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.
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