The McGill Daily Vol. 111 Issue 22

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EDITORIAL

Volume 111 Issue 22

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Labeau’s MRO Opposes “Inclusion, Diversity, and Respect”

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n Thursday, March 24, McGill’s Media Relations Office (MRO) circulated a statement by Deputy Provost Fabrice Labeau titled “SSMU Referendum Outcome.”

The statement was prompted by the passage of the Palestine Solidarity Policy, an initiative which mandates SSMU to boycott all companies “complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians,” to advocate for McGill to do the same, and to campaign for McGill to condemn Canary Mission and other surveillance campaigns against Palestinian and pro-Palestine students. While the Policy does not explicitly reference the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, Labeau states that the policy “echo[es] key tenets” of the movement. Immediately afterwards, he references the “Initiative to Prevent Anti-Semitism [sic.] and Islamophobia,” suggesting that he conflates anti-Israel/pro-Palestine sentiment with antisemitism. Labeau goes on to make several ill-informed, unjustified claims about the Policy:

“I am saddened to witness the unfolding of an initiative that can only bring more division to our community.”

Not only is this claim completely speculative, but it directly contradicts the referendum results. The Palestine Solidarity Policy was one of the most popular motions put forward during the Winter 2022 Referendum, having garnered 2,294 “yes” votes – more than any other motion on the ballot.

Additionally, the Policy has received support from a number of faculty members and staff. When asked whether Labeau had any data or student testimonials to verify his claim, the university failed to provide the Daily with evidence that the initiative is divisive.

“[I]nitiatives such as this one [...] are in contradiction with the University’s values of inclusion, diversity, and respect.”

Considering that this is the same university which has refused to remove colonial iconography from its campus, employs a professor who makes LGBTQ+ students feel unsafe, and whose principal rushed to defend “academic freedom” after a University of Ottawa professor used a racial slur, this point is laughable. Moreover, the purpose of the Policy is not to discriminate against any group based on their ethnicity or religion; on the contrary, it aims to make the university more inclusive of Palestinian students.

“Robust debate is key to what we do and who we are as a University [...] A policy such as this cannot be the way in which we, as a community, address serious and important questions.”

Again, this policy was passed in a democratic forum by an overwhelming majority, receiving 71.1 per cent approval.

Students have ample opportunity to engage in “robust debate” through SSMU – McGill is the one suppressing students’ ability to debate on these initiatives, not our student union.

Labeau concludes the statement by disclosing that the university is prepared to terminate its Memorandum of

Agreement (MoA) with SSMU, which includes terminating the collection of fees going toward the operating expenses of SSMU. While the termination of the MoA would not result in the dissolution of SSMU, it would make the Society’s financial affairs significantly more cumbersome and prohibit SSMU from using McGill’s name. Regardless of Labeau’s misguided criticisms of the Policy, his threat to terminate SSMU’s MoA is unacceptable – he is attempting to bully our student union into abandoning a democratically-adopted policy.

This is a threat to the autonomy of the Society; as Arts Representative Yara Coussa observed in an email to the Daily, complying with this ultimatum would “set a dangerous precedent [...] [SSMU] needs to be independent of the administration since many of the society’s political stances stand explicitly against the administration and the board of governors.”

This incident is just the latest in a long history of the university attempting to suppress pro-Palestine activism on campus. In the 2016 Winter General Assembly, a motion mandating SSMU to support the BDS movement was put forward – despite the fact that the motion was not ratified in the subsequent online vote, Principal Suzanne Fortier still felt compelled to announce that the university is “steadfastly oppose[d]” to the BDS movement. In Fall of 2019, Labeau threatened to default the Daily’s MoA when the editorial board at the time refused to publish a Letter to the Editor which defended settler-colonialism in Palestine.

Last May, Provost Christopher Manfredi sent an MRO email dismissing a student petition calling on the university to divest from Israel.

McGill has no shame in suppressing student democracy; it is crucial that SSMU does not acquiesce to the university’s demands. In an email to the Daily, the McGill chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) wrote: “Deputy Provost Labeau’s MRO was not only a threat to SPHR and to the SSMU, it was a threat to every single McGill student’s right to democracy [...] In response, we, the student body, will make it very clear that we will not sit idly by while the administration pathetically attempts to silence us for choosing to end their support to a genocidal settler-colonial regime.”

It is our responsibility to hold SSMU Executives and Councillors accountable for their actions following Labeau’s MRO – to do so, attend Legislative Council meetings, email your faculty representative, and support SPHR’s advocacy within SSMU. To advocate for student democracy at the university level, send an email to Labeau using SPHR’s email template, which can be found on their Facebook page. Jewish students on campus can sign an open letter in support of the policy, published by Jewish Members of the McGill Community in Support of the Palestine Solidarity Policy in The McGill Tribune.

As long as McGill invests in companies like the Oshkosh Corporation and RE/MAX, we are all complicit in Israeli apartheid – students must advocate for divestment from these corporations. The McGill Daily is committed to engaging in pro-Palestine activism on campus, and we ask that our readers do the same.

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news

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Students at McGill, UofT, UBC Pass Pro-Palestine Policies Abigail Popple Coordinating News Editor

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ver the past month, student unions at a handful of major Canadian universities have established pro-Palestine policies, often to the chagrin of university administrators.

While such policies are passed in student-led, democratic forums, administrators at these universities have attempted to intervene in student affairs on the grounds that advocating for divestment from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid will lead to divisiveness and discrimination within university communities. In light of this, the Daily examined administrators’ responses to pro-Palestine policies recently passed in student unions at McGill, the University of Toronto (UofT), and the University of British Columbia (UBC).

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The history of pro-Palestine policies within SSMU is a tumultuous one: in the Winter 2016 General Assembly (GA), a motion mandating SSMU’s support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was passed in the initial round of voting, only to fail the subsequent online ratification process.

Following the nullification of this motion, an anonymous student filed a Judicial Board (JBoard) petition inquiring into its constitutionality; in May of 2016, the JBoard came to the unanimous decision that “all motions which compel SSMU to actively campaign against specific countries are unconstitutional” – including motions in support of BDS. Despite this, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) McGill has continued to campaign for divestment from corporations complicit

in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians; the passage of the Palestine Solidarity Policy (PSP) in SSMU’s Winter 2022 Referendum was to be their latest victory.

The Policy had initially been absent from the referendum ballot following a notice from Elections SSMU that the JBoard issued an interim order prohibiting the PSP from being placed on the ballot “until such time a legal determination [could] be made,” per a March 13 email sent from Elections SSMU to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR). The following afternoon, Elections SSMU issued a statement explaining that the referendum ballot was “declared faulty and incomplete” – when the ballot was re-issued on Tuesday, March 15, the PSP was present, and later passed with 71.1 per cent of votes in favour.

The PSP, which SPHR described as “historic,” outlines nine action items, including the mandates that: 1) SSMU campaign for McGill to condemn Canary Mission and other surveillance campaigns against Palestinian and pro-Palestine students; 2) SSMU boycott “corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians,” and advocate for McGill to do so as well; and 3) SSMU establish a Palestine Solidarity Committee. In their statement regarding the passage of the PSP, SPHR observed that “Time and time again, [Palestinian students’] activism has been met with censorship, blacklisting, and repression from an openly hostile McGill Administration” over the past two decades of pro-Palestine advocacy at McGill.

As if on cue, the PSP was met with strong opposition from McGill Administration just three days after its passage: on Thursday, March 24, Deputy Provost Fabrice Labeau issued an email with the subject line “SSMU referendum outcome”

As if on cue, the PSP was met with strong opposition from McGill Administration just three days after its passage: on Thursday, March 24, Deputy Provost Fabrice Labeau issued an email with the subject line “SSMU referendum outcome.”

news via the Media Relations Office (MRO).

Labeau expressed disappointment in the policy – which he said “calls for several actions that echo key tenets” of the BDS Movement, although the PSP makes no mention of BDS – referencing the recent development of the “Initiative to Prevent Anti-Semitism [sic] and Islamophobia.”

He continued that initiatives like the PSP “create excessive polarization in our community” and are “in contradiction with the principles expressed by SSMU in its own constitution.” The Daily asked the MRO whether Labeau had any student testimonials or data verifying the claim that the PSP would divide the McGill community; the university did not provide evidence substantiating this claim. In response to the Daily’s inquiry as to which specific part of the SSMU constitution was violated, McGill merely repeated that initiatives like the PSP are “in contradiction with the principles expressed by SSMU in its own constitution.”

Labeau also said that the university had “communicated [his] concerns to the SSMU leadership and advised them to take [...] remedial action,” and divulged that the university is prepared to terminate its Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with SSMU. According to Article 12 of the MoA, the University may default the MoA “when the Association [i.e., SSMU] violates its constitution;” SSMU would be given 30 working days to remedy the default in the event of this happening. However, 2019-2020 SSMU President Bryan Buraga emailed SSMU Directors, Councillors, and Executives just under two hours after Labeau sent his MRO to explain that a default would not enable the university to “unilaterally dissolve the SSMU.” Buraga pointed out that in accordance with Article 12.3 of the MoA, SSMU could dispute arbitration within 90 days of receiving notice of the default.

Furthermore, Articles 13.2 and 13.3 of the MoA and Sections 53 and 55 of the Act respecting the accreditation and financing of students’ associations mandate McGill to collect and distribute SSMU funds – termination of the MoA would make SSMU’s financial processes more cumbersome, but would not pose an existential threat to the Society, per Buraga.

According to current SSMU President Darshan Daryanani, McGill did not communicate its disapproval of the Policy prior to providing the Notice of Default: “The McGill Administration failed to engage with the SSMU with more consideration for the democratic and constitutional

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily values of the Society,” Daryanani wrote in an email to the Daily.

The statement sent to the Daily by the MRO says that the university “has communicated [its] concerns to the SSMU leadership,” but does not specify whether the university reached out to SSMU regarding the PSP prior to threatening a notice of default. Per Daryanani, Labeau’s Notice of Default states that “in no way can [the PSP] be considered to ‘facilitate communication and interaction between all students from all McGill communities’ or to ‘act in the best interests of [SSMU’s] Members as a whole.’ It will also clearly lead to discrimination based on characteristics such a race, national or ethnic origin, and religion.” Daryanani does not appear to believe that the PSP violates SSMU’s Constitution, writing that it is the constitutional obligation of student representatives “to uphold matters of human rights, environmental protection and social justice.”

During the March 24 Legislative Council meeting, Councillors passed the “Motion Regarding Statement by SSMU in Response to MRO 2022-03-24,” which mandates SSMU to draft a public response to Labeau’s MRO as swiftly as possible. Arts Representative Yara Coussa, who told the Daily she is advocating for SSMU to contest the Notice of Default, is leading this initiative.

Daryanani said that SSMU’s response is set to be released on April 5, pending approval from SSMU’s legal counsel.

Union (UTGSU) voted to reject recommendations made by UofT’s Complaint and Resolution Council for Student Societies (CRCSS) regarding the Union’s BDS caucus. In February of 2021, the CRCSS reviewed the caucus due to allegations of antisemitism and found that it violated the Union’s AntiDiscrimination Policy “on the grounds of discrimination based on nationality.” In a statement to the Daily, the UTGSU wrote that it “believes that the caucus is not discriminatory, but rather that it calls for equity through activism to support Palestinians who are facing oppression.” Furthermore, the Union contends that the CRCSS itself is undemocratic, writing that it was created “to infringe upon student union autonomy without the consent of the UTGSU.” In response to the UTGSU’s rejection of the CRCSS recommendations, UofT decided to withhold student fees allocated to the BDS caucus – $10,918 total, according to a news article which UofT sent the Daily. Per the UTGSU, the consequences of withholding these fees will likely not be felt until the summer semester, but “it sets a dangerous precedent [...] for universities to overrule democratically-decided student union decisions that they don’t like.” The UTGSU is working to strengthen solidarity among student unions, and encouraged McGill’s student unions to join the Global Student Government coalition in its email to the Daily.

“A divided student movement makes it easier for university administrations to infringe upon University of Toronto student union autonomy and The University of Toronto weaken the student voice. We Students’ Union (UTSU) has cannot afford to be isolationist,” likewise had its controversies the Union explained. surrounding pro-BDS initiatives.

In July of 2015, the UTSU Board University of British of Directors (BoD) voted against Columbia the formation of a BDS committee, as reported in The Varsity. More On March 23, the Alma Mater recently, on February 16, the UTSU Society (AMS) Council voted approved a motion to divest from “yes” to a motion mandating firms complicit in the occupation the Council to “urge [UBC] to of Palestinian territory following divest from companies involved a lengthy and heated debate. in or complicit in human rights Afterwards, the UTSU released violations against Palestinians.” a statement affirming that they AMS declined to respond to the would support Palestinian students Daily’s request for comment; the “in a manner that unequivocally Daily also reached out to the UBC condemns anti-Semitism [sic], chapter of SPHR, but did not Islamophobia, and systemic receive a response. oppression in all its forms.”

In an email statement to According to this statement, the the Daily, UBC wrote that the Special General Meeting wherein university “does not invest the motion was passed was meant to directly in individual stocks or clear up “what precisely was meant companies,” instead investing in by the terms used in the motion,” “pooled funds and external fund but there was not an opportunity managers” in accordance with to do so – as such, how the motion principles “based on the United will impact UofT students remains Nations-supported Principles to be seen. for Responsible investment.”

On February 16, the University However, the statement continues of Toronto Graduate Students’ to explain that “the aggregate

exposure of the Endowment Portfolio to the names cited in the motion on the UN database was approximately $43,000, or 0.002% of the portfolio as of December 31, 2021. Including the full list of companies cited in the motion, the Endowment’s aggregate exposure was less than 0.05%, or approximately $1 million.” As of writing, UBC has not attempted to intervene in the AMS decision; the university did not express any intention to interfere with the Society in its statement to the Daily.

Broader Trends Michael Bueckert, Vice President at Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), wrote that there has been a “renewed momentum” in pro-Palestine activism on university campuses within the last year, pointing to the policies recently passed at McGill, Concordia, UofT, and UBC. Universities have historically repressed pro-Palestine activism, per Bueckert – for example, when Israeli Apartheid Week was brand new, administrators “bann[ed] event posters and [shut] down organizers.” Bueckert explained that such repression had seemed to subside, but there has recently been increased interference in student activism – “with a resurgence of activism, it’s not surprising to see a new wave of efforts to shut it down,” he observed.

Communications Lead for Independent Jewish Voices, Aaron Lakoff, echoed these concerns in an interview with the Daily. “It’s absolutely abhorrent when university administrations take these kinds of punitive actions,” Lakoff said, adding that universities should be celebrating vibrant student democracies and the presence of anti-racist movements on their campuses.

Of McGill and UofT’s response to pro-Palestine activism on their respective campuses, Lakoff remarked, “Who is the one guilty of the divisive atmosphere when you are threatening a democratic student body and democraticallymade decisions?”

Still, Bueckert and Lakoff both emphasized that students have an important role to play in antiracist and anti-apartheid efforts.

In 1985, McGill divested from its holdings in apartheid South Africa in response to student pressure; per Bueckert, student initiatives at the time included “establishing apartheid-free zones, protesting speeches by ambassadors, and implementing general antiapartheid policies” on McGill’s campus.

Likewise, Lakoff pointed out that institutions like McGill are often complicit

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in Israeli apartheid due to their investments in companies which profit on occupied Palestinian land – as such, “students should never underestimate the powerful and important role they can play in terms of bringing down apartheid.”

Lakoff, who is himself Jewish, said that alleging motions such as the PSP are antisemitic “ignores the fact that there are Jews all around the world [...] who are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.” He also pointed out that universities should make an effort to protect Palestinian students from racism: if universities want to create a culture of inclusion, respect, and safety, they must consider “the safety of people of colour and Palestinian students who are attending a university that is complicit in their own people’s dispossession and complicit in apartheid.”

“With a resurgence of activism, it’s not surprising to see a new wave of efforts to shut it down.”

Bueckert and Lakoff also expressed concern for the wellbeing of student democracies at the hands of administrators willing to interfere in student politics. “The fact that universities are using [financial] threats specifically to try to shut down anti-racist organizing is appalling,” Bueckert wrote, describing UofT and McGill’s behaviour as “anti-democratic and heavy-handed.” Similarly, Lakoff characterized these universities’ punitive actions as “abhorrent,” adding that these actions are “threats against student democracy and threats against the wellbeing of students and campus life.”

The Daily inquired as to why McGill chose to default its MoA with SSMU as opposed to another course of action; the university did not address this question in its statement to the Daily. Additionally, the Daily asked what Labeau feels would be an appropriate way to “address serious and important questions” such as the PSP – the university’s response only reiterates that “robust debate is key to what we do and who we are as a University.”

Affairs related to the PSP are still developing as SSMU prepares its response to the Notice of Default; the Daily will continue to follow this story.

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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return to campus 2022

Wastewater Testing Explained Data and alert level definitions uncovered

Saylor Catlin News Editor

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n October 1, 2021, McGill initiated the wastewater testing project and began collecting and testing samples from the university’s downtown and Macdonald residences. The project entails testing wastewater samples taken daily from each site for the presence of COVID19. Testing building wastewater enables researchers to detect the presence of the virus in a building’s sewage system and potentially monitor sick individuals. “While this testing cannot measure the precise amount of infection, it does provide a positive or negative result for the presence of the virus in the waste,” wrote the university in a message to the Daily. Essentially, a positive result indicates that one or more of the individuals in the building who have used the facilities are infected with COVID-19.

The wastewater testing page is updated on a “rolling basis” with current alert levels – high, medium, or low – for each residence based on the results of the sample testing. While the page provides protocol for each alert level, it does not provide definitions for what constitutes a positive result, information on how samples are collected, or historical data from when the initiative was started.

Given these gaps, the Daily filed an Access to Documents Request earlier this semester to gain access to data and definitions created by researchers. Here’s what we found.

Testing Procedures One sample is collected daily from La Citadelle, Carrefour

Eve Cable |Illustrations Editor Sherbrooke, New Residence Hall (NRH), Solin Hall, Royal Victoria College (RVC), Upper Residence, and Laird Hall. To collect the samples, researchers use a “torpedo,” a device developed in early 2021 specifically for testing the presence of COVID19 in wastewater. They are constructed with cotton buds, medical gauze swabs, and electronegative membranes encased in narrow 3D-printed shells. The device is a “passive sampler,” meaning it can be left in a waterbody for set amount of time during which pollutants in the water will interact with the device. At McGill, torpedoes are placed in wastewater (either in a building’s outdoor man-hole or indoor washout, depending on the site), and after 24 hours, they are removed and then transported to a McGill lab in the McConnell Engineering building to be analyzed.

The lab protocol – “SARSCoV-2 detection by absorption” – was developed by Dominic Frigon of McGill’s Civil Engineering department and Sarah Dorner of Polytechnique Montreal’s Civil, Geological, and Mining Engineering department. First, analysts obtain a concentration of the sample; Bovine Respiratory Syntactical virus (BRSV) and Pepper Mild Mottle virus (PMMV) are also added to the sample at this stage as external controls. Next, ribonucleic acid (RNA) is extracted from the sample’s concentration. Then, a molecular detection sample PCR test is performed on the RNA extraction using a testing kit, yielding a negative or positive result. There are notes throughout the lab protocol

giving guidelines for analysts; for example, the protocol notes that precision is important while obtaining the concentration, as “a precise external control is needed for data processing.”

Indeed, data shows that results are often inconclusive. Under the “PCR notes” column, analysts were instructed to “record any departures from typical analyses and observations.” Oftentimes, inconclusive results were the result of low PMMV and/or BRSV in the sample. On other occasions, inconclusive results were the result of a lost torpedo, crosscontamination with the SARSCoV-2 positive control, or a blocked pipe that prevented the sample from being collected, among other causes. Under the PCR notes, when there was a positive result, analysts occasionally noted whether the signal was “light,” “moderate,” or “strong.”

Alert Level Definitions The university outlines three different alert levels: low/vigilance level, medium/ precursor level, and high/ outbreak level. Low/vigilance level is the “normal” alert level, with the usual COVID-19 safety protocols in place. Medium/ precursor level is reached in a building following two days of consecutive positive results. At this level, a message is sent to all residents and staff of the building advising them to wear masks, reduce their contacts, get tested, and report any positive results to Case Management. The alert returns to low/vigilant following four consecutive days of negative results. The high/outbreak alert level is reached when two or more

residents report testing positive; thus, transition to this alert level is not directly through wastewater testing but is instead through Case Management. McGill’s guidelines indicate that “the alert level to which the building transitions will depend on current wastewater testing results.”

These definitions and guidelines indicate that if a singular positive result is found, residents and staff of the building are not notified, and there is no update made to the wastewater testing website. The data collected revealed that this happened several times over the course of the semester; a positive result was found on one day, and no one in the corresponding residence was notified, nor was the website updated.

of inconclusive results. For example, in a situation where a positive result is followed by an inconclusive result the next day, the alert level will not be changed.

Testing between January 26 and January 28 at NRH yielded positiveinconclusive-positive results; however, the alert level was not raised because there were not two consecutive days of positive results. Email correspondence and meeting minutes obtained by the Daily show that research directors and those in the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) were considering adjusting the definition for the medium/ precursor level to account for a situation such as this in early February, but the project’s page does not reflect that the definition was redefined, and inconclusive results remain unexplained.

Alert levels sent to those in residence alert them of protocols to follow when the alert level is raised, but these do not offer insight into the state of the outbreak. Uncovered email correspondence between Case Management and Student Housing and Hospitality Services revealed that there was a confirmed positive case in NRH on November 23 following two days of consecutive positive test results. However, the email sent to residents on November 23 notifying residents that the alert level was raised did not disclose the positive case in the building.

COVID-19 in Residences

A current resident of NRH told the Daily that as of December 2, residents are no longer receiving emails about alert levels and protocols. Now, this information is only posted on the university’s website. “To my knowledge, the alert levels haven’t led to any actual changes in measures,” the resident wrote: “if anything, the measures have become more relaxed.” The past few weeks have seen an outbreak of COVID-19 at McGill, with a staggering 473 cases most recently reported on campus. On March 23, students in residences were alerted that there were no more isolation rooms available and that those who tested positive would have to isolate in their own rooms.

When recently reporting her positive case, the aforementioned resident of NRH was instructed by case management to book a hotel room or double-mask around her roommate, who had tested negative for COVID-19.

“Not the smartest since masks don’t work indefinitely, and we The guidelines also don’t take sleep about five feet from each into account the prevalence other,” she commented.

These definitions and guidelines indicate that if a singular positive result is found, residents and staff of the building are not notified, and there is no update made to the wastewater testing website.

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

News

Montreal’s Chinatown Community Calls for Changes to REM de L’Est Light Rail

Elsie Yang Contributor

In January, Montreal’s Chinatown was granted heritage protections by the city of Montreal, signaling progress towards its protection against further development and gentrification.

Today, despite this change in status, Chinatown residents and community groups remain at work against threats of infrastructure development.

Since its announcement, Chinatown residents have expressed concern over the design of the REM de l’Est, a $10-billion electric light rail project set to connect downtown Montreal with the eastern neighborhoods of Pointe-aux-Trembles and Montréal-Nord. Among its 23 stations is one planned to occupy Chinatown’s only remaining vacant lot, located at the corner of René Lévesque and Saint-Laurent.

The REM de l’Est, the second phase of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), is set to “become the ‘backbone’ of transportation in the east end of Montreal” with a fully automated electric light rail car system connecting eastern Montreal to the downtown core. The proposed railway will double the coverage of the metro network in eastern Montreal and connect to existing public transit networks, utilizing driverless train cars running on elevated tracks.

The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) emphasizes REM de l’Est’s economic and environmental benefits, notably its potential to move residents away from solo driving, reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 35k tonnes/year, and generate $6.3 billion for Quebec’s GDP during construction.

However, many residents have expressed concerns about the introduction of such obtrusive infrastructure into their neighborhoods, calling it a “scar in the city’s landscape.”

On March 17, CDPQ Infra announced that it would delay hearings by Quebec’s environmental law agency, the Bureau d’Audience Publiques sur l’Environnement (BAPE). This was to be the next step in the process before beginning construction and ultimately finishing the light rail by mid-2029. Now, this timing will be skewed, rendering its completion date unknown.

The Chinatown Working Group, a community-based collective that played a large role in advocating for

Chinatown’s heritage designation and is now involved in the public consultation for bylaws protecting the neighborhood from future development, first raised concerns about the project last August. In a letter to CDPQ, they called REM de l’Est “detrimental to the integrity of the living and built environment” of Chinatown. Among a list of recommendations, the letter called for the inclusion of the Chinatown community in the planning process and for an underground option to be privileged over an aerial railway and ground structure. They ended their letter by expressing the potential of REM de l’Est to “contribute to the improvement of Montreal’s quality of life,” so long as the CDPQ considers their proposed changes.

On March 13, CWG echoed its August recommendations in a second letter, emphasizing the project’s need to respect Chinatown’s heritage through a “holistic integration from a design and planning perspective.”

It emphasizes the significance of prioritizing an underground track, claiming that “an elevated track and road closures would have a huge impact on Chinatown’s community and its future development, especially so close to [the institutional core] of this area.” Though a revised project was released following their August letter, CWG writes that CDPQ still has not addressed their previously stated concerns: “the updated version of the REM de l’Est is unacceptable and prejudicial to Chinatown and its community.”

Donny Seto, a member of CWG and lecturer in the Geography, Planning, and Environment department at Concordia University, told the Daily that the project – if completed as currently planned – would effectively corner off the northern sector of Chinatown. This is significant, he notes, “given that Chinatown [already] has three barriers on the east, west, and south side.”

Building the station underground, Seto says, “will reduce the physical impacts on Chinatown in terms of cutting it off from its surroundings.”

He points to some of the major development projects that have left a mark on Chinatown in the past – “from the Guy-Favreau building, Palais des congrès, and now the CHUM hospital – we don’t want additional heavy infrastructure [in Chinatown],” Seto told the Daily. He refers to the Complèxe Guy-Favreau, which replaced a cultural center in 2019, and to the recently constructed

Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) hospital which is located partially in Chinatown and partially in the Quartier Latin.

Chinatown “has survived in spite of these efforts – but it won’t if this is going to continuously happen,” says Seto.

CDPQ has responded to CWG’s second letter with the offer of having a conversation about the project and its impact on Chinatown, says Seto. However, at the time of our interview, they had not responded to CWG’s calls for the promoter’s presentation of the project in front of the Chinatown community followed by an open discussion.

Despite interim controls put in place to protect Chinatown from development in January, Seto says that since the heritage bylaws are still in process, “we don’t necessarily know how they will impact the project in the future.” However, he says that the heritage protections will dampen the real estate speculation that could come about if the REM was confirmed – “if they weren’t in place, a lot of developers would start buying out land without second thought […] so they will dampen the development pressures in Chinatown and give us a moment to reflect on how to properly protect and envision the future of Chinatown.”

Seto says that CWG has been in contact with Mayor Plante and other city councilors regarding the project’s impact on Chinatown.

The group’s advocacy, along with calls from east-end residents, has influenced the city to rethink its strategy and ultimately for the expert advisory committee on the project to request changes. Montreal Mayor Valorie Plante has expressed support for REM de l’Est, saying that “the progress of transportation in Montreal and in the east end depends on it.” However, Plante has also been vocal about the need to reform the project, demanding that the city be given a seat at the table in the planning process and adding provincial funding to integrate the aerial rail into the urban landscape.

Seto emphasizes that the REM de L’Est has low social acceptability so far, not only in Chinatown but among commuters and city residents in other affected neighborhoods: “those [who] would seemingly draw the most benefit from the line itself are [the ones] who are the most concerned about its impacts,” he says.

A new report by a city expert advisory committee working to

7

Eve Cable | Illustrations Editor ensure the project’s integration into its surroundings expresses “strong worries” about the large gap to be created between de Bleury and SaintUrbain streets, where trains would enter an elevated track from an underground tunnel. The committee also asked for the layout of RenéLévesque to be “fundamentally revised” to keep the area around the elevated track livable and accessible.

Christian Ducharme, vicepresident of engineering at CDPQ Infra, said that the company’s new designs, released last week, address “more than 80 per cent” of the concerns raised in the city’s report.

The new designs include an “urban lookout” overlooking the tunnel entrance on René-Lévesque to make the area pedestrian-friendly. It also suggests the use of transparent glasslike materials in locations where sound barriers up to four meters tall are necessary on tracks close to buildings, which Ducharme says will be “less heavy in the [surrounding] environment”. Ducharme added that two options remain for a small section of the project’s route through the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough: one that would run along Sherbrooke and connect with the Honoré-Beaugrand Metro station and the other that would run further south, along de Souligny.

According to Seto, Ducharme’s words are “empty promises to make the project look socially acceptable, when in reality [the new design] has no teeth.” He and his CWG colleagues disagree that the new design shows improvement: “when we saw the plan…there was some beautification, but the plan itself hasn’t changed very much – it didn’t address any of the concerns that we had posted in our

letter to CDPQ,” he added. Although promises to include green spaces and biking infrastructure were included in the design, Seto says that they would not be funded by the project – instead, these additions would be left up to the city. Seto, whose academic focus is on sustainable development and urban planning, says that while the current analysis focuses on the project’s potential in terms of economic returns on investment, “in terms of its social, environmental, and health impacts, I don’t think that work has been done thoroughly.”

Originally from Quebec City, the vulnerability of Montreal’s Chinatown to threats of infrastructure development is sentimental for Seto. “I witnessed Quebec City’s Chinatown disappearing with the development of highway infrastructure and [the expropriation of land] that housed many Chinatown residents…It disappeared pretty much overnight,” he told the Daily. “I don’t want to see this kind of event happening again [in Montreal].”

The REM de l’Est’s process has a long way to go, and for its critics, this pause signals the potential for reflection and the creation of a design that best suits all of Montreal. “[CWG] will definitely be vigilant in terms of what happens [with the project]. Hopefully, we will be invited to comment and consult on how this project could benefit Chinatown into the future,” says Seto.

In the meantime, CWG continues to push for its demands to be met.

“The fight isn’t over,” says Seto.

“CDPQ Infra should take this time to reflect on what the ultimate benefit of this project is, and who is benefitting the most.”

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April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Catey Fifield Copy Editor

news

“I choose to be as I am and to exist as I do”

O

n Thursday, March 24, the McGill Coalition Against Bill 21 – in collaboration with the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, SSMU, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS), and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) – hosted a panel titled “Living with Law 21: secondclass citizenship in Quebec today.” Invited to speak were Fatemeh Anvari, a teacher who was removed from her teaching post because of Bill 21; Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, a senior rabbi who has testified against the bill before Quebec’s National Assembly; Zeinab Diab, a PhD student studying the effects of the bill on religious minorities; and Faiz M. Lalani, a lawyer representing the World Sikh Organization in an appeal against the bill. The three-hour presentation was held in person at the Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Theatre and over Zoom, and it was attended by about 100 people, according to the organizers. The panelists discussed the impacts of Bill 21 on their lives and work, commented on the current state of the fight against Bill 21, and provided suggestions as to how members of the McGill community could aid in this fight.

The first to speak was Fatemeh Anvari. In December 2021, she was fired from a job teaching third grade at Chelsea Elementary School because she wears a hijab. The incident was covered widely by Canadian media, and thousands rushed to defend Anvari against a bill they called “awful” and “discriminatory.” Still, as Anvari explained to the audience at Thursday’s event, she “felt extremely alone.”

Anvari, who now works as a Student Life Animator at Chelsea Elementary School, emphasized the role teachers play in teaching their students to be true to themselves and to stand up for what they believe in. “How can we teach students to be their authentic selves,” she asked, “when their teacher cannot be her authentic self?”

As much as it pained Anvari to say goodbye to her students – one of whom, she recalled, drawing emotional responses from the audience on Zoom, “asked me whether it was my decision not to be their teacher anymore” – she understood that removing her hijab would be a disservice not only to herself but to her students.

“I choose to be as I am and to exist as I do,” she concluded.

The next speaker was Rabbi Lisa Grushcow. She detailed the

Osman Warsi | The McGill Daily three reasons why her temple, Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, joined a coalition against Bill 21.

Reason one was “it’s about us”: Jewish people, also religious minorities in Quebec, may feel the effects of Bill 21 if they wear a kippah or other article(s) of faith.

Reason two was “it’s not about us”: Grushcow acknowledged that Bill 21 disproportionately impacts Muslim women and that those who are not Muslim women should “use [our] privilege to stand up for what’s right.” Reason three, addressing the place of Bill 21 in schools, was that it can be good for children to learn from people wearing religious symbols. These experiences expose children to people different from themselves and perspectives different from their own, and they help to foster inclusion, acceptance, and an appreciation for diversity, Grushcow explained.

Gruschow also ref lected on the “terrible irony” of secularism in Quebec. While the separation of church and state should enable people of all faiths and beliefs to live in harmony, creating “a space where we can be together,” Grushcow argued, Bill 21 has

forced many people to leave or consider leaving Quebec.

“People don’t feel they can belong here anymore,” she said.

“How can we teach students to be their authentic selves when their teacher cannot be her authentic self?”

– Fatemeh Anvari

After Zeinab Diab, who spoke in French, presented her findings on Bill 21, Faiz M. Lalani offered a lawyer’s take on Bill 21. He described the bill as containing several “contradictory legal restrictions” and frustratingly ambiguous language – section 6, for instance, bans affected persons from wearing symbols that can be “reasonably considered as referring to a religious affiliation,” but it does not specify what these symbols

are. Lalani also stressed that Bill 21 is “fundamentally at odds with Quebec’s history”; Quebec has always been an advocate for religious freedom, he reminded the audience, and it was the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to grant equal rights to Jewish people.

Finally, Lalani outlined some of the arguments he and other lawyers are preparing to make the next time Bill 21 stands trial. These include: that Bill 21 is a criminal law, and provincial governments do not have the authority to enact criminal laws; that the government of François Legault made improper use of the notwithstanding clause, which Lalani said should only be used in “cases of emergency,” in enacting Bill 21; and that Bill 21, in disproportionately impacting Muslim women, violates the section 28 gender equality clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to which the notwithstanding clause cannot be applied. When Legault preemptively invoked the notwithstanding clause in 2019, it will be recalled, he shielded Bill 21 from potential court challenges that it violates certain Charter rights.

Responding to a question posed by an audience member, all of the panelists offered advice as to how ordinary people could take action against Bill 21.

They recommended donating money, signing petitions, writing to politicians, and, per Anvari, finding ways “to speak peacefully with people who do not think the same way we do.”

Only this, Grushcow added, will help to bridge the “us and them” divide that hangs over Quebec.

Lalani also stressed that Bill 21 is “fundamentally at odds with Quebec’s history”; Quebec has always been an advocate for religious freedom.

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Commentary

Reflecting on the Anniversary of Atlanta Mass Shooting

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Asian women’s rights to the city must be protected

Hyeyoon Cho Design and Production Editor content warning: anti-Asian racism *I use the term “Asian” in accordance with the discourses about the rise in anti-Asian violence and the pandemic. I would also like to acknowledge the limitations of the term “Asian,” which obscures the diversity among those it purports to cover.

Specifically, Asian women in Canada are not a homogenous group. They have their own unique experiences related to various historical and contextual factors including country of origin realities, migration experiences, war trauma, and socioeconomic status.

O

n March 16, 2021, a white man committed a mass shooting at three massage parlours in Atlanta, Georgia, killing eight people - Xiaojie Tan, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels six of whom were women of Asian descent. While I grieved for this tragic loss, I was also selfishly worried about my own safety, feeling anxious about going back to Montreal that coming fall. I came to realize that this fear is not an isolated one, but in fact shared by many students who attended the town hall meeting organized by McGill’s Department of East Asian Studies last year. I remember tearing up when I heard from women feeling unsafe. As far as I could remember, there was no official statement from the university on the Atlanta shooting, or even in general about the increased instances of anti-Asian racism in Canada (only SSMU sent out a statement condemning anti-

Asian racism). The only email I got from the school was the MRO communication that annoyingly reminded me that I need to be there in-person for the Fall, whilst anti-Asian crimes remained on the rise in Canada.

After the Atlanta shootings, I shared my concern with my friends, and we were all worried about being targets of physical harassment in public. The pandemic has led to a disturbing rise in anti-Asian racism and hate crimes in Canada, and the situation has only worsened.

According to a new report released by the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter and Project 1907, 943 racist incidents were reported across Canada in 2021, representing a 47 per cent increase from 2020. Reports from women accounted for two-thirds of these incidents.

What’s been especially challenging for me is that it’s difficult to separate myself from the stories and lives of the Asian women who have been brutally attacked and killed – from the Atlanta Spa massacre in March 2021, to the January 2022 subway killing of Michelle Go, and the February murder of Christina Yuna Lee. I see myself in these lives; I also experienced incidents of harassment on the streets. I always flatten my back against the metro ads so that I can’t be pushed onto the tracks. I flinch whenever I pass by St. Catherine and Guy, where a Korean man was brutally stabbed in March 2020.

As I go on with my everyday life and navigate public spaces, I become hyper aware of my gendered identity that is always in tension with my race. Min Jin Lee, author of the novel Pachinko, said “I never take my race off and leave it at home…It is in my skin, eyes, and hair. I am never without it. For me to function, I need to be at peace with my racial self.”

“I never take my race off and leave it at home…It is in my skin, eyes, and hair. I am never without it. For me to function, I need to be at peace with my racial self.”

- Min Jin Lee

Hyeyoon Cho | Design and Production Editor I also ask myself if I have been at peace with my racialized self at all. I’ve become “accustomed” to all forms of microaggressions, but being the target of racism for my physical appearance on the street makes me feel helpless. I am sick and tired of the hypersexualization of Asian women that propagates violence against us. I hate the fact that Asian women’s rights to the city, to be and feel safe, are infringed upon by racists. But at the same time, I am genuinely curious to know, what do we really need in order to feel safe? How can we stand together and change this? Are pepper sprays and self-defense training enough? Is more police funding an answer to all of this?

I don’t really have well-thought out answers to all those questions I raised. However, it is equally worth noting that anti-Asian racism did not just magically appear after the pandemic. It is important to keep in mind that white supremacy is embedded in Canada’s social institutions, that determine who belongs here (and who doesn’t), who is deserving of wealth and comfort (and who isn’t), and who owns the land (and who “was” already here). Not only is Canada a settler colonial state that has propagated violence to Indigenous communities, it has also aimed to maintain its status as a “white nation” through racial exclusion and migrant

exploitation. From the outset, Asian migration and settlement was met with anger as it was viewed as a threat to Canada’s white settler society. Limiting Asian immigration began in 1885 with the imposition of a head tax on Chinese migrants. Since then, various discriminatory policies and regulations were introduced to discourage Asian immigration to Canada, including the Komagata Maru incident excluding immigrants from India, the Hayashi-Lemieux Agreement of 1908 which limited Japanese immigration to a certain number a year, as well as issuing an order to forcibly relocate Japanese Canadians to internment camps in British Columbia.

Considering how anti-Asian racism is deeply rooted in these histories of state racial discrimination and violence, more police funding will not fix the root cause. Also, we cannot ignore the police brutality that has prompted Black and Indigenous people to fight for their liberation from state-sponsored racism.

Indeed, many have pointed out that more police enforcement and hate crimes legislation does not make communities safer from racial violence. Just like what Asian American Feminist Collective and their project Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities state, we need to redefine public safety as investments in

communities, social services, and infrastructures of care.

Combatting anti-Asian racism and hate crimes needs solidarity work. Here I’d also like to quote from Black feminist Audre Lorde and her work on intersectionality.

In The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism (1981), she says, “We have chosen each other and the edge of each other’s battles.” By calling attention to “the edge of each other’s battles,” Lorde frames solidarity in terms of commitment and desire, positioning reciprocity and affective ties as necessary to intersectional work. If solidarity is then about shifting the orientation of our desires and relationships, forming alliances with other movements, theories, and histories of resistance, maybe protecting and empowering Asian communities must be done not solely through positive media representation, but by actively supporting activists and organizations who have been doing work from the ground up. I encourage you to follow community organizations and activist groups such as Act 2 End Racism, Butterfly, South Asian Women’s Community Centre, Fight Covid Racism, and Pan Asian Collective. For more resources on mental health, check out Asian Mental Health Collective and Keep.meSAFE.

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features

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

The State of the Union

Are student unions across Canada broken beyond repair?

Eve Cable Illustrations Editor

L

ast week, a fictional rat very nearly became the incumbent president of the University of British Columbia’s student union.

Coming in second place and winning five of six head-to-heads against other candidates, the notorious Remy the Rat was a satiric candidate nominated by members of Climate Justice UBC in a bid both to add some fun to student elections and to bring awareness to the social justice demands of students on campus. The creators hoped that running would increase meager voter turnout: “It did. This year, the turnout was 17.4 per cent, a 10.5 increase from last year,” wrote The Ubyssey’s Regina Hipolito.

Voter apathy has been an issue at McGill for the past few years, with turnout in SSMU Executive elections and referendums ranging from around 10 per cent to 19 per cent, which amounts to around 3,000 people – a very small proportion of the 26,765

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily undergraduate students enrolled at the university. A fair number of voters who open the voting link for elections also choose to abstain on all questions, with around 30 per cent of voters abstaining on the majority of candidates in this year’s SSMU elections. This demonstrates either a lack of concern for who is elected or an arguably understandable lack of faith in any candidate. While there is always ample (and valid) criticism of our student unions – students need only take a quick scroll through McGill’s subreddit – students consistently fail to show up to vote.

It’s hard to work out who’s to blame for this, though. While students need to at least show up if they want change, it’s easy to understand why they are disillusioned with student government: years of disappointment from inexperienced and power-hungry executives who have failed to follow through on their campaign promises leaves a bleak environment for electoral politics.

Students have found communication from SSMU to

be frustrating, contributing to their lack of motivation to vote in student government elections. An anonymous U3 Arts student spoke to the Daily about the SSMU’s lack of clarity in elections emails: “I normally can’t find the time to go through the chutes and ladders of figuring out the online portals, and almost every time a question or a candidate has changed and I have to

do it multiple times. And even when I do fill it out, I often get followup emails asking me to vote again, or saying I haven’t yet voted, even though I know for a fact that it’s the exact same question or election I just voted on. It takes too much time, and it’s clearly not worth the effort.” Another anonymous student working for SSMU feels that Elections SSMU doesn’t have a good

[I]t’s easy to understand why [students] are disillusioned with student governments: years of dissapointment from inexperienced and power-hungry executives who have failed to follow through on their campaign promses leaves a bleak environment for electoral politics.

handle on the process: “I find those emails to be poorly written. They’re always full of errors, and I feel like the Elections officers quite often miss things that they shouldn’t. It means ballots are constantly being restarted every time and everyone receives, like, fifty emails at once.

Nobody’s going to read all that when we have stuff to do like classwork.”

Students complain that the election process is so bureaucratic that it creates confusion about who is running and why, and that information is often hidden behind the numerous links that students receive in election periods. Tory Fortunato, U3 Arts, cites this as a key reason for lack of student engagement with SSMU politics: “While the frequent reminders are helpful for me to remember to vote, the fact that they flood my inbox for an entire week is honestly a bit overwhelming. I wish emails included more about who is running and what is on the ballot rather than just simple reminders.

For students who are not as active on Facebook, which is where most SSMU

features campaigning happens, receiving emails about the ballot in its entirety would be helpful.” Fortunato’s mention of Facebook highlights another issue – that students are often not provided candidate information on an easy-to-access platform. Just this year, Elections SSMU failed to provide contact information for every campaign on the Referendum Question ballot, and it did not inform campus news outlets about the removal of the Palestine Solidarity Policy from the ballot at any point – the Daily was notified directly by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill. This lack of communication runs contrary to Elections SSMU’s mandate regarding media communication, and it makes running for, voting for, and reporting on SSMU an inaccessible process for all involved.

It’s therefore no wonder that students don’t participate in elections when the process often seems complicated and bureaucratic, particularly for the average student not involved in student government.

Blinded by bureaucracy, unions are failing to provide meaningful support to the students they represent: “I think what underscores the plight of student unions everywhere in Canada is a crisis of engagement, a crisis which could be avoided entirely if student unions could recall their raison d’etre and make themselves meaningful to students,” said Nick Taylor of Trent University in a conversation with the Daily. “At Trent, our student union has come to see itself as an extension of the university, far more concerned with the administration of services, than with any kind of actual lobbying, whether around tuition costs, or accessibility needs for online learning, or the seemingly ceaseless desire of our university administration to corporatize and commercialize.”

Blinded by bureaucracy, unions are failing to provide meaningful support to the students they represent.

This is one of the student body’s biggest gripes surrounding our own union at McGill: SSMU is so bogged-down by bureaucracy that it takes forever for real institutional change to happen as well as for student-serving initiatives to get up and running. Right now, for instance, Councillors and Senators are mostly unpaid positions.

Though paid Commissioner roles do exist, Councillors and Senators

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily do a comparable amount of work; they are absolutely crucial to the drafting and presenting of motions for enacting institutional change and for generally serving the interests of their constituents. With these roles being mostly unpaid, the capacity of these workers is diminished.

training is inconsistent from year to year. Effectively, SSMU has become a place where inexperienced candidates are burdened with salaried jobs that they aren’t prepared for. Though students should understand the risks and responsibilities of running for SSMU, the bureaucracy of the

nobody ran for the office. Meanwhile, The Ubyssey, despite not normally issuing endorsements, urged students not to vote for a particular slate following a slew of elections violations. Taylor provides insight into similar issues for executives at Trent University: “at the end of last academic year, half the executives of our student union stepped down over what was ostensibly an interpersonal conflict [...]

I think a lot of people see student union executive positions as something akin to a high school’s student council, and often their approach to the position reflects the same level of maturity. But it’s a job! And students are footing the bill for these opportunistic careerist types to clamor all over one another in a competition to see who the biggest narcissist is. It’s gross!” Exceptions to this would include candidates like this year’s VP University Affairs Claire Downie, who went on a leave of absence following the return of President Daryanani. At a recent consultative forum, Representative Coussa commented, “​​ I think that it is shameful that SSMU is an environment where an exec is unable organization makes it hard to ensure to work because she feels unsafe […] I that unprepared candidates know the think that we have failed VP Downie.” full extent of the responsibilities and difficulties they can expect to face in their roles.

As a current SSMU employee myself, I would never run for a SSMU executive position. It’s a common sentiment among casual staff that the roles are doomed and that those who actually care about and are involved in student government know not to run because they’re likely to be burned out

by October and embroiled in various disputes, scandals, and interpersonal conflicts. The roles are too much work for too little gain – while it’s an often-cited complaint that SSMU executives receive a high salary, their work reportedly translates to around minimum wage, with executives often taking on other jobs during their tenure in order to support their studies. The work that executives are tasked with is often burdensome and impossible to complete in a single year, particularly - Claire Downie when much of the year is spent putting out fires – such as this year’s ongoing disputes regarding President Darshan While writing this article, I Daryanani’s absence and the extra received news of VP Downie’s work required of other executives in resignation from SSMU. In her his absence. Readers can take a look at letter of resignation, she describes the Daily’s past endorsements to see if the toxic environment that led to any candidates managed to complete her departure: “There are some even the most basic of their campaign truly kind and devoted people at promises – more often than not, SSMU who genuinely care about supporting students, but there are they’ve not completed any.

The roles therefore attract people far more people with different running for the wrong reasons, not priorities. SSMU attracts a lot of the students who have actually fought truly harmful and just plain unkind for change. This year, extensions people. For the past few months, I were issued for three key positions have witnessed my coworkers fail (VP External, VP University Affairs, to understand, let alone advance, VP Student Life) due to a lack of anti-violence and anti-oppression in applications, and three positions the workplace. Inaction allows it to overall ran unopposed. These issues continue with impunity regardless are far from exclusive to SSMU and of who it harms. Their behavior as McGill – the University of Toronto’s well as their inaction has furthered student union has failed to find a an unsafe environment at SSMU. It president for the coming year after cost me this job, a full time source of

With issues ranging from voter apathy, to a lack of candidates, to corruption allegations, and to inexperienced executives, it’s almost impossible to know where to start in terms of reforming SSMU and other Canadian student unions into organization that actually enact meaningful change for the students they serve.

Councillors who do receive compensation for their work are financed by their respective departmental associations – like the Arts Representatives, who are funded by AUS. Arts Representative Yara Coussa told the Daily that this leads to problems for the unpaid representatives, who have to work on a voluntary basis: “It is not coincidental that the only Councillors getting paid through their departmental associations are the ones who are constantly bringing forward motions and speaking out,” Representative Coussa explained. “That being said, we are paid below the minimum wage for a very demanding and mentally taxing job.”

Students responsible for enacting change are therefore overstretched and underpaid for their time while still being held accountable for their work. In the past year, we have seen cases of Representatives being reprimanded for failing to consult on motions – but a lack of institutional memory in SSMU means that students are inadequately prepared for the roles they hold and that errors like this happen due to a lack of training and clarity.

This year also saw VP Internal Sarah Paulin request that campus media refrain from contacting SSMU employees despite the contracts signed by those employees not preventing media outlets from doing so. But VP Paulin came into the role with limited experience, taking over from a line of VP Internals who either never took office or also had limited experience in student government.

Running unopposed in last year’s election, Paulin had little template on which to base her work – it’s not surprising that SSMU Executives make mistakes like this when there is a profound lack of institutional memory in the organization and when

“There are some truly kind and devoted people at SSMU who genuinely care about supporting students, but there are far more people with different priorities.”

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income, and a lot of other things that I can’t articulate properly yet.”

With issues ranging from voter apathy, to a lack of candidates, to corruption allegations, and to inexperienced executives, it’s almost impossible to know where to start in terms of reforming SSMU and other Canadian student unions into organizations that actually enact meaningful change for the students they serve. One proposed solution is an initiative by Bryan Buraga to “Democratize SSMU,” but current members of SSMU governance have expressed dissatisfaction with the initiative. Current AUS VP External Charlotte Gurung told the Daily that she feels the initiative “is not feasible, it is a bandaid for bigger issues, and would make SSMU operations impossible.” They also criticized Buraga’s process of consultation: “The faculty societies are independently licensed organizations. Organizers of the Democratize SSMU motion did not do due diligence in consulting the Faculty Associations when writing this motion which would fundamentally change the operations of the independent faculty organizations [...] Organizers of the motion did not consider that democratizing the Board of Directors (and removing executives from the Board) is a completely infeasible plan which could slow down already tedious Board decisionmaking processes, leave the Society open to legal liability, result in ineffective communication between Executives and the Board, and delay funding approvals for student initiatives, clubs and services.” SUS VP Academic Alexandra Mircescu also described the initiative as a “utopian fantasy campaign,” arguing that the proposed change to faculty association governance structures ultimately “fails to address any of the pressing issues with SSMU which are impacting students right now.” In the past week, McGill administration has also threatened to sever its Memorandum of Agreement with SSMU in protest of its democratically voted-upon Palestine Solidarity Policy, jeopardizing the union’s ability to exist in the way it currently does.

Ultimately, it’s unclear whether any solutions could save the crumbling student unions across Canada. At some point along the way, we lost sight of what was really important: the students that elected candidates are meant to represent. Student government is meant to be a form of institutional support for the interests and wellbeing of students on university campuses – instead, it’s become a site of toxicity and bureaucracy, and countless students across the country have been harmed by their student unions’ politics and processes. It’s hard to not be pessimistic, but students across Canada have come to expect corruption over change, and it doesn’t look like things will change anytime soon.

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features

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Digging into Urban Gardening in Montreal

Anna Zavelsky Culture Editor

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eneviève Dubé of the Toit Vert Solidaire, a group created by the Milton Parc Green Committee and the Milton Parc Citizens’ Committee, spoke to the Daily about community gardens and urban agriculture initiatives in Montreal. The Toit Vert “was created to create connection between people in the community, empower people to fight for food security and to create a sense of belonging,” says Dubé, describing the garden as a “collective learning experience” that, if given the resources, could actually be a meaningful food source for lowincome households.

Located on De Maisonneuve Boulevard in Borough VilleMarie, a few blocks from the Saint-Laurent metro station, the community garden of Habitations Jeanne Mance is brimming with flowering plants, onion tops, and tomato vines. The City of Montreal currently maintains 97 community garden sites, the number varying per neighbourhood – one garden per 61 households in MercierHochelaga-Maisonneuve, one per 113 households in Ville-Marie, and one per 149 households in the PlateauMont-Royal neighbourhood, according to Dubé.

Habitations Jeanne Mance is Quebec’s oldest public housing project, and its garden offers residents lower-cost access to fresh produce through purchasing a plot.

Plots are allocated by street address, and gardeners are provided with soil, compost, gardening tools, and a watering source. Gardeners must follow a variety of rules, including maintaining the garden through regular weeding within their plots and along pathways, checking for pests and invasive plants, and participating in scheduled clean-ups.

Community gardens are essential food services in low-income and marginalized communities.

In Ontario, gardens were officially declared to be essential food services during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as the province announced the closure of recreational spaces, which initially included community gardens. Fresh produce grown and accessed by a neighbourhood community has been shown to increase the proportion of vegetables in diets, to have benefits for physical and mental health and well-being through fostering active involvement in gardening as an outdoor physical activity, and to foster connection with other

Viola Ruzzier | The McGill Daily members of the community.

Unfortunately, residents can expect to be on the waitlist for years before having access to a garden plot. Dubé reported to the Daily that wait times for a plot in PlateauMont-Royal are generally three to five years, according to 54 per cent of respondents – while some have been waiting for two years (19 per cent), and others for six to ten years (16 per cent). Borough councillors have expressed that expansion of urban agriculture is obstructed due to the limited availability of public land. According to Dubé, garden

plots in De Lorimer and Mile End neighbourhoods are divided in two to accommodate more gardeners – but this is not an adequate solution.

More land needs to be allocated for urban agriculture initiatives, addressing the cause of long wait lists rather than implementing a temporary solution that divides the already limited space there is. Dubé emphasizes that “we cannot relate community gardens to food security if we don’t have the space to develop them.” Currently, the community gardens in Montreal emphasize the individuality of plot ownership: the

Dubé imagines urban gardens to be pathways toward a sustainable food system in which the “production, processing, distribution [sic.] consumption of food products as well as the management of resdiual materials” are integrated into a local and collaborative network.

rules state that although “gardeners may help one another on occasion,” they “may not work on another gardener’s plot on a regular basis.”

And although plots are allowed to have a co-gardener, there can only be one and they can only serve as a temporary replacement for the main gardener. This restriction of one-gardener-per-plot, which has contributed to the reduction in plot sizes, severely limits the potential reach of urban gardens within their existing space and number. In order to shorten wait times and allow more people to engage with the garden, the Toit Vert recommends “offer[ing] options for collective gardening or involvement in other urban agriculture projects.”

Collective gardening differs from community gardening in that a group of people cultivate the garden together rather than own individual plots. Without increasing the amount and size of gardens, such a collective approach to gardening could better accommodate marginalized communities who would benefit from urban agriculture.

Dubé imagines urban gardens to be a pathway toward a sustainable food system in which

the “production, processing, distribution, [and] consumption of food products as well as the management of residual materials” are integrated into a local and collaborative network. Dubé attests that a 2021 survey by the Urban Agriculture Lab of Plateau-MontRoyal found that “vegetables grown in community gardens contribute to a good proportion of fresh fruit and vegetable consumption for some members, but – unfortunately – not enough to fully feed their households. Fruits and vegetables from the community garden represent between 25 per cent and 49 per cent of the total fruits and vegetables they eat during the growing season for 30 per cent of survey respondents.” Although this is a substantial increase from just the past two years, gardens are not currently a reliable food source because they are not allowed the space to grow. If gardens were to be adequately publicly funded and meaningfully expanded, the future could look like a garden in every neighbourhood. Dubé hinted at potentially establishing a garden for the Milton Parc community at the “Royal Vic site,” what used

features to be the Royal Victoria Hospital, land which McGill currently plans to privatize and convert into a Sustainability Sciences and Public Policy centre.

In order for greening projects to be beneficial, it is essential that projects are community-led or that members are given a seat at the table, in tandem with anti-gentrification efforts, housing rights, and ways to address other socioeconomic needs.

April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily cultivated land from 120 hectares to 160 hectares, to develop urban agriculture in schools, and to increase the number of urban agricultural businesses.

Magali Casaubon, the Urban Agriculture Program Manager at Santropol Roulant, speaks to the shortcomings of the plan: “it is important to remind the city that in order to move forward with the AU 2021–2026 super strategy, it must also ensure that it provides funding for human resources, particularly for community organizations that are already active and supported by individuals who are living with job insecurity from season to season.” The city has also been a proponent of “unconventional” greening initiatives, such as in alleyways known as “Ruelle Verte.”

Although this could aid with the urban heat island effect (UHI), growing in alleys is not effective on a larger scale due to limited water and sunlight. As well, green alleys have contributed to “urban renewal,” also known as gentrification, efforts. Dubé added that “the Milton Parc community has been waiting to get its own community garden” because the Toit Vert as well as other green initiatives across Milton Parc are “great projects, but they do not address food security needs.”

Gentrification

Funding In February, the City of Montreal announced an investment of $10 million over the next 10 years for urban agriculture projects. The money will be put toward the renovation of gardens, expansions, and the installation of compost bins. In order to access this funding, boroughs can submit proposals to the Office of Ecological Transition and Resilience. As well, Montreal’s 2021 to 2026 Urban Agriculture Strategy notably aims to expand

However, greening initiatives across Montreal – notably, the conversion of industrial land by the Lachine Canal into recreational space with bike and walking paths following its designation as a national park in 1976 – has provided sought-after green infrastructure that facilitates gentrification through land speculation and eviction of low-income residents.

Publicly-funded greening projects promoted by activists and borough councillors as well as those involved

in the Eco-quartier program, have inadvertently displaced low-income and racialized populations while being ineffective in addressing the issues they intend to. Ville en Vert, a project funded by Eco-quartier to combat the UHI, in the VilleraySaint Michel-Parc Extension is one such example of this. The project was initiated to reduce the UHI, which occurs when densely paved and constructed areas of a city absorb and retain greater UV radiation than vegetation and natural land cover would, resulting in higher overall temperatures in densely urban areas with little green space. This increases energy costs for air conditioning, pollution levels, and, in some cases, heatrelated illness.

A 2021 research paper titled “The Impacts of Green Gentrification on Homelessness; Urban Greening and Displacement in Parc-Extension Neighborhood of Montreal” reported, however, that the developers of the Ville en Vert project did not consult Parc-Extension residents or local organizers regarding the project in terms of adequately addressing the sustainability needs of the community.

Residents and organizers expressed feeling disappointed with the organization of the program, citing that it failed to integrate feedback, lacked the capacity to invoke environmental change residents could actually benefit from, and had no intention of reflecting the needs of residents. Environmental concerns, such as UHI, ultimately need to be addressed as intersectional social issues – undesirable land uses, zoning, and toxic waste disposal, among other environmental decisions, have historically deliberately targeted and disproportionately affected lowincome people and people of colour, especially Black and Indigenous peoples. The paper cited that the Ville en Vert project “did not emerge as a solution designed to address the problem of UHI in its complexity but rather as a result of applying a pre-

Anna Zavelsky | The McGill Daily existing solution to a ‘problem’ that is high on the political agenda,” and its adverse “inadvertent” effects of intensifying gentrification outweigh its negligible effects on the UHI. The city’s transformation of alleys into “Ruelle Verte,” in the absence of meaningful rent control, have had a similar effect. In order for greening projects to be beneficial, it is essential that projects are community-led or that members are given a seat at the table, in tandem with antigentrification efforts, housing rights, and ways to address other socioeconomic needs.

to “return” them at the end of the season. Volunteer with the Santropol Roulant and participate in the activities of the Toit Vert Solitaire ( join the Facebook group: Les Jardins collectifs de Milton Parc / Milton Parc Community Gardens).

Further, students can advocate against the privatization of the Royal Vic and in favour of keeping the land in the public domain, democratically managed to serve the social, economic, and ecological needs of Milton Parc residents.

Accessibility

The potential that urban gardening has in creating sustainable and community-based food systems in Montreal is immense. Although gardens wouldn’t be able to operate for around six months of the year, the summer and fall months could serve as a time of cultivating connection between people and between the earth through digging, weeding, shovelling compost, planting lettuce and watching it grow, and taking a squash home only to realize its the best-tasting squash of your life. However, the development of gardens has real limitations, such as funding, space to allow expansion, and the physical accessibility of the garden space. As well, it is important to consider the possible gentrifying effects that gardens can have.

Although gardens are in line with the needs of residents in various neighbourhoods, as indicated by the hundreds of people on the waitlist for a plot, greening initiatives coupled with poor rent control across Montreal have historically raised property values and resulted in the eviction of low-income residents. As a participant of a garden collective has said via Dubé, “Having a garden would make my life very happy every day. Meeting my neighbours, taking care of the plants, sharing my harvests by preparing meals for my friends and relatives, the magic of seeing what I have planted grow day after day.”

Gardens across Montreal have a varying number of plots which are accessible to people with disabilities.

There are many ways to make gardens more physically accessible for people with disabilities as well as for anyone unable to crouch for long periods of time – ultimately increasing community involvement in the garden space. Along main pathways and entrances within the garden, accessibility measures should maintain smooth paths that are wide enough for a wheelchair or have accessories such as ramps and railings. Additionally, vertical gardening techniques and raisedbeds allow gardeners to stand or sit on a chair, rather than crouch – such beds of varying heights are implemented at the Santropol Roulant. Beds can also be elevated to allow a wheelchair to be positioned underneath the planter while the gardener has access to the entirety of the bed. Ultimately, more needs to be done across the community gardens of Montreal to ensure improved physical access.

Engaging in Urban Agriculture

Anna Zavelsky | The McGill Daily

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To start your own garden, look to the Macdonald Campus Seed Library, which allows students to borrow a variety of flower, herb, and vegetable seeds with the option

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April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Souq Stories : On Commons, Enclosure, and Freedom crafts, such as carpentry, cotton and woollen textiles that made it famous.

The Acre market is characterised by its port, where barters and transactions took place.

The noise that fills the space demonstrates to the viewer that markets themselves are ways of exploring the commons, a centre of social and political life. Commons are defined as places that encapsulate earth and natural resources, institutions, rural and urban spaces, physical products, and knowledge.

They are places of public gathering, where hubs and networks are formulated and human interaction is promoted. Commons is the air we all breathe. The photographs demand that we recognize the significance of enclosures, as violence, colonialism and war forces enclosures on Palestinians and appropriates Palestinian lands. The power of photographs surpasses any sentence that could possibly be written about

Dimitra Kolios Culture Contributor

Zhichen Zhou | Solidarity for Palestenian Human Rights McGill

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,ouq Stories is a youth-led photography exhibit that captures daily life in seven historic Palestinian markets. With nearly two years of captured photographs, the work aims to strengthen unity among Palestinians across colonial borders, revive the national economy, and empower younger generations.

Souq is Arabic for street market.

The images capture a moment bursting with life, frozen within the frame. You are not sure where to look first – but then you find yourself staring. Fixated on one of the many photographs taken of Palestinian souqs. The visuals fill the space with colour, life, and memories that transgress national boundaries. The sounds of the marketplace emanating from the walls make you feel as though you should be looking behind you – as though a street vendor was calling at you. The exhibition places you at the center of a Palestinian souq. Scenes are brought to life as you imagine the narrowness of the alleyways and the hardness of the cobblestone street that blend into the darkness of the night sky. The faces in these images are so unfamiliar that you believe that you recognize them as strangers walking by you on the street. One photo captures a boy from Jerusalem pushing a cart of ka’ek al-quds, Jerusalem’s sesame bread. Another shows a brown cloth bag filled to the brim with vibrant

spices. A day turns into night as you walk past the fruit vendor and look into the neighbouring shoe store.

You become enclosed within the city walls, within the presence of the locals. A fragment of Palestinian life and land.

On June 24, 2021, a year following the latest war in the Gaza Strip, many demonstrated in front of the Israeli colonial prisons in Acre, Jaffa, and Nazareth in response to arrests made in recent protests. In Hebron and Nablus, many were spurred to protest the Palestinian Authority’s suppression of their freedom. At this time, homes in Silwan, Jerusalem, were being destroyed. Forced displacement threatened the Palestinians in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood. On the same day, more than 14 locally active organizations, in coordination with volunteers from the Insaniyyat Association, opened this same exhibition within the old markets of these seven cities.

Here at McGill, there is a glimpse of these forceful acts of activism – a fight against forced displacement and a fight for the need to recognize rights in the past, present, and future.

During the keynote presentation on March 29, Professor Helga Tawil-Souri of New York University described this exhibition as reminiscent of going to Damascus for ice cream followed by dinner in Beirut. A memory so vivid and a plan that feels like it is going to take place in the coming week.

Colonialism is today. It is not part of the past. The exhibition reveals the relationship between the visual, displacement, and commons. The

markets have been impacted by the attempted erasure of Palestinian identity and ways of life by Israeli colonialism, as Israelis encroach on their lands and forcefully displace families from their homes. The Hebron, Nazareth, Gaza, Jaffa, Acre, Nablus, and Jerusalem markets are distinguished by the character of their roadmaps and laneways. For Nablus, it was the city’s handicraft industries and its traditional Levant

the experiences of the Palestinian people, as Mair Marsha, one of the curators for the exhibit, explained.

Palestinian voices are triumphant.

As Professor Tawil-Souri put it, the moment of politics is when possibilities happen. The viewer is confronted with testimonial documents, and the mere existence of these documents is a form of protest. The right to be recognized. An act of unification follows every act of fragmentation, and uprooting is followed by re-rooting.

Palestinian identity, narrative, and social encounters are threatened by settler colonialism. But despite this enclosure, there is a tangible heritage that is captured in the exhibition – one that remembers that souqs are spaces of liberation and offers a decolonial perspective to life in Palestine. Palestinian souqs are places of reckoning and reclaiming, and through photographs we see these things happen.

We saw the souq as an inspiration.

The last vestige of Palestinian sovereignty under the occupation.

The souq, for us, meant our economic heartbeat, so it was important to revitalize it. We saw it as an opportunity to connect Palestinians because it’s a place that harbours a huge diversity of people.

Zhichen Zhou | Solidarity for Palestenian Human Rights McGill

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April 04, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Souq Stories : Interview with the Curators

Yehia Anas Sabaa Culture Contributor

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rom March 21 to April 7, the Macdonald-Harrington building hosts the Souq Stories: Reclaiming the Commons exhibition.

I sat down with curators Amir Marshi and Layan Salameh to talk about the exhibition and Palestinian activism.

Amir, studying at the University of Chicago, is from Nazareth, Palestine. He is the co-founder and coordinator of the project as well as co-founder of the Edward Said Forum for Palestinian students in the social sciences, humanities, and arts.

Layan is an architect from Nazareth, Palestine. She is the cofounder and coordinator of the partner groups and exhibitions at Souq Stories. Layan is doing a master’s in Architecture and Urban Planning.

The following is a short excerpt from a two-hour-long conversation with Amir and Layan.

Yehia for The McGill Daily (MD): What did this exhibition look like in Palestine?

Amir: This exhibition took place last June, and it took place in seven cities for seven days: Nazareth, Nablus, Gaza, Jaffa, Akka, Jerusalem, and Al-Khalil. The idea was to display these photographs in large print within the alleyways of the different souqs. So when you walked in Al-Khalil during those seven days, you would see photographs of the alleyways of Nazareth whereby you are not allowed to go from Al-Khalil to Nazareth. You don’t have the right to do so, according to Israel. So we try to create this common space and time to transcend these borders.

Here [at McGill], it’s very different. The idea is to show the distinct features of each souq but also to display them according to the overarching themes of common space, common time, and common history. We displayed the photographs all together on the wall; the idea here is to show one Palestine. When people look at Palestine, they see one portion of Palestine. We didn’t put the names of the locations. We want them to look at these spaces as first and foremost Palestinian spaces. We wanted to deconstruct and decolonize the way people look at Palestine.

Layan: We wanted the exhibition to be accessible to all people, to whoever comes to the souqs in their daily life. We faced a couple of restrictions. The occupation power restricted our movement, our cultural activities, and our activism. In Jerusalem, we couldn’t install the photographs because the occupation power sees it as threatening to its identity, so we had to print the photos on T-shirts and give them to the merchants so that people could see them in the alleys.

MD: Why did you decide to focus on the souq?

Amir: We saw the souq as an inspiration. The last vestige of Palestinian sovereignty under the occupation. The souq, for us, meant our economic heartbeat, so it was important to revitalize it. We saw it as an opportunity to connect Palestinians because it’s a place that harbours a huge diversity of people.

Layan: It has different levels.

For hundreds of years, those souqs were the core of the cities. Cities and towns actually developed around them. With that comes all of the public encounters of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Now, the colonial power sees it as threatening to its identity. In order to maintain a sense of economic superiority, it suppresses those places on every level. The souq carries with it a very long history. My parents and my grandparents used to always tell me: “Oh, we lived there, and next to it there was this souq and we used to buy so and so.” Our project aims to shift the narrative from seeing those places as images of a fragmented space to images of a unified space. So when our parents talk about going from a market in Nablus to a market in Nazareth for commercial exchange, we want to see this as a narrative of connectivity.

MD: Why are there Arabic journals behind the pictures?

Amir: This is a newspaper for the Arab diaspora here in Montreal. I think, for me, it’s part of our longterm aim of connecting with the diaspora. It’s funny because the publisher of the newspaper came here and interviewed us, too. So, in a way, these pictures are going to sort of fade into the background and be part of this space permanently. So, yeah, that’s how you see the merging of the background and the foreground.

Layan: You can also see that many of the articles are talking about uprisings and resistance.

This image of old newspapers is no longer accessible by virtue of the ever-expanding virtual world. So we wanted to exhibit those hidden newspapers, hidden stories, hidden knowledge and put it here so that people can see them.

MD: Who are the photographers?

Amir: That’s important because we tried to focus on young, aspiring photographers – even people who do photography as a hobby.

We didn’t want to include a lot of professional photographers.

We do have some professional photographers; one of them is Mustafa Al-Kharouf, who was born and raised in Jerusalem but doesn’t have any legal documentation. He’s trapped in Jerusalem because if he gets out he would never be able to come back. He’s not allowed to be unified with his family.

Layan: Souq Stories was a place for [young photographers] to share

their work. We connected with them through different social media platforms. We used our pre-existing network and we built on it and expanded it.

MD: What were the main goals of the project?

Amir: There are three goals: the strengthening of Palestinian unity, the revitalization of the national economy, and the empowerment of youth by virtue of connecting them across colonial borders.

Layan: We wanted a project that connects Palestinian youth with their fragmented geography.

MD: Can you talk more about this fragmented geography?

Layan: The movement of Palestinians is heavily restricted.

We are given this paper that tells us where we can work and where we can live. Some places are better than others. In Gaza, it’s a total enclosure. It’s extremely difficult to get in or out. This immense difficulty that Palestinians face when trying to move across different Palestinian cities contributes to the fragmentation.

You also have all these settlements that try to make a discontinuous Palestinian state in all of the West Bank. So it also tries to fragment the West Bank itself into A, B, C areas where, for example, A is for Israelis, B is under the control of the Israeli army, and C is for Palestinian authorities. This process of fragmentation is still ongoing; it happened in 1948 and it’s still happening now.

Both Amir and Layan wanted to stress that this exhibition was a collective effort. Many volunteers, organizations, and youth groups contributed to the project. There are two people that were supposed to come with Amir and Layan to Montreal: Waed Manaf Abbas and Shareef Sirhan.

I contacted Waed, who is the cocordinator of the curator group and the photography group and is on the general organizing committee for the project. I asked her about the reason she was not able to come to Montreal.

Waed (I translated Waed’s response from Arabic to English): I am from Jerusalem. People born in Jerusalem get this thing we call “the blue identity.” It’s not citizenship; it’s more like a permit that gives you the right of residence and the right to work. I have to live in Jerusalem, I have to work in Jerusalem, and I can only visit doctors in Jerusalem.

I do have an Israeli social security number and access to Israeli medical care. Since I am not a citizen, travelling becomes complicated: I am considered to be stateless. Like a lot of other people, if I want to come to Canada I have to go through the process of getting a visa – I can’t just decide to buy a plane ticket and travel. This process can get very complicated. To this day [March 31, 2022], my visa application is

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We display[ed] these photographs within the alleyways of the different Souqs. So when you walked in AlKhalil...you would see photographs of the alleyways of Nazareth whereby you are not allowed to go from Al-Khalil to Nazareth...we try to create this common space and time to transcend these borders.

still pending. Even if it had gotten accepted in time, I would’ve had to give my fingerprints to an official service centre. The first office they suggested is in Amman, Jordan, which is ridiculous because I am not Jordanian. So I would’ve had to travel to Jordan in order to be able to travel to Canada. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because my application is still pending.

MD: What were some of the main difficulties you had to deal with when you were working on the project?

Layan: A large part of the project took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The occupation power used the pandemic as an excuse to further restrict our movement and our freedom. They also imposed crazy fines. If you just lowered your mask from your nose you had to pay a huge amount. Of course, the pandemic was just an excuse. They are always looking for an excuse to restrict us.

So we had to deal with that every time we went to the streets to work on the project.

After talking about the exhibition, I also talked with Amir and Layan about Palestinian activism.

MD: Do you think there is a place for Palestinian activism in the West?

Amir: There’s a lot that people can do in the West. I mean, the West is the one responsible. All the nation-states of the West are the ones supporting Israel; they are the ones supporting Israeli companies.

What’s happening in Sheikh Jarrah – the company is from the U.S., man.

The money is from the U.S. States like Canada and the U.S. help maintain the situation. Pressure needs to be applied by people; we can’t wait for international organizations. The companies that are selling arms in Israel are from the West. The companies that are stealing land in the West Bank are selling their stuff here. Boycott those companies. Participate.

What I hear is that McGill is very implicated. It’s lovely to see that this exhibition correlated with the passing of the SPHR’s resolution.

Layan: This colonial system wants us to believe that

Palestinians who are not in Palestine – Palestinians in the diaspora – are not part of the Kadeya and are not part of the Palestinian issue. This is not true at all. It’s just a strategy to further fragment us. The work that is being done here is important. And it’s not just solidarity – I hate the word solidarity. Of course, our daily confrontation with the occupation power back in Palestine is not the same as what the people are doing here, but our social power can be constructed by the union of the many movements happening in the West. This can create a sense of unity with Palestinians across the world.

MD: Sometimes, Palestinian activists in Canada and the West get accused of being antisemitic.

What would you say is the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism?

Amir: The difference is huge.

Zionism, if you understand its history, is intrinsically tied with antisemitism. Herzl himself was antisemitic. You have a lot of evidence for this. And you see how Zionists allied themselves with Nazis in the past. How they used the fact that Jews were hated in order to garner support for their movement.

Zionism is part of racism. It’s part of the same racism that created antisemitism. The problem here is that many people see Jewish rights as Israeli rights. That’s very dangerous.

Layan: Antisemitism became this label that Zionists use to protect themselves.

MD: How can we highlight Palestinian narratives in Canada and the West?

Amir: Just listen to Palestinians.

Let Palestinians speak for themselves. We are very articulate, especially this generation. We know what we want and we know how to ask for it. So, yeah, it gives us the space to talk. And don’t just stand for our right for basic rights – our right for bread. We are seeking life. We are seeking sovereignty.

We are seeking a future that is beautiful and hopeful.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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April 4, 2022 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Documenting Palestinian Resistance

Abdallah Al-Khatib’s Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege)

Viola Ruzzier | Staff Illustrator Yehia Anas Sabaa Culture Contributor

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s part of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), Cinema Politica Concordia hosted a screening of Abdallah Al-Khatib’s debut film Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege) (2021). The screening was followed by a discussion with PalestinianSyrians Osama Mousa and Farah Al-Sayed, who shared their perspectives on the movie and how they related to it.

In 2013, Yarmouk Camp, a neighbourhood in Damascus that was originally designed as a refugee camp for Palestinians in Syria, was completely cut off from the rest of the world. The Syrian government blocked the neighbourhood in an attempt to gain the upper hand in

an ongoing civil war. The residents of Yarmouk were deprived of food, medical supplies, electricity, clean water, and other necessities. Little Palestine documents the resilience of Yarmouk’s inhabitants during the siege and the tragedies they endured.

When talking about the Palestinian refugee crisis, especially in the West, Palestinians tend to be reduced to mere statistics. By highlighting the stories of the people of Yarmouk, Al-Khatib’s film reminds us of the humanity of the people at the heart of this ongoing struggle.

In an interview, director Al-Khatib explained that one of his goals was to highlight the contrasting emotions that were felt during the siege. Throughout the film, we see images of joy and celebration set against images of misery and destruction. People both celebrated the marriages of

the camp’s youth and mourned the elders who died of hunger and malnutrition. We see children playing, but we also see them picking grass from the ground to eat.

In one scene, Al-Khatib asks a group of children about their dreams. One child says that he dreams of eating shawarma. Following him, we hear another child saying that he dreams of his brother coming back to life.

These scenes remind the audience that the people of Yarmouk are not defined by their suffering.

Mainstream Western media’s portrayal of Palestinian refugees often disregards the refugees’ dignity. Journalists overemphasize stories of suffering for the sake of increased viewership. Al-Khatib’s depiction does the opposite. It does not shy away from the tragic realities of the siege, but it shows those realities in a complex and,

Little Palestine documents the resilience of Yarmouk’s inhabitants during the siege, and the tragedies they endured. When talking about the Palestinian refugee crisis, especially in the West, Palestinians tend to be reduced to mere statistics.

By highlighting the stories of the people of Yarmouk, Al-Khatib’s film reminds us of the humanity of the people at the heart of this ongoing struggle.

compassionate way. There are no overt images of death and blood, yet death can be felt throughout the movie. Children are not used as reductive, two-dimensional props to portray what suffering “should look like.” They play, run, learn, dance, and laugh, as all children do. Finding this balance between documenting tragic events while portraying the wholeness of a subject’s humanity is not easy, and Al-Khatib does it masterfully.

One of the stories Al-Khatib chooses to highlight is that of his mother, Aisha Al-Khatib. Aisha volunteered as a healthcare worker during the siege of Yarmouk. With limited resources, she had to ensure the survival of dozens of the camp’s inhabitants. In the discussion after the movie, Osama, who used to help Aisha when he lived in Yarmouk, said that “she operated in a more efficient manner than most governments.” Aisha’s story shows us that the inhabitants of Yarmouk were not bystanders to a tragedy that was happening “to them.” They were actively fighting for their freedom and their dignity.

This spirit of resilience is one of the main themes of the movie.

Little Palestine reminds us all that the struggle of millions of Palestinian refugees is not just about land disputes; it’s also about the people. This sentiment is shared by Osama, who believes that “a lot of people love Palestine, but they don’t love Palestinians.”

Behind the brutal realities of the

The movie urges us to remember that in wars, genocides, and sieges, the group that suffers the most is not the government or military officials but rather the people – yet they are the ones no one talks about. siege, the filmmakers are asking their audience to see them rather than merely look at them through a reductive, dehumanizing lens.

The movie urges us to remember that in wars, genocides, and sieges, the group that suffers the most is not the government or military officials but rather the people – and yet they are the ones no one talks about. I want to end this article with the same dedication that the movie ended with: “To those who starved to death.”