Highlights include phone interview with Sue Collis about Belleville's Tenant Action Group (TAG), updates from the Great Lakes Security Summit, and solidarity with G-20 organizers on trial starting this week.
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The show kicks off with a phone interview with Sue Collis about the Tenant Action Group (TAG) who are doing some incredible organizing to ensure hydro access for all Belleville residents.
An update on what went down at the No One Is Illegal conference that took place last weekend. Organized as a counter-conference to the Great Lakes Security Summit (April 7-9), the conference ended with a militant picket and a protest. The Great Lakes Security Summit brought together approx. 150 senior representatives and officials from the emergency management, economic development, police and intelligence communities from the provinces of Ontario and Qubec and the Great Lakes states. On April 9th, Ernie Eves, Ontario's Premier, and George Pataki, Governor of New York, signed a Joint Statement calling for security measures to be enacted to ensure that Ontario and New York maintain the flow of commerce across their shared border. Other plans include more racial profiling at the boarder, more jails (Australian-style) for immigrants and refugees, more police state surveillance.
Solidarity with G-20 organizers! This week Jonathan Aspireault-Masse, Jaggi Singh and Christina Xydous began jury trial on charges of "participating in a riot". The charges date back to October 23, 2000, when 1000 people demonstrated against a closed meeting of the Group of 20 (G-20) outside Montreal's Sheraton Hotel. A jury of 9 women and 3 men was chosen, but not before the Crown was able to exclude, as permitted in law, several otential jurors (the defence also has the same right). However, the crown systematically excluded several young students, 2 CEGEP teachers and one writer, all of whom stated confidently they could judge the case without bias. Also, the crown excluded two young black men -- one who is a college student, the other who works in a fast-food restaurant. On the exclusion of the second young black man, and noting that all jurors selected to that point had been white, defendant Jaggi Singh, who is representing himself, stood up to object, stating, "I want a jury that represents the diversity of Montreal, not an all-white jury." In the end, only one juror is a person of colour.
The Montreal G-20 riot trial was delayed in coming to trial for more than two years, while the accused pursued further police evidence at Federal Court. They won a partial victory when the police were forced to admit that the Surete de Quebec (SQ) used at least 23 plainclothes crowd infiltrators during the G-20 demonstration (in addition to eight Montreal police undercovers, the riot police, mounted police and RCMP). The identities of the SQ crowd infiltrators remain confidential for reasons of national security, as well as other police intelligence and surveillance files on certain protesters.
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