Tuesday, August 14, 2012 7:00 pm
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/448803501807240/
McNabb Community Centre
180 Percy St.
Corner of Gladstone and Percy
Books 2 Prisoners, Students Against Israeli Apartheid – Carleton and the Indigenous Peoples’ Solidarity Movement of Ottawa
A panel with:
Nahla Abdo
Byron Sonne
Ryan Rainville
Books 2 Prisoners acknowledges that Ottawa is the unceded, occupied and traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation.
There are political prisoners in Canada and around the world. Most recently many activists were arrested and a small number of them charged for their political activities. There was a clear increase in the scope and level of repression that the Canadian state was willing to engage in to suppress and criminalize dissent. Examples include Roger Clement who is serving a four year sentence for his role in the arson of a Royal Bank of Canada and mischief over $5000 to a different RBC, and Amanda Hiscocks, who is currently serving a two year sentence for her organizing against the G20 in Toronto in 2010.
However, indigenous people in Canada and the Americas have been resisting colonization for 500+ years, and have and continue to face some of the harshest and most brutal political repression of their struggles for justice, dignity and self-determination. Similarly indigenous palestinians have been resisting British and subsequently Jewish and Israeli colonization of their land and lives since at least the 1920s. Palestinians in Palestine as well as the diaspora continue to endure some of the worst conditions on the planet. And yet in spite of the vicious repression that indigenous people in Canada, Palestine and around the world experience they also continue to provide an inspiring example of resistance for everyone struggling for social justice and liberation.
Nahla Abdo is a professor at Carleton University.
Byron Sonne was arrested on June 22, 2010, Byron was arrested in his home in Forest Hill, Toronto in relation to the G20 Summit. After his arrest, Byron was charged with six offenses and held without bail for a total of 330 days. At trial, all charges were dismissed and he was found not guilty.
Ryan Rainville was arrested on August 5th and released on strict bail conditions on November 9th. On Monday Dec. 5th, 2011 Ryan Rainville received a conditional sentence of 4 months under house arrest, followed by 4 months curfew and then one year probation. Ryan had plead guilty to 3 counts of Mischief over $5000 for using a red and black flag and a hammer to destroy Toronto Police cruisers during the G20 riot last year. He also plead guilty to a Breach of Peace.
