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Protest
The chilling case of Alison Bodine
DArrested at the border on vague charges, the political activist’s plight indicates a growing desperation on the part of the ruling oligarchy
By Michael Nenonen
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Fall officially started on September 23rd, but those of us living in the Lower Mainland know that summer died about a week before. On September 17th the temperature dropped, the air pressure changed, and we stepped into a world of cloud and rain, wind and shadow. The season speaks in a voice even our bones can hear, telling us that life is going to get harder, that we must surrender summer’s softness and prepare for winter’s severity. My sinuses registered the transition. For an entire day it felt like steel-toed boots were goose-stepping back and forth between my temples.
As if to mark our passage into this season of fallen leaves and faltering hearts, on September 17th a 21 year old journalism student named Andrew Meyer was manhandled by police at the University of Florida in Gainesville simply for asking Senator John Kerry a few politically damning questions. Kerry had finished his speech and Meyers made use of the time allotted him to ask why Kerry had conceded the presidential election so quickly when there was so much evidence of vote fraud, and why he refused to consider impeaching the president now that Bush is preparing to launch a war of aggression against Iran. Meyer wasn’t threatening anyone, but even so the Senator watched passively as police dragged Meyer away, forced him to the ground, and took a taser to him. The brutality was caught on a video that’s being circulated on the Internet.
Also on September 17th, anti-war activist Alison Bodine discovered that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had cancelled her scheduled 2pm admissibility hearing. The next day she learned that the hearing had been postponed to the 28th. In the meantime, the CBSA planned to hold onto her passport, her driver’s license, her car, and all of the political pamphlets, posters, newspapers and leaflets she had been travelling with.
But let’s back up a bit. I know Alison from meetings and rallies held by Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO). Like the other organizers at MAWO, Alison strikes me as compassionate, clear-headed, and committed to peacefully confronting the cruelties of the “War on Terror.” She and MAWO have organized scores of anti-war protests, forums, hip-hop festivals, and pickets of Canadian Armed Forces recruitment offices.
MAWO impresses me. Its members come from many backgrounds and ethnicities, they hold weekly educational and organizing meetings, they’re on the streets at least once a month, and they constantly co-ordinate with similar organizations across Canada and throughout the Americas. MAWO operates thoughtfully and strategically and doesn’t waste time with useless theatrics.
And so it came as a surprise when I heard that Bodine was arrested on September 13th at the Peace Arch border crossing and taken to an immigration detention facility. She was told there was a Canada-wide immigration warrant for her arrest, but she wasn’t told what she was being charged with.
Within five hours of her arrest, 80 people showed up at Vancouver’s Citizenship and Immigration Offices to demand her release. She was allowed to leave the detention facility on September 14th, but the charges against her remained in place, and she was stuck in Canada until the hearing. If the charges aren’t dropped, and if the admissibility hearing doesn’t go her way, she’ll be kicked out of the country and never allowed to return. I suspect that the CBSA postponed the hearing in the hope that her supporters would fade away, allowing Bodine to be abused in relative obscurity.
National and local media picked up her story and letters of support from across Canada and beyond poured into the hastily-formed Committee to Free Alison Bodine. (For those interested in sending these much-needed letters, the address is free_alison_bodine@yahoo.ca). The Committee began holding daily protests and educational events to register their displeasure and to raise awareness of Bodine’s plight.
On September 19th the CBSA finally disclosed that she was being charged with “misrepresentation,” but failed to provide any details about what she had supposedly misrepresented. She and her lawyer maintain that she hasn’t misrepresented anything. On the 20th, the CBSA let her claim her belongings, minus her passport. These concessions, along with her release from the detention centre, probably wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the public outcry over her case.
Bodine’s supporters believe that she hasn’t committed any crime and that she was targeted solely because of her political activism. Border officials likely knew that she was scheduled to speak at an anti-war rally on September 15th, an event timed to coincide with similar protests being held across North America. 100,000 activists, led by Iraq war veterans, military families, and various peace organizations converged on Washington, DC on that day; 197 were arrested when they tried to deliver their anti-war message to Congress.
Since Bodine isn’t a Canadian citizen she was very vulnerable to this kind of attack, but we shouldn’t think that any activist is really safe these days. Considering what happened to Andrew Meyer in Florida and the 197 activists arrested in Washington, and in light of the evidence that police tried to use agent provocateurs to provoke violence at the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting at Montebello in August, it seems that the North American oligarchy is becoming desperate. As the American economy crumbles, as Canadian sovereignty is bartered away, as the horrors of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine become more glaring, and as the US readies itself to bombard Iran, more and more people are beginning to understand and resist the psychopathic madness of the oligarchy’s domestic and foreign policies. The oligarchy rightly perceives this awakening as a threat to its interests, and it will respond with all the sensitivity of a mafia boss.
This is going to be hard on us, but it’s going to be hard on the oligarchy too. The public response to Bodine’s case reveals the growing vitality of the resistance movement. As the successes of democracy movements in Central and South America have proven, the dream of justice can survive even the most brutal suppression.
Fall is warning that winter is coming, but don’t despair. The cold will keep us alert and motivate us to come together to stay warm. The deeper the darkness and the more bitter the chill, the more fires we’ll light and the brighter they’ll burn. Go to Bodine’s blog at alisonbodine.blogspot.com to find out how you can light a torch and keep the cold at bay.
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