EIDN1
Photo: No One Is Illegal Ottawa

Rally Calls for End to Immigration Detention

Members and supporters of the Parent-Child Coalition for Justice (PCCJ) and the End Immigration Detention Network (EIDN) rallied outside the constituency office of Yasir Naqvi, Ottawa Centre MPP and Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, on Mar. 16.

Demonstrators sought to highlight the role of the Ontario government in indefinitely detaining immigrants without charge or trial in provincial jails, and forcibly separating parents from their children.

“On November 18th, the EIDN sent a letter to Minister Naqvi demanding he sever ties with the federal government and stop enforcing immigration detentions, but has yet to receive a response, let alone an acknowledgement”, explained EIDN member Daniel Cayley-Daoust.

“Of the 9,932 detentions that took place in 2013, 2,434 detentions took place in Ontario’s maximum-security jails,” according to an EIDN press release. “In 2013-2014, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) paid Ontario more than $21 million for jail space for immigration detainees.”

Grassy Narrows
Grassy Narrows youth rally inside the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry offices in Kenora. Photo: Alex Hundert, twitter.com

Grassy Narrows Protests Take Aim at Loggers, Government

Members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation held demonstrations outside of Weyerhaeuser and Kenora Forest Products and inside the office of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry on Mar. 16.

They demanded that the Ontario government remove all Grassy Narrows land from the Forest Management Unit and that the logging companies publicly commit to cease cutting in their traditional territory.

“We are back at Weyerhaeuser demanding again that they commit to not take any wood from our Territory, ever,” said Grassy Narrows youth Corissa Swain in a press release.

Referencing the overflowing woodlots, Swain, 14, questioned the need for Weyerhaeuser to continue cutting trees on their territory.

“They should never be taking trees from anywhere around here unless the Anishinabe People — whose territory it is — want them to,” she said. “But what we really want is for them to close down permanently and stop destroying Mother Earth.”

In December, the Ontario government rejected Grassy Narrows’ request for an Individual Environmental Assessment of the mercury impacts from the controversial final plan for clear-cut logging, according to the press release.

“Our land is our culture, and traditions as a people,” said Band Councilor Randy Fobister. “When the land is compromised in any way, our culture and traditions will be compromised.”

“Laboratory of Austerity” Blockaded in FrankfurtECB Protest1

Tens of thousands of Europeans protested the opening of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt on Mar. 18.

Police reported that 88 officers were injured after a few thousand blockaded access to the bank in the morning. Later in the day, an estimated 30,000 people marched in the city according to Tadzio Mueller, a climate justice activist who spoke with Democracy Now. “There was a real sense of a Europeanization of the struggle from below against the austerity diktats from above.”

“You have to imagine Europe or the eurozone right now as a huge laboratory for austerity policies,” he said. “The eurozone is being used by European elites to push back labour rights, all sorts of accomplishments of social movements of the last decades or even century.

“Everything is on the table in the euro crisis, whether it’s pensioners’ rights, workers’ rights, student rights, the right not to be evicted from your housing, health care,” he continued.

“Everything is on the table for a sort of neoliberal offensive from the top.”

Ten thousand police were summoned to protect the ECB which is reported to have cost €1.3 billion. Riot police used tear gas and water cannons against protesters who threw stones and torched police cars.

These articles first appeared in the Leveller Vol.7, No. 6 (Spring 2015).