In Canada two Mexican women workers win a victory for women workers everywhere!

June 2, 2015 by Dan Moshenberg Leave a Comment

Since 1973, Canada has run the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, or TFWP. Initially designed to bring in `high-skilled’ and specialized workers, in 2002 it was revised in order to bring in “low-skilled” workers who now make up the overwhelming majority of TFWP workers. Eight years ago, two Mexican sisters took on the injustice of the TFWP and, last week, won a landmark victory for women workers everywhere.

In August 2007, two sisters, now known as O.P.T. and M.P.T., left Mexico to work in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. They were employed by Presteve Foods Ltd, in Ontario, owned at the time by Jose Pratás. At the time Pratás was 74. O.P.T. is now 36 years old, and her sister is 30.

According to both sisters, Pratás immediately started making explicit sexual advances towards O.P.T. and then demanded sex. Whenever O.P.T offered resistance, Pratás would threaten to send her back to Mexico. This was no idle threat. Under the TFWP, “temporary workers” are attached to their employers. In the Spring of 2008, O.P.T. fled Presteve, moved to Windsor for a bit, and then returned to Mexico.

In the Spring of 2009, the CAW-Canada union, now called Unifor, filed a brief with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, on behalf of 39 Thai and Mexican women workers employed at Presteve. Then things moved both quickly and slowly. Pratás was charged with 23 criminal charges of sexual assault and five counts of common assault, all involving women “temporary foreign workers”. In March 2010, Pratás pleaded guilty to one count of assault, and received a conditional sentence and some probation.

Ultimately, of the original 39 claimants, only O.P.T. and M.P.T. were left to challenge the power of Presteve Foods, Jose Pratás and the entire Temporary Food Works Program.

Last Wednesday, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario handed down its decision and awarded O.P.T. a record $165,000 as compensation for “injury to her dignity, feelings and self-respect”. The Tribunal also awarded M.P.T. $55,000. Pratás and Presteve Foods, now owned by Pratás’s son, must pay the two sisters $220,000 for having created a “sexually poisoned work environment”.

After the hearing, O.P.T. said, “I want to tell all women that are in a similar situation, that they should not be silent and that there is justice and they should not just accept mistreatment or humiliation. We must not stay silent. [As a migrant] one feels that she or he has to stay there [in the workplace] and there is nowhere to go or no one to talk to. Under the temporary foreign worker program, the boss has all the power – over your money, house, status, everything. They have you tied to their will. It has been 8 years to obtain justice but 8 years and justice is finally here today.

“If we don’t do what they say, they have the power to deport. We are obligated to work. Not as people, but as slaves. We endure wage theft, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and our bodies are injured because of the stress of the work. They push and push us. How can you say that we are free when in practice we have no right to leave?

“But how can we leave, if we cannot work for another employer. They harm us, and then they send us home. There is racism underlying their treatment of us. How is this allowed in Canada? That happened to me eight years ago, and the system is still the same. Treat us with dignity. Not as animals. But as human beings who merit respect.

“Even when we have been humiliated and mistreated, we have to hang on to our dignity. That is all we have.”

Canada created a system in which workers were tied, handcuffed, to their employers, in which workers were forced into almost complete dependence on employers. Employers then sought women workers, whom, by law, they are allowed to pay less for the same work as male workers in the program. Women in the caregivers’ program suffer the same violence.

O.P.T’s and M.P.T.’s victory is a victory for women workers across Canada and around the world, as they struggle with the violence of `national economic growth.’ We have to hang on to our dignity. That is all we have.

(Photo Credit: thestar.com)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, Mexico, Temporary Foreign Worker Program, women workers

Black women prisoners still haunt International Women’s Day

March 6, 2015 by Dan Moshenberg 2 Comments

Around the world, women of color, Black women, Aboriginal women languish in solitary confinement. Many die there. Their numbers grow incrementally by the day. BobbyLee Worm, an Aboriginal woman prisoner in Canada, refused to become another abject statistic of prison morbidity and mortality.

In 2006, BobbyLee Worm, 19 years old, entered Edmonton Institution for Women. Shortly after, she was moved to Fraser Valley Institution. The Fraser Valley Institution described itself as “a multi-level facility for women … Programs focus on the particular needs of women offenders, including Aboriginal inmates and those with psychological problems or learning disabilities.”

One of these particular programs was called Management Protocol. Established in 2005, Management Protocol was “a special program for handling women prisoners who have been involved in a major violent incident or threat of incident while in the system.” By 2011 seven women prisoners had been on Management Protocol. All seven were Aboriginal women.

Management Protocol was indefinite and unregulated solitary confinement. Twenty- three hours a day for as long as the prison deemed `adequate’ and `necessary.’ How did one leave Management Protocol? One earned one’s way out. To this day, how one earned an exit visa remains a mystery.

BobbyLee Worm entered prison June 7, 2006. She was a first time offender, sentenced to six years, four months. She spent more than three and a half years in solitary confinement: 23 hours a day in a cell 10 by 8 feet, with no meaningful human contact. For months on end. She was 19 years old.

With the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, or BCCLA, BobbyLee Worm sued the State for violation of her constitutional rights. Two days after the lawsuit was filed, BobbyLee Worm was removed from Management Protocol. Soon after, the Correctional Service of Canada, or CSC, announced it would shut down the Management Protocol program. In May 2013, BobbyLee Worm and the Canadian prison state settled the suit out of court. According to all reports, BobbyLee Worm was pleased with settlement.

This is a story of State investments and of women’s resistance and refusal. Who was BobbyLee Worm? According to her former attorney, “She was a teenage runaway living on the street, she was addicted to drugs, she was a survivor of serious childhood abuse and trauma and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and from depression. She had never had the opportunity to have any sort of trauma or abuse counselling, which she desperately needed. And the response of corrections was to subject BobbyLee to one of the harshest and most psychologically damaging punitive measures that they have available to them. And I think BobbyLee’s story is, sadly, not atypical. This happens to hundreds of prisoners across the country every day.”

This happens to hundreds of prisoners across the country every day, and in particular to Aboriginal women and girls.

What was the Management Protocol? For the CSC, it was a major commitment: “When the protocol was designed in 2003, experts advised the CSC that it was illegal. CSC leadership implemented it anyway. In 2008, the Office of the Correctional Investigator recommended that the program be rescinded, and CSC’s own review agreed that the protocol was dysfunctional. But it was only when the BCCLA filed suit that the CSC cancelled it … The law that allowed the management protocol remains on the books.”

The CSC wanted Management Protocol … badly. It wanted cages for young Aboriginal women, especially those desperately in need. Aboriginal women, Black women, women of color who live with that kind of desperate need are told they owe a debt to society, and prison is not enough. They must go into the hole, they must be tortured.

After the settlement was announced, BobbyLee Worm explained, “There were times when I lost all hope. Solitary confinement does one thing. It breaks a person’s will to live. Being locked up like that you feel like you’re losing your mind. The only contact with another human is through a food slot. Days turn into nights and into days and you don’t know if you’ll ever get out.” Debra Worm, BobbyLee’s mother, commented, “As a mother, that’s the worst feeling in the world to know your child is being broken apart but not being able to do anything to save her.”

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada recently filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the laws governing solitary confinement. Sunday, March 8, 2015, is International Women’s Day. In 2011, Black women prisoners haunted International Women’s Day. In 2015, they still do. And next year?

(Image Credit: Erin Marie Konsmo, Media Arts Justice and Projects Coordinator, Native Youth Sexual Health Network)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Aboriginal women, BobbyLee Worm, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Debra Worm, Haunts, prison, solitary confinement, torture

In Canada, Native women disappear, bodies never counted!

January 5, 2015 by Brigitte Marti Leave a Comment

In 2008, Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander, two young indigenous women, disappeared in the Maniwaki area in Quebec. Their wallets and clothes were found but not their bodies. Despite claims to the contrary, the indigenous and Quebecois authorities took very little action to find them. Meanwhile, at the same time in the same area, the resources to find a young white runaway boy addicted to video game were easily gathered with Microsoft offering $50 000. There were no such resources available for two young indigenous women.

Last July, James Anaya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, released a report that exposed the “unresolved” issues at the basis of the socio economic gap between the non-indigenous and indigenous populations in Canada. Among these issues lies the increasingly precarious situation of Native women and their high vulnerability to sexual violence and murder. The report denounces the lack of “effective actions to address the problem of missing indigenous women and girls.” The report also points out the current issues of treaty negotiations as the indigenous land has become the target of non-indigenous mining and dam building.

About 2 000 indigenous young women have disappeared or been killed between 1980 and 2012 in Canada in the authorities’ indifference. The bodies of 90% of them have been found; still the code of silence prevails. It would be as if 55 000 women in France had disappeared or been murdered and the State did absolutely nothing. According to French journalist Emmanuelle Walter, that would not be tolerated. In her recent book, she describes Canada’s policy toward missing and murdered indigenous women as femicide.

Walter’s investigation took her back into the history of conquest and destruction of the Amerindian communities. She notes that the European patriarchal misogyny has contaminated Native men. Indian laws dictated by the colonizers affected the status of indigenous women. Moreover, the politics of assimilation that the Canadian government implemented in the 19^th century were politics of elimination. In Canada, like in the United States, boarding schools were in charge of removing the indigenous culture with extreme violence, including sexual violence. It is estimated that 150 000 indigenous children were boarded in these schools during 150 years. This colonial past is not resolved and allows this indifference to the fate of indigenous women and girls.

In her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Andrea Smith established the correlation between land conquest and sexual violence as a genocidal instrument. With the ongoing conquest of underground lands in Canada by energy and mining special interests, Smith’s argument that “sexual violence is a tool by which certain peoples become marked as inherently “rapable” is most important to remember.

When Stephen Harper became the prime minister of Canada in 2006, he immediately abolished social programs for indigenous people. Then, his C45 Law project to modify the environmental laws that protected the indigenous land and populations was introduced. The same government downplayed the attacks on indigenous women, treating them as isolated crimes. These connections must be recognized to allow a better understanding of the situation of indigenous people in Canada and elsewhere. Indigenous people are fighting on every front.

Indigenous women don’t want to be the victims and live in fear. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) has organized actions to expose this femicide. After the murder of another young indigenous woman last summer, indigenous women defied the Prime Minister Harper with a series of photos of women holding a sign that says “Am I next?”

They demand a nationwide inquiry with financial means attached to it and in consultation with indigenous women. But, as Michelle Audette from NWAC underlined, “The government refused the visit of the UN Rapporteur. Do you think it is going to receive our demands?”

That is why the organizing and actions to break the code of silence and recognize this femicide are not weakening and must be made visible.

(Photo Credit: Humber News)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Andrea Smith, Brigitte Marti, Canada, Emmanuelle Walter, Idle No More, indigenous women, James Anaya, Maisy Odjick, Michelle Audette, Native Women's Association of Canada, Resistances, Shannon Alexander

No crime, no trial, indefinite detention: Happy birthday Glory Anawa

December 15, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 7 Comments

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” We have traveled far, and quickly, from such notions of childhood, tenderness, and caring. Instead, we now have prison camouflaged as `detention’, and hell powder puffed as “indefinite detention.” Indefinite detention is not indefinite. It’s eternal damnation, and we, not the children, are the damned.

Glory Anawa fled Cameroon after a threat of Female Genital Mutilation. She sought refuge. Now she sits in a Canadian immigration detention center with little to no hope of seeing anything like freedom ever again.

Anawa’s story is long and complicated, and yet quite simple. At the age of 23 and pregnant, Glory Anawa was sent to Yarl’s Wood, where she remained until she was 8 months and 2 weeks pregnant. Then she was released … for a matter of weeks, after which it was back to Yarl’s Wood for the young mother and her 6-week-old daughter, Tracy. From there, things went downhill, as they had for other mothers and daughters in Yarl’s Wood. Finally, Glory Anawa and daughter Tracy were released.

In February 2013, Glory Anawa, pregnant, sought refuge in Canada. She was immediately taken into custody. In August 2013, Glory gave birth to her son, Alpha Ochigbo. Since birth, Alpha, a Canadian citizen, has been with his mother in prison. The authorities have tried to deport Glory, but Cameroon won’t provide papers. So, Glory Anawa is stuck, because Canada does not have a limit on how long it can detain immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, or refugees. Glory is not stuck. She has been firmly planted by Canada into a new rung of hell, that of the women who seek asylum, refuge, or help. Welcome to the neoliberal world order.

“I don’t even have words to express how I feel. It makes me speechless. I’ve been robbed of my life,” says Glory Anawa. Suffering beyond expression followed by silence followed by a total and global theft that results in death-in-life. Around the world, this is the formula for those who seek asylum, generally, and for women in particular. Canada adds the twist of indefinite detention. Glory Anawa is one of 145 migrants in Canada who are under indefinite detention. Why? Why hold anyone indefinitely? Why hold those who have committed no crime indefinitely? Why hold those who have never been tried indefinitely?

Today, December 15, 2014, is Glory Anawa’s 29^th birthday. She should not be condemned to indefinite anything. No one should. And we should not be condemned for eternity for the crime of looking the other way. Tear down more than the walls. Tear down the processes, tear down the consciousness that allows us to think it’s right to condemn women, children, men, all who seek haven from a life of pain and suffering.

(Photo Credit: TheMainlander.com)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: asylum, Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Glory Anawa, Haunts, indefinite detention, prison, women, Yarl's Wood

Jamila Bibi and the high price of compassion

September 24, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 6 Comments

On Tuesday, September 16, Jamila Bibi was deported from Canada to Pakistan. The story is straightforward, and then again it’s not. Jamila Bibi is 65 years old. In 2007, Bibi fled her home. She says she was accused, falsely, of adultery. If convicted, Jamila Bibi could face death by stoning. Bibi went to Canada and applied for asylum.

In 2009, her asylum case was heard. Negar Azmudeh, who presided over the case, concluded that Jamila Bibi was a credible witness, that there was ample evidence that she had been unjustly accused of adultery, and that if convicted she would face death by stoning. However, Azmudeh reasoned that since Jamila Bibi’s husband had not filed for divorce, she was not only still married but under the protection of her husband. It was her husband’s uncle who had filed the adultery charges. And so Jamila Bibi was denied asylum. She did not have enough money for a lawyer, and so did not immediately appeal the decision.

Three months after the 2009 hearing, Bibi’s husband filed for and received a divorce. That action did not change the decision. Bibi has been working in Saskatoon as a cook. She reported dutifully every week. She made friends, some very dear, such as her employer Sahana Yeasmin.

In 2012, Bibi had enough money set aside to approach a lawyer, who immediately appealed the case. Again, Bibi reported every week. Two weeks ago, on her regular visit, she was informed she was to be deported. She was immediately taken into custody. Less than a week later, she was deported to Pakistan. According to Sahana Yeasmin, Bibi, now in Pakistan, fears for her life and is in hiding. Yeasmin reports that Bibi is thankful for the support and remains hopeful that she will be able to return to Canada and to her life in Saskatoon.

Jamila Bibi’s story, up to now, is painful and terrible, but Canada’s story, in many ways, is far worse. How is it that an adjudicator can say that despite credible and ample evidence, a woman accused of adultery is safe because her husband has not divorced her? How is that no one applied compassionate grounds to keep Jamila Bibi in Canada? Where exactly is the intersection of the rule of law and the exercise of compassion, in particular in asylum cases? Surely, these are the exceptional cases that test and prove the rule.

As Nida Shahzeb wrote, “What evidence are they talking about? Did they expect Jamila Bibi to pull some strings even though they know she does not come from privilege back in her village? Or do they expect her accusers to now shower her with petals at the airport? What makes this action of the Canadian government different from the numerous acts of brutality in Pakistan? Is Canada to be held accountable if Jamila Bibi is killed in Pakistan, a country which has a continuing history of honour killings?”

Why did Canada ship Jamila Bibi back to Pakistan, perhaps to a slow and painful death? Because she wasn’t worth keeping. As a woman, a woman of color, an older woman, a woman worker of meager means, she simply didn’t have enough value for the State to be bothered. In the global asylum and refugee marketplace, the price of compassion for such women has become prohibitively high.

(Photo Credit: cbc.ca)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: asylum, Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, Jamila Bibi, Pakistan, Sahana Yeasmin, women

Canada’s walking zombies: women prisoners

April 15, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 11 Comments

Across Canada, federal prisons have routinely prescribed psychotropic drugs, and in particular quetiapine, to women prisoners. Women prisoners, friends and families, and advocates have long complained that the women’s prisons are a factory for zombie production, that women go in with some problems and come out stone cold zombie. They were right.

Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, has been on the case since last year, when he was informed, by the Canadian Press and CBC, that the Correctional Service Canada had told them that, basically, it didn’t have data on prison prescriptions. It had general information but nothing specific.

The conditions in women’s prisons are specific.

Sapers found that, of 591 federal women prisoners, 370 are on psychotropic drugs, prescribed by the prison staff. 63% of women prisoners are on heavy medication, with dangerous side effects. The more local, the more vicious are the numbers. For example, in the Nova Institution for Women in Nova Scotia, the Joliette Institution for Women in Quebec and the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia, the prescription rate is around 75%. Three out of every four women is being given drugs. By contrast, in 2001, the prescription rate was around 42%.

Why are so many women on quetiapine? Not to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which is what quetiapine is meant for. No. In Canada’s federal prison system, quetiapine is the go-to drug for any sleeping discomfort, for women, that is. Further, many of the women prisoners are given multiple psychotropic drugs.

There’s a special fate in store for women prisoners: “Women are prescribed more psychotropic medications than men, both in the community and in prison. Prescribing psychotropic medication in the prison setting is particularly problematic given the hierarchical relationship between psy and correctional mandates – where psy care is executed through a correctional system that inherently prioritizes security and carceral power over therapeutic care. Due to the fact that provincial and federal correctional systems are responsible for providing mental health care to prisoners a power imbalance exists between psy and medical experts and the correctional administrators to whom they are accountable and the prisoner-patients. It is important to remember that a prisoner’s ability to refuse medication is not always guaranteed; medication orders are often written into the prisoner’s correctional plan and thus become compulsory.”

For Aboriginal women prisoners, it’s worse. For women in provincial prisons, it’s worse. For all women prisoners, however, the prison produces a mass population of women “walking zombies.”

Current and former women prisoners report now what they reported three years ago. They were given drugs, without explanation. They received little to no real counseling. They couldn’t say no. They were prisoners, after all, and they were women prisoners. If the state wants women to become walking zombies, so be it.

(Image Credit: https://thenonconformer.wordpress.com)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, psychotropic drugs, women, women prisoners, women's prison

In Canada, another casualty of immigration laws and indifference

February 10, 2014 by Brigitte Marti 9 Comments

On December 20^th 2013 Lucia Vega Jimenez committed suicide, hanging herself in a shower stall of a bleak border facility at the Vancouver International Airport under the jurisdiction of Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA. She died eight days later in a hospital.

The Transit Police arrested Lucia for two reasons. First, she did not purchase her bus ticket. Second her name and origin could be the source of a serious offense. It became a life-and-death offense for Lucia.

After her arrest, her fate was in the hands of CBSA, who sent her to their Vancouver airport facility to await deportation.

The news of Lucia Vega Jimenez’s death surfaced over a month after she died. It has generated a number of outcries and questions. But what are the questions?

Why was she detained in quasi isolation with no contact allowed with friends and family members? What is the border that the CBSA is “defending” so harshly?

After 9-11 2001, the rhetoric about border insecurity and porosity was utilized by CBSA to implement secrecy as its regular practice through protection against terrorism legislation in 2003. According to immigration lawyer Phil Rankin, “They think themselves as the first line against terrorism.”

Exactly what borders are we talking about, as all sorts of merchandise and products travel freely thanks to manipulative trade agreements? Moreover, a certain code of silence surrounds the way the global market trade system impoverishes and destabilizes populations, especially women.

Lucia was 42. she was worried for her safety, as she had made a failed refugee claim in 2010. She was distraught, as some cash that she saved for her family had been stolen. She was detained in a facility that is described as a very lonely, isolated place. Phil Rankin explained, “No one gets in or out. It’s very impersonal, very secure, and very private, there’s no John Howard Society, no visits from family or lawyers. They want to move these people without a fuss or muss. There’s no oversight by non-officials.”

This question of lack of independent oversight has been challenged by the BC Civil Liberties Association and No One Is Illegal, a grassroots organization that works to end detention for migrants in Canada. Then, should we question the fact that the CBSA has contracted with a private firm (Genesis Security)?

Despite some 7000 signatures on a petition that demands an “immediate public inquiry and a comprehensive review of migrant detention policies,” the tone of some comments from forums such as a local TV forum reveals that the general public has been rendered insensitive to these questions of detention of migrants. The reality of Lucia’s death in isolation, the reality of a woman who worked and lived in Vancouver as a domestic worker, vanishes under the views that she was “illegal” and responsible for killing herself. These populist utterances are encouraged and help to camouflage the reasons for border security that justify the mistreatment of migrants and the surveillance of everyone.

We should wonder how borders have become private and secretly run to serve the global market and how in the midst of privatization and deregulation policies, Lucia Vega Jimenez had come to prefer to kill herself rather than being deported. We should wonder about the complete indifference of officials who pride themselves in defending their country, but defending their country against what?

(Image Credit: Sanctuary Health)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Brigitte Marti, Canada, immigration, Lucia Vega Jimenez, prison, Resistances, women

Who tied the knot that killed Lucia Vega Jimenez?

February 5, 2014 by Dan Moshenberg 19 Comments

42-year-old Mexican immigrant Lucia Vega Jimenez died on December 28, 2013. On December 20, she was found hanging from a shower stall in the `immigration holding center’ at the Vancouver airport. Apparently, she had been hanging, without oxygen, for at least 40 minutes, before she was cut down and sent to hospital. Who tied the knot? Canada. The global system of `immigrant detention’. Everyone.

Everything about Lucia Vega Jimenez’s story is familiar. And it doesn’t end with her death.

In 2010, Jimenez had applied for asylum in Canada, was rejected and deported. She returned to Canada in the Spring of 2013, got a job, off the books, as a hotel cleaner, kept her head down and her nose to the grindstone. Described by a friend as a `ghost’ in Vancouver, Jimenez worked and saved money to send home to her ailing mother, sister and her sister’s three children. In late December, she was picked up for not paying bus fare, and then was flipped over to `the authorities.’ They shuttled her off to jail, and then to the holding cell, a private facility in the basement of the airport, and there she ended her life. While in detention, the money she’d saved `disappeared.’

The CBSA did not release any information for almost a month, and the `information’ has been obstructionist and opaque. So, the world asks questions.

A reporter asked: “How often were detainees checked? Were those checks visual inspections? Were there cameras monitoring the cells? Does the CBSA put out press releases at the death of a detainee (which has happened several times in the past), and is there legislation that bounds the agency to announce the death of a detainee? What is the CBSA policy regarding visitors to the YVR [Vancouver International Airport] holding center? Are lawyers, family, friends, John Howard Society, religious counsel, etc. allowed in?”

No answer was forthcoming.

Friends and advocates want to know what happened. Why did no one see Lucia Vega Jimenez for at least 40 some minutes? The Mexican government wants to know what happens to its citizens in `holding centers’. The Mexican Consul-General, Claudia Franco Hijuelos, has a particular interest: “She was fearful of going back to Mexico – not to the country, but specifically to some domestic situation that she might face. That is why we provided some options for her of transition houses where she might be housed. She considered the options and she chose one of those options. Everything was set for her to fly directly to that city in Mexico where the transition house would receive her.” According to the Consul-General, Vega “seemed to be accepting the situation.”

What happened? The questions of time – how long it took to find Vega, how long it took to `report’ her death – are part and parcel of the structure of gendered indignity for immigrant women. Four years ago, a study on health, access to services and working conditions for undocumented migrants in Canada noted: “The effects of being non-status are invariably gendered. Non-status women have been noted to be extremely vulnerable to poverty, unemployment, poor and unstable living conditions, danger, exploitation, abuse, and high risk or complications during pregnancy. Lack of status limits women’s ability to access information, seek social assistance, counseling or health care, which contributes to their reliance on unsafe and underground employment or informal networks to obtain housing … Generally, non-status women have also been noted to experience more language barriers, social isolation, and fear, in addition to lack of control over partner abuse and the effects of this on their children. In relation to policies, regularization programs and other immigration policies have been noted to reinforce dominant power relations that consequently subjugate women as dependents of their opposite sex partners.”

Lucia Vega Jimenez lived, and died, the life of the undocumented women immigrant. Precarious doesn’t begin to cover it. But she persevered. And the State? The State chose to “reinforce dominant power … that subjugates women.”

(Image Credit: http://sanctuaryhealth.blogspot.com)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, immigration detention, Lucia Vega Jimenez, Mexico, prison, women immigrant

Remember this: We all killed Ashley Smith

December 31, 2013 by Dan Moshenberg 9 Comments

On October 19, 2007, 19-year-old Ashley Smith died, or was encouraged to kill herself, while seven prison guards in a model Canadian women’s prison watched, followed orders, and did nothing. And by doing nothing is meant committed homicide. That was a decision of coroner’s jury, Thursday, December 19, 2013, six years and two months, to the day.

While it’s a good decision, and while it allows Ashley’s mother, in particular, a kind of peace, there’s more here. Ashley Smith was a girl, then a young woman who lived with mental and emotional problems. She needed help. She knew she needed help. She begged for help, and not only in her last moments. Her entire adolescence and brief adult life, she begged for help. There was none available in New Brunswick, where her family lived, and so she went into the system, and then was shipped around, from prison to prison, from prison system to prison system.

How does a young woman beg for help in prison? There’s one sure-fire way: self-harm. And that’s the route Ashley Smith took. That irked the warden who ordered the staff to do, ultimately, as they did.

But this is not about Canada, nor about seven guards, nor one warden, nor even the so-called correctional system nor the so-called criminal justice system. It’s not about the mental health system either. It’s about us, you, me, all of us.

Where ever you live right now, people, and in particular young girls, are being thrown behind bars for the crime of asking for help. `Budget crises’ produce austerity programs just as `inefficiencies’ once produced structural adjustment programs. These are all too genteel descriptors for a global factory of torture and death, that begins and ends with everyone who is supposed to be responsible responsibly watching a girl kill herself and doing nothing to stop it.

This is not about strangers `letting something bad happen’ nor is this `the order of things.’ This is the order of people and power.

We all contribute to a world in which prison has become the first and the final solution to everything, in which prison and military budgets dwarf all other government expenditures. We vote for that, we teach that, we allow that to continue, we contribute. Remember that.

And in the New Year, remember this: we all killed Ashley Smith. We did not `fail’ her; we killed her. So, rest in peace, Ashley Smith. Perhaps your death and life will not have been for naught. Perhaps.

(Photo Credit: UWaterloo.ca)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Ashley Smith, Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, prison

Stop sending Aboriginal women to prison!

December 2, 2013 by Dan Moshenberg 16 Comments

Canada’s federal prisons hold more prisoners than ever before. The provincial prisons are also full to the brim. What’s going on? Crime is on the decline. The White prison population is also in decline.

Last Tuesday, Canada’s Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers issued his annual report. The picture is both grim and not surprising. There’s a `boom’ in prisoners, and it’s made up of people of color. Aboriginal people make up around 4 per cent of the population, and close to 25% of the Federal prison population.

Black prisoners are “over-represented”, especially in maximum-security prisons. Black prisoners are also “over-represented” in solitary confinement. Black prisoners disproportionately face the “use of force” from guards. Black prisoners also face discrimination in prison jobs employment and in parole release.

Meanwhile, the prison staff remains overwhelmingly White. The Fear of a Black Planet continues to this day. To no one’s surprise.

For women in the system, the rates of incarceration far exceed those of men. Since 2003, the female prison population increased by over 60%. One in three women the federal prison system is Aboriginal. Since 2003, the Aboriginal women’s federal prison population has increased by 83.7%

Why are Aboriginal women being imprisoned at such high, and higher, rates? What happens to Aboriginal women when they enter into the prison system?

“In September 2012, an independent review commissioned by the Department of Public Safety entitled Marginalized: The Aboriginal Women’s Experience in Federal Corrections was released. The external report examined the reasons behind the over-representation of Aboriginal women in federal penitentiaries, revealing a depressing picture of dislocation, isolation, violence, poverty, victimization and discrimination. It examines several themes that are consistent with the Office’s own findings and recommendations in this area of corrections: over-classification of Aboriginal women inmates; high prison self-injury rates among Aboriginal women; lack of culturally appropriate programming; and limited use of CCRA [Corrections and Conditional Release Act] provisions to share care and custody of Aboriginal offenders with Aboriginal communities.”

Aboriginal women are “over-represented” in solitary and maximum security. Force is used on Aboriginal women prisoners at an extraordinarily high rate. But the highest rate is that of self harm. From 2011 to 2012 Aboriginal women accounted for almost 75% of self-injuries among women prisoners. More often than not, self-injury results in charges being filed, solitary confinement, and security reclassification. If an Aboriginal woman hurts herself, it’s a crime. Instead of help, counseling, anything supportive, she’s sent into the hole.

Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers concluded, “You cannot reasonably claim to have a just society with incarceration rates like these.” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, “The only minority I would say we are interested in are the criminals.”

(Photo Credit: flickr / Vice)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Aboriginal women, Black prisoners, Canada, Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, Howard Sapers, prison