2013-06-19T16:17:53-04:00 Nick Van der Graaf http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=nick-van-der-graaf Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Nick Van der Graaf Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2095159 2012-11-09T17:28:02-05:00 2013-01-09T05:12:01-05:00

Nick Van der Graaf http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-van-der-graaf/
They were awarded the medals thanks to the recommendation of Saskatchewan Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott. It's important to be clear that their mission of trespassing at abortion clinics is not an act of charity but rather is part of a long history of harassment of patients and clinic staff by organized religious fanatics across Canada and the United States.

This story may seem like small potatoes, only affecting a limited demographic. No doubt it could easily be dismissed as just a "women's issue." But all Canadians, no matter what their personal views on abortion, should be concerned. The rewarding of criminal harassment is not something anyone should take lightly, even among their fellow Roman Catholics, whose default impulse may be to support "pro-life" activism.

We've gone through a lot of blood, sweat and tears to create a free society for all to enjoy. We have freedom of opinion and the right to control our own lives. Our rights as citizens to respect and privacy, to bodily integrity and dignity are well established. We would not have it any other way. I know, just as a human being, that I want control over my own body. I can't fathom the idea that anyone would want to do that to half the human race.

The anti-choice don't seem to understand that they are enjoying the exact same freedom to make moral choices that the pro-choice side demands. They are free to not have abortions, not to be coerced, and to control their own bodies. Pro-choicers by definition support everyone's rights to make fundamental life decisions freely, without fear of consequence. I absolutely support their right to feel that for them, abortion is immoral, and to govern their own lives accordingly.

The anti-choice fail to see that if they succeed in somehow re-criminalizing abortion, they will be endangering their own rights. For if one state intrusion into your private life is ok, then how about another? And another? There truly is no telling where fanatics might not pry and try to control, what savage punishments they might feel justified in meting out to any citizens they feel have fallen short of their vision of personal morality. It has happened before and could easily happen again. Enshrining human rights and freedoms in law is a deliberate attempt to thwart that kind of potential tyranny.

Our rights aren't something that we each file away and pull out when we need them; they are a sea that we swim in, an environment that we all need to live happy, fruitful and safe lives. Restricting women's rights will damage everybody's rights. A recent study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization shows clearly that the legality of abortion barely affects the number of abortions actually performed -- but criminalizing abortion makes it significantly more dangerous for the women involved. If the anti-choice got their way, they would be putting women's lives at risk, they'd endanger everyone's civil rights, and they wouldn't even be changing the fact of abortion in society.

Rather than waging a war on abortion providers, the anti-choice need to rethink their approach entirely. They need to devote their resources and the compassion they claim motivates them to creating an environment where women facing an unplanned pregnancy, who don't feel abortion is an option for them, can have the best possible emotional and financial supports for themselves and their babies.

So the ongoing harassment at clinics, threats and lurking dangers that abortion providers face is both pointless and immoral. Linda Gibbons and Mary Wagner insist that they have every right to bother people about their intimate lives, their sexuality, their most personal decisions. This is unacceptable in a free society. Moreover, they are attempting to legitimize that very approach itself. I doubt most people would like the idea that strangers, armed with nothing but their own fanaticism, would be free to barge into their private lives.

I know that politically progressive people already oppose this. What I find mind-boggling is that conservatives, always demanding less government interference, don't fight this nonsense tooth and nail. They should take another look at Vellacott and his friends in the anti-choice Parliamentary caucus, and see that they represent an ongoing threat to all Canadians' civil liberties.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1593203 2012-06-14T07:20:26-04:00 2012-08-14T05:12:09-04:00

Nick Van der Graaf http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-van-der-graaf/ video of the York Region police sergeant telling a Toronto G20 protestor that "This ain't Canada right now."

As reported in the Toronto Star June 6, the York Police Services Board has declined to lay misconduct charges against him, claiming a six-month deadline had long expired and that the protestor, Paul Figueiras, is suing Detective Charlebois.

This is how Charlebois himself recalls the incident: "I mean, (Figueiras is) going, 'I have my rights, this is Canada,' all this stuff. I'm just giving him gibber back, right?" Charlebois told investigators. "We do it all the time. Guys are talking nonsense and he got nonsense back."

So our rights are 'nonsense'? It is galling to read this so shortly after the release of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director's scathing report of police conduct during the G20. Not only is their antipathy towards ordinary citizens perfectly clear, it appears that they don't really care who knows it. While OIPRD head Gerry McNeill's report blamed key police commanders for the G20 civil rights debacle, there's no escaping that anti-rights sentiment was manifested by the behaviour of the rank and file across the city during those hot, ugly days. Charlebois' attitude was the rule, not the exception. Police didn't just arrest innocent civilians, they did so with a savage glee that was thoroughly alarming to witness.

If the police are broadly and actively against our Charter rights, then we have a real problem that demands serious attention. Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's response, to lay misconduct charges against certain commanders is certainly appropriate insofar as it goes. By virtue of their positions alone they have their share of responsibility. But it's much more than just the commanders; the real problem is the culture of law-enforcement.

Ordinary police officers' willingness to engage in rampant rights-breaking and general mayhem against the general population is unacceptable. It is unacceptable in a 21st century liberal democracy, and it is unacceptable under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a truly democratic culture, those police officers would have simply refused to take part in a mass violation of citizens' rights. They would not have kettled people in the rain, and they would not have snarled and sniggered at the hundreds of detainees -- you know, Canadian citizens -- shoved in cages for no good purpose at all.

Perhaps part of the trouble is that most Toronto police officers don't even live in Toronto. A 2010 study found that three quarters of them live in suburbs and small towns in Durham, York Region and further afield. While of course police officers, like anyone else, are free to live wherever they like, as a trend it is counter-productive. It can only exacerbate the sense of alienation between the community and police officers. It also mirrors old patterns of how the state maintains order. Dictatorships have used this technique for centuries -- using legions from distant parts of the country to keep the local population down. It is easier to be dismissive or hostile if the citizens they're dealing with aren't even part of their own community.

Better policing happens when the community feels like the police are on their side. Getting the police out of their mobile fortresses/data centres (i.e., police cars) would be a great first step. Officers walking a community beat would have a better opportunity to get to know the neighbourhoods they police, and to build trust with community members. And the police themselves would probably find their jobs far more rewarding then they do currently. The "us against them" mentality they evidently labour under is not only unproductive, it must be a stressful drag for the police themselves.

Another positive measure would be for the authorities to reward the few officers who did try to do the right thing under difficult circumstances. I'm talking about the officers who let people out of the kettling situation, and the officers who tried to be decent to the caged detainees.

For the long term there has to be a fundamental change in the relationship between law enforcement and protesters. In a working democracy making a stink about a public issue in a public place is not only legal, it is something of a civic obligation. How many have fought on battlefields, in the streets and in courtrooms to give us rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression? This wasn't so that we could address public policy only in theory; it was so that we could actually participate in the public forum and effect the change we want.

That large numbers of officers are routinely sent to police demonstrations is ridiculous. It is not only provocative, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a liberal democracy. The sooner the authorities realize this, the better for everyone concerned.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1116621 2011-11-28T17:12:12-05:00 2012-01-28T05:12:01-05:00

Nick Van der Graaf http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-van-der-graaf/
The physical state of the camp and her inhabitants was clearly degenerating. A number of crazy people had taken up residence. They were disruptive and alarming to both Occupy people and the general public. Physical fights sometimes broke out and neighbours were not rallied to the cause -- unfortunately, quite the opposite occurred.

But despite some problems, the camp in St. James Park was fundamentally courageous and important. I was often critical of it, but they basically did the right thing; they came out en masse and made a stink about important issues. Not only that, they wouldn't just go away after a couple of hours. The wealth disparity in this country is now an actual topic of conversation -- even media pundits deign to talk about it. It is thanks to those brave women and men, most of them quite young, who defied official disapproval and put themselves on the line.

To the people who snort that just camping isn't particularly brave, perhaps you've forgotten about the levels of police violence we've seen recently, not least the gleefully savage civil rights suppression that police meted out at the G20 demonstrations last year. So it is important to acknowledge what the Occupy kids were preparing to take on.

But they ran into difficulties fairly quickly. They made a number of poor management decisions. First, they rejected conventional leadership models and decided to operate by consensus. Let me state for the record that there's nothing wrong with leadership per se. It gets things done. And I'm sure many if not all of the young activists who lived in St. James were deeply saddened a few months ago when Jack Layton died. But mere months after mourning someone who used his leadership to materially benefit our country, they reject leadership as a tool.

Ditto the slavish use of the human mic, a painfully cumbersome tool that was invented to get around laws banning megaphones. Like many "emergency" measures, it's not as good as the original. It's making do with less. So deliberately making political meetings take twice or three times as long as they should? Why would you do that to your fellow activists? And why would you deliberately create unnecessary delays in your operational process? It was even used in a press conference I witnessed -- actual microphones there picking up what sounds to outsiders like a pack of political zombies repeating the speakers' words. A perfect mix of bizarre and boring.

So, next steps. After its initial success, it's time for Occupy to think big. Occupy movements around the world should prioritize synchronizing their message and activities to the maximum degree. The internets are primed and waiting to facilitate just such a co-ordination. A unified, worldwide movement, committed to non-violence, would be uniquely powerful. With many different causes involved but supporting one overarching theme, Occupy would be in a much stronger position to further influence the political discourse. Working together greatly increases their potential to challenge corporate power. Besides, corporations are transnational -- so it makes sense that the Occupy movement must devote itself to being effective at that level as well.

It won't be easy. Everyone thinks their cause is the most important. But the attempt to build this unity would have to be couched in language that encourages open dialogue and willingness to focus on root causes and not just symptoms. One immediately clear issue they could unify around is to fight for legal reforms that would forcibly separate big capital from the state. The system of mass corruption that we abide today is at the root of a wide number of societal ills, income disparity being not the least of them.

And the message has to be broadly appealing. It has to be inclusive. It has to be less about things being "unfair," which can be perceived as a childish whinge, to the adult "this is demonstrably bad for society." The movement has to show that the ridiculous concentration of wealth into the top 0.1 per cent of society isn't just immoral, it deprives society at large of all the creative potential that wealth represents. Arts funding, infrastructure investment, accessible education, scientific research -- the list goes on and on. We are all losing out.

The Occupy movement has made an impressive initial splash. These are early days, and despite current setbacks, it can go on to strongly challenge the power of Mammon. But a couple thousand individual movements can only do so much. A populist, unified approach seems to be the only effective way to go forward.

Nick Van der Graaf is a Toronto writer and activist.

http://neodemokratia.ca/]]>