This week’s program features 3 conversations:
Firstly, we speak with Sterling Stutz, a former co-defendant in the Main G20 Conspiracy case stemming back to the 2010 anti-G20 protests in Toronto, Canada. Sterling shares her experiences around the protest, collective defense and resistance to the G20 and Canadian State.She also speaks a bit about Det. Sergent Gary Giroux, who is the most public cop prosecuting post-G20 arrests, as well as the pig who pushed for the prosecution of Nyki Kish.
More info at http://www.freenyki.org/
- Transcripts
- PDF (Unimposed)
- Zine (Imposed PDF)
Next up, we speak with Fatimah, who speaks about the case of Dane Rossman. Dane is an American activist facing extradition to Canada in for charges stemming from the G20 protest of 2010. We talk about Dane’s work, borders, neoliberalism, incarceration and how to support Dane.
Find out more at http://supportdanerossman.blogspot.com/
Finally, we speak with Katherine about the case of Joel Bitar, another activist from the U.S. facing extradtion. We speak about Joel’s case and how he can be best supported. Find out more at http://supportjoel.com/
For more info on other cases surrounding the ongoing repression of G20 arrestees:
http://g20.torontomobilize.org/
http://appetitesforchange.wordpress.com/
The playlist can be found here
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Sterling Stutz Transcription
TFSR: We’re speaking with Sterling Stutz, one of the 17 former co-defendants in the main G20 conspiracy case, stemming from the 2010 G20 protest in Toronto. Thanks for speaking with us.
Sterling: Thanks so much for having me.
TFSR: Can you talk about the G20 protest in Toronto and the conspiracy trial that came out of it? What type of people were targeted by the conspiracy case?
Sterling: In 2010 we planned a mobilization in Toronto for the G20 summit that was happening downtown, and we saw thousands of people converge on the city protesting things like capitalism, colonialism, gender justice. There were esteemed days of resistance. One of those days, on June 26, was a major labor demonstration with thousands of people in the streets, and part of that was a breakoff march where there was a black bloc, and property destruction happened that night. We saw over 1100 arrests over the weekend, which is the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, and part of those arrests were folks charged with conspiracy.
There were 21 arrests for conspiracy charges in total out of this “main conspiracy group,” as the prosecutors called us. Those arrests came out of the context of organizing for this mobilization against the G20.It was based on infiltration that happened by police officers of the Ontario Provincial Police into the network Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance, that was formed as part of the mobilization. They were infiltrating our communities since November 2008 in the lead up to both the Olympics and the G20 summit. For the 21 people charged with conspiracy, some of the charges were conspiracy to assault police, conspiracy to obstruct police, and conspiracy to commit mischief over $5,000.
Conspiracy basically means that two or more people agreed to do something. What happened in terms of the prosecution of this case? They cast a wide, wide net over those who mobilized against the summit and singled out those that they perceived to be leaders. The people who were targeted by the conspiracy case were community organizers from across southern Ontario and Quebec. Those people, for the most part, participated in organizing around indigenous solidarity, migrant justice, and anarchist organizing, which the state has been seeing increasingly as a threat, due to the coming together of these different political struggles. As a result, the state has been working to criminalize and stop our organizing and the effective work that we were doing.
TFSR: Conspiracy trials have been on the rise in the United States to oppress and divide anarchists and other radicals. Do you see this tendency to use conspiracy charges against anarchists and anti-authoritarians on the rise by the Canadian state?
Sterling: I think that the tactic of using the legal system against us is something that is continually going on. But the conspiracy case that we were faced with in 2010 was unprecedented in terms of the amount of police work that went into it, how long of an investigation it was, and the number of accused that we were dealing with, as 21 people were charged. Also, a lot of these charges stemmed from infiltration, or from having our communities infiltrated, which I think is a tactic that we’re not going to see go away. It’s just going to keep increasing, and it is increasing when we see the policing that’s happening across the country from all the different organizing that’s going on. They found out that if they infiltrate our movements, they really get a lot, and the criminalization of dissent and of organizing has always been felt, and always been present, but we’re seeing it really strongly now.
That’s because they’re afraid of our movements, they’re afraid of the things we’re getting, and the strength that we’re building. The people that we’re talking about here, that are being infiltrated and being criminalized in their organizing, are people who work in movements for radical change representing real alternatives to confronting existing power structures, which is terrifying governments, and terrifying those systems of hierarchy. This type of repression happens because we’re actually working on things, we’re actually creating change.
TFSR: What do you think it is about the mixture of organizing around indigenous rights and immigrant solidarity while using anarchist principles that is specifically threatening? What is bringing about this quick and harsh response from the state?
Sterling: Organizing around migrant justice, indigenous solidarity, and anarchism requires a complete rejection of the state’s existence. It’s saying the state is here to cause us harm and perpetuate inequalities, and that is not okay. The fact that people are standing up and actually rejecting state structures terrifies those whose job it is to enforce those structures. Toronto just won a victory where city council voted to make it a sanctuary city, where undocumented people have access to city services. That’s the first city in Canada to do that, which is huge. Saying that undocumented people, folks who do not have full immigration status or any immigration status, have access to city services is life-changing for so many people, and it terrifies this government, which is a racist colonial government whose job it is to keep people out of the country.
Different communities coming together over these issues, creating allyships, is seen as a direct threat to the state. The people that we see charged in this group were working on those issues, and were working in a number of communities. You had multiple six or so people from the Kitchener–Waterloo region, three people from Guelph, two people from Hamilton, two people from Montreal, and a handful from Toronto. That’s across the entire region. It seems quite intentional that that they specifically were trying to disrupt and harm our movement. For myself, it has really committed me to working on these issues and understanding the complicated ways in which the state tries to criminalize us and tries to stop us from doing the work that we want to do.
TFSR: Besides enhancing solidarity and, I guess, a de facto understanding of legal processes, what other lessons did you learn by being a part of the trial and the collective defense?
Sterling: I think that I learned that a collective defense is really hard. I mean it’s complicated, because we had so many people going through this process where we couldn’t even talk to each other, we all had non-association conditions, which are really common in the Canadian legal system. So we couldn’t talk to each other without our lawyers present. Most of us couldn’t even talk about anything that wasn’t for the purpose of legal defense. So personally, it’s difficult because some of those people were my roommates and close friends who I couldn’t talk to really about anything for a year and a half, but I also learned that there’s no victory in the courts, there’s no way to win.
We identified a set of goals, and were able to use leverage that we built ourselves by working together in order to meet our goals of getting the least amount of jail time for the least number of people, but we didn’t win, because there is no winning. This is a system that has always been a political tool to use against groups that have been deemed undesirable or who refuse to cooperate with the it. Its sole existence is to protect Canada’s colonial and capitalist social structure. There is no winning inside of that. There’s just, less harm.
TFSR: So, there are five American activists who are facing extradition to Canada stemming from charges related to the G20 protests in 2010. How is it that more than a year after the end of the case, actually, coming up on three years since the anti-G20 protests themselves, that the reverberations are still being felt this way?
Sterling: It takes a really long time to extradite someone. The extradition process for Joel began in October 2011. We’re talking right now in March 2013, so really, the legal system works very slowly. But outside of that, it’s this idea that the G20 is not going away. The Canadian state is taking the property damage that happened on June 26 extremely seriously, and are quite upset about the smashed windows and bank machines. It’s a message that this won’t be tolerated, and I think that it’s a response to the organizing work and the mobilization that happened there. It’s a response with a very specific message by the state that, “This is not acceptable. We are going to push you into cooperating with us and into not doing this again.” And that’s not accepted by the broader community. We see this in the ways that community organizing is continuing in the face of this continued repression, and that there is this growing support for the people being extradited, and highlights the work our people are doing in response to the militarization of the borders.
TFSR: The main G20 conspiracy case that you were involved in resulted in six people taking guilty charges and facing prison time, with 11 people having their charges dropped, among which you were in the latter group. Are material and other forms of support still being sought for the defendants who took jail time? Is anyone still imprisoned?
Sterling: We took a plea deal in November 2011, where six people pled guilty to counseling charges, which basically means having told people to do illegal things, in exchange for 11 of us having our charges withdrawn. I was one of the people who had my charges withdrawn. Alex Hundert is the last person who’s in jail from that. He should be getting out of jail quite soon. He’s been in jail since June 2012. The other co-defendants from this case have been released and have resolved all of that.
There are still folks facing G20 charges, though. There’s somebody expected to be sentenced later this month, and a couple of people from Toronto, like from southern Ontario, who are still facing charges and challenging those charges. Donations are still needed, especially for support of these folks who are facing extradition or have been extradited. In the case of three folks who have already appeared in Toronto court, that support is still really needed. There’s a G20 fundraising cookbook that was put out, called “Appetites for Change: Recipes for Hungry Radicals.” I was part of editing the book, which is going to be available quite soon online. Folks can check it out at appetitesforchange.wordpress.com
TFSR: Is there a central website where people can follow what’s going on with the folks in Canada who are still facing charges?
Sterling: Yes, for other information about charges related to the G20. There is the website G20.torontomobilize.org (no longer active as of 2026).
TFSR: The public face of the Canadian state’s case for extradition is Detective Sergeant Gary Giroux. What do you know about this detective, and does he have a history of prosecuting anti-authoritarians?
Sterling: Detective Giroux is one of the Toronto police officers who has been in the media the most about the G20, and about trying to find the people who smashed things based on facial recognition software, and has spoken about the extraditions, and was really the person pushing for them. He has a history of prosecuting anarchists and anti-authoritarians.
We saw that when we talk about Nicole Kish (Nyki), who is woman serving a life sentence right now in Ontario for second degree murder. Giroux was the lead detective on her case, and he basically pushed and pushed, and was in the media calling her a murderer when there was no evidence to convict her of this. He testified in court that he based his arrest of Nikki and case against her on these people’s testimony, who have later gone back on it, and said that actually they’re not sure between two to three people if Nikki was that person, and were actually unable to identify her in court as the person that they apparently saw holding a knife. Despite this, she was very much convicted in the media. The media called it the “Panhandler Murder.” It was really just a couple of people from the Toronto police pushing this, and Giroux was at the forefront of that, and he’s at the forefront of this again, making it personal.
It’s about personal attacks based on our lives or based on our politics. When you charge somebody with a crime, it’s very personal, and it’s inherently personal, because it’s their life. But when we talk about fighting for radical change and criminalizing our movements, it’s also political, and there is no separating those two.
TFSR: In the case of Nyki, is there information that listeners can get about her case and ways to support her?
Sterling: For more information about Nyki’s case, you should visit freenyki.org.
TFSR: Sterling, what can people do to support the people facing extradition, and make it harder for the US state to secretly extradite them to Canada during this newest wave of repression?
Sterling: Pay attention to their support websites, what’s going on with the extradition, follow the cases, spread the word, and tell people about what’s going on. So many people I’ve talked to and told about what’s happening had no idea about it. Most people don’t and so really just having those basic conversations with folks, telling them what’s up, and spreading the word. Also, writing letters of support can really, really make a difference when we’re talking about incarceration and supporting folks facing charges. Donations are also great, so that we can help support folks who are doing prisoner support work in terms of all the different funds that are needed when we’re talking about paying for lawyers etc. These are all really great things to do as acts of solidarity.
TFSR: Sterling, how can people find out more about your case?
Sterling: If folks go to https://conspiretoresist.wordpress.com/, information is available about our main conspiracy case.
TFSR: We’ve been speaking with Sterling Stutz, one of the 17 former co-defendants of the main G20 conspiracy case, stemming from the 2010 anti-G20 protests in Toronto, about her experience as a co-defendant on that case. We’re discussing this in light of the five Americans who are facing extradition to Canada related to charges stemming from that protest against the G20. Thank you so much.
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Fatima on Dane Rossman Transcription
TFSR: We’re speaking with Fatima, who’s doing support work for Dane Rossman in Arizona, an activist facing deportation to Canada. Thanks for joining us, Fatima. Can you tell our listeners what’s happening to Dane Rossman?
Fatima: Sure, so Dane was picked up Thursday, February 20, first by the US Marshals. He was arrested at his house, and he was taken in on a provisional arrest warrant, which was issued by the US Attorney’s Office. They were acting on a Canadian extradition request. Dane is one of five Americans sought in Canada for alleged offenses stemming from the G20 summit there in 2010.
TFSR: So Dane was someone who was arrested in a mass arrest during the G20 and then released without charges, is that correct?
Fatima: Yes, he was taken into custody and released without charges. He was arrested in the largest mass arrest in Canada’s history, and only now, three years later, he’s facing three charges related to alleged property damage.
TFSR: Can you talk about what kind of precedence there is for this extradition, if any, in the US, considering the lack of charges at the time of their arrest in Canada?
Fatima: The extradition of individuals from the US to Canada for property damage is almost unheard of. However, people have been extradited from Canada to the US, and Canada and the US have a very functioning extradition treaty. People are frequently extradited and passed between the two countries, but the extradition for these kind of charges that Dane is facing is pretty unprecedented. You can easily read the extradition treaty between the US and Canada by just googling US-Canada extradition treaty. You’ll notice that Article Four says the extradition shall not be granted. There’s a subsection three, which talks about when the events of extradition is requested is of a political character, or the person whose extradition is requested proves that the extradition request has been made for the purpose of trying to punish him for an offense of the above mentioned character. So there is potentially an argument that these extraditions are politically motivated. I think that the problem comes with the differences in defining what is a politically motivated extradition request in the eyes of, say, a magistrate or in the eyes of someone who thinks that you should be able to cross nation boundaries and protest, given the global nature of the institutions which are controlling our lives and communities.
TFSR: Can you tell listeners a little bit about the social justice work that Dane Rossman does in the US, and the irony of the situation in that context?
Fatima: Sure, so Dane does a lot of different kinds of work in Tucson, Arizona, where he lives. He’s a social justice advocate and a humanitarian aid volunteer. He has done a lot of work around fighting criminalizing state laws we’ve been dealing with in the southwest, and educating people about mass incarceration.
TFSR: Dane’s apparently not the only one facing extradition, can you say anything about the others facing extradition?
Fatima: There’s four other Americans facing extradition, they all have a different number and variety of charges.
TFSR: Can you talk a little bit in detail about what sort of border work Dane does?
Fatima: Dane works with a humanitarian aid organization that puts food and water out on the trails where folks are crossing into the country, he also provides medical care as a form of humanitarian aid, and also works with a myriad of coalitions in Tucson and broader Arizona that have been trying to address the internalization of the border, the expansion of, and deputization of the police, and the shift from dealing with immigration, which used to be in the civil code, and now it’s much more criminalized.
TFSR: There’s definitely a different element to the potential extradition up to Canada, with as far as it not being a racialized discriminatory element to it in that way. So Dana’s facing charges stemming from the G20 protests in 2010 in Toronto. The G20 is a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 powerful countries in the European Union. And I think it’s wortth saying that the G20 is one of the main kind of places of authorship for neoliberal economic policies, which are some of the main reasons which people are basically forced to migrate north as economic refugees. People are unable to provide for their families in their home communities, and I think there’s a direct correlation between crossing nation-state boundaries to dissent and crossing nation-state boundaries to survive. If you look at the way that entrance into the US has been criminalized and kind of used for profit by the prison industry here, and now that some of the prison populations because of the changes in some of the drug sentencing laws, haven’t really kept up with the pace of prison expansion, it’s kind of where they’re looking to for their next generation of inmates.
TFSR: Can you talk a little bit about the people that Dane’s being housed with?
Fatima: Dane is in a CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) facility in Florence, and the Correction Corporations of America is one of the nation’s largest private prison companies, and a lot of people he’s in with are being charged with illegal reentry, which is a charge that is really easy for folks to prosecute and prove, because basically it just says you’ve come through the system before, you’ve been in for some kind of immigration-related offense in the past, and here you are again. Unless you live in the southwest or are part of affected communities in other parts of the country, most people don’t realize just how much prisons are depending on undocumented inmates to make a profit.
There’s been a series of programs in Tucson. One of them is called “Streamline,” and it takes 70 people from the Tucson sector every day, and it charges them with crimes related to crossing without papers, and basically people have to serve prison sentences in private facilities before they’re then deported. There’s also another program called “Secure Communities,” where basically anytime you get booked, they take your fingerprints, and they always send them to the FBI. They have also started sending them to ICE, which is Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
With programs like “Streamline,” people are being taken from immigration detention and being put into the prison system. And through programs like“Secure Communities,” people are being taken from the prison and transferred into immigration detention, so in this way they can kind of get their optimal use out of each person that they catch in an ever extending net.
TFSR: Is the “Streamline” program a project of SB1070?
Fatima: The “Streamline” project started in the Del Rio sector in Texas a few years ago and has since expanded into other border communities. Basically, even though “Streamline” is kind of a small percentage of entrance in the Tucson sector daily, you can kind of think about it as sort of psych op. It’s basically a way to engender fear in the community, especially considering that the charges that are causing the largest number of people to be incarcerated are actually things like illegal reentry, which doesn’t necessarily have to do with picking people up at the border, but rather picking them up in the interior.
I think when you reflect upon the number of people in Florence for immigration-related charges, I think people presume that’s because folks were trying to cross, but actually a large percentage of folks who are being incarcerated on immigration-related charges in this country have been living here for years, and because of the deputization of the police and SB1070, the border has expanded inwards. We’re now seeing more and more people who are being picked up and deported, not only from the border regions but from the interior.
TFSR: And “Secure Communities” basically imposes that on a federal level onto counties and local law enforcement in order for them to get federal funding, right?
Fatima: Yes, it’s a program that is trying to go national by the end of this year (2013), and I think you know there is a direct correlation between the criminalization of which bodies exist where and are acknowledged. There’s been a lot of discussion about policy solutions for immigration in this country, and I think that we must accept that there will never be a policy solution, because you know the nature in which enforcement happens when it comes to nation-state boundaries. Someone’s always going to be criminalized, and someone’s always going to be not eligible for the exceptions that they’re making. Not that a larger general amnesty wouldn’t be helpful, but someone will always be outside of those lines.
TFSR: It’s ironic to think that the last administration that put through an amnesty was actually the Reagan administration, which is something I imagine the Republican Party, for all its lauding of Reagan’s choices, would choose not to remember. And yet at the same time after September 11, Obama has been riding on the coattails of the motions that George W. Bush set into action with the creation of ICE out of INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), and has been deporting how many people per year.
Fatima: Deportations are pretty much at a record high. It’s about 400,000 a year, a lot of separated families. And I think you can see that shift in the border region, definitely more and more people I talk to who are crossing or just trying to get back.
TFSR: Just so we can cover related topics, can you talk a little bit about the Corrections Corporation of America, and their role in the shaping of state and federal immigration and enforcement policies through ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)?
Fatima: The Corrections Corporation of America is one of the largest private prison companies in the US, and they’re part of this thing called ALEC, which is the American Legislative Exchange Council. The American Legislative Exchange Council is this group of corporations and legislators who get together and write model legislation. How it works is that it’s a partnership of about 2000 state lawmakers and 200 corporations, and they get together and write model legislation that benefits their corporate members, and then the legislative members take these bills back to their communities, and they try to get them passed. They’ve had pretty good luck in the past. About 20% of their bills have been passed into law, with ALEC being famously known for this wave of tough sentencing laws passing in the 90s, which increased the prison population. Things like the “Three Strike Rule,” treatment sentencing, mandatory minimum sentences, or these kinds of things that limited parole and took away discretion on the part of judges.
Furthermore, ALEC was a big part of what caused SB1070 to pass, and also what caused so many SB1070 copycat laws to go through in such a short period of time. Two-thirds of SB1070’s 36 sponsors were ALEC members, and 30 have received donations from the prison industry. So, ALEC can best be described as a perfect example of how social democracy is a farce. I mean, it’s basically the mechanism through which criminalizing laws, which are used by corporations for profit get passed without really any kind of public knowledge of it. ALEC kind of was exposed over the last two years, I would say, I mean, more so than before in the corporate media, but previous to that, very few people knew that it even existed.
TFSR: To highlight: the passage of things like “Three Strikes,” and with the passage of things like mandatory minimums, it abolishes the ability of a judge to sentence according to their professional discretion, right?
Fatima: Yeah, the reason that things like mandatory minimum sentences, the “Three Strikes” laws, and sentencing limits on parole are really devastating is because there can be no consideration of someone’s personal story or their life experience or what else they’re dealing with. It takes away any illusion that the justice system in this country is about reform or about offering people the opportunity to “change their lives.” That’s just not the point of our judicial system in the states, and these laws kind of prove that, especially with the discrepancies in sentencing such as cocaine-related charges versus crack-related charges, for example. You can see the ways that these are really used to target and repress dissent, and to devastate communities. Basically that’s what we’re seeing in the southwest, and it’s what we’ve been seeing a lot in communities across the country.
TFSR: What kind of active support can people offer to Dane right now that would be helpful while Dane is being processed, and is there a foreseeable date when the extradition would be carried through?
Fatima: One of the main things that would be really helpful right now is for people to go to the website, https://supportdanerossman.blogspot.com/ and read about the case. Also, let other people in your communities know about the case. If you’re able to donate, or if you’re able to throw a fundraiser for Dane, or for one of the other folks facing extradition, it would also be helpful. Dane has his extradition hearing set for April 16. We’re trying to work on the possibility of bail, and basically any of the funds that we get will go towards helping pay for his legal costs that he’ll incur once he gets to Canada.
If you look at the groups that the Canadian government focused specifically on repressing during the period leading up to and after the G20, they focused very specifically on folks doing indigenous solidarity work, migrant rights work, and anarchist organizing, and it’s interesting to note that Dane has been an active participant at all three of those kinds of work,
TFSR: When I think back to the public statements that were made during the end of the sentencing period of the G20 case, I remember people describing the work that they did, and it was almost always the same across the board. It was indigenous rights, it was border work, it was anti-prison industrial complex work, or it was specifically anarchist organizing.
Fatima: If you look at it from like an economic perspective, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that the Canadian government would be spending this much time and resources to extradite five Americans for charges allegedly relating to the G20.But when you think of regimes of repression as a business instead of necessarily as something which has any kind of internal logic to it financially, then you come to understand that the Canadian government needs to justify their huge expenditure on state surveillance and repression during the G20 and this is just an extension of that.
TFSR: And an extension of the chilling effect brought to communities of activists doing that sort of work, right?
Fatima: Maybe, but I don’t know if it’s working. I think people will continue to do the work that they feel drawn to and compelled to do in their lives, regardless of the government’s response to it.
TFSR: Fatima, thank you so much for speaking with us. I’ll keep listeners up to date as to updates regarding Dane’s case.
Fatima: I would say anyone interested in supporting Dane, can check out his support website, https://supportdanerossman.blogspot.com/, and make a donation or hold a fundraiser for him. Also if they’re able to write to him.
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Katherine on Joel Bitar Transcription
TFSR: We are speaking with Katherine, who’s doing support work for Joel Bitar, who is one of the Americans facing extradition to Canada for a ledger of charges relating to the G20 in Toronto in 2010.Thanks a lot for joining us.
Katherine: Glad I could be here.
TFSR: Joel Bitar was arrested on Valentine’s Day morning, February 14 (2013), in New York City by US Marshals at his home on alleged charges stemming back to the G20 protests in June of 2010 in Toronto, Canada. Can you talk about Joel’s incarceration and extradition proceedings so far? What’s he being charged with?
Katherine: Joel is being charged with 26 counts. I don’t have a list of all the specific charges in front of me, but they’re all pretty much related to property damage, so it’s essentially just for that.
TFSR: At the time of his initial arrest he was part of a large sweeping roundup by police of alleged anti-G20 protesters that happened. Can you talk about those circumstances?
Katherine: Yes, the Toronto Police Department arrested about 1100 people, around the G20, and Joel was one of those many people. They were all taken to this converted film studio that they were using as a holding facility with rough prison conditions. He was later processed, released, and safely returned to the States.
TFSR: Can you talk about the conditions under which Joel is being confined currently?
Katherine: He was granted bail, which is very unusual in extradition cases, pending his bail hearing, which is scheduled for mid-April. At this point, it was rescheduled from its prior date, which was in March, so that was coming up, actually. He’s under pretty strict conditions. He is on house arrest, he has an electronic monitoring device, and he can’t leave his house without a written order from the court, which meant that he had to give up his job.
TFSR: That magistrate granting that conditional bail was a pretty big surprise, because even the US prosecutors, let alone the Canadians, didn’t want that to happen. Can you talk about t the implications of the judge not considering Joel to be that big of a flight risk?
Katherine: This is just my conjecture, but I think when Joel was the first to come up before the judge, this case is pretty unprecedented in the legal histories of both countries. So I think the judge was being particularly cautious, and she saw that perhaps there was some precedent that was being said in terms of extraditing somebody on such things, but again, that is just my own opinion.
Joel’s attorney at the time, Weinstein, argued a few different positions on why Joel should be granted bail pending his extradition hearing, which was almost always opposed by the state. And it was opposed, but the judge granted Joel the bail based on the time that elapsed between when Joel retained Martin Stoller, an attorney, around the fall of 2010 and called Giroux in Canada, where he said, “I represent Joel Bitar, he’s here, he wants to know what’s going on, what are his charges, etc.”
At the time, Giroux, according to Stoller’s testimony in court, was like, “Yes, we know who Joel Bitar is. We want to charge him.” At the time, they were saying 25 charges, and it’s been bumped up to 26 at this point. But he said, “We want to charge him for these 25 charges, and we believe he’s responsible for ‘x’ amount of damage.” At the time they knew, and this was pretty much the linchpin for the judge, that there was a sufficient amount of time that Joel could have fled.
Joel knew three years ago, and he hasn’t fled. Plus he has strong community ties, in addition to him being a low-flight risk. I think you know those are very strong reasons why the judge granted bail, but I could see when I was in court that day the judge was concerned about what these implications are.It seemed at least there was some element of concern about these implications, because it is a strange situation, and at the time we didn’t know there were four other people.
TFSR: You’ve mentioned that Joel is an activist with community ties. Can you talk about what kind of support work and organizing Joel does?
Katherine: Joel is involved in a lot of work involving economic and social justice issues. I know that he has very strong ties to pro-Palestinian activism. His father is Palestinian, and I know that he went to Gaza in order to do some work there, along with many other people in New York. He was also involved in student organizing, as well as anti-war work, several years ago.
TFSR: Fatima, who does support work for another activist Dane Rossman, who is also facing extradition from the US, pointed out that the activists who faced the main conspiracy case charges during the G20 were activists who worked in one or more of the following categories: indigenous solidarity issues, immigration issues, and anarchist organizing. Can you talk about the targeting of Joel and the quiescence of the US government to the beginning of extradition proceedings?
Katherine: I think you know there’s a very interesting point that happened in Joel’s original court date when he was arrested on the provisional arrest warrant. The US attorney kept talking about how Joel’s charges were extraditable offenses that endangered Canadian citizens, and this was emphasized a couple times. What I thought was interesting was that the government was emphasizing this idea that he “harmed citizens,” but it kind of comes to the question of what is a citizen, when you consider that Joel allegedly did some property damage, which allegedly involved some broken windows and maybe some dented car hoods, things like this. At the same time, the Toronto Police Department was brutalizing, arresting, threatening rape, and sexually assaulting people they arrested at the G20. If you take loaded language out, such as, you know, “protester”, “police”, or “violence,”and just look at the equations on either side, I would say the police were far more “harmful to citizens.” And that is usually the case all over the world.
We live in New York, where police shoot and brutalize people all the time. They brutalize people in Toronto, they brutalize them in Montreal, they brutalize them all over the place. Plus the militaries of all these countries, brutalize people everywhere and occupy their homes. It’s the idea that you know some people who are opposing the nature of our society, who are in opposition to what the G20 does and represents are “endangering Canadian citizens” to me is really what comes to the heart of this issue.
I mean, we’re all citizens under these old ideas of the republic, and how modern nation-states formed, going to Rousseau, and the social contract, but nothing exists outside of the concept of the citizen and absolute subordination to the sovereign, the state. The state decided who is the citizen, and in this case, the protesters are not citizens, the US is extraditing someone they don’t really consider to be a citizen. Indigenous people don’t count as citizens. Black people don’t count as citizens, anyone that the state decides isn’t a citizen, isn’t a citizen. So we are all non-citizens for the most part. Because we’re all laboring under the idea that our rights are only granted to us by states.
In addition, there’s just some other absurdities, in my opinion, which the G20 represents. The G20 represents 80% of the world’s economic wealth, and they’re deciding on things in secret, it’s a whole yada yada yada, of how these summits operate. The free flow of militaries, and the free flow of corporations and goods and capitalism, all these things are are okay and are allowed. And treaties are formed like NAFTA trying to institute the FTAA, and all these other things that promote this free flow of goods and capital under our current system. That’s all acceptable. That’s all allowed. This is all “good.” This is all representing the “will of the people,” and the “citizens” are for this. People who are in opposition to this are criminalized because you cannot be in opposition to this. People from all over the world went to the G20 and they continue to do. And this is precisely why they want to prevent this. This is the chilling effect that they’re hoping to gain from these extraditions. Within six months, they pretty much were claiming that they had this evidence and they wanted to extradite these people. Three years later, they’re just starting to do it, which in itself is a very scary idea. One could be chased through all the corners of the earth because they went to a protest. The free flow of people who are in opposition is not allowed, which is something that is again indicative of our current system, what is allowed and what is not allowed.
They don’t want opposition, so they prevent it. They want to inflict a fear amongst people, and they’re usually pretty successful at it. Meanwhile, capital flows freely unobstructed in the US. Why they didn’t oppose this? Well, why would they oppose it? They’ve gone to great lengths to try to prevent people from coming to summits in the United States, or traveling to protests.
In the Pacific Northwest right now, there is a grand jury that’s specifically investigating people who traveled from Portland to Seattle to protest. There’s been some other major summits since Seattle happened in 1999, but that’s where we saw the first modern day stormtroopers of this era, and that continued on throughout the specifically anti-Globalization period. We also saw it through the anti-war years and it culminates, and these incredible police states that arrange around these summits specifically to prevent people from opposing what is happening are there to prevent any resistance at all costs. Of course, the US government is like “the more the merrier, please take him, we absolutely do not oppose this extradition, because we’re doing the same thing here.”
TFSR: Where can people find out more information about Joel Bitar’s case, and what kind of support can can listeners offer right now?
Katherine: I would direct people to Joel’s website, which is supportjoel.wordpress.com, to find out more information. Statements will be posted on the site, and there’s also a donation page. In terms of the kind of support we’re looking for right now, trial is a sensitive time because things that people do and say could have some effect in terms of any kind of potential sentencing or agreements. But saying that, I want to remind everyone that the state is always 100% responsible for state repression. But we’re focusing mostly on fundraising and raising awareness. Fundraising is pretty self-explanatory. There’s a myriad of legal costs and travel costs, and Joel is not able to work at this moment because he’s on strict house arrest, so you know it is a financial burden both to himself and his family, who pretty much has to put up everything they own on the line in order for Joel to be out on bail. There’s a donation page, and we encourage people to host benefits or do other sorts of fundraising things if they can, and raise awareness, as this is very important.
I think this is a very important case. When I first read the article in December 2010 where Giroux is promising that he will get these Americans and extradite them to Canada, I found it shocking. Then it was shocking when I heard that Joel and four other people were arrested. It’s a very unprecedented case. I think that it speaks volumes in terms of the sort of international cooperation of state repression against people who are in opposition to society as it stands right now, and I think there’s a very good possibility that Joel plus four other people maybe end up in prison. It’s good for people to keep these people in mind.
TFSR: Thank you, Katherine for speaking with us. We’ve been speaking with Katherine, who is doing support work for Joel Bitar, who is one of the Americans being threatened with extradition to Canada in relation to charges stemming from the 2010 anti-G20 protests there. Thanks a lot.
Katherine: Thanks. It was great speaking with you.