Three bailiffs carry me handcuffed for the length of the BC Supreme Court Registry office as I yell, “This court killed Harriet Nahanee! May God forgive you!”

The bailiffs shut down the Registry office for over two hours as a result of several people trying to attend Betty Krawczyk’s sentencing. Clerks who had been standing around killing time in their sea of cubicles looked shocked and afraid as I was carried past. After another 20 yards they threw me head first into the elevator and I stopped yelling.

When we got to the dungeon in the Supreme Court basement, some of the bailiffs were still wheezing from carrying me so far, and out of sympathy, I said I’d walk. Then a bug-eyed bailiff, who was just about to get off work, booked me in. He searched me thoroughly, jamming his hand hard into my prostate area. He told me I wouldn’t be allowed to pee because people might have drugs up their butt to flush (at the Supreme Court? I thought), but finally he let me pee while he watched. I refused to sign anything without speaking to a lawyer first and he said that if I didn’t sign, all my things (keys, shoes, belt, and jacket) would be thrown into the dumpster, and he confirmed this with other bailiffs before he locked me in the cell in which I would spend the next five hours.

Real balanced reporting

Perhaps reporting on the sentencing of Betty Krawczyk from inside a cell isn’t balanced journalism, or even legal journalism, but next to the coverage by Vancouver’s agenda-setting media, it seemed like the only way to attempt overall balance.

I had the opportunity to attend three of Krawczyk’s previous hearings, which is far more than most of the mass media did. In each hearing, the standing-room-only crowd of mostly senior citizens was well behaved until Judge Brenda Brown left and they let loose a cheer for Betty, much to the chagrin of the bailiffs who reminded us that there were other trials in session and that this was not an audience-participation situation. A lady sitting next to me told me, with fear in her eyes, that these people (the court) mean business, and that a lot of the people that were in attendance were facing charges or had been ordered to pay fines as high as $5,000 to the development company Peter Kiewit and Sons that had the contract to destroy Eagle Bluffs. “Oh! Don’t use my name!” she said, “I’m one of the people who were arrested.”

She introduced people to me and gave me a DVD called Standing Up for Nature, a film showing a panel of scientists going through all the species that would be affected by the widening of the Sea to Sky Highway. When sentencing was delayed yet again, the woman said, “Oh no! I’m going to have to take another day off work.”

Tough in jail

On February 24, First Nations activist and another Great Grandmother, Harriet Nahanee, died. She had been sentenced to jail for fighting for the Earth and had been checked directly into intensive care as soon as she had served her sentence in Surrey Pretrial jail. One month after her sentencing, Nahanee died, nine days before Krawczyk was sentenced. The Supreme Court’s cells are a lot better than those in Surrey Pretrial, and I am a healthy young man, but my five hours in the cell did not do my health any good. While freezing in my jail cell, I considered what it’s like for an old woman to endure the hardships of incarceration.

East Vancouver NDP MLA Jenny Kwan asked for an inquiry into Nahanee’s death, but BC’s Liberal government refused her request. The government denies that there was ever any evidence that Nahanee had contracted a disease when she had been incarcerated, and if her family had concerns they should take them up with Corrections Canada. Yet it is no secret that there is a strain of pneumonia that is breeding in the Lower Mainland and has prompted nurses to go into downtown eastside alleys and bars administering vaccinations. The months surrounding Nahanee’s incarceration saw a rise in Surrey drug-victim busts. Police are keeping Surrey Pretrial full of unhealthy people. Judge Brown knew Nahanee was suffering from respiratory illness, but she sent her to do her sentence in one of Canada’s worst jails anyway. A main reason for the stiffness of the sentences, according to Judge Brown, was that both older women were unwilling to apologize, despite repeated insistences from the crown and the judge that they do so.

With news that BC’s government had refused to launch an inquiry, and the Crown recommending a sentence of 9 to 15 months for Krawczyk, supporters gathered one last time on the steps at Smithe and Nelson and waited in line to get into court. This time, however, the hearing was held in the bunker created for the Air India hearings. Guards stopped most people from getting through the metal detectors. The line didn’t move at all. By the time Brown had said that Krawczyk’s crime was one of the worst there is, dished out a 10-month sentence and left, only a quarter of the seating was taken while most everyone waited outside.

Kept out

Instead of the usual six bailiffs, now there were dozens. Bailiffs followed individuals to and from the washrooms. Supporters chanted the First Nations “Mother Song” in the lobby and then the crowd filed back out into the street. At this point I noticed Eric, a young African-Canadian activist that had been collecting pledges from people who wanted to share Krawczyk’s sentence. Eric asked a bailiff why we weren’t allowed into the courtroom, and the bailiff directed him to desk 212 in the Court Registry. Several people then walked around to the Court Registry, but were met by a bailiff trying to hold the door closed. There were so many people coming out that he couldn’t keep people from coming into the lobby. The doors to the Registry itself, however, were blocked by a human wall of bailiffs. Some people sat down. There was more singing. Bailiffs started letting in only lawyers, and the people on the ground sat in a circle, allowing access past either side of the circle.

Camille Bains, a reporter from the Canadian Press, started aggravating the crowd, asking them why they weren’t at work and why they didn’t go outside to protest. When the crowd protested, she said she had to ask the hard questions.

Arrested

The washrooms were locked, and after we had sat there for an hour this became a real issue for a lot of people. Someone brought in some granola bars. Then 50 VPD showed up and shut the doors to the lobby. There were only about a dozen people still sitting down and they were sectioned off by lines of officers. An officer read an injunction that ordered everyone to cease obstructing the doorway, and to leave in 60 seconds or be arrested. Everyone left except Eric Nolan, a young activist who sat calmly in the midst of a sea of cops, so I sat down beside him. Cops then administered pain threshold techniques on Nolan, despite the fact that he was not resisting arrest. Nolan’s statement can be viewed at myspace. com/thefreedompages.

After Nolan and I were arrested, people stayed outside for a while. One group of women went to Eagle Ridge to pray, contravening the injunction that Krawczyk was sentenced for having violated, and yet no arrests were made at Eagle Ridge on March 5.

The Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers buried their coverage of the event, while the Globe and Mail gave Betty a huge spread, and even the National Post had her on the front page. Then the Sun and Province ran editorials that stated that in the opinions of the editorial boards, these old women got what they deserved. In working to protect ecosystems at all costs and accepting any sacrifice, they had threatened the very order of our society. They’re anarchists, like some Mad Max Road Warrior villains.

The most disturbing thing is how many people seem to believe what CanWest propagandists tell them to believe, writing letter after letter commending Judge Brown for removing these treacherous criminals from our midst. How much are these opinions worth if they are coming from people who don’t care enough about anything to challenge the law about it, people with nothing worth dying for?

Breach of the peace

It’s not fun to be locked up. After sitting staring at a splatter of something sticky on the wall that had been there long enough to develop a fuzziness, a bailiff came and said that we would be released at 4:30 so that we could not return to the disruption. Upon my release, they told me what I had been arrested for: breach of the peace. It is an arrest without charge, he told me. They gave me back my things and kicked me out. A group calling themselves FREEBETTY have since surfaced, as has some graffiti. Betty’s appeal has been scheduled for November, leaving lots of time for people to read her book, Lock Me Up or Let Me Go. A band of young native activists stole a 30-square-meter Olympic flag from City Hall and claimed their action for Harriet Nahanee.