Hating capitalism is a hate crime, say the Hamilton Police
The Hamilton Police Hate Crimes Unit (HCU) is at it again. As they did last year, the HCU has included a number of activist events and groups in their annual hate crimes report.
Included again among the "emerging trends and areas of concerns" that "may have significant impact and repercussions on the Hamilton community in terms of Hate/Bias related incidents" are the G8/G20 counter-summit organizing including "anti-capitalist, anti-globalization, environmentalists, etc." protests (that is one scary "etc.").
The Dali Lama makes it into the report for the second year in a row, as part of a planned religious counter-summit in Winnipeg. I kid you not.
Anarchists get special attention once again with the report naming "the local anarchist movement" and "anarchism" itself. Apparently hating capitalism, the state and oppression is a hate crime according to the Hamilton Police.
New to the list is anti-2015 Pan Am Games organizing including "boycott of sponsors" and "local reaction to building projects for facilities."
This year the police have again included themselves among the vulnerable groups identified in hate crime legislation, by again including anti-police graffiti as an example of a hate crime. This same ploy last year lead one local paper to run an editorial called "Hug a cop or be charged".
As Common Cause pointed out in our response to last year's report, this shows the extent to which the police are willing to go to criminalize dissent.
It also reveals the true, political function of the police under capitalism: to serve the rich and powerful by protecting them and their institutions from the anger of the exploited and oppressed. You can read this article for more analysis on the political role of the police.
In a city as unjust and unequal as Hamilton, where, according to one recent report, people living in the richest neighbourhoods live on average 21 years longer than those living in the poorest communities, the police are an indispensable part of keeping the status quo. Witness how they have been only too happy to accommodate the recent calls whipped up by local politicians to "clean up" downtown.
The report also makes a mockery of the idea that the police take hate crimes seriously, though the everyday racism, sexism, homophobia and other oppression doled out by the police already makes that clear enough to anyone who has to deal with them regularly.
Fortunately, at least one local reporter has given the story some coverage, and in quite a critical light at that. This article, for example, quotes lawyer and University of Toronto law professor Peter Rosenthal as saying “hating capitalism and advocating its elimination is not a crime.”
It was in large part thanks to another local reporter, who covered the story last year, that the activities of the Hamilton Police have come to light. For last years coverage of the HCU report, including Common Cause's response, click here.
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Identity Politix and the Police-State
The State and its goons can only get away with this shite if we let them get away with it. The answer is always to *organize*, of course (but *how* is the big issue). And now is a very good time to bring up what should be clear to any experienced political activist (but most certainly isn't): that the bourgeois State is very, very experienced at taking such meek reformist activism as "Identity Politix" -- with its general fetish of petitioning the 'Powers That Be' to create narrowly-focused laws in its 'interests' -- and turning this logic into laws and actions *which instead serve the interests of the bourgeois state*. And most immediately its fascistic goons. "Hate Crime" is only the most recent example of this obtuse political cretinism at work.
There's a lot more to be said about this, of course; but enuff here for now.
--
Build the North America-wide General Strike.
TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.
Beware the 'bait & switch' fraud:
"Social Justice" is NOT Socialism
I say we publicize this. We
I say we publicize this.
We publicize the fact that it's a hate crime to defend the environment.
It's a hate crime to oppose state repression.
It's apparently hateful to oppose the Pan Am games or capitalist exploitation and destruction.
Let's maximize the
Let's maximize the publicity.
Hold a protest out front of the police station at least 3-4 days before the book fair. Publish a press release at the same time. That way, the press can report on our protest, and that may drive more people to the fair.
As if to prove us right...
...the Hamilton police just last night busted into the wrong apartment and brutally beat the crap out of 58-year-old Po La Haya, a refugee from Myanmar, even though it was clear from their warrant they had the wrong guy. Yup, there is an example of that everyday racism. Only difference here is that this time it made the papers. And they wonder why people are "still not lovin police."
The Left in Hamilton and
The Left in Hamilton and Ontario -- primarily the communists and anarchists -- do indeed have to pick up this gauntlet that the state and its goons have thrown down. If we don't, they WILL indeed go to town on us. We certainly know these goons are ever eager to start stomping our faces. However, tackling this on just the specific basis of this particular threat wouldn't be good enuff: the general threat of the swiftly growing police-state to everyone -- i.e. the entire working-class -- has to be linked to this.
--
Build the North America-wide General Strike.
TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.
Beware the 'bait & switch' fraud:
"Social Justice" is NOT Socialism
That's all, Folks..?
No more comments on this? This provocation needs to be addressed.
--
Build the North America-wide General Strike.
TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.
Beware the 'bait & switch' fraud:
"Social Justice" is NOT Socialism
Anarchist Book Fair
I don't like bullies; never had. Right now, as a Hamilton resident, I feel as if the local police are trying to bully me into not attending such events as the Hamilton Anarchist Book Fair. Well, I'm not going to be bullied. I will be there on June 5, and I will be trying to get as many people as I can to also come by: not necessarily because they are anarchists, but because all people of good conscience need to show the Hamilton Police Services that it is not for them to decide whose politics is acceptable and whose is not.
Pigs on the streets
People really have to do something about this aggressive new police presence on the 'streets'... No individuals can deal with them. Safely.
--
Build the North America-wide General Strike.
TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.
Beware the 'bait & switch' fraud:
"Social Justice" is NOT Socialism