|
|
|
|
||
|
PROTESTS DISRUPT RACIST MEETINGS
(This article is from the Oct. 16-31, 1999 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
By Kimball Cariou
TAKING ADVANTAGE of the media uproar over the arrival of several hundred Chinese migrants, racist groups are trying to hold public forums to whip up anti-migrant views in British Columbia. At least two of these meetings in late September were met with strong public resistance.
The notorious anti-immigrant campaigner Paul Fromm spoke at the Ramada Inn in Prince George on Sept. 29. Despite protests from the local multicultural society and other anti-racist groups, the hotel refused to cancel Fromm's room rental. About 25 people picketed the meeting, handing out pamphlets outlining Fromm's history of racist and neo-fascist activities. Some people turned back after reading the material, and in the end, only about ten non-protesters actually attended the meeting.
A protest by about 300 people took place the next night, after the Vancouver Public Library Board rejected demands by labour and anti-racist groups to cancel its rental of the Alice McKay Room to the Canadian Free Speech League.
Despite its name, high-profile supporters of the CFSL spend considerable time and money on lawsuits targetting anti-racists who expose the hatred spread by ultra-right groups. At the CFSL meeting on Sept. 30, the speakers were Victoria lawyer Doug Christie, who acts as defence counsel for many neo-fascists facing legal charges, and North Vancouver's Doug Collins, whose newspaper column promoted anti-Semitism and racism for years until he "retired."
An hour before the meeting, anti-racist activists began gathering outside the downtown library, handing out literature about Christie and Collins to library patrons and passersby. Most of the protesters found ways to get around a police blockade of the building's main doors, taking the rally inside the lobby. But access to the basement-level McKay room was blocked off by police and security guards at the top of a flight of stairs. As the entire building echoed with chants and slogans, many library patrons and even some staff members joined the protest.
About a dozen anti-racists paid $10 to get into the meeting, along with some 20-25 CFSL supporters. When the meeting began, other protesters pushed through police lines to pound on the locked doors. The combination of noise from the lobby and the doors, plus the unrelenting challenges to Christie and Collins by protesters inside the room, eventually caused it to be shut down after just an hour.
Police quickly hustled the CFSL supporters out of the building, except for one car which was briefly blocked at the parking garage exit. Two protesters were arrested, including one Communist Party of Canada member, a Chilean exile who was the victim of torture and fascist violence in that country.
Having spent thousands of dollars on overtime costs for an estimated forty police and security guards for the event, a spokesperson for the VPL told the Vancouver Province that its policy allowing neo-fascist groups to rent meeting rooms may be reviewed.
(NOTE: After this issue was printed, word arrived that the CFSL has booked the same Vancouver Public Library meeting room for a similar event in late October. Call the PV office at 604-255-2041 for details on protests against this event.)
|
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
