. They also host youth nights where kids do activities like silkscreening T-shirts. “It’s an opportunity for youth to get informed about the issues,” says organizer Marla Renn. “It gives participants the ability to respond through their creative expression.”

For Teach2010’s high school workshops, Renn, a schoolteacher, takes her small team into classrooms to facilitate discussions about the Olympics. “We begin to look at the issues surrounding the Olympics and then we step away and look at whether those things translate into reality,” she says. “What are the real impacts of the Olympics? If you had an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, what would you spend $6 billion of public money on?” Students have suggested building hospitals and community centres, or housing everyone on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside without a home. They’ve even discussed buying an ice cream for everyone in the city.

Renn and the students discuss environmental impacts and dissect organizers’ claims that this will be the “greenest Games ever.” They talk about the motivations of stakeholders like the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), as well as sponsors and the mainstream news media.

It’s not entirely surprising that the Olympic resistance’s move into the classroom has itself been met with resistance.

Myriam Dumont, an elementary school teacher in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, tried to organize a Teach2010 workshop for teachers at her school in October 2009 to give them ideas for a balanced lesson about the Olympics.

The issue exploded when the Vancouver Sun reported that the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers Association (VESTA) was promoting a Teach2010 workshop. The association had simply put a link on their website to inform teachers that the workshop was taking place.

The Sun article caused a minor media frenzy, and a couple of days later, Sun columnist Cam Cole wrote a piece called “It’s elementary, my dear children: The Olympics are a sham,” in which he sarcastically attacks the Olympic Resistance Network and VESTA, accusing both parties of crushing children’s hopes and dreams.

“Nip those dreams in the bud, I say,” writes Cole. “Get ’em early. That’s the kind of preventive action that makes us all proud to pay your salaries.”

VESTA quickly distanced itself from the event, removing the informational link on its website and replacing it with a disclaimer. The media attention resulted in the cancellation of Dumont’s workshop and her holding it off school property.

“I saw it as an opportunity for teachers to get kids to start thinking about issues and what they can do, how it affects them, and taking action.” She says discussions about the Olympics are especially important in an inner-city Vancouver school, where pro-Olympic propaganda is everywhere.

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Concerned about the growing power of food corporations, Wolverine decided to take up farming full-time, and to save and share heirloom seeds with those who were interested. (Photo: Fabrice Grover)

By Hannah Askew
Briarpatch Magazine
January/February 2010

“A lot of people have got their hearts broke, trying to make a living off this land without any water,” Wolverine tells me. We are walking down the hill from his house towards a small field planted with flowering squash. His dog, Bingo, trails behind.

Wolverine – who prefers not to be called by his English name of William Ignace – is a 78-year-old member of the Secwepemc nation. He farms a sloping piece of land in the semi-arid hills of the Adams Lake Indian Band Reserve near Chase, British Columbia. On his 50 acres, he grows organic beans, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas and squash. He keeps chickens, a few cows and a pair of horses. He is also an internationally recognized champion of indigenous rights, regularly invited to speak at gatherings and conferences around the world.

“I tried to sue the government back in ’89 for lost revenue,” he told me. “I got 12 families [from the reserve] together and asked them what crops they would’ve grown if they’d had water. Then I looked up the money they could’ve made if they’d grown those crops. That’s the figure I was planning to sue the government for.”

The lawsuit was never launched, but farming on the reserve remains an act of stubborn defiance. As the government does not provide irrigation pumps for the Adams Lake Band, Wolverine had to rig up his own system. He bought a diesel pump for $700 and installed it on the bank of the small river that flows at the base of his land. Unfortunately, the pump has to be operated manually and is difficult to start.

On the evening that I interviewed him, he was frustrated because he had sprained his wrist earlier in the day, trying to get the motor going. “This is the kind of thing we have to put up with from the Canadian government,” he said.

The Thompson Okanagan has a contentious history when it comes to water rights. As the region is partial desert, irrigation plays a vital role in agriculture. When European farmers first settled the region in the 1890s, a primary concern was to create irrigation systems with which to water crops. The early irrigation systems (built by private land speculators or by farmers themselves) consisted of simple wooden flumes that relied on gravity to carry water to farmers’ orchards and fields. After World War I, the provincial government became involved in building centralized irrigation systems using gasoline-powered pumps to draw water from out of the lake for use on farmers’ lands.

Early irrigation systems, in combination with other de­velopment projects undertaken by settlers, had a devastating impact on First Nations’ traditional food-gathering practices. Prior to the colonization of their territory, Okanagan and Secwepemc people enjoyed a varied diet of edible roots, berries and other plants, as well as salmon and wild game such as deer, elk and rabbit. The erection of fences by settlers, in combination with the diversion of water sources, disrupted the regular migration routes of large animals in the region, leading to a dramatic reduction in their number; the spawning grounds of the salmon were destroyed or made difficult to access because of dams; and finally, many of the edible roots and other plants diminished in availability or disappeared altogether as a result of cattle grazing, residential development and other projects.

The late Mary Thomas (1919-2007), a traditional ecological knowledge keeper and a member of the Secwepemc nation, told enthnobotanist Nancy Turner that as a child she used to go down to the mouth of the Salmon River where it flows into Shuswap Lake to dig wapato and water parsnips from along the banks of the river. The water parsnips were eaten raw, while the wapato were placed into baskets to be cooked up later. “Now,” she said in 2001, “there’s not one plant left down there. Let alone a cattail where the birds used to sing beautiful music. You don’t hear that anymore.”

With traditional food sources diminishing in the early 1900s, many First Nations people were forced to hire themselves out for wages and attempt farming on reserve land allotted to them by the provincial government. Mary Thomas recalled to Turner that her mother started a vegetable garden on the Neskonlith Indian Band Reserve, and also got a job helping to construct an irrigation system for white settlers.

The Secwepemc people held (and continue to hold) holistic beliefs about the natural water systems that once criss-crossed the region, maintaining that the rivers, lakes and streams have a spiritual value as well as providing life to many plants and animals. Thomas recalled that her mother felt sad about having to participate in the building of the irrigation dams: “It was hard work weeding and hoeing a vegetable patch, but it was even harder going against the cultural beliefs.”

In the late 19th and early 20th century, many First Nations families chose to support themselves by running their own farms, but access to water was a continual problem as the colonial government frequently denied water permits to First Nations applicants in favour of white orchardists and farmers. In 1914, a white official writing on behalf of the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for B.C. observed, “Again and again in our visitation of reserves in the ‘dry belt’ I got the impression that the Indians are being deprived of water to which they are entitled.”

A number of First Nations fought against the injustice of the system. In 1911, Paul Terbasket of the Okanagan nation was jailed for irrigating his crops and orchard in defiance of a government decision that denied him a water permit in favour of the Similkameen Fruitlands Company. Then in 1917, an Okanagan woman named Mary chopped to pieces an irrigation flume carrying water to a wealthy white farmer.

Finally, in 1931, the Adams Lake Band and the Neskonolith Band demanded that the Department of Indian Affairs pay for an irrigation system to increase the volume of water available to the two reserves.

In response to this petition, some Indian Affairs officials were sent to look at conditions on the two reserves. One reported back that “The large number of Indians resident thereon [were] dependent almost entirely upon agriculture for their livelihood, and the totally inadequate supply of water for irrigation purposes.” Another agent confirmed the inadequate water supply and added, “The cause of most of the Indian diseases in the interior of British Columbia Dry Belt is [ . . . ] malnutrition. Lack of water to raise crops on their lands is the primary cause.”

In other words, the reports confirmed exactly what the native leaders were saying: the people on the reserves were suffering because they had no means to support themselves other than farming, and there was not enough water available on the reserves to farm with.

Wolverine was born on the Adams Lake Reserve in 1931, the same year that these reports were made. Although his family lived on arable land, insufficient irrigation meant that his parents frequently had to take work off-farm to make ends meet. When I asked him what kind of work they did, he said, “They were jacks-of-all-trades, I guess. Had to be, to survive. Loggers, ranchers, they did everything. Trappers.”

Like Mary Thomas, Wolverine attended the infamous Kamloops Residential School as a child. When the issue came up in our interview, he looked down at the dry grass at his feet.

“That’s a black mark on Canada’s history, that,” Wolverine said when asked about the experience. “Well, we learned hard work. That’s one thing we learned.”

Unlike many other residential school survivors, Wolverine is still a fluent speaker of his native tongue, Secwepemctsin. He also possesses extensive knowledge of the Secwepemc land and culture. He describes himself, along with Mary Thomas, as being one of the few “true elders.”

As a younger man, he worked for nearly 40 years as a faller for logging companies around B.C., single-handedly felling trees up to 13 feet in diameter. During these years, Wolverine sometimes took breaks from the logging camps to come back to his land to farm and trap.

He didn’t get seriously into farming, though, until the early 1980s when a Hopi man mysteriously appeared on his land and presented him with a small sack containing ancient Hopi seeds for squash, beans, corn and tomatoes. Concerned about the growing power of food corporations, Wolverine decided to take up farming full-time, and to save and share heirloom seeds with those who were interested. His seeds have travelled as far as Russia, where they were distributed by the NGO “Save the Seeds.”

As a full-time organic farmer on the Adam’s Lake Reserve, Wolverine quickly grew frustrated by inadequate access to irrigation, which was still a problem for him, just as it had been for his parents. After doing some legal research, he decided to launch a class-action lawsuit against the government for allowing other parties to overdraw from the river and for failing to ensure an adequate flow of water onto the reserve.

Ultimately, however, the lawsuit was never launched. “I spent three years of my life researching that case,” he told me, “but in the end the [band] leadership backed away. They didn’t want any trouble.”

These days, Wolverine is growing tired of fighting. “I spent five and a half years in the pen, you know,” he says to me, referring to the jail time he served for his leadership role in the Gustafsen Lake standoff, in which he, along with several others, illegally occupied sacred and unceded territory traditionally used for Sun Dances at Ts’Peten.

His top priority now is to secure a good irrigation pump so that when he leaves his farm to his children they will have an easier time. Fingering his sprained wrist, he tells me that he is considering applying for a grant to help replace the pump. In recent years, the Aboriginal Agriculture Initiative has had some funds available through a joint partnership with the government of Canada, the province of B.C., and the non-profit Investment Agriculture Foundation of B.C. to help First Nations farmers pay for irrigation systems.

The problem of water availability is more acute today than ever. Environment Canada released a climate change study in 2005 that found that significant warming has been observed in the Okanagan Valley. Less snow in the mountains and early melts increase the flow of water during winter months and lessen the flow in the summertime, when irrigation demands are highest. Climate models predict that by 2050, the valley may have 35 per cent less precipitation as compared to the 1961-90 average.

Tough choices will have to be made in the future, experts say, between water use for domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs, and ecological needs such as water for wild plants, animals and fish. As water scarcity in the region increases, the claims of politically marginalized First Nations communities are likely to become even more sidelined. The livelihoods of Okanagan and Secwepemc farmers who, like Wolverine, live on reserves and are already struggling to get enough water to irrigate their fields will be in jeopardy.

Throughout her lifetime, Mary Thomas fought hard to protect the rivers for the salmon run, founding the Salmon River Watershed Restoration Project. She, like many other Secwepemc people, felt a strong obligation to care for the land. “Man is supposed to be the protector,” she told Turner. “Humans were given the responsibility to protect the goodies that they created on this mother earth and I’m afraid that we’re not obeying that. We’re losing.”

In the past, guardianship rights over the lakes, rivers and streams of the Thompson Okanagan were forcibly taken from First Nations people. This act was not only unjust, but also had a devastating impact on the ecology of the region. While the Secwepemc, Okanagan and other First Nations protected the region’s fragile resources for over 10,000 years, a mere century and a half of settler rule has brought the area to the verge of ecological collapse.

The environmental difficulties that the Thompson Okanagan region is currently experiencing come as no surprise to Wolverine. “When you wage a war on the Indigenous people, you wage a war on the environment itself,” he says.

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