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Arrests at Vancouver casseroles: We need to stand up against criminalization of dissent

Last night in Vancouver seven participants in a casserole solidarity demonstration were detained and/or arrested by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD).

They were taken down violently, roughed up, cuffed, searched and detained for hours. They were not informed as to why they were being arrested, or what if any laws they may have broken. They were, in short, denied most of their Charter rights.

Two were taken into custody at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) as the march was about to begin. The other five were detained a few hours later during a jail solidarity vigil outside the police station at 222 Main Street, where the first two were being held.

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Why we must shift the state: Movement building after Bill C-38

Scene from a Vancouver casseroles protest. (Photo: Ian MacKenzie)

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I have two seemingly unrelated things on my mind today -- two things, in fact, that I have been obsessing over for several days now. First, a recent report in the journal Nature, and, second, the passing of the Harper government's omnibus Bill C-38.

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To re-Occupy or not to re-Occupy

Photo: Stephen Collis

That is the question. Or maybe -- how we ought to re-occupy. Though to this point it has been more a question of when, rather than if or how. Once Occupy Vancouver's camp was evicted, First Nations elders reminded us that winter was the time for recuperation, storytelling, planning, and readying for the spring. And indeed, the call for a spring re-occupation has been in circulation almost since the evictions became general, with perhaps the loudest and clearest call coming in the form of the Spanish Indignados and the DRY (Democracia Real Ya) movement's #12m12 call to make the 12th of May 2012 a day of global action: "Let's turn the streets into the biggest loudspeaker on earth."

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