I have now sent three letters discussing the Christie Blatchford situation to UW's student funded and operated paper the Imprint. These letters were in response to the editorials, letters and community editorials that the Imprint has run which attack me, the ARA, and our actions which confronted the dominant eurocentric culture and one of their mouthpieces. That the Imprint wont print these views is a telling tale of its own - it is a right biased and uncritical rag.
Christie Speaks on Behalf of Power while UW Criminalises Dissent and Welcomes Hackery.
by: Dan Kellar
A perfect example of the decline of good journalism in the Imprint was the cover story from the first issue of 2011, written by Eleonora Meszaros and praised by EIC Gina Racine. This piece, which looked at Christie Blatchford’s return to UW, follows the obvious settler bias presented in the student funded paper following Blatchford’s first scheduled appearance in the fall. The author misquote me, quotes from a blog (instead of a person who’s contact information she has) and fails to challenge the narrative presented by Blatchford and University officials. In other words, that story is hack journalism worthy of Blatchford.
The story claims that I had called Christie a “neo-nazi.” This claim is false (though she has attended rallies held by anti-native loudmouth Gary McHale, who also garners support from white supremacists). The point of protesting Christie Blatchford’s presentation on our supposedly academic campus was to expose that she is an unacademic mouthpiece of the dominant colonial culture who presents a supremacist and revisionist (eurocentric) view of history. She claims her book is about “law and order” and some sort of “two-tiered policing” but fails to acknowledge that the canadian government has not upheld its agreements with the Haudenosaunee of Six Nations (who are allies to the Queen by treaty, not canadian citizens). The re-occupation of the land that was to become the “Douglas Creek Estates” was not the first action taken by the Indigenous; it came after more than 200 years of dishonourable conduct by us settlers on the Haldimand tract – this land, their land. That she admitted to being a hack journalist less than 10 minutes into her talk, and that she knows little of the colonial history of the area reinforces what I did call her – a racist hack journalist.
Meszaros failed to note that Blatchford called herself an ignorant hack or that Christie could not answer questions from critical history students. She also erroneously claimed that protestors were “sent home”. 15 people, many of them members of Anti-Racist Action, were blocked at the outside entrance to the building where Christie was to speak, by 10 UW and Waterloo regional police. Unable to retrieve their tickets, the groups started picketing in the courtyard and handing out informational flyers to attendees. The police attempted to put us into a “free speech zone”, and when we refused to be corralled, they threatened us with trespassing tickets – on our own campus. 15 other police were scattered around the event and surrounding buildings (including the tunnel system). If the cover shot of the Imprint was not cropped as it was, we would have seen a cop on either side of Blatchford on the stage (Eleonora, who owned the stage?).
That UW administration militarized the event with 25 or more police and security agents instead of speaking to the roots of our dissension which follows trends seen across Turtle Island (Toronto-G20, Oka) and around the world (UK, France, Ireland, Greece) – the criminalization of dissent against the dominant culture of exploitative colonial (racist) capitalism.
