I drove across the Burlington Skyway the other day; the first really hot and humid day of the summer. The sailboats were out on Hamilton harbour, and as I drove up the long slope of the bridge I could see the other thing which defines Hamilton in my mind: the visible layer of brown haze trapped between the escarpment and the steel mills. I’ve always loved the sailboats, but it’s the smog that says “Hamilton” to me.
I find myself doing these posts on Hamilton because the situation is evolving — or rather devolving — on a day-to-day basis. When last I wrote about this, on Friday, there was a glimmer of hope. Ceder Hopperton was waiting on the decision as to whether they’d violated their parole, and police had admitted that the only objectionable action they’d taken was to speak at a public meeting; surely justice would prevail and Hopperton would be freed.
By Friday evening, it was clear that no such thing would happen. In fact, Cedar Hopperton spent the entire weekend in jail, waiting for a decision that never came. It wasn’t until yesterday that the parole board issued its decision… Hopperton had violated their parole by speaking at the public meeting on June 15th and the revocation of Hopperton’s parole would stand. Hopperton will serve the rest of their sentence in prison, and will be released at the end of August.
I was going to say that this was heartbreaking. It’s not heartbreaking. It’s infuriating. The Hamilton Police Service lied to the parole board to get Hopperton’s parole revoked — by claiming without evidence that they were at the Pride attack defending the crowd — and when it became clear that the HPS could provide no evidence for this, they changed their story to demonize Hopperton’s speech on June 15th. (The transcript is below, taken from Twitter.)
Let us be very clear: the Hamilton Police Service has decided that public speaking constitutes a parole violation. The exercise of free speech is therefore a crime, or at least it’s a crime when that speech levels criticism at the police. This is an abuse of police power shocking in its cynicism… and the parole board just validated that abuse.
This was a deliberate political move on the part of the police. They targeted a noisy, uppity, anarchistic trans person because they figured nobody would give a shit… but it gives them a precedent now, doesn’t it? It gives them the stick they need to persecute people who publicly criticize the police. It gives them what they need to shut down protest.
Hopperton’s situation has now gone from a questionable parole violation call to a civil rights issue.
And as a writer who regularly calls out the police and the powers-that-be… I have to say this is starting to hit a little close to home, especially considering that in a burst of temper yesterday I may have tweeted “The mayor can get fucked.”
The reason for that burst of temper, after a weekend which included Eisnberger making a patently insincere apology even while his allies on council were gas-lighting and victim-blaming the LGBTQ community, was the appalling presence at Hamilton’s General Issues Committee of Justin Long, the leader of the Hamilton Yellow Vests. Long (not to be confused with the charmingly nerdy actor of the same name) is the driving force behind organizing the Yellow Vests and is also allegedly a member of the local Proud Boys network. He’s an antisemitic homophobe, a violent racist, and a general all-around scumbag. So of course he got to speak to Hamilton’s city council on the topic of how the Yellow Vests have been misrepresented in the biased liberal media.
In what’s been described as a meandering, disjointed speech, Long vilified anti-fascists, claimed that his organization is a “comfortable protest” which is pro-pipeline and only criticizes Trudeau and that anyone saying differently couldn’t be trusted. When city councillor Brad Clark challenged Long on the Yellow Vest demonstrators’ habit of yelling Islamophobic comments at people near their protest, Long outright stated that Hamilton’s Muslim community was lying.
The Yellow Vests in Canada are a hugely racist, Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ organization. Anyone who has spent five minutes on one of their Facebook pages can tell you that. The “official policies” of the organization might not admit it, but it’s clear that such opinions aren’t only tolerated in the YVs, but tacitly encouraged. The Yellow Vests are a hate group, and they’re known as a bridge into more radical right-wing extremist groups. For Long to brazenly lie about this in front of city council is… well, it’s about what you’d expect from a fascistic racist who’s not half as smart as he thinks he is. The mere fact that the city accepted Long’s delegation to the committee is an insult to the LGBTQ community, especially during a council meeting that was supposed to be about developing a comprehensive anti-hate policy.
To make things worse, after yesterday’s marathon council meeting, Hamilton adopted that new “anti-hate” policy… which doesn’t actually contain any measures specific to stopping hate groups. But boy oh boy, does it ever contain measures which are clearly calculated to stifle dissent and legitimate protest.
These are ridiculous restrictions — by which I mean that they are worthy of public ridicule.
Forbidding “Distribution of Food or Beverage”? Will I go to jail if I give someone a bottle of water? “Distribution of circulars, advertisements or promotional items”? So I guess we shouldn’t bother printing those pamphlets to accompany the protest. “The use of sound-amplifying equipment”, “Affixing or installing temporary or permanent posters/signs/banners”, “Closing a road”, “Engaging in any activity that creates a nuisance or interferes with the use and enjoyment of the space by other persons?” Without hyperbole, that literally outlaws any protest, march, demonstrations or other use of public space that’s I’ve ever seen in twenty years of activism.
Oh, and forbidding “using profane language?” I guess I’m fucked.
These measures will almost certainly be overturned following the first court challenge, as many of them are shocking violations of Canada’s charter of civil rights. That’s not going to help the hapless bastards who get caught up in them in the meantime.
This is getting complicated, so let’s back up and summarize: On the same day that Hamilton Council welcomed violent antisemitic homophobe Justin Long, leader of the Yellow Vests hate group which participated in the attack on Hamilton Pride, to speak at city council, anti-fascist activist Cedar Hopperton was denied parole for the “violation” of condemning the Hamilton Police for their spiteful and petty refusal to protect the LGBTQ community. Four other LGBTQ and anti-fascist activists are facing charges for defending Pride when the Hamilton police refused to do so.
And the head of one of the hate groups that planned and executed the attack on Pride, which has been allowed to operate openly in the community due to the cowardice and laxity of Hamilton’s police and municipal governance… is being welcomed to the table.
Then the city votes itself new surveillance and information-gathering powers, which will allow them to collect data on… whoever, I guess… and that information will go to the city’s IT department… where neo-Nazi Marc Lemire is still inexplicably employed. The same anti-hate policy, which does not actually mention hate groups, is chock-full of measures designed to criminalize dissent and is apparently targeted at the noisy and inconvenient anarchist community that Cedar Hopperton is a part of.
A community which I’m a part of.
This is Kafkaesque. This is literally Kafkaesque, by which I mean it is an absurd injustice so inexplicable and extreme that it actually makes me doubt my own fucking sanity.
Deep breath.
The thing that makes me furious is that Long and compatriots in the alt-right groups — the hate preachers, the Canadian Combat Coalition, the Nouns of Odin and so forth — are doubtlessly celebrating their victory. They attacked Pride. They beat anti-fascist protesters in the streets. They bragged out it online and then did it again at Toronto Pride, and nothing has happened to them. They’ve been rewarded for it by Mayor Fred Eisenberger and the city of Hamilton with a seat at the table and the legitimacy that comes with it.
Needless to say, these developments are not being received calmly in activist circles. There’s a demonstration planned for this Saturday at Hamilton’s City Hall… it was planned to be family-friendly. Now it will almost certainly be in violation of the city’s new “anti-hate” policy, especially as the sign-making workshop and musical performances haven’t been cancelled. I’m not sure whether Long and his alt-right buddies will be over on their side of the plaza smirking at us, but I suspect they will. They’ve been shown that fascists and hate groups have nothing to fear about operating openly in Hamilton.
I plan on being at this demonstration. I make this statement knowing that — having been openly (and profanely) critical of the Hamilton Police Service and Mayor Fred Eisenberger — that I am risking arrest if I attend such a gathering. The new “anti-hate policy” gives the cops near-unlimited power to arrest me for whatever reason they feel like: The first time I share a bottle of water or prop a protest sign against something or raise my voice in a cheer I’ll be breaking the law.
This entire situation, starting from the Police refusing to protect Pride (thus forcing anarchists and anti-fascists to step up) to the complete shit-show of the city’s response, is being used by Fred Eisenberger and his allies to criminalize dissent and use the queer and anarchist communities as a punching bag.
Why?
That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Why would the mayor and the “old guard” on city council want to criminalize dissent so blatantly? So much so that they’d tolerate, even encourage right-wing hate groups in their efforts to divide the community?
And the answer, like all answers, ultimately comes down to following the money: This is all about crushing anti-gentrification activism.
Which is where we come back around to Cedar Hopperton and last years’ anti-gentrification protest on Locke Street.
The Greater Toronto Area’s real-estate market is famously, almost insanely hot right now. Huge condo developments are overtaking the downtown and that wave of inflated housing prices is literally driving people out of the city. Hamilton, a rust-belt industrial city, has long suffered with poverty and income inequality, especially in the downtown core and the “lower city” between the escarpment and the waterfront steel mills. Across Hamilton Harbour, the city of Burlington has developed immensely in a few short years, taking advantage of the GO-train lines which lead straight into the heart of Toronto (considerably faster than the QEW-Gardiner highway connection), as has Oakville. Mississauga is already completely developed out. That leaves Hamilton squarely in the sights of developers.
Locke Street was the first of downtown Hamilton’s gentrification efforts, and it has largely been seen as a success by politicians and business owners. Never mind that the people who lived there were, and still are, being forced out by “reno-victions” and rent increases while wealthy former Torontonians move into the newly trendy neighbourhood. The same fear that led to last year’s Locke Street anti-gentrification protest has now moved into the Barton Street neighbourhood, fuelled by city grant money and city policies that deprioritize the people already living in these poverty-afflicted neighbourhoods.
I’m writing this, and trying not to sound like some paranoid, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist, but this is where the money leads: Cui bono, as Lucius Cassius asked — to whom goes the benefit?
There’s a lot of money at stake here. Billions of dollars in development funds. Hamilton’s lower city is poised on the brink of a massive gentrification effort that will revitalize and enrich the old city core which has languished in poverty and disuse for decades. And that would be a good thing… if it wasn’t about to be done by dispossessing the communities that already live there. Poor people are going to lose their homes because rich people want quirky turn-of-the-century townhouses and brick tapas bars. And Hamilton city council is pouring taxpayer money into the effort.
This is why police and council have allowed the Yellow Vests to operate with near-impunity: to stir up community resistance against the YV’s hate-filled propaganda; which resistance the city has now used to establish an “anti-hate group” policy that transparently attacks people who’ve protested the City of Hamilton’s gentrification efforts. Indeed, if you go point-by-point through the list of “activities prohibited at Assemblies and Demonstrations” you find that each and every one of them is a specific incident from recent protests against gentrification and economic inequality.
Hate groups are growing in Hamilton… and they’re growing because the mayor, a faction of city council and the police are encouraging them for short-term political advantage. The street-level fascist groups are being used by the city so that they can ride the backlash and establish the powers needed to stifle political opposition to multi-billion-dollar plans for development in the city. That’s why there are so few charges for the hate groups who attacked Pride, and that’s why the police are focusing their efforts on many of the same people who participate in anti-gentrification resistance.
Fascism and capitalism, racism and convenience, crony politics, injustice, civil rights violations and corruption and good old-fashioned petty cruelty… all compressed into a toxic stew as bad as any smog cloud under Hamilton mountain. And the racist, homophobic fallout lands as it always has, on the lower city, on the LGBTQ community, the trans community, the anarchists, the anti-fascists and above all, the poor.
Money talks, but don’t you dare talk back.
