Omar Khadr and the Frailty of Rights by Rick Gunderman

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” -Mohandas Gandhi

Toronto-born Omar Khadr was 13 when he was sent by his parents to fight for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He was 15 when he was detained in a firefight with US soldiers in 2002. He was a child soldier in both circumstances.

Now 22, he has spent nearly seven years in the United States’ Guantanamo Bay prison camp. He was awaiting trial until US President Barack Obama announced an executive order to suspend trials as a step towards closing the prison.

The Bush Administration shamelessly ignored Khadr’s status as a child soldier. Canadian courts have ruled that his imprisonment violated his human rights, including the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. He was repeatedly harassed and beaten by Guantanamo prison guards.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly said that in light of the “seriousness” of the crimes that Khadr is charged with (they are charging him with murder as a war crime for his suspected involvement in the grenade death of a US soldier. Yes, as a war crime), he must stay in Guantanamo and face trial there.

If Harper considers Guantanamo Bay to be a place where Omar Khadr – or anybody for that matter – has access to real justice, he is delusional. The only other possibility is that Harper, like so many Canadians and Americans, is so blinded by this ill-born concept of “terrorism” that now permeates our continent that he is willing to violate civil, human, and child soldier rights, all of which Canada has pledged multiple times in the past to protect.

A recent Harris-Decima/Canadian Press poll indicates that 54% of Canadians want Khadr returned to Canada, an about-face from last July when 60+% of Canadians thought that Khadr should rot in Guantanamo. Having born witness to the rantings of many of these jumpy terror-tweaked people, I can attest that none of them are spawned from anything but an unsubstantiated, fear-borne anxiety about “terrorists”, coupled with a grotesquely blind Canadian/American nationalism.

To be fair, most Canadians do not have the time or energy in their lives to truly sit down to consider the legal and philosophical complexities surrounding the Khadr case. Nevertheless, attitudes being what they are, it is clear that the conceptions that North Americans have about justice and rights is sliding further and further down the slide of barbarity every day. In the name of protection against “terror” (a violent METHOD of political action, not a movement with goals of its own), the right-wing punditry of the continent has convinced significant portions of the population that those with any association to the word are not worthy of rights or justice.

In one word: bullshit. Combatants for Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Mahdi are fighting for a cause that has no more or less objective merit than the cause of American imperialism. They are resisting the presence of US soldiers in their country and among their people in the same vein that the Green Mountain Boys, the Boston Tea Party, and the Continental Army fought against British rule in the United States. Do Americans forget that their own government was bred out of violent revolution and militant action in the face of foreign oppression?

This is, of course, not to excuse the tactics or ideology of the Islamist movement at large. Secularism triumphs over theocracy; diplomacy and negotiation are always preferable to violence; direct confrontations with US soldiers are a much better method of resistance than slaughtering US civilians (i.e. 9/11). But the straight fact is that the Islamist movement dates back to the Christian Crusades, when for the first time Muslims banded together to face a common enemy, ultimately uniting into the Ottoman Empire, which held the ideal of a pan-Islamic state across the Muslim world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, however, did not destroy pan-Islamic resistance to the subsequent occupations and interference of Europe and the United States. This is the source of the wide-ranging conflict in the Middle East.

Surely, Khadr knew little if anything of this history when he was shipped to the Middle East at the tender age of 13 to fight the Westerners he lived among. But the mentality of resistance, induced by centuries of conquest, undoubtedly passed onto him from his parents the way it was passed to them from theirs.

Omar Khadr is not a bloodthirsty subhuman being bent on wantonly slaughtering as many Canadians as he can. Even taking the child soldier status out of the equation, he was a young man who believed he was fighting for his people, the same way US soldiers (and their Revolutionary War counterparts) believe they are fighting for their country/people.

Khadr should not be dehumanized and denied all the rights that he is entitled to because he (actually, his parents…) picked the “wrong” side.

Sarah Palin’s Speech Full of Lies, by (sorry) Perez Hilton

http://perezhilton.com/2008-09-04-sarah-palins-speech-full-of-lies

*Note* My best buddy and his girlfriend told me about this link, so I checked it out. I feel compelled to establish that I am not a reader of Perez Hilton or any other celebrity gossip.

The Strategy of the United Front, by Rick Gunderman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_front

It’s a fairly self-explanatory term. The United Front is a strategy adopted by revolutionary socialist organizations as a means to both accomplish short-term goals alongside other non-revolutionary socialists, and to expose the non-revolutionary elements to the revolutionary cause. By working among the non-revolutionaries, revolutionary groups can hopefully win over at least some of them.

I personally give this strategy much currency when pondering revolutionary socialism. After all, I myself was won over by this strategy, at least partially. Before my days as an open revolutionary I was an active member of the New Democratic Party – for the unfamiliar, the NDP is Canada’s reformist social democratic party. When I attended anti-war or pro-labour demonstrations I always found myself in the company of Marxists, anarchists, Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists and syndicalists. Had I not been so exposed to elements of the radical left, not to mention while they were working towards goals I truly believe in, I might never have embraced revolution.

I have wrangled lately with exactly how a United Front strategy could be infused into community socialist activism. As it stands, the only organization that explicitly advocates community socialism (the Canadian Community Socialist Organization, a group based almost entirely on Facebook) lacks anything solid in terms of an organizational structure, ties with other groups, or even a single campaign under its belt.

I have tried, thus far to little avail, to be part of building a solid CCSO. I won’t mince words: it is incredibly difficult. Not only is the CCSO introducing to the non-socialist public yet another form of a system that many (erroneously) conceive to have failed, it is introducing itself to those already identifying as “socialists” but whose alleigance belongs to the Communist Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, Common Cause, the IWW, the New Democratic Party, Fightback, Socialist Action, etc.

I am not chauvinistically attached to community socialism: it is not an ideology of socialism that I claim is “superior” to any other. I have been fairly vocal since I began the project that community socialism is libertarian socialism that emphasizes community-based democracy, workers’ self-management of the workplace through democratic workers’ councils, and the abolition of all state-sponsored hinderances to personal liberty.

At it’s heart, community socialism is socialism itself, but so is every other movement that supports similar goals. As such, I don’t wish to see the assimilation of the pre-existing socialist movement into community socialism. Rather, I’d like to see community socialism build itself into a viable movement while at the same time working alongside – and never at odds with, when possible – fellow pro-working class, pro-democracy, pro-liberty forces.

It is my hope, however, that someday “socialism” can be interpreted to stand for what community socialism does, and that the people of the world will abandon all preconceptions that socialism stands for government tyranny and widespread poverty.

Until then, I call on all socialists to span across ideological lines. Community socialists: work with the communists, the anarachists, and the democratic socialists. Communists, anarchists and democratic socialists: we want to work with you. We want to overthrow capitalism. We want to destroy the bourgeois state.

Red Rising Returns!

(Announcement by editor Rick Gunderman)

Dear readers,

It has been three and a half months since Red Rising’s last post. As the sole editor, my lack of solid access to a computer during the summer months (long story short: the college took its rental laptop back) unfortunately allowed me to let slip my duties.

A lot has happened in those three and a half months that I have missed golden opportunities to write about. Russia and Georgia fought a war over two separatist republics. The 2008 US presidential election is bound to produce either the first black president or the first female vice-president. Local elections in the United Kingdom saw a dangerous shift in the consciousness of the British working class. Guantanamo Bay has come under increasing scrutiny as a cesspool of injustice with the case of Omar Khadr. Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, using the time to showcase their rich culture (good!) and the magnificence of their capitalist-state bureaucrat partnership (bad). French President Nicolas Sarkozy has performed a series of foreign policy maneuvers, continuing the longstanding diplomatic influence of the French republic.

At last, I have got my laptop back, and I intend to be in full activity within a few days. I will start off posting a series of very good articles I have read over the summer, then begin mixing my own in with them to get back into form. Once again, I encourage anybody interested in writing anything to submit – unfortunately, any work you do will be unpaid. For what it’s worth, I’m working for free too.

Cheers,

Rick G.

Dissent is a Fundamental Part of Democracy, by Rick Gunderman

An activist group called “No One Is Illegal” – which I am in full support of and whose Facebook group I am a member of – participated in a campaign which scored a major success against the Toronto Police Service (TPS). Migrant communities, women’s organizations, trade unions, social service workers, youth organizations and many others united to force the Toronto Police Services Board to adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding undocumented immigrants. In their own words…

“Two years have passed and after numerous meetings, deputations and a tacit agreement from the Toronto Police Services Board of the need for a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in their organization, no implementation plan has come from Chief Bill Blair.

Meanwhile migrant communities continue to be bullied, brutalized, apprehended and detained by Toronto police — who continue to work hand in hand with the Canadian Border Service Agency to implement Canada’s racist, classist, homophobic and ableist immigration policies!”

I say, without reservations, that No One Is Illegal is among the best activist groups in Canada. Theirs is a cause that I truly believe in: that all people of the world have the right to move across the borders that elite kings and politicians propped up for their own benefit, to divide and rule the population, and that those borders should ultimately cease to exist, much like in Europe.

As I write this, I can already hear a chorus of pissed-off reactionaries. “They’re illegal!”, “They’re a burden on our society!”, “They never assimilate!”, and so forth. It is quite irritating to me, as I can see the veiled racism that lies behind such comments, supposedly said in the name of “rule of law”, or “national good”, or whatever.

Was it “legal” when the pilgrims and settlers arrived, massacred the Native populations, didn’t learn Iroquois, Algonquin, or Huron, and established Christianity rather than adopt tribal beliefs? So what’s the big deal with others coming, living among us, and sharing our land? Are we afraid that they’ll do what European Canadians did to the Natives?

Many Canadians act as if this is our God-given land, that since we are born here that it is therefore ours and ours alone. But what it is that makes the land “ours”? Is it not just dirt, sitting on top of a thick layer of rock floating on a gigantic ball of magma? That’s all the land, “our country”, is: dirt. The attitude of Canadians (and Americans) amounts virtually to worshiping mud, at the rate that so-called “patriotism” is taking on a radically reactionary, land-based form. It seems we’ve conveniently forgotten that half of Canada’s provinces and territories have Native names, and many places throughout the United States, including many states, also have Native names.

These “Minutemen” patrolling the United States-Mexico border are nothing short of a reincarnated Ku Klux Klan. They are the modern-day Nathan Bedford Forrests and William Joseph Simmonses. They ride around in the back of pick-up trucks along the US-Mexico border, guns in hand, shooting at migrants attempting to enter the United States for a better life. They dehumanize the Mexican migrants, seeing them as barely above animals. Such similar tactics to the KKK, who rode around on horseback harassing, attacking, and even murdering innocent African-Americans, considering them sub-human.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is perhaps, at least in North America, among the most hypocritical ideologies. How can someone, whose ancestors in all likelihood immigrated at one point or another to North America, deny that very right to others? So it was okay for you and yours, but not them and theirs? Why?

Probably a lot of racism, for one. Maybe xenophobia, since even non-Anglophone European immigrants aren’t looked upon favourably, but that might be more political in nature (Russians, for example, may be seen as “commies”). A theory of mine is that it’s simply Anglo-American Chauvinism, considering that even French Canadians are often on the receiving end of negative Anglo attitudes. My own grandparents, arrivals from Germany post-World War 2, were occasionally harassed either for their accents or for being “Nazis”.

There is no rhyme or reason to the arguments of the anti-immigration camp. There are plenty of resources to go around, particularly if we are able to kick out the owners of our workplaces and collect their bounty, which we alone produce, for ourselves. Most immigrants do learn either English or French, and considering that we forced the Natives to learn those languages, maybe helping along the immigrants by learning the basics of some of their languages isn’t so bad an idea. It may even enrich us as individuals. And of all the immigrants I have met in my life, very, very few of them have said that they regret their decision to come to Canada.

Let’s tear down the borders everywhere, open our homelands and our heartlands to all those who wish to come see them, live on them, and work on them. Let’s make them feel welcomed and free so that we may all peacefully live together.

But that’s not even my point. My point was to say that these protests in favour of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy are necessary and are, to some degree, working. It seems that sometimes, when the people organize effectively, we can have our voices matter. We sure as hell can’t rely on the politicians to do the speaking for us.

Commentary on the US Political Process, by Rick Gunderman

*note: I will try to make this as fresh a commentary as I can, as I recognize that we’ve all heard enough about the problems, merits, shortcomings and benefits of the US political system. To that end, I will specifically talk about the way voters represent themselves and how the media interprets it at election time.

When election season comes around in Canada, some of us may be called by pollsters to ask us which party we plan to vote for. The results of those polls are broadcast and published in the news, showing a voter preference for the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democrats, sometimes the Bloc Quebecois, and recently the Greens.

In the United States, voters are registered full-time as either Republican, Democratic, or “Independent”. Such is the nature of the US political system that narrows down to two “competing” parties that the only third option is a voter of “independence”. I have a hard time seeing Communist Party USA and Constitution Party members sitting comfortably together in this boat.

Truth be told, it isn’t that different than here in Canada, where three to five parties are represented, and none of the fourteen other registered parties are.

Even so, the Canadian polling process captures how people plan to vote, with the undecided choosing the “undecided” option. The American registration process, on the other hand, is structured in such a way that the established media applies the declared registration on a spectrum with the ultraconservative Republicans at one end, the neo-hippie liberal socialist Democrats at the other, and the mindless Independents in the middle.

But as I pointed out by using CPUSA and the Constitution Party as examples, there exist those beyond the Republicans and Democrats on their respective sides of the spectrum.

Which is why I find it odd that many pro-Democratic political commentators seem to believe that to win over the Independents, Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton…maybe…probably not…) must drag themselves more towards the centre of the American political system.

The graph on this website should illustrate just what it means to be a centrist caught between Republicans and Democrats in the States.

Hardly very “centrist”, is it? There’s maybe a needle between the two through which to wiggle, with some Democrats even being more authoritarian than some Republicans! Incredible.

Voter turnout for the 2004 Presidential election was a dismal 60.7%…the highest since 1968. Yes, the highest. And as far as I can tell, the 39.3% who didn’t bother must know what they’re missing out on: a superficially “divisive” election which, right down to the bone, is just another battle in the Civil War of Political Capitalism.

No wonder Independents are treated almost exclusively as the mindless middle between the “left of the right” and the “right of the right”! The registration process abandons the socialists, communists, social democrats and left liberals…and that’s just those to the left of the Democrats. As much as I despise what they stand for, I must also speak out against the anti-democratic forces’ attack on the anti-democratic forces of the far-right as well…grudgingly.

An Application of Cultural Autonomy, by Rick Gunderman

To illustrate what cultural autonomy means, I will draw upon an existing example of a vibrant minority that lives within the grander society but still retains a distinct culture and distinct identity.

The gay community has dealt with a tragic history of oppression and discrimination. Although homosexuality was widely practiced in many parts of the world (Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the pre-Columbian Americas, pre-colonial Africa, Ancient East Asia), the infusion of Christianity into the Roman Empire ultimately made both entities more authoritarian. This was particularly so with a form of cultural genocide that sought to eradicate homosexual activity in all areas. After the fall of Rome, subsequent conservative Christian emperors sought to use the authority of the church to push their own agenda of social control. Incredible amounts of oppression against homosexual activity occurred in the name of the Father.

Meanwhile, the civilizations of East Asia, the pre-Columbian Americas, and sub-Saharan Africa all maintained cultures that ran the gamut from an attitude of permissiveness to outright reverence of homosexuality.

It has only in recent times come to pass that the “genderqueer” community (for lack of a better term) has gained a place in society.

Thus, the workings of the gay community today serve as a positive example of cultural autonomy. They have their own bars and clubs, festivals, and advocacy groups, all within which straight people are more than welcome to participate. They have a distinct way of life from straight folk, but nonetheless live and work all around us.

Granted, to apply cultural autonomy to different communities may be met with varying degrees of difficulty, particularly when the community occurs in a concentrated geographical location. But when the question arises as to how cultural autonomy can solve the problems of the black, Hispanic, Native, immigrant, Francophone, etc. communities, the gay community can continually serve as a beacon.

The Gray Panthers: South Park’s Biggest Fear, by Rick Gunderman

Have you seen that one episode of South Park, “Grey Dawn, Episode 710″? It’s the one where a lot of old people are getting into car accidents, so the town takes away all of their licenses, and then the American Association of Retired Persons (now simply AARP) launches a military invasion of the town. It was supposed to be a spoof of the 1984 movie “Red Dawn”.

The AARP in real life is not a militant group. They are a seniors’ advocacy group that works primarily through litigation and lobbying and provides special non-profit services to its members.

If Trey Parker and Matt Stone had done a little more research, they may have found a perfect target for their satire: the Gray Panthers.

In case the name doesn’t say it all, the Gray Panthers are retirees’ answer to Huey P. Newton. I couldn’t freaking believe it when I came across it. I mean, who ever heard of militant seniors, particularly when their founder was quoted suggesting that since women often outlive men by eight years on average, elderly widows should look to each other for sexual pleasure.

Notwithstanding the personally unpleasant mental picture drawn by such a statement, I applaud the Gray Panthers. While the AARP is a decent enough organization, it’s good to see that the spirit of resistance is not lost in the older generations.

Furthermore, my pleasure with the Gray Panthers comes from (and for those who have read Unite the Activist Front, this will come as no surprise) the fact that they adamantly believe that all social justice movements are inseparably linked. As such, they affirm their solidarity with movements in support of youth, ethnic, racial and cultural minorities, peace, LGBT liberation, civil liberties, the poor and the working class.

Granted, some of their statements may seem outrageous and controversial to the general public, but what good is free expression without using it to search for new ideas? Old lesbians may not do it for most people, but if it makes them happy, what’s the harm? Which does go to highlight the question: shouldn’t we all be free to explore our sexuality at our own pleasure?

In conclusion, I salute the courage, attitudes, values, vision and assertiveness of the Gray Panthers. May they continue to valiantly defy ageism, and may we all stand by their side! You can visit their site at http://www.graypanthers.org/

Cultural Autonomy and Separatism, by Rick Gunderman

A long-standing trend in the anti-racist far-left is to advocate for the “cultural autonomy” of minorities. That is to say, each cultural group has the inalienable right to express their way of life as they see fit.

Personal issues that I have had with this particular philosophy revolve around a reservation I have for the idea of separatism. I abhor the idea of allowing any sort of divisions to manifest into a sociological or geographical apartheid. It is my conviction, backed up by scientific evidence, that ethnicity and race in particular are virtually negligible genetic factors in an individual’s personality.

Thus, the meaning of cultural autonomy must be made mutually exclusive with any form of separatism.

Cultural autonomy means the right to express one’s culture with other members of that culture. Complications arise in geographical regions wherein there co-exist many cultures, a case-in-point of which could be Anglo-Franco North America.

It is a part of the world where cultures converge. Although dominated by Anglo-European culture in the United States and English Canada and Franco-European culture in French Canada (and parts of Louisiana and New England), it is common to find a Chinatown, Little Italy, Greektown and Little India in many cities, not to mention enclaves of African-American, Jewish, German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish/Hispanic, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern and Native American culture.

To offer cultural autonomy is easiest when a definable geographic region belongs almost or completely homogeneously to a distinct cultural group. I often use the Frisians of northeastern Germany and northern Netherlands to illustrate this. It is conceivable that the remaining Frisians could call for autonomy within the German and Dutch states, or outright independence, as long as their national self-determination were respected by the German and Dutch states. The same could be said for the Tatars, Chechens, Ossetians and Bashkirs of Russia; the Basques and Catalans of Spain and France; the Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Manx of the United Kingdom; and any of the 56 distinct ethnic groups recognized by the People’s Republic of China.

However, the situation in North America is a textbook example of the difficulties of universal cultural autonomy in that, often, the cultural groups all live within the same geographical boundary. Major North American cities like Toronto, New York City, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Chicago, Boston, Montreal, Miami and San Francisco all fit into this phenomenon.

The contention regarding cultural autonomy is not based on whether all cultures have an inalienable right to express their cultures independent of another: they do. The question regards how best to implement it in all situations so that a global condition of universal cultural autonomy emerges.

To suggest that the division of all cultures into distinct nation-states is the best solution is simply ridiculous. Examples, primarily in Europe, show that it is both impossible and impractical. It is impossible because nation-states necessarily require territorial boundaries, almost never of which correspond 100% with a homogeneous nation, trapping nationals outside of the boundaries and non-nationals inside them. It is impractical because the nation-state is an inherently nationalist institution, causing arbitrary national divisions by uniting dissimilar communities against often similar communities.

Without the nation-state, a new social order must emerge that allows for cultural autonomy but also undermines separatism.

Take, for example, African-Americans in the United States. Historically an oppressed minority, they have yet to break free from the bonds of the damage of slavery, institutional discrimination, and contemporary racism. Calls for black nationalism have met with varying degrees of success.

The solution cannot be nationalism. There can be no creation of a distinct, independent nation-state for African-Americans. This is so for two reasons: one, African-Americans are not completely geographically concentrated, forming enclaves in cities and towns, meaning that no African-American nation-state would have continuous boundaries; two, while forming enclaves across the country, African-Americans also live in communities that are dominantly European-American or Hispanic-American, while non-Africans also live in their communities.

Nevertheless, African-Americans have formed a distinct culture, characterized by such things as jazz, hip-hop, rap, some distinctive cuisine, a unique form of comedy and entertainment, artistic and poetic styles, and even a dialect of American English (commonly known as “Ebonics”).

To allow African-Americans, and all other cultural minorities, to fully express their culture is absolutely necessary for the full development of each individual African-American’s identity.

The first step in doing so is to immediately remove all legal barriers to this. This includes clamping down on racial profiling, leveling out laws that unfairly single out African-Americans*, retrying black prisoners when there is evidence of a breach of justice, etc.

Once the minority in question has achieved absolute equality under the law, they must use their organizational power to create a visible presence for themselves in society, using this presence to normalize relations between their community and all others. They must actively seek to educate members of other communities and cultures about their way of life, for it is ignorance that leads to hate.

The most important manifestation of cultural autonomy must be a political structure that allows for culture-related issues to be decided by members of that culture. This does not entail political sovereignty: that would be separatism. It is the right of a cultural community, like any other community, to decide their direction without interference.

Simply, cultural autonomy is the right of all cultures to flourish by their own means while co-existing peacefully with other cultures with stipulations based on human and civil rights.

* An example of this is laws regarding cocaine and crack cocaine. An ACLU report documents that “distribution of just 5 grams of crack carries a minimum 5-year federal prison sentence, while for powder cocaine, distribution of 500 grams – 100 times the amount of crack cocaine – carries the same sentence.” For more, see http://creativedestruction.wordpress.com/2006/11/15/crack-cocaine-sentencing-systematic-racism-at-work/

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy: Unapologetically Against the War on Drugs, by Rick Gunderman

What would Abraham Lincoln say?

“Prohibition makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded,” read the back of a t-shirt distributed by Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP).

The SSDP is, as the name suggests, dedicated to eradicating the War on Drugs. They believe that although drugs are harmful, the best method to reducing the risk of drug addiction is to educate and not prosecute. They compare the use of drugs to sex: during sex, we use condoms because it’s the safe thing to do. We must treat drugs the same way: if you must use them, accept the dangers and commence at your own discretion.

Unapologetically against the War on Drugs, the SSDP says that they “neither encourage or condemn drug use.” Rather, they seek to reduce the harm caused by drug use and drug policies. The SSDP makes it clear that they believe that current drug policy is counterproductive and they make use of examples from college and university campuses across North America to illustrate their point.

For example, students who are caught with drugs at a university are often expelled, which the SSDP argues dooms them to fall short of their potential and likely turn to the drugs which got them kicked out of the university in the first place.

Another example is the presence of the university in the dorm room tenants’ lives. The SSDP believes that a university should have no more authority over what a dorm resident does in his or her room than a landlord would in an apartment building. Some universities actually invade the privacy of their students and search the rooms for drugs, often solely on a rumour. How would the administrators like it, the SSDP asks, if students went rifling through their desk drawers and private possessions?

The War on Drugs has been a controversial talking point in Canada ever since it entered our mainstream political consciousness. Proponents say that it is the only way to “keep our kids safe” from drugs and help them live healthy, safe lives. Opponents argue that fighting drugs using strict laws and harsh penalties does nothing to deter those who are likely to use drugs in the first place, and such principles are authoritarian in nature.

Whatever the viewpoint, it is a fact that the War on Drugs is largely imported from our neighbour to the south. Following the death of the remnants of a hippie culture with any presence and the emergence of punk culture, the War was declared as a reaction to these two sub-cultures’ notorious use of drugs. The parents of the ’80s (i.e. the teens of the ’60s) began a campaign to demand more cops on the beat and harsher legal punishments for using drugs.

The trouble with this is that it did not take into account that, after drugs became less mainstream, it was the poor who wound up retaining their liking for this magic happiness. Drugs became a symbol for poverty, and by extension “welfare deadbeats”. If they weren’t locked up in jail for peddling pot, they’d just be sapping money from Social Security, say the reactionaries.

Of course, not all drug users are poor. There are many who turn to drugs and alcohol for recreation and not escapism. A popular theory, one of which I strongly advocate, is that boredom is a large factor in this. Many argue that teens today have better access to movies, television, sports, and other forms of entertainment, and it is insensible to suggest that boredom is a cause for drug use. Au contraire: it makes perfect sense.

With the cost of living rising combined with standard inflation, parents are away from home much more often than they used to be, and this is true for middle class families as much as working class families.

When women (rightfully) won the right to work for equal pay there was something that we as a society failed to account for with our newfound acquisition of justice: the void that many kids would find once both parents were out working. Instead of setting up entertaining and effective after-school programs (or anything to keep them occupied), we bred the infamous “latch-key” kids of the ’80s and ‘90, who would search for less constructive means to occupy themselves.

The reasons why people do drugs are plentiful, as are the solutions to the epidemic. A strong economy with job security, well-equipped public schools, enjoyable activities for all kids and youth, and a comprehensive social safety net are all tried, tested and true methods of fighting drugs without a War. They are also, sadely, beyond the comprehension of the authoritarian elements of society.

Honest Abe was so-named for a reason. He had a knack for speaking his mind, a reputation for truthfulness, and a legacy that is championed by both parties and honoured by the people of the United States of America and beyond.

If you’re not one who cares for the advice of a 19th Century American political icon, take it from Tupac Shakur: “Instead of war on poverty, they got a War on Drugs so the police can bother me.”