In the early morning of November 9, 2024, a group of masked fascists occupied the corner of King and James in downtown Hamilton outside of Jackson Square, holding a banner that said “MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW,” painted in black stencil lettering.
Many of us weren’t surprised. The Steel City is known primarily for its blue collar steelworking industry, and as a result of the cannibalistic gentrification of our city, two distinct communities have emerged: a leftist, labour-focused movement, and a right-wing, fascist one.
For years, Hamilton has been designated the ‘Hate Capital of Canada,’ but we, acting as Hamilton’s Spring contingent, want to make it clear to the Hamiltonian public that not only do the vast majority of residents disagree with this racist scapegoating of the city’s immigrant population, but that we won’t let the fascists get away with it, either.
Taking action: blame billionaires, not immigrants!
As the cost of living crisis pushes more Hamiltonans closer to instability, we as Spring Hamilton—the majority of us working class renters ourselves—know that immigrants are not to blame as housing and grocery prices soar. Right wing government policies and the greed of billionaires are. We know that working class people do not benefit from attacking one another, it is the rich who benefit from our division.
To take action against this wave of fascist messaging, we helped to organize a demonstration on the afternoon of December 7, 2024, where community members, Spring members, and other allies gathered outside of the same King and James intersection with an opposition banner reading, “BLAME BILLIONAIRES, NOT IMMIGRANTS! STATUS FOR ALL!”
Two exhibiting artists at Hamilton’s Workers Arts and Heritage Museum, Simranpreet Kaur Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek, provided a solidarity statement to be read aloud at the demonstration. Their exhibition, ‘Foreign Dreams,’ is available to view until December 14, 2024.
Their powerful statement reads as follows:
Hello, everyone, and thank you for being here today. We are Simranpreet Kaur Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek – two diasporic Punjabi artists who have lived and worked among international students and migrant workers for years. These people are some of our closest friends. Many of them we call family, as they have opened their doors to us when we have traveled to Punjab. We have seen them struggle, be exploited, and be lonely. We have celebrated their birthdays and changes in status. We have laughed together and cried together. We have been to their graduations and even to their funerals. They are our community. We stand with them.
We are gathered here to say something we should never have to say out loud: that money is not more important than human life.
Let us say it together and reflect on why we have to say this: money is not more important than human life.
For the last decade, the Canadian government has been recruiting international students to fill low-level jobs and help colleges and universities boost their profit margins. These people are told that, after years of work, they will be able to stay as permanent residents. After years of struggling in a foreign land, years of not being able to fly home to see family, celebrate birthdays and mourn deaths, gather for holidays and festivals, years of facing housing discrimination, legislative discrimination, exploitative labour practices, suspicion becoming outright racism – hundreds of thousands of work permit holders are being told that they will be sent home. Have they not sacrificed enough?
Money is not more important than human life.
The people who spread hate speech, who call for mass deportation, who have the nerve to call another person illegal, remember: you, too, were an immigrant once. Your families came to Canada in search of something better. They let go of their old lives to come to this vast, stunningly beautiful, bitingly cold country.
And the people who are trying to come to Canada now – are they not on a similar path?
Money is not more important than human life.
We say this to the Canadian government: you cannot make billions of dollars off hundreds of thousands of people and then change the rules of the game you built for them. You cannot blame them for the problems you created – that you decided to view students and migrant workers as sources of profit instead of human beings. You were once the people you are now turning a blind eye to. These people are our community, and we stand with them.
We say this to the Canadian government: we have watched your complicity with the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We have seen you hold your arms contracts and backdoor deals with another settler colonial regime in higher esteem than the men, women, and children who have seen their friends and families slaughtered and their ancestral lands flattened by indiscriminate bombing. Need we remind you that Israel has already violated its ceasefire with Lebanon, a cease-fire that Trudeau eagerly celebrated as a move towards “lasting peace”? We see you handwringing about the value of human life as you continue to aid and abet a genocide. The blood of an entire people, once again, is on your hands.
And so we say once more: money is not more important than human life. Give the people to whom you are selling the idea of Canada what they deserve: stability and legal status. International students and migrant workers have become the backbone of our communities. They are our truck drivers, public transit conductors, construction workers, and grocery clerks. Migrant workers comprise nearly a quarter of agricultural employees. They grow, harvest, pack, ship, and cook our food. Our society would collapse without them. These people are our community, and we stand with them.
Thank you.
Local activity in Hamilton and beyond
By creating a public, local action accessible to everyday people, we hoped to encourage people to join the fight against anti-immigrant sentiment and fascism. We are at our strongest when we have a mass movement that politicians and fascists cannot ignore or defeat, and to do that, we need to build our numbers. To build our numbers, we need to organize where we are rooted, and extend our solidarity to others who are doing the same.
On the same day as Spring Hamilton’s demonstration, Naujawan Support Network (an organization of young people uniting to stop the exploitation of international students and workers, based in Brampton) held a solidarity rally marking 100 days of their PGWP (Post Graduate Work Permit) sit-in protest against the exploitation of their workers. Spring stands in solidarity with the Naujawan Support Network. We encourage folks that are reading to donate to their GoFundMe in support of the protestors if they have the means to do so.
We would also like to ask folks to show solidarity with the Migrant Rights Network and ask Canadian leaders to support permanent residency and rights for migrants, undocumented people, and refugees, by signing this petition against the federal government’s announcement that they will reduce immigration.
No matter where you live, you can take part in the fight against racism and anti-immigrant sentiment by downloading, printing, and putting up these posters with a message from the entire working class: “Blame billionaires, NOT immigrants!”
On behalf of Spring Socialist Network’s Hamilton branch, thank you to everyone who attended and/or expressed solidarity. We hope to continue organizing with our neighbours and being a part of the fight against fascism. We will be back.
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