Today, Leah, went to jail. For the last 18 months, I could not write to her, talk to her, argue with her. We could not hug, or hold hands. There was no texting, no phone calls, no emails. The one person that I talked to a few times a day every day, was someone I was not allowed to make eye contact with if I ever saw her on the street.
And then suddenly a few weeks ago my bail conditions were gone. Our friendship, which was considered a threat for so long was now legal.
The first night, at 11 p.m., as Leah’s curfew started, a few of us co-accused agreed to be her surety-designates. We laughed about how absurd it was that the day before we couldn’t talk and now we were to ensure that she followed her bail conditions. We laughed because we did not want to cry.
And now I won’t see her except for a few visits for the next 10 months. She joins Erik, Adam and Peter in jail. Soon Mandy will go in and then Alex.
Some people say I am so angry and upset because I know these people personally. Maybe.
Thing is, you know these people too. If you’ve eaten at an activist event in Toronto in the last 18 months, you’ve eaten food that one of them has cooked. If you have seen any of the massive banners that OCAP and No One Is Illegal dropped between 2008 and 2010, then you have seen what these people can do. If you have heard of actions against arms makers in Kitchener-Waterloo, or how the Olympic Spirit Train was delayed, of anything that happened in Guelph really, or how there was a sleep-in on the grounds of Queen’s Park to get the KI 6 released, then you know what these people have put their life and energy into. You’ve read their blog posts and their magazines, You are either friends with them or friends of people who are friends with them. You probably share their ideas about the kinds of worlds you want to live in.
These are our friends, our comrades, our community.
On November 22, I stood in Occupied St. James Park and I, and a few hundred others said together: Leah, Mandy, Alex, Peter, Erik, Adam, we will not forget.
We will not forget who they are, what they have done, what they were arrested for, and what they are jailed for.
We will act. And in the truest sense of the word, we will be accountable.
On June 26, 2010, I awoke to hear that Mandy, Leah, Alex and Peter had been arrested. In a state of total emotional disarray, I decided to stop everything and head to the court house. All my friends around me advised me to stay put, to join the demonstrations but I insisted I was done. Just then a friend called who had managed to speak to Leah and Alex — we don’t want court support they had said, stay on the streets, and tell Hussan to organize a press conference at our house.
I learned that day what one must do when one’s friends are jailed. Fight harder.
I organized that press conference but I never made it there. I was snatched on the way. But today, after the sentencing was done, I drove to Niagara to protest with the small support committee that is working with the four undocumented men, some refugee claimants who have been on hunger strike in the detention centre to demand that they be released from detention and they get medical treatment. You can sign their petition and join their Facebook here. It was a noise demonstration so we chanted as loud as we could so that the prisoners inside could hear us.
I screamed for the six going to jail from my trial. For all the people arrested, and all the people going to jail for the anti-G20 protests. I screamed for the activists across the country staring at a jail sentence. For the Indigenous land defenders that keep getting targeted. For all the people jailed for crimes of survival. For the many thousands facing deportation. For the people dying on the streets of Cairo and of Damascus that are being shot by the police.
This blog post is going to be my first letter to those in jail. Those inside have asked to hear about what we are doing on the outside, they want to know about meetings, about actions, about what we are winning for people, and what we are creating for ourselves.
What are you going to write to them about?
To get addresses to write letters to go to http://conspiretoresist.wordpress.com/
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