solidarity

The Mohawk College Protest

I’m only publishing one blog post this week. I was hoping to do a detailed reportback of the events of the weekend — all the protests and counter protests and the 2019 Toronto Anarchist Bookfair — but in truth, I’ve been having trouble writing it. After a frustrating couple of days of starting and stopping, I’ve come to realize why: It’s difficult to write a summary when the events feel like they’re still ongoing.

Working In Solidarity

It was another chaotic weekend in Hamilton as hate groups once again took over the forecourt at Hamilton City Hall. This time it wasn’t the Yellow Vests, whose dwindling numbers have scattered around the city in increasingly ill-attended and ineffective demonstrations, but instead the Soldiers of Odin & their co-nouns the Wolves of Odin.

At around eleven on Saturday morning word came out over various social media platforms that a large group of Nouns of Odin had showed up in their branded leather BDSM bottoming-vests, and were acting aggressively toward the small number of No Hate in the Hammer counter-protesters, including women and children. Officers from Hamilton Police Service were present, of course, but multiple reports state they concentrated more on herding the No Hate crowd into a corner than actually policing aggressive and violent neo-Nazis, who were allowed to freely move among the anti-hate counter-protesters, to the detriment of order and safety.

The social media callout included an urgent request for more counter-protesters to make their way to City Hall and the community began to turn out almost immediately, including, and very much to her credit, Ward 1 councillor Maureen Wilson, who left a family event on Locke Street in order to attend at the forecourt. (My spouse and I considered driving into the city, but it’s an almost hour-long trip each way and we assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that we’d not have been able to make it in time to contribute.)

It’s been seven days since anarchist and activist Cedar Hopperton was arrested for parole violations in relation to the fascist hate-group attack on the Pride festival in Hamilton, Ontario. Ironically, it appears that the very “parole violation” they were accused of — attending a rally that became violent — simply didn’t happen. Several members of the community have testified that Hopperton wasn’t at Pride, knowing that there was the potential for violence by fascists and religious zealots, so they stayed away, intending on keeping their parole in good faith. The Hamilton police, with no evidence, simply told the parole board to revoke Hopperton’s parole and they were arrested. To date, Hopperton has not been given any sort of court hearing or judicial process.

I’m not going to dive too deep into the absolute shitshow that is municipal politics in Hamilton at the moment. There’s plenty of media coverage about it, if you care to study how institutionalized homophobia and racism and impact a community. This post is about the fallout, and how people come together — or don’t — in support of each other.