Responding to a call to action originating in Portland, Oregon, where neo-Nazi activity has reportedly taken the life of an anti-racist activist, Common Cause Hamilton is supporting our friends and comrades in London, Ontario as they confront similar forces.

In most years since 1998, London has seen its Pride parade marred by hate from the neo-Nazi Northern Alliance and some Christian Right allies. While these acts have been pathetic and insignificant enough to be ridiculed, we should not take them lightly. These groups go so far as to openly call for a sort of ethnic and sexual cleansing, and have stood shoulder to shoulder with the likes of the Klu Klux Klan and biker gang members who have gone on to commit murder.

If we allow these forces of hate to operate and to grow, they will be the same forces that crush us and our work toward a society that accepts everyone for who they are, a society that meets the depth and breadth of human needs - from material necessities to community and the possibility of love and sexuality in all their manifestations.

These are the forces that prey upon working class youth, turning them against their peers and distorting the sources of their struggles. In these economic times - when poor and marginalized people of all stripes are being made to pay for a failed system that exploits - it is doubly important that we be vigilant against the potential for a creeping racism and fascism. It is in such times that people are most vulnerable to being divided, ruled and scapegoated.

We send our greetings to London for a festive parade, and trust a combination of strength and creative ridicule will keep the hate mongers an irrelevant annoyance.

Common Cause Hamilton