#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CANADA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Joint statement for an inclusive and anti-racist community in Saguenay (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Words like shock and horror do not do enough to express our disgust before the

hate crime perpetrated Saturday afternoon against the Chicoutimi Mosque. We who
are active every day tearing down these borders built of prejudices, violence,
oppression, privilege and ignorance, are saddened by this new manifestation of a
system of oppression - racism - that is widespread where we live. ---- While we
suspect this act to be the result of a hate propaganda campaign carried out by a
local racist group, we are also taking a stand against much more widespread and
everyday forms of racism in our region. Confronted with the stupid marketing
clichés about a "welcoming city" (which does not do anything) and the pointless
forays into police journalism by the mainstream media, we are putting out this
declaration: from courage springs hope, the hope to defeat and knock down all
forms of oppression. This is a call for action.

An Isolated Act?

Primarily concerned with protecting the image of the city, or even of Quebec, we
have already heard a lot said about how the hate crime that took place last
weekend was an isolated act. In these circumstances, some commentators, like
Richard Martineau, are only interested in defending Quebec against any
accusations that it is a racist province, relying on dubious statistics about
hate crimes. We see racism as an international system of oppression and
exploitation. This system works by assigning groups their place in society, on
the basis of essentializing criteria, in such a way that subgroups within society
are created ( "racial" groups) in a hierarchical relationship to one another. (1)
In Quebec, we can see a social construction based on a white francophone
"dominant" majority in relationship to ethnocultural "minorities" (especially
people from Third World countries) and Indigenous people who are "dominated".

Saguenay-Lac St-Jean is often presented as a welcoming region. It is impossible
to not notice that prejudices against the First Nations remain firmly entrenched
in the population and continue to be transmitted in the media. Hardly any better,
in his crusade to impose a prayer to god at city hall, last year Mayor Jean
Tremblay stated that, "What shocks me is seeing that we, the soft French
Canadians, are going to be told how to behave[...]by a person who has come here
from Algeria and whose name we are not even able to pronounce." These prejudices
give rise to feelings of difference and hostility and normalize everyday racism.
They also contribute to the negative images of other people, such as the idea
that Arabs are violent, that Indigenous people are lazy, and that people from
other ethnocultural groups cannot be trusted. The debate going on right now about
the Charter of "Quebec Values" is a typical example of the resistance to make any
changes in our policies of inclusion. This is also reminiscent of how the famous
reasonable accommodations crisis, which gave us the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in
2007, became a burning issue giving rise to fears about the survival of Quebecois
identity.

Present throughout society, racism is a form of violence that is not confined to
any one age group and that can take different forms (verbal, psychological,
physical, economic, etc.). In the fall of 2010, a couple in their fifties fired a
hunting gun at two women leaving the NRJ bar in Chicoutimi. The couple had been
ejected from the bar previously for their racism: on September 25, the couple had
shown up at an African evening to which they had not been invited, and started
making racist insults to the people who were there, and picking fights. They had
been kicked out, and the husband had promised that he would settle the score.

Who has not heard individuals, family members, neighbours or work mates,
defending the idea (whether they're joking or not, the effect is the same) that
people who are not Quebecois should be barred from public life, deprived of their
civil rights, or even expelled from the national territory? Who has not heard
racist talk implying that members of visible minorities who do not "integrate" do
not belong in Quebec?

A Racist Hate Group

Beyond these forms of racism that are present everywhere in our society and which
get overlooked all too often, it is very troubling to see that there are people,
such as a cell of the organization Fédération des québécois de souche (Federation
of Pure Quebecois), who are spreading hateful ideas similar to nazism and fascism
in some sectors in the area. The main idea these people are putting forward is
that their nation or "race" is naturally superior to others, so they propose a
racial "purification" which brings them to the point of proposing the expulsion
and elimination of people from other ethnocultural groups. They accuse people who
are not a part of the white francophone majority of being responsible for the
"degradation" of Quebecois culture. Of course, the idea that there is one
"Quebecois culture" is part of the construction of a myth that requires ignoring
the many contributions of people who these individuals are trying to categorize
as different from themselves.

In the area, an identifiable group distributed hate propaganda in thousands of
mail boxes and its members have been responsible for numerous acts of
intimidation and death threats in Chicoutimi since 2011. The Fédération des
québécois de souche brags about these actions. Under cover of protecting the
national identity, members of this group are building ties with the radical edge
of the Quebecois far right which is not shy about adopting neo-nazi symbols and
the Hitler salute. We condemn the complacency and lack of professionalism with
which the local media have offered a platform to this group over the past years.
In December 2012, this group enjoyed exceptional coverage: three color pages,
including the front page, in the newspapers Le Point du Lac St-Jean and Le Réveil
- free publicity (without there even being an event) which only put forth the
unchallenged point of view of a member (anonymous) of the group, the whole thing
illustrated by his "work." In fact, this group was also involved in hanging a
xenophobic banner from the roof of the Hotel Chicoutimi during the Festival des
Rythmes du Monde in 2012 and probably knows something about the hacking of the
website of the organization Portes ouvertes sur le lac with hateful messages. It
would be a serious mistake to trivialize or minimize such actions. We must
realize that they constitute just one more factor contributing to insecurity, and
potentially social exclusion, for Indigenous people, immigrants, and all other
racialized people. We must denounce the existence of this group and put a stop to
its activities.

Conclusion

It is undeniable that racism is present in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Mayor Jean
Tremblay is wrong to imply that this was just an isolated act «which is probably
not the work of a group, but of a person with mental problems.» (2) We disagree,
and would respond that it is stupid and pointless to medically pathologize
racists. This system of oppression takes different forms and sometimes expresses
itself in a diffuse way, but it always does harm to the people who are its
victims. Forms of oppression and privilege are embedded in the norms, the
culture, the laws and the institutions of our society. This allows privileged
social groups to use their "power over" (relationship of domination) in order to
reinforce their position of dominance, and as a consequence to reinforce the
hierarchy of differences. To be active in the struggle against racism means first
of all recognizing its existence and taking concrete actions to denounce the
racist actions and words that we encounter every day. Of course, this can become
pointless if we refuse to attack the groups which put out racist hate propaganda.
We know so little about the Muslim and Indigenous communities in our area, it
would be good to create occasions to allow us to open up dialog in order to
understand one another and to get rid of all of the prejudices.

 From courage springs hope, the hope to defeat and knock down all forms of
oppression.

Collectif Emma Goldman

[1]Christine Delphy, 2008. «Classer, dominer qui sont les "autres"?», p. 197.
[2]Le Quotidien, 3 septembre 2013, p. 3.

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/p/joint-declaration-for-inclusive-and.html
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca