The Daily GRRR! - February 13th, 2015 - Waves Through Walls: Prison Radio

Welcome, I am your host Dan Kellar and you are listening to The Daily GRRR! Waves Through Walls: Prison Radio, on 100.3fm, CKMS in Waterloo, Ontario. Soundfm.ca on the web, today is Friday February 13th, 2015.

We are broadcasting from the centre of the Haldimand Tract, the occupied Grand River Territory of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations).

The Daily GRRR! is a project of the Grand River Media Collective; and is supported by the Community Radio Fund of Canada and CKMS.

The clip that kicked off the show is from Mumia Abu-Jamal with his piece entitled Obama and Black History Month . Check prisonradio.org for more of Mumia’s podcasts.

Today’s feature is political prisoner Jaan Laaman reading his essay which reflects on Resistance, Struggle, Death, and Incarceration. The piece concludes In the Spirit of Phil Africa, let us remember: Freedom Is A Constant Struggle!",

Now we will start with today’s headlines:

The Daily GRRR!
HEADLINES for February 13th, 2015 
1. Family Day Rally At Lindsay’s Immigration Jail
2. Breaking: American Jails Are Being Overused
3. London’s Prisoners Justice Film Festival is Seeking Support
4. Judge Dismisses Anti-Protest P6 Charges
5. Mental Distress and Police Causing Death
6. 2 Brant County OPP Charged In Car Chase Death
7. RCMP Illegally Took Guns From Homes After Evacuating Residents
8. McGill Profs Attempt To Avoid Scrutiny Over Military Contracts Through Shell Companies
9. Continent-Wide Ceremonies and Demonstrations for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
10. 4 Decades Since Arrest of Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier

1. Family Day Rally At Lindsay’s Immigration Jail
This Family Day holiday, hundreds of southern ontario residents, led by high-school aged youth from Peterborough and Toronto, are expected to convene at the Central East Correctional Facility in Lindsay, Ontario - to demand justice for the migrants being held in cages in this maximum security jail.

In a press release the event’s organisers, members of Youth 4 Global Change & End Immigration Detention Network Youth Committee, say they “hope to raise awareness of family separation and endless jailing of immigrants including children without charges or trial.”

This latest demonstration is part of an ongoing campaign which started in 2013 to end maximum security detention in provincial jails for migrants; follow international norms and ensure a limit of 90 days that migrants can be held in detention pending deportation; and to overhaul of the flawed detention review process.

The press release from the organisers states: “Currently, at least 146 of these migrants have been jailed for over 6 months – Canada cannot deport them for various reasons but will not release them. Their detention is indefinite. In 2013, nearly 205 children were listed as detained by Canadian immigration enforcement. The actual number of children in prison is much higher as citizen children are not counted. A recent investigation found that at least 11 people have died in immigration enforcement custody in the last decade.”

Siblings, parents, friends and grandparents of the youth group, as well as family members of many of the men imprisoned by immigration enforcement will be raising signs and making music outside the prison walls during the day and hope other folks will join them.

For more info on this event and the campaign to end Canada’s inhumane treatment of migrants visit http://endimmigrationdetention.com

2. Breaking: American Jails Are Being Overused
The VERA institute of Justice, a US non-profit, has released a study detailing the overuse of jails in America detailing a shift from jailing only high risk suspects during the pre-trial phase to a debtors prison for people too poor to post bail.

The study found that “Nearly 75 percent of both pretrial detainees
and sentenced offenders are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order
offenses.”

While looking into the numbers, researchers found that “Underlying the behavior that lands people in jail, there is often a history of substance abuse, mental illness, poverty, failure in school, and homelessness.”

The study also found that “jailing practices have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Nationally, African Americans are jailed at almost four times the rate of white Americans despite their making up only 13 percent of the U.S. population.” The researches also found that “Locally, disparities can be even starker: in New York City, for example, blacks are jailed at
nearly 12 times and Latinos more than five times the rate of whites.”

Another major find of the study that while more people are ending up in jail for short periods, even that length of time has increased over the past 2 decades from 14 to 23 days. This finding is compounded with the conclusion that “even a short stay in jail can have dire consequences”. The report goes on detail how “research has shown that spending as few as two days
in jail can increase the likelihood of a sentence of incarceration and the harshness
of that sentence, reduce economic viability, promote future criminal behavior, and
worsen the health of the largely low-risk defendants who enter them—making jail
a gateway to deeper and more lasting involvement in the criminal justice system at
considerable costs to the people involved and to society at large.”

All in all, more great evidence to abolish the current prison industrial complex.

3. London’s Prisoners Justice Film Festival is Seeking Support
The 3rd Prisoners Justice Film Festival is taking place starting March 8th in London, Ontario and event organisers have launched an indiegogo campaign to gather a little extra financial support to ensure an amazing and accessible event.
The organisers note:
‘We prioritize making the event free since many people most affected by the Prison Industrial Complex have limited money. It is also important to us to be able to rent accessible spaces and to pay for professional ASL interpretation.” Childcare will also be available at the venues.

The film festival itself is in its 3rd year and will be running over several days in London, Ontario, the full schedule is available at https://prisonjusticefilm.wordpress.com/

The campaign page explains that the organisers “believe that policing, borders, prisons and institutionalization do not make our communities safer or more secure. We believe in working to build safe and healthy communities for all. One of our main intentions is to build cross-movement connections, as we know that the Prison Industrial Complex intersects with so many movements and communities.”

The group explains:”We are a growing coalition of activists and organizations with big ideas. We believe in a pro-active approach to creating safety in our communities, which requires affordable housing, accessible health care, drug policy reform, decriminalization of sex work, transformative and restorative justice and meeting the needs of victims and survivors. Our organizing committee ranges in our ideas and politics regarding the prison industrial complex (PIC) and work on a continuum of penal reform to penal abolition.”

4.Judge Dismisses Anti-Protest P6 Charges
A judge has agreed with protesters who were charged under Montreal’s controversial P6 by-law which was enacted to silence dissent during the 2013-2014 student uprising in Quebec. Noting that the police falsified evidence, among other violations, Judge, Randall Richmod acquitted 3 defendants and paved the way for dropping the charges on the 1200 or so other people who were targeted in the draconian measure.

The Legal Committee of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ) says it is is “delighted” with the decision saying it was “only possible thanks to the network of solidarity and mutual support that has developed amongst the thousands of people arrested in demonstrations across Quebec.“

P6 sought to criminalise protests that were not registered beforehand with the police.

ASSE quoted Judge Randall in their press release who said “the trivialization of this violation of the law by senior officers of the police department of the City of Montreal is staggering. Not only does the ordered procedure risk convicting the innocent, it seriously undermines the confidence we can have in the documentary evidence that is used every year in thousands of penal prosecutions."

The judge noted that Article 2.1 of P6 “does not create a penal offence. As a consequence, it is
legally impossible to convict people on the basis of the provision.” Secondly, the judge also accepted that P6 should have only been used against organisers of the demonstrations. ASSE notes that “we can expect everyone arrested under this article to be acquitted in the coming months.”

5. Mental Distress and Police Causing Death
In the final piece of a 6 part series, journalist Travis Lupick revealed some disturbing trends when it comes to police involved killings in the past 7 years in BC. The most telling statistic is that in the “99 police-involved deaths investigated or scheduled for investigation between 2007 and 2014, 90 percent involved a mental-health component, substance abuse, or both.”

This investigative series from the Georgia Strait comes on the heels of a string of bloody incidents involving the police at the end of 2014. In November 2014, after Victoria police shot and killed 21 year-old Rhett Patrick Victor Mutch, who was threatening self-harm, the Vancouver police shot and killed Phuong Na Du within a minute of arriving on the scene. Du was hitting a fence with a 2x4 before he was shot and the Strait reports that the 51-year-old man’s friends said he was struggling with a mental-health issue.

A witness to the murder, Kieran Fogarty told the Straight “It was four shots, right away… Bang-bang, bang-bang.” While the VPD reported that the first two shots were non-lethal bean-bag rounds. Fogarty adds, “But there was no pause in between.”

Additionally, Surrey Transit police killed Naverone Woods on December 28th. The cbc reports that the 23-year-old First Nations man was reportedly distraught and was also inflicting self-harm.

The head of the Vancouver police mental-health unit admitted that the numbers do not surprise him. Clearly the VPD is not equipped to deal with the complexities found in the modern world.

In reaction to the report, one Coast Salish based anarchist, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of troll and/or state retribution at their work and in their lives, told the Daily GRRR! “F*ck The Police”

6. 2 Brant County OPP Charged In Car Chase Death
Following an investigation undertaken by the SIU, OPP Const. Craig McMurtrie and OPP Const. Rodney Donald Grubb have been charged with criminal negligence causing death, dangerous driving causing death, and one count of conduct likely to constitute mischief causing actual danger to life.

In a move quite out of character for the agency,the SIU has decided that the 2 cops who left their RIDE check in wild pursuit of a truck that eventually plowed into the car of 18-year-old Ashley Lerno, killing her, likely committed criminal offences.

This is the second time cops roaming brantford streets have been in the news recently after the SIU re-opened the case of 18-year-old Evan Jones. Jones was killed by Brantford police Const. Adam Hill on Aug. 25, 2010 while experiencing mental-distress. In this case the SIU has received “Materially new information” about the shooting.

7. RCMP Illegally Took Guns From Homes After Evacuating Residents
The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, the oversight board for the RMCP has released a report which details the misconduct of RCMP officers during the evacuation of High River, Alberta in 2013. The report author “blames the mistakes on poor leadership, lack of guidance and failure to communicate with the public.”

High River was mostly evacuated amid flooding in June 2013, however dozens of residents stayed in their homes, which the RCMP say prompted the need to start entering the empty homes to seize guns.

The report notes that if the cops told a judge of the seizure of more than 600 guns from just over 100 houses it would have been more acceptable, but they also did not follow other guidelines.

The CBC notes that the report makes several recommendations, including creation of:
a national crisis communications handbook;
guidelines on seizure of firearms, ammunition and contraband during disasters;
special forms to ensure better note-taking about forced entries.

8. McGill Profs Attempt To Avoid Scrutiny Over Military Contracts Through Shell Companies
A student-led organisation at McGill university in Montreal has revealed that professors connected to the Shock Wave Physics Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the school have been setting up shell companies based at their homes in an effort to avoid regulatory and public scrutiny as they undertake weapons research at the institution.

Demilitarize McGill used access-to-information and other unnamed sources to reveal this troubling information which “allowed the professors to escape the requirement to disclose whether research funded by military agencies may have harmful consequences.”

In a press release Lina Rodriguez, an undergraduate student at UQAM said “By allowing these research collaborations to be channeled through front companies, McGill once again admits it has a lot to hide when it comes to weapons research and development on campus”

The research revealed that nearly a million dollars has been sent through two of the shell companies since 2009, with one quarter-million dollar contract still active.

Demilitarize McGill’s About us page says the group “organizes to interrupt the University’s history of complicity in colonization and imperialist warfare by ending military collaboration at McGill.”

9. Continent-Wide Ceremonies and Demonstrations for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
Marches, Demonstrations, and Ceremonies will be taking place across Turtle Island over the next several days to honour, remember, and seek justice for the 1200+ missing and murdered indigenous women in so-called canada. In Vancouver, this will be the 25th annual march and the organisers call people to “come together to grieve the loss of our beloved sisters, remember the women who are still missing, and to dedicate ourselves to justice”.

The main organising site for the Vancouver march notes that “the February 14th Annual Women’s Memorial March is held on Valentine’s Day each year to honour the memory of all women from the Downtown Eastside who have died due to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual violence. Now in its 25th year, the march brings courage and commitment to end the violence that vulnerable women in the DTES face on a daily basis.”

Events are happening across the continent with the 10th annual “Strawberry Ceremony” happening in Toronto at police HQ, also on the 14th. The call out for the event reads:

“On February 14th we come together in solidarity with the women who started this vigil over 20 years ago in Vancouver's DTES, and with the marches and rallies that will be taking place across this land. We stand in defense of our lives and to demonstrate against the complicity of the state in the ongoing genocide of Indigenous women and the impunity of state institutions and actors (police, RCMP, coroners' offices, the courts, and an indifferent federal government) that prevents justice for all Indigenous peoples.”

for more info check https://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com

10. 4 Decades Since Arrest of Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier
Last Friday, February 6th marked 39 years since the colonial states of america and canada successfully colluded to apprehend Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier. Peltier was convicted of killing 2 FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, crimes from which he maintains his innocence.

In a statement on the anniversary of his arrest, Amnesty International wrote:

“Amnesty’s numerous concerns include coercion of an alleged eye-witness whose testimony was used to obtain Peltier’s arrest and extradition, and the prosecution’s withholding of evidence that may have altered the outcome of his trial. Furthermore, the justice system has failed to address these breaches whether through a retrial or through the parole process.

Amnesty International also remains deeply concerned that the treatment of Leonard Peltier in the US justice system may have been influenced by political factors, including the tense relations between AIM and the FBI at the time of killings.

Amnesty International recognizes the seriousness of the crime for which Leonard Peltier was convicted and has the deepest sympathy for the relatives of Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. We also believe that the fundamental injustices involved in the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Leonard Peltier mean that he must be released.“

To read the whole statement visit: http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/continued-imprisonment-leonard-pelt...

Thats all for the headlines, now for some
Midway Musichere is Savage Fam with (a clean version of) Strychnine
http://youtu.be/PD_OBNat0rQ

And we are back, you just heard Savage Fam with Strychnine

You are listening to Waves Through Walls edition of The Daily GRRR! Today is February 13th, 2015, my name is Dan Kellar and we are now moving into the feature portion of our broadcast.

Today’s feature is political prisoner Jaan Laaman reading his essay which reflects on Resistance, Struggle, Death, and Incarceration.
text: https://denverabc.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/some-reflections-on-comrades-...

audio: http://prisonradio.org/media/audio/jaan-laaman/spirit-resistance-struggl...

That was political prisoner Jaan Laaman reading his recent essay reflecting on Resistance, Struggle, Death, and Incarceration.

This has been the The Daily GRRR! for February 13th, 2015. We are on weekdays from 9-10am on 100.3fm CKMS in Waterloo region, and http://soundfm.ca on the web. Check out all our past shows and other Grand River Media Collective work on our webpage http://grandrivermc.ca

The Daily GRRR! is supported by the Community Radio Fund of Canada and CKMS.

Stay tuned in for more Grand River Radical Radio after we close the podcast.

Thanks for Listening.