Category Archives: Vancouver

Kirk LaPointe’s Credibility Problem: the NPA

Don’t vote for the NPA. Any of them.

LaPointe is the NPA’s mayoral candidate. The NPA stands for the Non-Partisan Association. If you actually believe the NPA has no partisan ideology, please don’t vote. For almost a decade I’ve been writing about how the brand notion of the NPA is fundamentally a lie. No one is non-partisan in the sense of not being ideological. The NPA is a right wing, neoliberal, corporate-loving, public service-hating party aligned with the likes of Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, Harper, Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark and everyone else who worships Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand of the market as God.

Ideology is good. It reflects our values and principles about how we want to live, how we want to enrich our communities and what kind of world we want to leave to our children. Ideology is good. We should embrace ours and learn more about what we believe. It is not a weakness or a crutch or something to be ashamed of. Yet the NPA hopes you will see some nobility in them pretending to be objective and free of ideological influence. That’s just a lie.

Read these little snippets of NPA wisdom and let’s re-spin them below. Keep your barf bag handy.

NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe handed out flyers at Broadway and Cambie, and made affordability the focus of his media briefing.

“Gregor Robertson can say he’s sorry, but it’s too late. He’s failed to keep Vancouver affordable because he has been distracted by other issues – many outside his jurisdiction,” said LaPointe in a statement.

“We will put Vancouver families ahead of developers who are selling to overseas buyers. We will create childcare spaces and reduce the financial pressures on Vancouverites,” he added.

Mayoral candidates in final dash for votes in tight race | Vancouver Observer.

  1. Affordability” is code for reducing municipal taxes, usually more for businesses than for real human beings, cutting city services and increasing user fees. People who talk about affordability like this refer to taxes as a burden as opposed to an investment into making our community and world a better place. They are to be shunned and not elected. Leave them in their solitary, greed-filled isolation with the other social pariahs.
  2. Robertson is “distracted by other issues–many outside his jurisdiction.” This is code for how the NPA supports more fossil fuel development, more pipelines and more tankers trying not to play pinball in our waters. Cities are not in charge of those developments, so the NPA talks about how Vancouver should stay out of those discussions because we’re all sitting at the kids’ table while the grown ups deal with that. But municipalities have a legitimate right to reflect the will of people. Burnaby is taking on Kinder Morgan in their jurisdiction because they can, and they should. Climate change is a scourge on humanity and it reflects the worst of our species that we aren’t rapidly trying to avert our man-made disaster. But hiding behind rhetoric of issues beyond our jurisdiction is how the NPA allows its corporate friends to have faith in the loyalty of their NPA lapdogs. Vision certainly hasn’t stopped increased tanker traffic in our waters, partly because it is actually outside the city’s regulatory jurisdiction, but opposing this foolish increase in fossil fuel development is better than trying to duck it completely, as the NPA is doing.
  3. The NPA will “put Vancouver families ahead of developers who are selling to overseas buyers.” This plays to the latent and sometimes overt racism and xenophobia in Vancouver. “We” are sick of “those people” from “away” using “our” housing market as a speculation zone. “We” wish “they” would go away and not make our homes so unaffordable. But wait, “we” make a fortune from selling “our” homes to “them,” so we’re basically hypocrites. The NPA has no policies or legal suggestions to ensure that only the anointed “we” get access to “our” homes so “they” can’t come here. Instead, closet bigots and racists will vote for them because they think it will keep “them” away from “our” city. Don’t give in to the rhetoric of racism and division.
  4. We will create childcare space“? Their platform says they will “utilize underused space in schools for childcare opportunities; [and] provide at least five more instruction days for students by reducing the number of District Closure days.” These are actually great ideas, talked about by many for years. But how will they do that? Their platform elaborates, which is where we find their problems [emphasis is mine]: “The education of students must be at the centre of Vancouver School Board decisions, and there should be no room for ideology. The NPA is committed to providing the best education possible to Vancouver students. By examining alternative sources of revenue, such as renting out excess space in schools to local partners and examining grants, sponsorships or partnerships compatible with Vancouver’s educational values, an NPA School Board will work with the community to deliver the education our students deserve.” So much for trusting them on that. Firstly, ironically, school district funding is beyond the city’s jurisdiction which means to reduce district closure days they would need to get more provincial K-12 money. Short of that they’d have to privatize with Chevron in the classroom and other corporate partnerships. The NPA also thinks we are stunningly stupid because they said there should be no room for ideology in school board decisions. The mere existence of public education is based on one kind of ideology. Neoliberals want to stop the poor from getting educated. That’s why they cut funding in the first place. The NPA [sic] wants to look at alternate sources of revenue [fundraising, corporate sponsorship, advertising to captive impressionable audiences in classrooms], renting out space [but to whom?], and looking at partnerships [again with whom?] with those compatible with our educational values. Values is another word for ideology. The NPA’s ideology is about free market privatization and abandoning ideological principles like equity so that the poor get equal access to high quality education, just like the rich. The rich want to keep poor kids stupid. It makes it easier to rule the world that way. And the last thing we should do is partner with any corporation or group that actually aligns with the NPA non-ideological [sic] ideology.
  5. Finally, the NPA wants to “reduce the financial pressures on Vancouverites.” Like above, this means cutting taxes because they are a “burden,” a “pressure” to be avoided. But again, when we do that, we have to cut services and increase user fees, which are a regressive tax on the poor. That means more expensive rinks and pools, fewer library days, less park maintenance and improvement, dirtier streets, more dangerous roadways, weaker water infrastructure, less reliable sewage systems, worse resilience when flash floods take out infrastructure [do you remember Father’s Day this summer and North Vancouver a couple weeks ago?], inferior mitigation of effects of climate change, and so on and so on.

So once again, this year, the NPA has a credibility problem. If you vote for any of them, you are being duped. Caveat emptor. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Transit Should Be Free; Until Then…

$1/day is a good start to get there.

  1. It’s good for the environment.
  2. It reduces commuter stress.
  3. It forces governments to increase progressive taxation to cover infrastructure costs.
  4. It uses BC’s cheap hydro electricity.
  5. It combats rampant zombie consumerism.
  6. The post-secondary UPass system has improved commuting incredibly.

So $1/day is a good start to get there:

Mayoral candidate Meena Wong of COPE launched another populist proposal Wednesday, calling for a universal transit program that would cost each of Vancouver’s citizens $1 per day.

The 1% Has More Solidarity Than We Do

In Davos, the 1% rule the world. Literally. They also have the guns.

The 1% are claiming we have it out for them; that if we don’t tone down the rhetoric and stop calling them names like “the contemptuous rich,” we might end up starting a class war. But they already know there’s a class war, and it’s been going on for generations. Today, the rich are winning because they have more solidarity than we do. The year 2014 is a battleground and the currency is solidarity. If we don’t start organizing together, quickly, and far more effectively, the contemptuous rich will continue to come out on top.

For centuries, the 1% were the nobility, the aristocrats, the old money, the patriarchy. Then Adam Smith pitched capitalism in his 1776 book Wealth of Nations, and liberated the entrepreneurs to join the blue bloods. Today, every January, corporate and government leaders from around the world – the people who literally rule the world – meet in the winter-wonderland of Davos, Switzerland, to launch the annual World Economic Forum. There, they plan the global agenda. This year’s sexy new idea was advancing “social entrepreneurialism.” That sounds so kumbaya, just like public-private partnerships, but it’s just spin for privatizing social services.

The World Economic Forum is just one of the most recent venues where the global elite show their solidarity with each other, and plan how to maximize shareholder wealth and minimize global social, economic and political equality. Beyond Davos, our rulers have also created a roadmap for undermining the democracy of nations through secret trade agreements like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and CETA (the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement). These agreements are designed to give right-wing governments the excuse to deregulate industries, privatize public services, and elevate shareholders’ and investors’ “right” to profit above the needs of society.

How does this translate in Harper’s vision of Canada? April Fool’s Day this year marked the end of the 10-year Canada Health Accord and the beginning of a 12-year fiscal plan to cut $36 billion from federal Medicare funding. This manufactured disaster is textbook Shock Doctrine, designed to impair the public health care system in order to drive more demand for private alternatives.

THE RISE OF THE 99%

The Occupy Movement helped us understand the 1% and the 99%. One of the movement’s critical failures, however, was its inability to frame its core message in the face of a hostile corporate media, and a well-coordinated network of police and intelligence service agencies working together to discredit, mock, beat, arrest, and terrorize the Occupiers. The Occupy Movement’s message was, and is, merely equality: a demand for political, social and economic equality, plus, a healthy environment. This simple message manifested itself in dozens of demands, but whose message won? The 1%. After all, they own the guns and the corporate media. But, there is hope for the 99%.

On March 19, for instance, 650 people gathered in the Maritime Labour Centre to formally kickstart the Metro Vancouver Alliance, a solidarity catalyst if there ever was one. Its birth was inspired by the Industrial Areas Foundation community organizing model, active in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia and the UK. The MVA is a coalition of labour, community and faith-based organizations who share common progressive goals.

On April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, the Occupy Movement rebooted itself in a worldwide “Wave of Action.” Its goal is a three-month rolling wave of activism at former Occupy sites, designed to reinvigorate the solidarity started in 2011. And there are other solidarity catalysts in Canada, including the Greater Edmonton Alliance.

These coalitions are fantastic, but they risk irrelevance if they can’t evolve to the next level of solidarity. These alliances need to grow more intense, both inwardly and outwardly.

The member groups of progressive coalitions need to find ways of connecting their individual members to better support each other. And the coalitions themselves need to support each other. I believe such an effort at deepening and broadening solidarity has, so far, been lacking. Meanwhile, the 1% are deeply well-connected, from community chambers of commerce right up to the World Trade Organization. They’re all spouting the same spin and rhetoric on their members’ behalf, while we, the 99%, can often not get past “letterhead coalitions,” a term introduced to me by Amanda Tattersall, one of the founders of the Sydney Alliance in Australia. What good is it to have a coalition when the extent of union, or faith, or community organization activity is merely a letter of support?

We need to seed more alliances in Canada. And we need to help union members themselves understand why unions matter. Labour campaigns like these can only help: the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) campaign, Together FAIRNESS WORKS; the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) campaign, Unite for Fairness; and the National Union of Public And General Employees (NUPGE) campaign, All Together Now.

We need to then connect union members with social change coalitions, like Occupy Version 2 and the upcoming Peoples’ Social Forum in Ottawa (August 21 to 24). Our window is opening again. It’s time to leap through and convene the big gatherings.

This piece originally appeared in Our Times magazine.

Occupy, For Democracy

Journalists protest the erosion of freedom of expression in Canada on Feb. 27 in Toronto. Photo Credit: Hiba Zayadin

When I write about soft fascism, I sometimes feel too Canadian. I don’t want to be impolite and talk about hard or old school or 20th century fascism because frankly, when people read that word, they think, “hey, is he talking about Hitler kinda stuff? Ok, then, so it’s not fascism.”

It is though. You don’t have to start a genocide for someone to consider your actions fascist.

It’s a kind, gentler, Canadian-style fascism with a hit of Tom Horton’s and a bonspiel on TV in the background.

Attempts to suppress democracy, though, ARE fascism. From the Conservative government’s voter suppression actions, and contempt of legislature and the courts, they seek totalitarian power.

This is why I Occupy.

And while we figure out what Occupy Vancouver is going to look like going forward, it is this kind of work to decriminalize journalism that we need to be mindful of. See below.

Now, more than ever, because there’s a federal election brewing and we know that the federal government will cheat again to keep its power because it thinks it’s right and they know best for all of us. Like the BC government’s election gag laws and the city of Vancouver’s pre-Olympics and Occupy era democracy suppression measures.

We can be vigilant or we can be sheep. If you want to be a sheep, fine. Stay away from me. If you want to be vigilant, sign up for email updates over there on the right. We’re all about vigilance around here. And I believe Stephen Harper is mentally ill, WITHOUT even having seen the Flanagan interview from Friday night.

And we’re about making Occupy potent, and unlike the governments, transparent and accountable and democratic.

Respect.

Culture of secrecy endangering democracy: CJFE

Listen

“Canadians have lost even more ground in one of the fundamental elements of free expression—the ability to know what their government is doing and why,” says a news release issued by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The CJFE has just issued its 2014 Review of Free Expression in Canada and it gives the Canadian government “a failing grade.”

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Tom Henheffer of CJFE says there is a growing culture of secrecy in government. © Andrew Williamson

Government ‘defunding’ access to information

Access to information law means any Canadian can apply for access to any government document for a fee of five dollars. “It’s something that’s absolutely critical for the functioning of Canadian democracy because it helps to keep Canadians informed. It’s crucial for investigative journalism,” says Tom Henheffer, executive director of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

“The fact is the government is intentionally dismantling it. They’re defunding access department so when someone files a requests there’s no response. Eighty per cent of documents that do come back are censored, many of the heavily censored,” says Henherrer, noting that there has been a 51 per cent increase in complaints about missing records in the past year.

‘A growing culture of secrecy’

“Even worse than that is the fact that there is this growing culture of secrecy in government, both federally and provincially and in some municipalities,” says Henheffer. He says politicians and civil servants are deliberating not keeping records, avoiding e-mail and sending messages from BlackBerry to BlackBerry that are erased every 30 days.

“In the past Canadians have had a robust access to essentially the decision-making process that goes into forming policy in Canada and that access is being taken away.”

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CJFE Review warns of a ‘dangerous’ decline in freedom of expression in Canada. © CJFE

Whistleblower protecting ‘ineffective’

Surveillance of citizens is another major concern listed in the review as well as a lack of any effective protection for whistleblowers. Henheffer says civil servants who flag problems in government lose their jobs. “That’s why we have such a culture of secrecy, part of the reason why, because we don’t have this protection so people aren’t coming like say Edward Snowden (American intelligence contractor who leaked documents revealing widespread surveillance of citizens by U.S. spy agency). We don’t have anyone like that in Canada because the sacrifice that they would make is too great and as a result we don’t know what we don’t know.”

Culture of secrecy endangering democracy: CJFE.

Protest Vancouver Police Brutality, 2014 Edition

How many times do you think you deserve to be kneed in the back while you’re already subdued by police on the sidewalk, face-down?

kneejab
Vancouver Police gratuitous brutality from May 1, 2014.

Once?

Twice?

Does it make any difference if you’re a minor? Or if you were documenting police actions at a May Day march?

Well, while many of us were on The Drive Thursday night doing some May Day things and rebooting Occupy Vancouver, others were downtown. And one person was being gratuitously beaten by a VPD member.

Various video links exist here, which also happens to be the planning page for a protest against VPD violence tomorrow night at 7pm at the police station, with a march up the hill to city hall.

Stunningly, corporate media has run something about this. Mind you, they did frame the video footage by saying that video rarely tells the whole story. If you examine the various clips linked above, you’ll see far more than the several seconds that Global corporate media chose to show, before suggesting that there is more context. Idiocy. But we know that corporate de-/re-contextualizes reality for us all the time. That’s actually why Politics, Re-Spun exists.

Global also missed an opportunity to report on the unedited, raw footage of the incident that was online here.

So what are you doing tomorrow night at 7pm? Do you believe people should be able to protest, or take pictures in public or [yikes!] even just BE in public without fear of the police pinning you to the ground, kneeing you in the back and breaking your arm?

Do you think protest is your right as a citizen without the chill factor of wondering if the police will beat you for no good reason?

If so, Tuesday, 7pm is when you should join this protest at the police station, before it marches to city hall.

 

Occupy Vancouver Reboots Tonight!

CoV_GrandviewParkOccupy Vancouver reboots tonight to join the worldwide #WaveOfAction that began on April 4 and runs [at least] to July 4, 2014.

We will meet in Grandview Park on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories.

615pm is the start time, though honestly, I’ll be there a bit early. With my Occupy Vancouver sign taped to my hockey stick. In some convenient part of the park, since there will be a May Day march arriving there for a rally at the same time.

Things to consider:

Continue reading Occupy Vancouver Reboots Tonight!

Occupy Vancouver Reboots Tomorrow: A Primer

GlobalSolidarity Some thoughts as we countdown to the reboot of Occupy Vancouver at 615pm tomorrow night at Grandview Park. Come join us with your ideas:

  1. Mine are all about seeking equality and justice: economically, socially, politically and environmentally.
  2. Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is an inspiring classic. Some agree with it, some disagree. Some paint it as the template of Obama tactics [hardly, but still, you should also read this bit below written just after Obama’s first inauguration] and some paint it as wholly insufficient. You can read some key excerpts from it here. Then you’ll need to ponder what you think about ideals and pragmatism.
  3. Metro Vancouver Alliance is an organization that is inspired by Alinsky. You should explore them here. And pay attention to them in the Twitter.
  4. And you should also read about Fried Squirrels to see what you think works and doesn’t work about rebooting Occupy Vancouver from that little narrative.

Beyond that, see #1 above. That’s what I’ve got from distilling 2.5 years of thinking about Occupy. Can you express what you think about, and want for, Occupy Vancouver in one sentence? That’s a good exercise for tomorrow night!

 

Alinsky’s Rules: Must Reading In Obama Era
By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY | Posted Monday, February 02, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Immediately after the Democratic National Convention in Colorado, the Boston Globe published a letter from David Alinsky. He boasted about how Barack Obama had made effective use of his training in the methods of David’s late father, the famous Chicago radical, Saul Alinsky.

David Alinsky gloated: “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

What was Saul Alinsky’s model that Barack Obama used so successfully to defeat the Clinton machine plus the Republican Party in a dramatic one-two punch never before seen in politics?

What is known today as “the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power” are fully set forth in Alinsky’s 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.”

Alinsky’s worldview was that mankind is divided into three parts: “the haves, the have-nots and the have-a-little, want mores.” His purpose was to teach the have-nots how to take power and money away from the haves by creating mass organizations to seize power, and he admitted “this means revolution.”

He wanted a radical change of America’s social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. Alinsky developed strategies to achieve power through mass organization, and organizing was his word for revolution.

He wanted to move the U.S. from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. “Change” was Alinsky’s favorite word, used on page after page. “I will argue,” he wrote, “that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change.”

Alinsky used what he called “general concepts of change” to move us toward “a science of revolution.”

What he called change meant an alteration of our socioeconomic structure; what he called organizing meant pursuing confrontational political tactics.

Alinsky taught the have-nots to “hate the establishment of the haves” because they have “power, money, food, security and luxury.” He claimed that “justice, morality, law and order are mere words used by the haves to justify and secure their status quo.”

Alinsky didn’t ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He was more devious; he taught his followers that “moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”

To achieve his goals, he sought local community organizers who projected confidence and vision as well as change. Barack Obama fit the profile.

Alinsky didn’t want just talkers. He wanted radicals who were prepared to take bold action to organize the discontented, precipitate crises, grab power and transform society. He taught his organizers how to infiltrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties, gain influence in them and introduce change.

The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were ego (“reaching for the highest level for which man can reach — to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God”), curiosity (raising “questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern”), irreverence (“nothing is sacred”; “detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality”), a sense of humor (“the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule”) and a personality with confidence in presenting the right reason for his actions only “as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved.”

The organizer must “rub raw the resentments of the people of the community, fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. . . . stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.”

Alinsky trained his community organizers to adopt a “middle-class identity” and familiarity with their “values and problems.” After achieving “the priceless value of his middle-class experience,” he will “begin to dissect and examine that way of life as he never has before.”

Alinsky’s trainees are instructed to return to the suburban scene of the middle class with its variety of organizations, from PTAs to League of Women Voters, consumer groups, churches and clubs. Alinsky boasted: “With rare exceptions, our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle-class society. . . . Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class.”

Put “Rules for Radicals” on your must-read list if you want to understand much of contemporary politics.

When Blog Comment Spam Goes Bad

You know you want it!

Someone really crossed the line from whoops, to nuclear codes.

One of the15,000 weekly blog spam comments that never make it to the human eyes stage on this website, accidentally made it through.

Sadly, it is a compendium of all the kinds of faux-sincere blog comments. Which is like Christmas for those who pay attention to the sociology of the internets.

Read at your leisure, and peril. Actual websites deleted to not encourage bad behaviour.

It becomes a mildly deranging mantra of ill. Kind of like neoliberal capitalism.

Push back!

Remember, Occupy Vancouver reboots at 615pm Thursday night at Grandview Park. Come join us with your ideas. Mine are all about seeking equality and justice: economically, socially, politically and environmentally.

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Ending Homelessness: Easy If You Simply Care

Homeless sleeping in American FlagIf we are a caring society. If we acknowledge that there are a myriad of reasons why a community’s homeless population is homeless. If we thought we should invest our tax dollars and take advantage of good research, good experience, good pilot projects and professionals to address homelessness and other problems. If we were interested in treating people as people instead of the poorn or poor bashing of dehumanizing people. If all this…we could fix homlessness and address many or all of the things that lead to homelessness and preventable human suffering. Here’s how.

Continue reading Ending Homelessness: Easy If You Simply Care

ACTION: Illegal Israeli Settlement Goods Sold at London Drugs

mandela_palestineSodaStream boycott informational picket

Saturday, Dec. 21, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.

London Drugs, Broadway @ Cambie, Vancouver

Below is a notice of an important event happening on Saturday in Vancouver. If something is labelled as “Made in Israel” but is really made in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank of Palestine, where does it really come from? Nowhere that I would want to buy from. You?

I’m only as free as everyone is free. Don’t tolerate occupation. The boycott alternative information is here.

Nelson Mandela has died, but the memory of his commitment to universal freedom and justice lives on.  Mandela championed justice for the oppressed not only of South Africa, but everywhere.   

In an address to the ANC in 1997- three years after the demise of apartheid in South Africa – he reminded his listeners of the UN’s strong stand against “this iniquitous system” and how, over time, an international consensus grew which helped bring about its end.  Describing the UN’s 1977 inauguration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People as a demonstration of its “recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine,” Mandela added: “But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians . . .”  

Hopefully this memory will inspire shoppers to buy responsibly and ethically, as they choose last-minute gifts this Christmastime and “Boxing Week.” That includes refusing to buy SodaStream home carbonation devices, which – although fraudulently labelled “Made in Israel” — are actually produced in the industrial park of the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim in the occupied West Bank of Palestine.

Boycotts of SodaStream, already widespread throughout Western Europe and the United States, are now gaining ground in Canada. Independent Jewish Voices–Canada, the United Church of Canada, district and provincial labour councils, student groups, and many others have called on their supporters to refrain from buying SodaStream. In the lower mainland, local affiliates of the Canadian Boycott Coalition for Justice in Palestine/Israel (www.canadianboycottcoalition.ca) and the United Network for Justice in Palestine and Israel (www.UNJPPI.org) have held two public actions so far. The next will be on Saturday, December 21 at 2:00 p.m. in front of London Drugs, 525 W. Broadway, Vancouver.  Please join us and help spread the word.

As Tyler Levitan, campaigns coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, has stated: “It is vitally important that we support nonviolent struggles against systems of mass oppression. The Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the ongoing theft of Palestinian land and resources, is a serious crime that we all must acknowledge.”