BASICS Issue #22 (Sep/Oct 2010)

Noaman Ali

On the night of July 23, 2010, Farshad Azadian, an organizer with the Esplanade Community Group, was arrested on charges of obstruction of a police officer.

In fact, Farshad was simply observing police rounding up on a friend and fellow activist near the site of a shooting that had occurred that night. But just because there may have been a crime in the neighbourhood “doesn’t mean that every youth ought to lose their civil rights,” said Farshad.

According to him, police in the neighbourhood know well that there is a group of “activist kids” moving on issues affecting the community. “It’s true that there are problems in the community, but when people in the community rise up to tackle these issues, those in power try to block them, including through the police,” Farshad told BASICS. Previously the police attempted to stop the Esplanade Community Group from booking space in a community centre, until community pressure reversed this block .

Leaders of G20 countries are concerned about how working classes will respond to planned austerity measures. Much of the equipment purchased during G20 will be used against working-class and racialized communities, who daily face violence at the hands of the police. By specifically targeting organizers, the state signals its commitment to criminalizing dissent.

Two days before Farshad’s arrest, on July 21, when activists at a rally organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) walked in to the provincial Liberal party headquarters with an invoice to show how much the government owed poor people due to regressive social assistance cuts.

Without warning, police arrested eleven activists for trespassing. Usually, this results in a ticket, but the police took nine of the activists to the police station and elevated the charges to mischief and forcible entry.

Along with Farshad, these activists must take valuable time and resources from agitating for social change to put them toward legal defence.

On August 17, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network held an event at the University of Toronto concerning the arrests of several organizers during the G20 summit weekend and actions that preceded it in Toronto.

Over the course of June 21–27, over a thousand people were arrested. The majority were released without charge. On August 23, the charges of several hundred were dropped and prosecutors attempted to get rid of many others without any serious scrutiny.

Far more serious charges and conditions were levelled against community organizers, including S.K. Hussan of No One Is Illegal–Toronto, who along with others argued at the event attended by nearly 200 people that the arrests and targeting of organizers were an attempt to undermine organizing in the city.

Hussan and others also noted that the kind of indiscriminate arrests and use of violence by police used in downtown Toronto over the G20 summit weekend are routinely used against working-class and racialized neighbourhoods in Toronto, as well as against immigrants and refugees.

Using the police to arrest working-class and racialized people, whether in their day-to-day roles or when they are also community organizers, shows that police violence is necessary to maintain an oppressive power structure.

For instance, native people account for 2.7% of Canada’s population, but 18.5% of federal prisons—not because they commit more crimes, but because they are more heavily policed, arrested and convicted by a racist legal system.

Organizers and people in working-class, racialized and indigenous communities must unite to resist repression of the state and its police force.

Free all state prisoners! Drop the bogus and repressive charges! Contribute to the legal defence of Farshad by e-mailing [email protected] This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , to the OCAP activists defence by visiting http://ocap.ca, and to the G20 arrests by visiting http://g20.torontomobilize.org/support

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