and very briefly on sentencing… while I am scheduled to be in court on Jan. 13–the same day as Amanda Hiscock’s sentencing–i intend to delay my own sentencing hearing, likely until the spring.

***********************************

Today I pled guilty to one count of counsel to commit mischief and one count of counsel to obstruct police. This guilty plea was part of a collective deal that secured the withdrawal of charges from 11 allies. My original charges were four counts of conspiracy, six counts of counsel, two counts of intimidation, and two breaches of probation.

One of the specific things that I pled to is in relation to the “target list” that was made for the Toronto Community Mobilisation Network. It was a list of banks, political offices, police stations, corporate outlets, and other places where people might have wanted to protest during the G20. I never considered that it might be a crime to compile such a list, even though I did indeed know that some of the places on this list would be subject to property destruction. That was going to happen whether we made the list or not.

The other specific thing I did that is being understood as “criminal,” is a direct action workshop that I facilitated where a component of the workshop entailed discussions about “de-arresting” people, and strategies and tactics for doing so. De-arresting is defending our friends and allies from the clutches of the police. I believe that people have an inherent right to protect themselves and an obligation to protect each other. People can decide for themselves whether or not the bulk of the arrests during the G20 were lawful or not, and whether or not that matters.

Nothing about this deal changes any of my analysis of the meaning of the state’s prosecution and their efforts to criminalise organising and dissent. I have posted (on my blog) the un-redacted version of my piece from October 11. Over the next few weeks I will be posting some of my reflections on the collective deal we have taken, some of the pieces I wrote when first in jail right after our initial arrests, updates on my sentencing (which is being delayed), and also maybe some other things that I have been waiting to say, and perhaps even some writing that has nothing at all to do with the G20 Conspiracy charges.

http://alexhundert.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/g20-conspiracy-prosecution-and-the-criminalisation-of-mass-organising/

http://alexhundert.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/conspiracy-to-riot-in-the-age-of-austerity/

http://alexhundert.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/out-of-jail/

http://alexhundert.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/capitalism-criminalization-and-resistance/

Solidarity, love and respect to Ryan Rainville, Kelly Pflug-Back, Byron Sonne and every single other person still facing charges or sentences arising from the G20, from Occupy, and anyone else arrested while standing up for themselves, others, or the land.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us.

Fight Back.

***********************************

see conspiretoresist.wordpress.com for collective and individual statements by the 17 former co-defendants

***********************************

AGREED STATEMENT OF FACTS: Alex HUNDERT

 This is an agreed statement of facts jointly submitted in support of a guilty to plea to one count of counseling to commit mischief over, and one count of counseling to obstruct a peace officer, as follows:

1.         The G20 Summitwas held in the City ofToronto,ProvinceofOntario, between the dates of June 25, 2010 and June 27, 2010.

2.         During the months leading up to the G20 Summit, police from a number of forces made massive expenditures of resources  to prepare for any threats there might be to public order and security during the Summit.  These police forces included the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ontario Provincial Police and the Toronto Police Service.

3.         The police managed to infiltrate a number of activist groups that were meeting to plan protests and actions against the G20 Summit. These groups can be described as anarchist groups or groups that had an anti-capitalist and anti-colonial agenda.  Some of these groups were involved in working for indigenous sovereignty, land and treaty rights, for migrant justice and on environmental issues, advocated for and provided services for poor and homeless people, were involved in widespread public education campaigns, and also were independent media providers. Undercover police officers attended and participated in meetings over the course of this investigation. These meetings became increasingly focused on the G20 Summit as the date approached.

4.         It was during these meetings that two embedded undercover OPP officers came to be familiar with Alexander Hundert. Mr. Hundert was ideologically opposed to the existence, role and policies of the G20.  Mr. Hundert expected the primary focus of the Toronto G20 meetings to be an “austerity” agenda, which he opposed.  Mr. Hundert also opposed the security being put in place for theSummit.  Based on his perception of past Summits’ histories of protests and policing, Mr. Hundert believed that the security plans for this summit were meant to stifle dissent, contain protests, create distance between the protestors and the delegates, establish police control of the city and would likely entail mass arrests.

5.         One or both of the undercover OPP officers were present at meetings of activist groups and organizations inTorontoand other locations inSouthern Ontariowhere discussions and planning for protests at the G20 Summit occurred. It was apparent to both of the undercover officers that Mr. Hundert stood out as being well-known and well-respected in the groups, and appeared to be listened to by other attendees at the meetings.  Mr. Hundert was aware from these meetings and his knowledge of what had happened at previous G20 Summits, that some of the people who would be in attendance at this Summit would be intent on committing many different acts in protest of the G20, some of which would be criminal, including marches, rallies, and property damage; and that confrontations with the police would result from some of these actions.

6.         It was in these meetings, whose attendance ranged from around 5 people to well over 100 people, that Mr. Hundert counseled and encouraged those in attendance to commit acts involving property damage and to obstruct the police.

7.         Mr. Hundert, working with others, compiled and disseminated a “target list” in which he provided the names and locations of places deemed appropriate for direct action by protestors.  This list included major banks, police divisions, consulates, corporate outlets and other locations. Mr. Hundert encouraged people to use the “target list” to determine which specific locations should be targeted for protests and a wide range of direct action tactics.  He was aware this could involve property damage.

8.         Mr. Hundert also taught methods of “de-arresting” any protesters observed being taken into custody.   “De-arresting” refers to the act of assisting a person being arrested by interfering with the arrest using a variety of tactics. While advising protesters on how to defend one another, Mr. Hundert did not specify to those he trained that de-arresting should only be undertaken if people were certain that an arrest was unlawful.

9.         On June 26, 2010, after a week of protests, a large riot broke out in downtownToronto. During the course of the riot, protesters, some dressed in black clothing and masks, moved through the downtown streets and smashed the windows of banks, and stores using sticks, newspaper boxes and other items. These were not isolated incidents; widespread property damage was caused.  This occurred onYonge St.,Queen St. West, andBay St. In addition, several police cars were set on fire downtown, on Queen St. Westand onBay St. This riot went on for several hours on the afternoon of Saturday June 26.

10.       The majority of the large scale property damage was done on June 26th and it mostly targeted businesses that would be classically deemed to be “capitalist” in nature, for example, major banks and corporate businesses.

11.       In addition, on June 26 and 27, 2010, there were many confrontations between protesters and police.  Some of these confrontations included the successful or attempted de-arresting of individuals.

12.       Mr. Hundert was arrested at his home, early on the morning of June 26th and was not in attendance at the riot that began later that day. It cannot be proven that the individuals counseled by Mr. Hundert contributed to the property damage or obstruction of the police that occurred on June 26th or 27th.

13.       At the time of the time of these offences, Mr. Hundert was on a probation order entered into on March 8, 2010 (as a result of blocking garbage trucks from attending a garbage dump on what he and other supporters perceived to be indigenous lands, in violation of a Court injunction) which required that he Keep the Peace and Be of Good Behaviour.

I will have a new piece, about the deal we took today, up shortly. 

***************************************************

G20 Charges in Toronto, Tar Sands Arrests in Ottawa, and Occupy Wall Street

On Monday September 26, more than 100 people were arrested when they engaged in an act of mass civil disobedience on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. They were there to protest against the Keystone XL pipeline, and to send this message to the Harper Government: The Alberta tarsands are environmentally destructive and socially irresponsible, and the extraction project there should be understood as “ecocide”.

Some reports indicate that as many as 1000+ people rallied in Ottawa to protest, listen to speeches, and to support almost 200 people who risked arrest.

The Ottawa action followed a prolonged action earlier last month in Washington, where, in a two week period, more than 1000 people were arrested out front of the White House, in an attempt to urge President Obama not to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline when he has the opportunity in November.

Both of these actions were highly coordinated by professional activists, with the backing of large NGOs including Greenpeace, 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, and others. The arrestees in both actions included a number of celebrity activists. In both places, most of the arrestees and many others attended professionally facilitated trainings and workshops to prepare themselves for the actions and the arrests. The organisers met and planned for months in advance.

In many ways, minus the celebrities and the NGO funding, much of the work that went into planning the week long convergence against the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010 was very similar; months of meetings and workshops were held, as well as training series conducted in several different cities. Unfortunately, unlike in Ottawa and Washington, many of the over 1000 people arrested in Toronto during the G20 had not prepared for the experience of being arrested, nor did not they volunteer for it. In Toronto, people also had a much more real version of what being arrested more often feels like: violent, scary and uncertain. In staged acts of civil disobedience like the ones in Ottawa and Washington, the experience of arrest tends to be more, well, “civil”.

There is tremendous amount of space already devoted to critiquing the tactics employed in these two very different actions—the marches and the accompanying black bloc tactics in Toronto, the staged arrests in Washington and Ottawa—but what I’m interested in here is the organising and the threats posed to this kind of organising by the type of prosecution that the Ontario Crown Attorney’s office is perpetrating against me and 16 others in the “G20 Main Conspiracy Group Prosecution”.

While the Crown is likely to present to the court, all kinds of inflammatory comments, including quotes from my blog, for most of those accused, the only suggestion of any “conspiracy” on their part, will be the allegation that they were merely present at protest planning meetings when “unlawful acts” were discussed. That is to say, the Crown will say that they agreed to be part of a conspiracy to, for example commit mischief, merely because they were present at a meeting where someone said that windows would likely get smashed during a given rally or march.

While some of the unlawful acts that get mentioned over months of protest organising may be inflammatory and distasteful to some, it should be stressed that it is the “unlawful nature” of such acts that creates the alleged “conspiracy.” The fact that some of these acts that get discussed may be considered by some to be over some arbitrary line of acceptability should be inconsequential. The type of “criminality” is not what is relevant; what is important is that the acts discussed at these meetings are technically against the law.

If this is enough for “conspiracy” charges to stick to organisers, the future of protest organising is actually in jeopardy.

Conspiracy law is inherently confusing; that’s part of the problem. In Canada, the current conspiracy laws exist on the books mostly for the purpose of prosecuting gangsters, such as mobs and biker gangs. However, occasionally, the state has tried to used these charges against activists; there was a case in Quebec after the 2001 FTAA summit in Quebec City, and another one right here in Ontario after the so-called “OCAP riot” in the same year. Ten years later, they are trying again.

In the United States, conspiracy charges have been used similarly, however there they also get conflated with pseudo-fascistic domestic terrorism laws. The RNC 8 and the SHAC 7 are two examples of cases where counter-terrorism laws have been conflated with the application of conspiracy law against protest organisers.

In Canada, the application of laws designed for the Hell’s Angels and the Mafia against political organisers and community activists is the same type of dangerous slide towards fascism that we have seen in the US with the types of cases mentioned (and unfortunately, many others as well).

The G20 Main Conspiracy Group Prosecution is yet another attempt by the Canadian government to manipulate the laws so that they can use the so-called criminal justice system as a weapon against political organisers. This is a very dangerous road to travel.

***

The meetings to plan the g20 protests happened over the course of 2009 and 2010. Now flash forward to 2011, and imagine the planning meetings for the recent Ottawa and Washington anti-tarsands actions. What do you imagine those meetings to have looked like? Obviously in the meetings to plan these acts of mass civil disobedience and pre-arranged arrests, organisers put forward a plan that included coordinated unlawfulness.

According to the precedent being set in our case, if we lose on the conspiracy charges, the implication will be that organising for mass civil disobedience will be similarly criminalised alongside more “confrontational” mass actions. The crime that could be alleged against such organisers would likely be conspiracy to commit mischief and conspiracy to obstruct justice, potentially indictable offenses that carry potential serious prison time.

And there is more. In addition to the “conspiracy” charges that all 17 of us have, I have an additional six counts of “counselling” to commit various indictable offences. All of these charges stem from workshops that were conducted over the course of preparing for the g20 protests; facilitating workshops for new activists has been one of my primary sources of income over the last few years. One ramification of these charges is that these workshops—one of the primary means by which activists share skills with each other, and a primary activity for building movements—may become understood by the courts as inherently criminal. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Let me clear one thing up; I was not teaching people how to fight cops—not even close. I was facilitating discussions about what people could expect at major summit protests. Most of the workshops consisted of talking about what happened at past summits and about the policing tactics used at the types of protests that people could expect to take place on the streets of Toronto.  And for the record, what we told people to expect was pretty much exactly what happened. Maybe they’re just mad at us because we were right.

Most of the workshops in question were nearly identical to the same “Direct Action 101” workshops that I and many others have been conducting together for years with student groups, grassroots organisations, activist groups, NGOs, unions, etc. They are nearly identical to the same “Direct Action” workshops facilitated by experienced action trainers and coordinators across the continent and even the globe. They are likely very similar, in fact, to the trainings that more than one thousand people received before the Washington actions and more than 200 before the Ottawa actions. I feel that I can safely make that assumption because several of the trainers and coordinators for these actions are some of the very same people who trained me. 

These types of trainings and workshops are incredibly important at this current political moment in history. There are thousands of people across North America who are engaging in street activism for the very first time, as they are inspired by the incredible #OccupyWallStreet movement (also not without some very serious and necessary critiques).

Trainings demystify protest tactics and strategies, teach people the skills necessary to participate effectively in consensus processes such as the general assemblies that are the cornerstone of this new “occupation” movement, prepare people for the experience of potential arrest and other forms of police violence as well as their strategies and tactics, teach people skills to talk and interact with media, help people develop and hone political messaging and analysis, and many other really important things that are crucial to developing effective social movements. The state wants to prevent us from developing these movements.

The state is going to try to conceal what is really going on here by making their case against us all about the inflammatory comments made about tactics that the broader movement is not in consensus around. But disagreement about appropriate diversity of tactics has nothing to do with this case; it is a smoke screen. The important fact here is that they are trying to develop a structural weapon to criminalise organising in general.

ANY JOURNALIST is entitled to ask for notice of the publication and for information about how to seek standing at the full hearing that may cover such topics of interest as whether or not the court can order people to pull pre existing posts from the internet, whether or not the police can charge people for reposting links from the internet, the right of journalists to report on information already in the public domain, whether or not courts can order bans on information not arising from the legal process, and other such concerns.

Today is the first day of what is scheduled to be an 11 week preliminary inquiry for what the Ontario Crown Attorney’s office calls, the “G20 Main Conspiracy Group Prosecution.” This prosecution will see myself, along with 16 other community organisers spend almost three months in court every single week day, watching and listening as the Crown Attorneys from the Provincial “Gangs and Guns Initiative” present evidence collected by a series of undercover cops who infiltrated community organisations across the country over a period of nearly two years prior to last year’s G20 (an event which saw the city converted into “Fortress Toronto,” as the heads of state from the world’s twenty richest countries, along with more than 10 000 cops, occupied the city’s downtown).

The Crown will allege that we are somehow responsible for the confrontational demonstrations, including those of the black bloc, which occurred on June 26 2010. It will not be alleged that any of us actually participated in those demonstrations, or that any of us broke any windows or burned any cop cars, nor will it be alleged that we physically caused any damage to anything or anyone, or that any of us even had any part in coordinating that day’s demonstrations. In fact, several of us were already in jail hours before the day’s protests even began. Their only allegation will be that we “conspired” to do things. For this they want to give us serious jail time. If things go badly, I could realistically spend up to 6 years in jail (given that I face several “counsel” charges in addition to the conspiracy charges faced by all 17 co-accused).

But the truth is that the details of this case are not what is most important. It is true that facts will come out about the scary degrees to which the state has gone to infiltrate legitimate community organisations, about the state’s willingness to curb freedoms and civil liberties, and that this case could potentially set very dangerous precedents concerning people’s ability to organise and speak politically in their communities. It is true that all of these issues are important here, but what I think is most important is the timing.

This is the age of austerity. The Ford budget cuts that this city is bracing itself for are the local manifestation of the austerity agenda that was at the centre of the G20 meetings hosted last summer by Stephen Harper. It is the same austerity agenda that people are rising up against all across Europe, which is not entirely unconnected from the inspiring people’s uprisings that are still ongoing in Northern Africa and the Middle East.

It is no coincidence that here, people’s inherent right to organise is under attack at the same time that the need to organise is so important.

The so-called “G20 Main Conspiracy Prosecution” is a quite frightening infringement on various freedoms and a precedent setting attack on an assortment of rights that are presumably constitutionally protected. It is an explicit criminalisation of dissent. Because of the precedents that this case has the potential to set, it might be recognised that this prosecution is, in and of itself, an attack on the very idea of community organising, and it is designed to prevent us all from being able to fight back against the austerity agenda. They do not want us to fight back. They want us not to organise.

Austerity is an attack against already targeted communities. The coming cuts in this city are going to make most people’s lives worse and our city less livable. But for many –undocumented people, indigenous people, poor and racialised people, people with disabilities, queer and trans people—services are already insufficient and inaccessible; these are people who are going to be the most impacted by the coming cuts. The cuts will also be felt by all working people who reside in this city. People will resist.

While the 17 of us are tied up in court over the next 11 weeks, people in communities across this city will be organising against austerity.

Just this past Saturday, more than 500 people participated in a mass meeting at Dufferin Grove Park to organise against Ford’s planned cuts. Over the next few weeks and months we will see what comes out of such inspiring processes. The “Toronto Stop the Cuts” campaign is a coordinated network of autonomous neighbourhood committees across the city, creating a growing chorus against the cuts. The voices of this movement in the city are a multitude that is far more representative of the people who reside in this city than any electoral process. By the time the preliminary hearing for the “G20 Main Conspiracy Prosecution” is over, we will know whether or not City Council will have listened to those voices. Then will come the trial.

The reason that the state so badly needs to effectively criminalise dissent and community organising is because, if they choose to ignore the voices of the people who live in this city, like is happening in Spain and Greece and in England, resistance is likely to look much more like the riotous scenes from the streets of our city during last year’s G20 than it is to look like the beautiful scenes from this past weekend’s mass organising meeting in the park.

******************************************************************************************

Post script:

I want to send my love and respect to Kelly Pflug-Back, Ryan Rainville and Byron Sonne. They’re not allowed to hear from me, but that does not prevent me from sending a message for them into the world. I also want to recognize that there are many people who are still dealing with the consequences of the g20 legal crackdown; there are people in jail right now on g20 charges. All of those people deserve our support.

If people want to offer their support, while I can’t speak for those co-accused with me, what I would want from people is for them to get involved, stay involved, or get more involved with the Stop the Cuts campaign, or with anti tar sands work, or supporting Indigenous sovereignty, land and treaty rights, or organising to stop the mega-quarry in Melancthon county, or for queer liberation, or against violence against women, or against the gross racism of the Harper government’s immigration policies; the best support people can offer is to be more active than they otherwise might, in the very campaigns and for the very issues that the state seeks to prevent us from organising around.

And finally, thank you to everyone for all the support.

While the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets during last year’s mobilisation against the G20 were there for many different reasons—migrant justice, Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, worker’s rights, queer liberation, anti-capitalism, civil liberties and more—the so called leaders of the world’s 20 wealthiest nations met behind the closed doors of a fortified downtown Toronto with one thing at the top of their agenda: austerity.

The “austerity agenda” is a consensus amongst G20 states that, in order to keep the current capitalist system afloat, over the next ten to twenty years, public spending on things like social services, education and health care, will be sacrificed for financial sector bailouts, so that banks and large corporations can remain profitable and viable. The austerity agenda will ensure that the costs of a failing capitalist system will be felt by poor communities.

In Toronto, momentum from last year’s mobilisation against the G20 is being put into coordinated neighbourhood based campaigns against the austerity agenda that is being implemented in this city by the Ford Mayoral regime and nationally by the Harper Government. The “Raise the Rates” campaign is meant to build “a provincial movement to raise social assistance rates to where people can live with health and dignity,” according to the website of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

A joint statement that reminds people of the connection between last year’s anti-G20 mobilisation and the ongoing struggle against the austerity agenda was released yesterday by a group of community-based organisations.

The statement, June 2011: Our Streets are Still on Fire, says “We supported the week of protests against the G20 in June 2010 because we refused to be silenced. We refused to be pushed to the margins as the so-called leaders of the world made decisions on our behalf. We insisted that the world would hear our stories through our voices. And just as in the years before the G20 came to Toronto, we remain committed to fight back, to mobilize, and to organize.

“Today, we demand freedom for all those still facing charges from June 2010 and we commit to fighting the age of austerity that the G20 leaders have imposed on us. We know that the cuts, and the attacks on our communities will increase over the next few years. We plan to meet these challenges head on because we know that through organized collective resistance the power of the people will prevail.”

Much thanks and love to David and Leah for putting that experience together, to all the other “interns” who were up there with us, and to all my dear friends and everyone else from Asubpeeschoseewagong, aka Grassy Narrows First Nation.

Journal pt.1

So… I have been at the Grassy Narrows blockade site now for over a month. We are camped at Slant Lake, the site of the longest standing Indigenous blockade in Canada. Right near the middle of our camp is a sign that declares the location as the center of Grassy Narrows’ traditional land use area. I find spending time here to be most inspirational, and have seen this place be the same for many others; members of our group, other activists, and members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation as well as people from other First Nations communities. It has been personally inspirational in many, many ways. I have had trouble articulating these emotions. Maybe if I were a more spiritual person I would have more and more meaningful things to say about that. Maybe later.

Now, I am writing (I think) to recap some of the events from the past month, and to talk about what they have meant to me, how I have interpreted them, and perhaps even how they have affected me. I feel like this might be one of those life-changing experiences that people so often speak about. I have in the past chosen not to put much stock in that notion – that a short period of time might create drastic change in a person. I have often felt that critical, informed, self-aware people should be more prepared for the situations that they are entering than to allow themselves to be changed in such ways by them. It is looking like I might have to rethink that some. Whether it means that I am less informed and self-aware than I thought I was, or that short intense experiences can, in fact, have life altering effects on people, is something that I will have to consider more deeply. However, I suspect that both are probably true.

Where to begin? I suppose I should begin at the beginning. At least that is what linear logic would dictate. And short of any other new schemes, it seems like a good place to start. I suppose the first question worth answering would be the one that asks why I am here. Perhaps before that even, a little bit of back ground info (about myself). I spent the better part of a decade wasted. The privilege afforded me due to my gender, skin colour, and class are all crucial factors in my having survived that period of my life. I found myself out in Whistler BC, and on New Years Eve 2003, I was smoked by a pick up truck on the Sea to Sky Highway. Still in bed, almost four months later, I decided to go back to school and enrolled at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo. In the fall I will be entering the third year of a combined honours degree in Religion & Culture and Global Studies. It was at Laurier that I substantially picked up both activism and journalism for the first time.

Now here I am at Grassy Narrows, interning for RAN and Forest Ethics, and allegedly covering the Struggle for my school magazine and paper. And why am I here? As a Canadian I feel that I have an obligation to do all that I can to help prevent further atrocities being committed against this lands Indigenous peoples. I am here because while so many of our peers are running off to Africa and Asia and South America to do human rights work, we have tragic violations of those rights right here in my home province of Ontario. In Canada, we commit genocide. And I feel as a Canadian, born on stolen land, I have a responsibility to do my part in ending the egregious acts that are committed in my name and for my benefit. I feel that I have enjoyed those benefits for too long. And while I don’t really know how to entirely stop reaping my privilege in my day-to-day life, I do know that I have to do something. I have to try. I think that I also know that the only way that I might figure out exactly what to do is by doing what I can. And doing it now. That is why I am here at Grassy Narrows – because I can be. And because I can be here, I have to be here.

Every time I try and explain why I am here, either in writing or in conversation, it comes out fairly different each time. But the sentiment is always the same. And, while varying factors are mentioned or not in the telling of this story, its message always remains fairly constant.

I suppose that I owe whoever may be reading some information about what I have actually been up to for the past month. Here, for starters, is a list of some highlights, with details to follow. First, there was a thirty-hour adventure from Toronto to Grassy in an over-packed van with five other people. There is a blog post at www.freegrassy.org about this voyage. On the second night out here, we went to ‘Pow Wow Island’ for a (you guessed it) Pow Wow. It was cool. There is also a blog post about this night on the same web site.

In the first few days here we met many, many people – some of whom I had read a fair bit about while learning about the history of Grassy Narrows’ Struggle with governments and corporations. I am hoping that fairly soon there will be links to interviews with some of these people up on the net and info as well, so I wont write much about anyone right now. A few days in, we met with a pair of Indigenous Rights Campaigners from Amnesty Intl. I interviewed Craig Benjamin and will post excerpts from that conversation. Accompanying the campaigners was a Chiapas woman from Mexico. She was an activist and an organizer, and I got the impression that she was pretty badass. Still early in our time here, we visited some of the areas that were clear-cut prior to the starting of the blockade. Were we taken on a tour with some of the leading grassroots activists here, including Chrissie Swain, one of the two sisters who felled the first tree in the longest standing blockade in Canada. We met Charles Wagamese, an ex-school teacher in Grassy. He and others we have met are featured in the film As Long as the Rivers Flow; I highly suggest everyone see it. Ways to view it can be found at www.FreeGrassy.org.

On June 2nd, I wound up being a pallbearer at a funeral in Grassy. At first, I was just recruited to be one of the gravediggers. Then I was taken to go fetch the coffin. Then I was in the hall, and then carrying the occupied coffin out and into the truck – all this in front of more the 60 grieving friends and relatives. It was heavy. There is a blog about this as well at FreeGrassy.org. A prominent community member told me that there are many ways in which a community comes together, many things that bring people together, death is a very powerful one of them. Being involved in the funeral of Emile Fontaine made me feel as if I was being called in; called into having a personal stake in the community. And as it was said, it was a bringing together, and it was an honour and a to be part of it.

In our second week here, we received the rest of our team. There are some awesome border crossing stories, hopefully some of them will get posted on this site.

Preparations for the Youth Gathering and Pow Wow that took place at the blockade were until recently what had occupied most of our time. Now we are working on preparations for a large social justice gathering that is taking place here. I will definitely be writing more about both gatherings and the Pow Wow later. There are lots and lots of stories to tell there – I could probably write for months. Somewhere in all this time, Matt Shaaf, an ex-member of Christian Peacemaker Teams who had lived for three years in and around Grassy came to visit us for a weekend. He ran a two-day anti-oppression workshop, helped put up a teepee, taught us how to make grease-fire mushroom clouds, and also indulged me in a lengthy interview. Again, sections of it, or even video clips will eventually be posted here. That’s a bit of a run down. I will get into much more detail telling stories about the youth gathering and Pow Wow, and others.

PEACE
-alex.

Rabble.ca, April 8

“What the group does… is organize around issues at the political level — such as campaigns and raising awareness — as well as building community and going through a process of dialogue about how to collectively overcome the barriers that are placed in front of women in this neighbourhood. This is important because there is a lot of organizing in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, but not often led by residents. So there is an identifiable need for social justice work to be more directly rooted in the experiences and voices of residents of the DTES.”

[Read full article]

Bridget Tolley’s search for justice for her mother

Rabble.ca, March 21

Bridget Tolley is an Algonquin grandmother of five from the Kitigan Zibi reserve in so-called Quebec. On Oct. 5, 2001, Her mother Gladys was struck and killed on the reserve by a Quebec Police cruiser. Since then, Tolley has been fighting for accountability, seeking justice for her mother.

[Read full article]

[Updated and Published on January 26, TMC, http://toronto.mediacoop.ca
Released from jail on January 24]

After nearly five months in jail, I will finally be walking out of the Toronto West Detention Centre having taken a plea bargain with the Crown.

The deal required that I plead guilty to a single count of “breach recognisance” stemming from a single presentation amongst many presentations at the September 17 event at Ryerson University titled “Strengthening Our Resolve: Movement Building and Ongoing Resistance to the G20 Agenda”.

The plea was in exchange for having the breach of bail coming from an almost identical event at Wilfrid Laurier University dropped, along with two counts of breaching my probation (which is left over from an older charge in Cayuga resulting from a blockade in Cayuga) dropped. They have also stopped the proceedings to collect a hundred and twenty thousand dollars from my sureties. More importantly, I finally got a new bail, including being able to post to the internet, having no curfew, and being able to leave the house with designates. This allows me to once again be a contributing member of my community and to the movements I am a part of.

Some people will be quick to judge this as a “sell out,” as exchanging a platform to fight for a potentially meaningful victory in court for my personal freedom. That possibility has haunted me. But I do sincerely believe that position to be a hasty and narrow judgement.

As it stood, I found out that my trial date for the breach was moved from January 31 to March. Regardless of the outcome of the breach trial, I would still not be released until a separate bail hearing to be held in April at the earliest. At that point, I would have been in jail for over seven months with no reasonable prospects of even being released on bail given the pending allegations of “intimidation of a justice participant” and the original conspiracy charges.

To remain behind bars would have been the obvious choice, even if a hard decision. Previously in October, I had made the decision to refuse my bail which included a media gag and punitive non associations. Staying in jail this time around would also have been relatively easy because I had been doing just fine in there. But at the same time, I was a serious drain on those who have done such wonders in supporting me, helping me stay strong and to feel connected to community. Incarceration is a weapon designed to affect the communities that people are a part of; to suck resources, energy and emotion out of them and not just the individuals held in dungeons.

And while being willing to sacrifice oneself might be noble in theory and sometimes the only right decision to make, in this circumstance I feel it is far more important to be in my community, contributing, giving back, fulfilling my responsibilities. This is who I want to be in the movement right now—a participant, not a symbol.

And what would the point even have been, if I had sat in the cage until after we were able to get our victory in court? The truth is, the only point that can ever be proven in a court is that the courts are a legitimate source of authority in our lives. I would like to deny them that power.

We could have fought them, on their own battle ground, and tried to establish that the OPP’s and the Crown’s position that what took place on the Ryerson and WLU campuses did not constitute “public demonstrations.” I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I realised that I don’t really care how panel discussions are classified by the courts. What I care about is that we are able to defend the spaces in which those free discussions take place and that we do not depend on the state to provide them for us. That defence happens every day, with our unity in the streets, and in those spaces themselves, not in a courtroom.

And if we had won the trial it would merely have established that I had not breached my bail conditions on those particular days. It would not establish that the cops and the Crown would never be able to treat another campus-based discussion as a “public demonstration.”  The fight is not whether a panel discussion is a public demonstration, the fight is over the existence of such a bail condition itself and it will hopefully be found “unconstitutional” as a result of a challenge that has been put forward by one of my coaccused.

For those who do prioritise such legal victories, I actually think that we have come closer to establishing that such discussions are not to be legally defined as demonstrations than we would have by winning at trial. The charges for the Laurier event were dropped, and I only plead guilty for one part of the event at Ryerson as contravening my bail condition not to participate in a public demonstration.

In the statement of facts agreed upon at court during the plea hearing, what was specifically defined as constituting a breach was just a single presentation by three Indigenous women at Ryerson. They used props, and the opening line included the statement, “I am not here today as a panellist.” In such a twisted world that wants to hold people in jails and put on shows in courtrooms to argue over such semantics, I can accept that such a presentation, in a room full of nearly three hundred people, might need to constitute a “public demonstration.”  Nothing in my plea suggests that there was anything “unlawful” about that presentation, just that under this regime, it counts as a “public demonstration.”

I would like to add though, that I whole-heartedly support every word that those women had to say that night. The content was both poignant and necessary, and also perfectly in line with panel discussions. By no means in itself did the content of the presentation constitute a public demonstration. It was not the Indigenous language, nor the possession of traditional eagle feathers; it was merely the use of plastic handcuffs as props. These props served to demonstrate the ways in which Indigenous people’s participation in academic, activist, and broader society has been handcuffed by racist and colonial practices and structures. Also far too often, Indigenous people find themselves in literal handcuffs as a result of the patterns in this legal system, especially pre-trial incarcerations, over-prosecutions, and unjust convictions. I thank those women for making that presentation that night, and if it makes me “guilty,” again, so be it. Nyaweh, miigwetch to them.

I would like to write a new narrative, one other than the tired and damaging narrative of martyrdom whereby one isolated person sits in a jail cell becoming a symbol against injustice. We need to tell a new story—one that does not insist on suffering from those committed to our movements.  While this is often necessary, we also need a discourse that speaks to us about commitment as meaning that we are actually part of the daily struggles that strive to build communities and networks that can sustain our visions for better lives and for spaces where real freedom and safety are possible. This is the type of story that I want to be telling.

I don’t think that people should be any less outraged now that I am out of jail. The injustice of the system has been laid bare again like so many times before. It is the inherent functioning of an explicitly oppressive system that is designed to perpetuate power and propagate its own order, especially against targeted communities including Indigenous people, people of colour, poor people, queer and trans people. This system cannot be vindicated by courtroom victories. Be outraged and let’s struggle on our own terms.

I am one of eighteen organisers charged with “conspiracy” for the demonstrations that took over the streets of Toronto this past June. I have now spent more than four months in jail since then. Released on bail in July, and after beating the Ontario Crown Attorney’s office’s appeal of that release, I spent the rest of the summer on house arrest. But after speaking on discussion panels at Wilfrid Laurier University and then at Ryerson University, even though I was in the presence of my court-appointed surety, I was again arrested, before being released on bail after another month behind bars, under conditions that have been called “draconian” and rallied against by legal professionals, civil libertarians, journalists, academics, and activists alike. I had initially refused to sign those conditions which included a ban on talking to the media and sharing my political beliefs in public, as well as absurdly punitive non-association conditions designed as an attack on the communities and networks that I am a part of. For taking that stand, I was thrown in “the hole” at the Toronto East Detention Centre. I eventually capitulated and signed the bail conditions, getting released in mid-October. The decision to sign those papers haunts me still—I wish I’d taken a stronger stand.

Only eight days after getting out, after a court appearance to challenge some of those conditions, I was again re-arrested, this time charged with the preposterous allegation of “intimidating a justice participant”. The same crown attorneys who had failed repeatedly to get a “detention order” against me from the court have now themselves personally made an accusation that has resulted in my being charged with a new offence and jailed since October 23.

***

This past December, a member of the Toronto Police Service was finally charged for a small piece of the brutality that was enacted on the streets of this city in June. One cop has been charged and some people seem to feel somehow vindicated. But this is not justice. Even if each and every assault committed resulted in police and politicians being held somehow accountable, that would still be only a beginning. Unless their actions are acknowledged as having been part of the planned security operation; unless it is recognised that their attacks on people were meant to intimidate those who would resist, and to criminalise dissent; unless we recognise that brutality and targeted violence are standard operating procedures for police forces and state security; unless we start organising for change and start to name and confront the system that these thugs protect—unless all this begins to happen—we will never have justice.

When it was first decided that the G20 would be held in downtown Toronto, what happened was inevitable. It happens every time they decide to hold such meetings: resistance and repression. That’s why, while people prepared to take the streets with tens of thousands—working people and poor people, migrant and Indigenous peoples, queer people, disabled people, students, activists, and anarchists—while people began to organise, the state infiltrated our meetings and organisations as they sank hundreds of millions of dollars to “security” and prepared to criminalise dissent and to attack those who would stand for justice, for communities, for the people and for the land.

And what they were so malicious in protecting that weekend in Toronto is the same thing that they are so brutal in protecting every day; a system of exploitation and destruction in which the rich get richer while their mercenaries and subsidiaries subjugate and destroy targeted communities and the land, with their wage slavery and their assimilationist economics, with their clear-cut logging, their mountaintop removal mining, and their deep-sea oil drilling. But people will refuse to be destroyed, and we will protect the land. We will resist.

This newest stage of keeping their exploitative system in power entails cutting resources from the few places where most people have access to them—social services, education, health care—all to be sure that there will still be enough money to keep bailing out banks and corporations, to keep this system called capitalism afloat. But we don’t want this system, this “capitalism”. The people of the world are rejecting this destructive system of exploitation and violence. We are resisting.

And we have already had massive cuts to social services including to the special diet program and to immigrant services in Ontario. These cuts have targeted—as the system always does—poor people, people of colour, migrants, disabled people, and women. Meanwhile, corporations have been announcing massive expansion of plans for destructive resource extraction projects that will continue to devastate and poison the environment and the lands of Indigenous nations. And this state continues to pour billions of dollars into the prison industrial complex, which as always continues to target anyone who by virtue of their actions, or even their very existence, poses a challenge to this system of domination.

***

On January 31 I will be in provincial court to face trial for the charges arising from the two speakers panels that took place on university campuses this past September. These discussions are said to have violated the bail condition not to participate in public demonstrations, a condition that PEN Canada has called “unconstitutional”. The crown and the OPP claim that these discussions qualify as “demonstrations” because of the tone and content of the discourse that was put forward by myself and others.

But the university is supposed to be a place for learning, for the sharing of ideas. It is a space for challenging, controversial, and confrontational ideas. It is a space where dissenting ideas are supposed to be protected.

This specific battle is not simply a fight over freedom of speech. And it is definitely not just a fight over the absurd suggestion that I breached an already preposterous bail condition. This fight is not merely about legalities and rights; it is about spaces and responsibilities.

We have a responsibility to speak about justice, to refuse to let injustice be met with silence even when our speech comes into conflict with the state’s agenda, especially when we carry voices of dissention and are privileged enough to be able to bear the consequences of the state’s repression.

The university is a space for ideas and campuses are among our spaces where we are supposed to protect the idea and practice of dissent. This fight, for me, is about defending spaces where freedom is possible.

Press Release Dec 21, 2010 “Alex Hundert’s Breach Trial Set”. Link
http://g20.torontomobilize.org/node/679

Locked Up: Alex Hundert speaks on his case. Media Coop link
http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/locked/5354.

Rabble podcast link
http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/awl/2010/12/locked-jailhouse-intervi…

Write to Alex in jail and read other updates from his support committee “Alex Hundert: 30 days behind bars”. Link
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/5244