This is the year.

I work at the busiest courthouse in the country. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, when thousands of workers have been ordered to work from home, schools and universities have been closed, and events numbering over 250 cancelled, it felt like nothing had changed at the Brampton Courthouse. Despite these risks, the courthouse was busy and people remained incarcerated. Imprisoned people were brought from jails to the court, and kept up to 8 at a time in small jail cells under the courtroom. They had only a steel open toilet, and no sink, soap, tissues or disinfectant. Jury-trials may have been called off , intermittent sentences suspended, and family visitations halted, but hundreds of people are still being forced to attend court. Those who failed to attend risked a warrant for their arrest. In court, people sat side by side, shared pens, handcuffs, and communicated in close-contact. It was clear that the perceived needs of the legal system were prioritized over public he...

Good morning: This election, I am helping run an election campaign for the NDP and our champion candidate Melissa in my Toronto riding of University-Rosedale. I am writing to you today as a committed organizer and friend, to share why I see this political involvement as an extension of my social justice movement work, and therefore why I’ve decided to commit myself fully to organizing around this incredibly important Canadian election. I hope you will choose to get involved as well.   Some background... I moved back to Canada after many years doing human rights and racial, economic, and basic freedom legal work and organizing in the United States. I love being back in Toronto. I feel a commitment from communities I am connecting back into to building a society where we can all thrive - because of our differences, because of government action to remove barriers and create a more equitable playing field, because of collective commitment to support each other. ...

He was 15 with the most hopeful and cheerful attitude. He was excited to go back to school and when we met in a make-shift temporary shelter for migrants along the US-Mexico border, he asked me to bring him books so he could learn English. Over the days I spent at the border giving people legal information about the refugee process, he slowly opened up to me about the violence he had been threatened with because he wouldn’t join the gangs back home in Honduras. “I want to come to the US to go to school, but also, I really just want to live.” I lost him for months in the US immigration system—a system designed to exact suffering to deter unwanted migration. This child would spend over 4 months incarcerated. He was released in the middle of the night having been transferred to New Jersey, with an ankle monitor and a paper with his next court date. We found each other through Facebook in April and he shared over breakfast: “I’ve had to take a job washing dishes a...

Three years ago, as we came together with family and in celebration over the holidays, the stark image of a young Syrian boy’s dead body floating ashore in a desperate attempt to escape to safety captured the world’s attention and urgently demanded action. The complicity of governments’ in this young boy’s death reflected the grave costs of global inaction to humanitarian crisis. This year again, as we enter the new year, a crisis is building at the U.S.-Mexico border as politicians play politics with human lives. I spent the last 9 days in Barretal , the Mexican government run refugee camp where individuals and families who traveled with the Refugee Caravan are being forcibly held. I worked with a local organization to help provide legal advice around the asylum process and help people prepare for their asylum interviews. Barretal is the U.S. and Mexican government’s response to years of failed immigration, economic, and foreign policies. It is also the stark illustration of an an...