Russia had decided to invade Ukraine on February 24/2022, which created a cascade of tragedy and suffering for its citizens. This also created a lot of fear and uncertainty in the EU as a whole, since many leaders are left wondering if their country will also face Russia’s tyranny. This blog post however touches on the African students left stranded in Ukraine, who had decided to leverage the power that social media can offer to them.

Ukraine is a popular destination for African students who wish to further their education. It’s estimated that they accounted for nearly a quarter of the 76000 foreign students at the start of 2022. While many had the chance to flee, some chose to stay behind to help others also flee, perhaps due to an inner sense of duty to help their fellow man. Tolulope Osho, 31, reached the polish border a day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but he bravely decided to go back and help others. “I have friends, If by leaving my valuables, I can save more lives, then I’m doing it. Life is more important.” Other brave souls like Osho, who’s from Nigeria, has decided to help shelter people in underground bunkers, and drive them to borders. He and a friend have aided over 200 people, and covered their ticket costs and other necessities through fundraiser.

One common theme with these situations is that many people are leveraging social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to raise awareness, and gather support. Axel, a 20 year old studying computer science in Kyiv Ukraine, mentioned waiting in the cold for hours outside to catch a train, just because the color of his skin. And the maltreatment didn’t stop at the border, as he was met with further abuse, and exploitation at the border to exploit these desperate people. Once these cries for help on social media were noticed, many sprung into action in order to help these venerable people in any way they could. The Global Black Coalition, a collective of activists, had helped more than 700 African students flee by offering legal aid, coordinating food drops, placing people in shelters, and providing blankets, warm clothes, cellphones, and computers. A handful of Black Coalition members had flown to Europe to support African refugees, to negotiate with governments in the EU, like Poland, about extending student visas, and also providing moral support. John Adeyefa, President of ACAO, and Gwen Madiba, ACAO’s program coordinator were in Paris to meet with a few dozen families fleeing Ukraine. 

“I think this is the first time in history that Black-led charities, not-for-profits, organizations are joining forces under one roof as one people to support our people, to let them know they are not alone and that they have a family, a support network across the world. It’s important to have a movement that understands the needs of our people and speaks the language they understand, not just in dialects but in experience.”

– Gwen Madiba, Program Coordinator, African Canadian Association of Ottawa.

 

BLACK LOVE – A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER

“There has been this unbroken history of struggle for liberation for hundreds of years, but Black people managed to create beauty and love in the very process of fighting this system.” — Angela Davis

What is Black Love?

This wide-reaching term can refer to love shared among the Black community through movements that demand equity for Black people, the fight for liberation, and the celebration of concepts like Black unity and Black strength. Unrelenting, fearless, and foundational to the Black freedom struggle, Black love is based on anti-racism, collective organizing, and a commitment to freedom and democracy. As Cornel West explains, “Black love has nothing to do whatsoever with hating others. It has everything to do with hating white supremacy, everything to do with hating evil deeds, everything to do with hating the impediments of Black dignity and Black decency. But it’s always for. It’s not simply against. It’s not simply anti. Black love is not just anti-racist. No… it’s for the people you love and those who sometimes you think you oppose.” It’s a love, he says, that seeks “liberty for everybody.”

Love is such a powerful word. It has spiritual meaning. It means far more than what we say. It’s from the heart. It’s deeper than the words ‘I LOVE YOU.’ Black love has produced many freedom fighters who helped made our way a little straight. It is love that elevates a community rather than individuals. It is not selfish. The foundation of ACAO is situated on Black love. Since its formation, ACAO has always been about community and community welfare. We knew very early that we rise or sink together. Today, I salute all those who have contributed their time, effort, and love to help ACAO serve the community with love. 2021 was undoubtedly a difficult year. In many ways, it was the continuation of 2020 that saw us trapped under the armpits of two serious pandemics – rise of anti-Black racism and COVID-19 pandemic that decimated our community. As we celebrate the end of 2021 and usher in 2022, let’s be mindful that the fight for black liberation continues. The pandemics still rages on including the fight for a more equitable and better Canada. That is why we need more freedom fighters.

The Job Ad: Freedom Fighters Wanted! The reward is unknown. Would you answer the call?

The fight for justice, equity, fairer society continues. In other words, the struggle continues here at home and abroad. We need freedom fighters to put their shoulders to the wheel – it helps move the wagon farther down the track. Don’t be a bystander or spectator. Let’s all help liberate our community. Let’s start from where we are. Where we have influence – your place of work, place of worship, everywhere. It’s in our DNA. We are a resilient people created for such a time as this to make a difference. We can do it, but we need to work with a common goal. We do not have to agree on the way to achieve it but that is okay. There are several ways we can take but the destination must be the same. We are black but not monolithic. We have different cultures, experiences, and upbringing. We do not expect to be unison in our approach to build a more just society. For example, our famous three black intellectuals like, W.E.B Du Bois, and Booker T Washington, and Ida B. Wells never agreed on the how’s. They were vocal about their disagreement, but they agreed on what the fight was all about.

The same could be said of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. The ‘what’ we fight and the ‘why’ we fight are important than the ‘how’ we fight. In 2022, express black love by becoming a freedom fighter. Join the fight in your own small way. If everyone pitches in, the aggregate of our individual efforts will produce a powerful collective force capable of shaping the next decade for the benefit of black people here in Canada and elsewhere.

Let’s love one another even as we fight the system that has oppressed us for hundreds of years. Let’s teach Black love to our children, our youth, our friends, and community. Black love will help save our community from internal destruction. Black love eschews evil. It will put an end to senseless homicides that characterized our community in 2021. Let’s collectively teach our youth this black love. It’s the sure way to save the lives of our youth. Let this be your charge for 2022. Do your part to save our people and to lift the community up. Would you answer to the call?

As you reflect on the call, I leave you with this hymnal – A Charge to Keep I Have:

 

1 A charge to keep I have,

A God to glorify,

A never-dying soul to save,

And fit it for the sky.

2 To serve the present age,

My calling to fulfill;

Oh, may it all my pow’rs engage

To do my Master’s will!

3 Arm me with watchful care

As in Thy sight to live,

And now Thy servant, Lord, prepare

A strict account to give!

4 Help me to watch and pray,

And still on Thee rely,

Oh, let me not my trust betray,

But press to realms on high.

 

Black love has nothing to do with hating others…. [it’s a love seeking] liberty for everybody. – Cornel West

 

Happy New Year!

Your Chief Servant,

Hector Addison

I was swiping through Instagram stories when I saw a humorous Tik Tok video poking fun at the pressure that many parents feel to stay calm when disciplining their children in public. Embarrassed, they timidly smile at onlookers and diplomatically negotiate with their screaming kid, only to blow up with rage and reach for the belt as soon as they make it into the doorway. It seemed like befitting content in these pandemic times as stressed, overextended parents are forced to work and homeschool at once. Perhaps, for others, it was a short comedic relief from the stream of rage-inducing news about yet another police killing, a rapid rise in coronavirus cases, and an unemployment rate of historic proportions. Yet, as I replayed this seemingly innocent video over and over again, I thought just how precisely a joke about hitting children shows what those who are skeptical about police abolition fail to understand.

At first glance, corporal punishment and child abuse seem hardly related to the issue of police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement’s demand to defund and abolish police in the United States. At the very core, however, both of these social issues are rooted in the same cultural logic of punishment that has been completely normalized in our society.

Whether we hit children into submission, violate—if not murder—a “criminal suspect,” or put masses of people in prison cells, the unspoken assumption is all the same: the act of violence is a punishment, and it is an earned consequence that the wrongdoer must endure and suffer in silence in order to correct and socially atone for negative behaviors.

We see this in the way that many people desperately look for ways to justify indefensible slayings of black people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Eric Garner, and many more. The long-standing cultural belief that people are subjected to deadly violence or coercive force by law enforcement because they did something to merit such a punitive response is deeply engrained not only in our social institutions (like the police or prisons) but in the cultural imagination itself.

For many, being confronted with the idea that people are subjected to violence in our society because this is how our culture teaches those with power to control others is deeply uncomfortable. Seeing the use of violence as gratuitous, rather than merited, fundamentally unsettles the way in which carceral culture socializes Americans, and especially whites, to think about themselves and the social institution of policing tasked to “serve and protect” them.

Conceptually, the idea of violence as a mechanism by which society is disciplined shatters the illusion of a distinction between “good” and “bad” people and threatens our psychological investment in ideas like morality, goodness, and safety that are framed precisely in terms of these binaries. The enigmatic figure of the (black) criminal must exist so that we can be assured that “we” are not like “them” and that what happens to them cannot and should not happen to “us.”

The impulse to defend and justify how violence is weaponized to control, surveil, and dominate oppressed people shows that violence is considered to be an integral part of our cultural communication and a legitimate means of settling interpersonal disputes, particularly misbehavior. We’ve heard it all before, maybe at our own dining table or from the nearby office cubicle. “Well, wasn’t he trying to spend a counterfeit $20 bill?” “He was no angel selling untaxed cigarettes!” “It wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t start running away.” Perhaps, we have, at some point, said it ourselves.

As such, the need to frame violence against victims as warranted punishment extends far beyond the issue of racist policing. Most of us pick up on and internalize such violent ways of relating to each other early on in life. We quickly learn that some people “deserve” to be punished (with violence, bullying, silence, or indifference) simply because they have, in one way or another, overstepped the unspoken social mandate. We label people “criminals” if they have broken the rule of property law, but they need not break legal boundaries to be cast outside of social belonging. Consider all the ways in which over the years immigrants, Muslims, and, with the coronavirus pandemic, Asian Americans, too, have been ostracized, harassed, and even physically attacked simply because they are perceived as a threat to the security and wellbeing of Americans.

It is hardly surprising that cultural narratives of punishment are so well-established, since we are taught to think of violence as legitimate punishment since childhood. Despite the popular adage “violence is never the answer,” the vast majority of us learn not only to tolerate but to accept violence as a normal part of everyday life through our first experiences in the family structure. bell hooks contends that social violence begins with patriarchal conditioning within the home. “Patriarchal violence in the home,” she writes, “is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more powerful individual to control others through various forms of coercive force.” This applies not only to the dynamic between romantic partners, she notes, but to the relationship between the caregiver and the child.

If we are not “disciplined” through violent physical and emotional abuse as children, then most of us have been at least put in the corner, shamed or in some other way isolated from others as punishment. Whenever the issue of child abuse comes up, people routinely jump up with defensive arguments about how violent discipline is necessary in order to raise polite and respectable children, despite years of research that completely disputes the effectiveness of physical punishment. Nevertheless, it is still widely assumed that “disciplining” children using physical and emotional punishment will teach them the life lessons they need to grow into responsible “good” adults.

However, if we fail to learn the lesson when we grow up, the metaphorical “reflection” corner where the young child stood—punished, shamed and isolated from others—becomes the jail cell. Law enforcement authorities mimic the patriarchal rule established in the family unit on a national scale. Just like the parent who treats the child with a sense of power and the right to punish for the sake of “discipline,” the state assumes the role of the benevolent disciplinarian over its population in the name of “order.”

Despite the ample evidence to suggest that economic poverty, substance use disorders, and lack of economic opportunities trap oppressed communities in cycles of criminalization, in a patriarchal culture the wrongdoers, like children, are penalized, isolated, and put away to reflect on their misdeeds, rather than rehabilitated and aided in regaining control over their lives. They should have, after all, made “better choices.”

All this is to say that the way we are taught to relate to another—ultimately, fearing each other and deriving a sense of comfort that those who so terrify us are kept under control—deeply shapes how our culture determines who is deserving of punishment and who is entitled to enact it. In every aspect, we live in a culture of violence.

More than that, how we think about harm and punishment has profoundly shaped social practices, public policies, and budget priorities, such that in the United States there are more police in schools than counselors, 250% more prison cells than hospital beds, and 28 states with death penalty laws.

So, as abolitionists, we want to call attention to the way in which we have accepted and taken for granted this system of enormous violence and punishment as the primary and only way of living with others.

Rooted in the history of black resistance practices, the abolitionist movement looks to shift these cultural norms towards embracing notions of healing, compassion, and holistic justice as equally viable paths for nurturing a society in which all people are free from fear and domination.

Abolition calls forth a world where each and every one of us has a birthright to be our whole selves and live in full dignity. Therefore, in calling for defunding the police and investing in communal wellness, abolitionists offer a fundamentally different model for thinking about human interconnectedness and social belonging. Instead of punishing, policing, and locking communities in cycles of violence, we can choose to center the ethos of radical love and collective care by providing our communities with compassion, dignity, and financial resources that would lay ground for stable access to safe and affordable housing, education, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

Abolition challenges the limits of our imagination and calls on our inherent capacity to imagine otherwise—to think outside of the regime of violence and to envision alternative ways of being in this world. Abolishing policing is a necessary step towards ending four centuries of racial violence against black people but it is only the beginning. To build truly anti-racist, feminist social structures that work for and empower all of us, we must radically shift and re-imagine how we relate to each other. As prolific black feminist abolitionists Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariame Kaba teach us, we must heed the call and decriminalize our imagination by not merely dreaming or wishing for change but actively working towards the kind of world that we know, with all of our being, is possible.

This post was curled from the Medium

Police chief Mark Saunders is calling for calm amid allegations of foul play in the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell to her death from a 24th-floor apartment balcony during an interaction with Toronto police.

He revealed that dispatch received three individual 911 calls regarding an assault at 100 High Park on Wednesday evening, two of which indicated that there was a knife present. The call sounded “rather frantic” and police presence was needed, he said. He also said he’s “very comfortable” with the number of officers that were at the scene.

He told reporters “there’s a whole lot I want to say” and wishes he could say more about what occurred, but can’t due to the SIU’s ongoing investigation. “It’s a lot of misinformation, it’s a lot of lies,” Saunders said.

The chief added, “I support my men and women based on the limited information that I have right now.” He said he’s “anxious” for the investigation to be completed and hopes the public gets to hear the “absolute truth.” He also called for the use of body cameras, saying this is a “textbook case” of why they should be provided.

He said people are “feeding into” the “outrageous lies” being spread on social media and is urging the public to “wait for the facts to come out.”

It still remains unclear as to exactly what happened in the moment’s leading up to Regis’ death.

Watch the news conference HERE.

 

Toronto police are being accused of pushing a Black woman off an apartment balcony to her death in the city’s High Park neighbourhood. 

The incident took place on Wednesday, May 27, at around 5:15 pm. The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said Toronto police responded to a “domestic incident” at an apartment building on High Park Avenue. While inside a unit on the 24th floor, police “observed” a woman on the balcony. “A short time later, the woman fell from the balcony to the ground,” according to a news release from the SIU. Police did not release the woman’s name but family members publicly identified her as Regis Korchinski-Paquet. 

In several videos posted on his @rocawrld Instagram account, her cousin alleges that police threw her off the building and left her body at the scene for hours. He says the police claimed she committed suicide. 

The family’s lawyer Knia Singh said the victim’s mother, Claudette Beals-Clayton, sought police assistance because Regis was experiencing a mental health crisis, and pleaded with them to take her daughter to CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) for mental health support. 

Singh said words were exchanged between Regis and the police officers in the hallway before she went inside her apartment to use the bathroom. 

Multiple officers followed her in the unit while her brother was blocked from entering. About two minutes later, her mother and brother heard commotion inside and Regis crying out for help. Eventually an officer came out and told her mother that she was on the ground.

The family is demanding #JusticeforRegis and wants answers to how a call for assistance resulted in her death. Singh finds it suspicious suicide is being mentioned considering Regis asked building management for weeks to install a protective screen around the apartment balcony.

Police Chief Mark Saunders and Mayor John Tory offered condolences to his family, while the SIU is asking anyone with information to contact the lead investigator at 1-800-787-8529 or upload any video evidence on the SIU website.

A protest for Regis has been organized at Christie Pits on Saturday, May 30 at 2:00 pm.

Read the full statement HERE.