In recent days, Real People’s Media has become the target of a COINTELPRO-style smear campaign.
While we do not normally publicly comment on attacks from trolls and social media haters, the situation has now escalated to one in which threats of vigilante violence have been made against RPM members and the participants at the Wyman Rd. camp. These threats have been made online and in person. The fingerprints of police involvement in “bad-jacketing” RPM members for violence are all over recent events.
RPM has uncovered multiple instances of the Tyendinaga Police Service (affiliated with the Ontario Provincial Police) working to undermine and infiltrate the movement in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. This has included covert efforts by Tyendinaga Police Chief Jason Brant to remove the camp by issuing a fake press release that was sent to OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique in the early hours of February 13th, 2020. The press release claimed that the Mohawks were standing down and leaving the Wyman Rd. location before the arrival of Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, and was timed to coincide with an aborted 8am SWAT Team raid to arrest the ‘hard line’ elements who wouldn’t clear the site.
The issuing of the secret police press release was arranged with self-proclaimed “Mohawk Warrior” Shawn Brant. Brant has been notably absent from involvement in the Wet’suwet’en solidarity movement in Tyendinaga except where he has appeared to actively undermine it.
Brant was present along with CN Rail police and Tyendinaga Police Chief Jason Brant to observe the gathering on Wyman shortly after it began, but he was not present at the camp except on the evening of February 12th. That night, Shawn Brant made every effort to convince the people to leave the front lines – a request that was unsuccessful. When Tyendinaga Police Chief Jason Brant arrived on the morning of February 13th to carry out his and Shawn’s plans, he was promptly escorted out by Mohawk warriors.
On February 25th, the Tyendinaga Police continued to interfere in the movement to support the Wet’suwet’en. Real People’s Media has obtained an audio recording of TPS Officer Marcel Maracle working to sow fear and division amongst the people, all while trying to influence political events by encouraging a contact to “put together a committee” made up of a “Bear, Wolf and Turtle” to make the decision “on behalf” of the people to shut down the camps and leave.....