Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories
No Celebration In Detention
International Migrants Day
1:30pm
Samedi Décembre 18 2010
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Rides leaving Edmonds station from 1:00 until 1:15. If you can, please make a small donation so we can continue to rent the equipment needed to make this happen!
International Migrants Day is marked globally on December 18 as a day of solidarity with the struggles of migrants. This year, during the holiday season, we honour the survival and dignity of the Tamil refugees, over 400 of whom remain behind bars three months after arriving on the shores of BC (unceded Indigenous land). Join us in a prison support rally in front of the Burnaby Youth Custody Services Centre where mothers and children who arrived aboard MV Sun Sea are being detained. Let them know that we know there is no celebration till we are all free!
Every day, migrants in Canada endure the indignities of lack of status, detention, deportation, discrimination, labour exploitation, poverty, and the brunt of the anti-terror regime. Meanwhile, the Canadian government supports international agreements that allow the free movement of capital across the globe, giving people no choice but to migrate in the face of poverty, militarization, and displacement.
Canada’s immigration system is not broken. It is the result of a perfected system of social control, containment, and commodification. Most recently, under the banner of combating “human smuggling” and “queue-jumping”, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and Minister of Censorship and Deportation Jason Kenney introduced Bill C49, which blatantly criminalizes refugees and targets them for imprisonment and/or deportation.
For every arbitrary detention, for every summary deportation, for every minute spent in jail, for every anxious day spent waiting for status, for every dehumanizing hour spent working in Canadian sweatshops— for all the stolen time and the stolen lives — we pay tribute to the courage and resistance of migrants.
Release Detained Asylum-Seekers!
Justice, Freedom, and Status for All!
Right to Stay, Freedom to Move, Right to Return!
* NO ONE IS ILLEGAL, THE SYSTEM IS ILLEGAL!
We do not advocate for more humane politicians or more generous laws. We demand an end to detentions and deportations and the violence of all cages of control. We demand the abolition of exploitative temporary worker programs. We demand workers control over their own production, not corporate wage-slave working conditions that commodifies human beings especially women. We demand status for all those who have been deemed illegal in order to justify theft of their labour. From Turtle Island to Afghanistan, we demand the dismantling of Fortress North America and its border security pacts as well as the global military-industrial complex, all of which deliberately creates and justifies a culture of fear and repression.
We say this because we challenge the very notion that some people are more deserving of a fulfilling life than others. Ideologies of worth are based on racism and domination that have justified the dehumanization and genocide of peoples across the world. Instead, we assert the basic principle of self-determination. That people have the right to remain in their homes in the face of global displacement due to land theft, occupation, corporate globalization, and other capitalist and imperialist forces. That in light of the freedom afforded to capital and armies, people are free to move whether due to persecution or poverty, or simply in order to flourish with dignity. That people have the inherent right to return to the lands of which they have been unjustly dispossessed.
The Canadian state and its economy are built on the theft of Indigenous lands; the exploitation of labour, especially slave, migrant, and reproductive labour; and the global appropriation of natural resources. The ongoing apartheid reality instituted through reserves and sweatshops is one that must be fundamentally uprooted and transformed. We envision and actively strive to create a humanity where everyone has the right to sustenance and the ability to provide it, where we are free of oppression, misery, and exploitation, and are able to live meaningfully with one another and in reverence for the land that sustains us.
The site for the Vancouver local of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated. Please visit the main Media Co-op website to learn more about the organization.