Grassroots NB

A network of diverse activists pursuing abolition & decolonization on the unceded & ancient territories of the Wǝlastǝkewiyik, Mi’kmaq, & Peskotomuhkati nations

[hussan @hussansk]

I reviewed Carney’s “Canada Strong” plan now that he's PM. It’s a massive corporate giveaway: billions for cops and the military, crumbs for the rest of us. A hard-right shift—even from Trudeau. #CanadaStrong

🧵

[NB Media Co-op / Coop Média NB @nbmediacoop]

A group of students and community activists successfully disrupted the Edmonton Police’s plan to recruit at the @UNB Fredericton campus on Tuesday.

Report by Dora Szemok
https://t.co/ujtO7bEwn0

[El Jones @ElJonesPoet]

This you?

[Critical Criminology @critcrim]

"Here’s why we can abolish most of the criminal justice system now without endangering public safety"

https://t.co/7izOABc0qv

[Critical Criminology @critcrim]

Note that RCMP fired 40 shots killing Nona McEwan and Randy Crosson WITHOUT EVER HAVING EVEN SPOKEN WITH THEM. Not once over the course of 7 or so hours.

This is cops responding to a crisis situation.

[Critical Criminology @critcrim]

“My hands were behind my back and then they were kneeling on me. And out of nowhere he just punched me; he didn’t say anything,” she said.

Video shows Vancouver police officer punching handcuffed Indigenous woman

https://t.co/df7tEQQQDc

[El Jones @ElJonesPoet]

Advocates fought to ban incarcerating people in provincial jail on “immigration hold” who have committed no crimes and are simply there for administrative reasons. Instead of not incarcerating them, the government is planning on federal prison instead https://t.co/EsFk8sWs2t

[Grassroots NB @GrassrootsNb]

@Gov_NB misinterprets data to fit their narrative: absenteeism doesn't /cause/ 'substance abuse, violence, suicide, risky sexual behaviour, delinquency, injury, and illness'. Good attendance in racist, settler colonial schools don't address these problems - only just societies do

[Government of NB @Gov_NB]

We have released an implementation plan and accountability framework for the long-term recommendations put forward by the executive steering committee to improve the anglophone education sector.

https://t.co/4sasWbrR4h

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the "Cold War" was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core.

This remains the primary objective of Western aggression today. And it is the single greatest source of violence, war and instability in the world system.

The reason Western powers went after socialist movements across the global South during the "Cold War" (Cuba, China, the incineration of Vietnam and North Korea, etc) was because they knew socialism would enable the South to regain control over their own productive capacities - their labour and resources and factories - and organize them around local needs and national development.

When this happens - when people in the global South start producing and consuming for themselves - it means that those resources are no longer cheaply available to service consumption and accumulation in the core, thus disrupting the imperial arrangement on which Western capitalism has always relied (cheap labour, cheap resources, control over productive capacities, markets on tap). Remember, roughly 50% of all material consumption in the core is net-appropriated from the global South. This is what they are trying to defend.

But it wasn't only socialist governments that pursued economic sovereignty. After political decolonization, a wide range of movements and states across the South also sought economic liberation and sovereign industrial development. And Western powers attacked them with equal brutality (Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, the DRC...).

This is the key reason that Western powers supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it is why they support the Israeli regime today... as Western settler-colonial outposts that can be used to attack and destabilize regional movements seeking socialism or any form of real economic sovereignty, whether in Angola or Mozambique or Zimbabwe or any of the Arab nationalist or socialist movements in North Africa and the Middle East.

Iran has always been central to this story. Western states orchestrated a coup against the extremely popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. He was a left-leaning nationalist, not a socialist. But he wanted Iran to have control over its own resources (notably, oil), and for the US and Britain this was unacceptable. Mossadegh was replaced by a brutal Western-backed dictatorship. The revolution that finally overthrew the dictatorship in 1979 - and constituted the current government - wasn't even left-leaning, much less socialist. But they want national economic self-determination and that is sin enough. They are a target for the exact same reasons that Iraq and Libya were targets.

The same goes for China. China's path toward sovereign industrialization - whether socialist or not - means that it is no longer an easy source of cheap labour for Western capital. And as the supply price increases so too does the sabre-rattling from Western states and media.

So this is the situation we are in. The Western ruling classes are backing obscene violence and plausible genocide in Gaza, against overwhelming international condemnation, because they must shore up their regional outpost at virtually any cost. The vast majority of the world supports Palestinian liberation, but Palestinian liberation would constrain Israeli power and open the way to regional liberation movements, and this is strongly antithetical to the interests of Western capital. And now they are provoking war with Iran, risking regional conflagration, while at the same time encircling China with military bases, ramping up sanctions on Cuba, trying to contain progressive governments in Latin America, threatening invasion of the Sahel states...

It is intolerable and it cannot continue. The violence they perpetrate, the instability, the constant wars against a long historical procession of peoples and movements in the global South who yearn for freedom and self-determination... the whole world is dragged into this horrifying nightmare. They are willing to inflict enormous suffering and misery on hundreds of millions of people in order to preserve existing dynamics of capital accumulation. We will not have peace until this arrangement is overcome and post-capitalist transformations are achieved.

[Denise Balkissoon @balkissoon]

I finally checked out the 50,000+ member Reddit channel planning a Loblaw boycott in May and it is *organized* https://t.co/qB3rcELjoS

They have: a list of demands, a list of alt groceries and suggested ways to participate other than a boycott, incl multiple letter templates.

[Q @nthngsrl_]

Mount Allison management wants to lay-off all campus food-service workers at the end of April. The 45 workers, many with decades of service, need your support so MtA does not contract-flip them out of the very jobs they depend on. https://t.co/rPuPHDPRVX

[Pariah Carey @DesmondCole]

A reminder that people who are being criminalized for Palestinian solidarity work need our support

[Barbara Low @BarbaraXLow]

Russ is right.

More proof that 'Reconciliation' is the newest word for forced ASSimilation.

That's why I spell it this way: #Wreckconciliation

Settlers be ever tricksy with their words.

[Carl Pomeroy @CarlPomeroyCTV]

HAPPENING NOW!
Pro-Palestinian Protesters have staged a sit-in ,corner of Hollis and Terminal Rd,Hfx.
Major police presence on scene.
Hollis St. at a standstill.@CTVAtlantic @Move100Halifax

[Grassroots NB @GrassrootsNb]

An important read:

Fisher et al. (2023). School‐based law enforcement strategies to reduce crime, increase perceptions of safety, and improve learning outcomes in primary and secondary schools. https://t.co/xU8XXgc0Jk

[Grassroots NB @GrassrootsNb]

Being parasites of public funds for social problems police claim to address (but actually exacerbate) was not enough. Now Fredericton Police are leeching funds from public education - a system already chronically underfunded, under-resourced, and racist.

https://t.co/29QXq5Si3H

[Brett Forester @BrettForester]

Canada broke its treaty obligations to the Blood Tribe in Alberta but the band is barred from suing by a statute of limitations, the Supreme Court of Canada says, in a case that may impact First Nations' ability to sue the Crown for historic breaches. https://t.co/FpORazBoI3

[David Gordon Koch @davidgordonkoch]

Take a few minutes to read these beautiful and sometimes poignant accounts of this week's eclipse from journalism students in Elsipogtog First Nation, which was on the path of totality this week.

[The Breach @TheBreachMedia]

Canadian companies are supplying key parts for the F-35 fighter jets Israel is using to destroy Gaza.

Liberals are letting it happen, despite claiming they’ve stopped weapons exports to Israel.

[Indigenous Climate Action @Indigenous_ca]

Are you an Indigenous Youth engaged in climate justice organizing? Our Indigenous Youth Wellness Honorarium aims to support youth doing organizing work.🌱

Learn more: https://t.co/4lC8No4dJR

#YouthOpportunities #IndigenousClimateAction #SupportIndigenousYouth