Canadian Cops: Misogyny, Racism and Violence Against Women: New Report

RCMP arresting Freda Huson, founder of the Unist’ot’en healing center, to clear the way for building a gas pipeline on Wet’suwet’en land (Narwhal, 2/10/20). (photo: Amber Bracken/Narwhal) Journalist Amber Bracken was arrested in November.

THE TOXIC CULTURE OF THE RCMP: MISOGYNY, RACISM AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN CANADA’S NATIONAL POLICE FORCE

A Report by The Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (May 2022)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The evidence of systemic discrimination and violence against women perpetrated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is shocking, and it is growing. This is the conclusion of a new report on Canada’s national police force issued May 9, 2022 by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA). FAFIA says that it is time to act.

The Government of Canada is committed to “address[ing] the profound systemic inequities and disparities that remain present …in our core institutions” and to “accelerat[ing] action to reform the RCMP.” It is time for independent review and transformational change.

London Film Screening of 'Tolvanera' -- Gold Mining in Sonora Brings Death in the Struggle for Life

London Film Screening of 'Tolvanera' -- Gold Mining in Sonora Brings Death in the Struggle for Life 

by Brenda Norrell

Censored News

In Sonora, just south of the Arizona border, there is a struggle against an open pit gold mine that few have heard of. Thanks to the Zapatistas Tour for Life through Europe, and new friends in London, England, the film Tolvanera will be screened. The film tells of this struggle, and the screening brings global attention to those murdered and disappeared who have opposed it.

Caborca is 144 miles south of the Arizona border

Credit: Pie de Página The ejido (community) of El Bajío is located in the municipality of Caborca, Sonora, in the coastal region of northeastern Mexico.The ejido (community) of El Bajío is located in the municipality of Caborca, Sonora, in the coastal region of northeastern Mexico.

Plainsmen's Post provides background for the struggle and the film, in the article, "Tolvanera, When Finding Gold on Your Land is Your Death Sentence.

On the black screen voices are tense, frightened. “No, please,” begs a woman. They respond harshly: “Face down.” The journalist is recording with her phone without the armed group noticing. “Guys, we are reporters. They told us that there was an abandoned mine here and we went in to see ”. With their faces covered by ski masks with skulls and wielding long weapons, the men threaten them so that they do not return there. And the journalists leave. It was March 2018.

This is how many stories are silenced in Mexico, but in Tolvanera it is just the beginning of the documentary, selected this year at the Morelia Festival. The incident remained marked in the memory of one of those reporters, Ángel Melgoza (Zamora, Michoacán, 1992), who decided not to drop the subject and take it to the big screen. Over the years he continues to pull the thread to try to explain the complicated skein of corruption, illegality, violence and impunity that surrounds the struggle of the El Bajío ejido against the mining company Grupo Fresnillo, owned by billionaire Alberto Baillères.