2011 May Day of Action for Status for All (Toronto)
NoOneIsIllegal.org/MayDay: All about May Day from the Toronto organizers
Below, EJToronto (Environmental Justice Toronto), organizers of the 'Green Bloc' contingent, summarize their view of the climate & environmental connection to May Day:
Canada is built upon the historical and ongoing plunder and exploitation of indigenous land at home and abroad. Forced out of their homes by industrial mega projects, by timber clearcuts and by climate change, migrants face militarized borders and find themselves criminalized by the states responsible for their displacement.
Despite being one of the world's leading emitters of climate-change causing greenhouse gases, Canada refuses entry to the great masses of people being displaced through climate change caused drought, flooding, crop failure and rising sea levels.
Denied a legal mechanism to come to this land, migrants are forced into Temporary Foreign Worker programs or are declared "illegal" and denied the legal protections available to other workers. Treated as cheap, disposable labour, migrants are exploited to facilitate the smooth running of ecologically destructive industries, most notoriously in the (Alberta) Tar Sands.
Canada's crimes of displacement extend beyond GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions to being home to a global mining industry that poisons food and water, attacks communities with private thugs and state police, and blasts livelihoods into dust.
The Canadian-owned North Mara mine in Tanzania has displaced over 10,000 people, and local villagers surviving through artisan mining have been gunned down by Canada's Barrick Gold's security forces.
In Papua New Guinea, police officers supported by Barrick Gold burned down the homes of people living around their Porgera mine.
Barrick is not alone and Canadian firms pillage land and displace communities around the globe, sheltered from accountability by Canadian law and supported by diplomatic interventions by the Canadian state.
In the face of Canada's ongoing displacement of people around the world through its support of pillaging companies, through climate wrecking mega projects like the Tar Sands, through livelihood-destroying trade policies and through its support and participation in war and occupation...
We must unite against the Conservative government's attacks on refugees and immigrants and demand that everyone, regardless of immigration status, be allowed to live a life with dignity and without fear of detention and deportation.
MORE
Add new comment