Marc Lamont Hill’s case for intersectionality

Marc Lamont Hill
Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond
Toronto: Atria Books, 2016
250 pp. $35
9 781501 124945

Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Alton Sterling. Michael Brown. Philando Castile. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray.

These names, and far too many others, should be instantly recognizable as those of young African-Americans whose lives were taken by law enforcement authorities or vigilantes in the years since the U.S. elected its first black president.

Some were armed and others were not. Some had committed crimes while others hadn’t. Some of their assailants were white and others were black. But they would all likely be with us today had they not been born black and poor.

As Ta Nehisi Coates wrote, addressing his son, in his masterful Between the World and Me,

And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if that destruction is the result of an unfortuante reaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy … All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible.

Morehouse College political scientist, CNN commentator and VH1 host Marc Lamont Hill takes a somewhat broader approach in his latest work, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond. Yes, the aforementioned individuals were victims of their own blackness in a country plagued by deep-seated prejudice against African-Americans, but there are also cultural, socioeconomic and, of course, political factors at play. They weren’t simply targeted for being black, but because they were “nobody,” to borrow the book’s title.

“To be Nobody is to be vulnerable,” writes Hill at the beginning of the book.

In the most basic sense, all of us are vulnerable; to be human is to be susceptible to misfortune, violence, illness and death. The role of government, however, is to offer forms of protection that enhance our lives and shield our bodies from foreseeable and preventable dangers. Unfortunately, for many citizens – particularly those marked as poor, Black, Brown, immigrant, queer, or trans – State power has only increased their vulnerability, making their lives more rather than less unsafe.

In other words, Hill is making the case for intersectionality. In doing so, he lambasts state violence against the vulnerable, but also examines the factors that got us to where we are now – from the white flight that made Ferguson, Mo., a majority black suburb of St. Louis with a mostly white police force to the austerity measures that lead to the emergency management system that tainted the Flint, Mich., water supply with lead.

The author writes with the eloquence and passion he’s become known for as a public intellectual. Take this fiery speech as an example:

 

Michael Brown’s corpse was left in the street for four hours because he was Nobody, a member of “a disposable class for which one of the strongest correlates is being Black.” But it wasn’t only his blackness – “his death was only made more certain because he was young, male, urban, poor, and subject to the kinds of legal and social definitions that devalue life and compromise justice.”

Perhaps the most novel aspect of Hill’s book is when he deals with the gendered angle of police brutality, using the death of Sandra Bland as a case study. Bland, who was pulled over for a routine traffic stop and ended up committing suicide in her jail cell, was forced out of her car and arrested because the officer didn’t like her attitude. This was a case not only of state-sanctioned racism but of male dominance.

He quotes the black feminist scholar Brittney Cooper, who observed that the officer, Brian Encinia, “expected that she wouldn’t question him. He wanted her submission. Her deference. Her fear.”  But nobody put it better than Bland herself when she told Encinia, as per his car’s dashboard camera, “Don’t it make you feel good, Officer Encinia? You’re a real man now (emphasis Hill’s).”

In jail, Bland’s story becomes a symbol of Hill’s entire argument. After being arrested for being a strong black female who stood up for herself, Bland is unable to pay her bail. Suffering from mental health issues, she takes her own life. This is a powerful indictment of America’s war on the poor, black, female and mentally ill. She lived and died as Nobody.

In the book’s section on mass incarceration, appropriately titled “Caged,” Hill critiques Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. He shares much of her “trenchant analysis,” but objects to her narrow focus on the African-American experience. As Hill writes, “The trend toward incarcerating more African-Americans is matched by the trend toward incarcerating more Latinos, the trend toward incarcerating more women … and the trend toward incarcerating more new immigrants.”

With characteristic wit, he says, “If there is a ‘new Jim Crow,’ it is joined by a new ‘Jane Crow,’ a new ‘Diego Crow,’ and a new ‘Jim Crow Jr.'” True, and this is an important part of Hill’s analysis, but many would see Alexander’s narrow focus as an asset rather than a weakness. In any case, Hill’s work is more of an extension of Alexander’s analysis than a rebuttal.

However, because Hill casts such a wide net, dealing with America’s war on the vulnerable as a whole, his book occasionally seems a bit unfocused. This broad approach is a double-edged sword – it provides valuable context for America’s war on the vulnerable, taking his argument beyond racism, but with that, the reader’s expectations are raised.

Since the vast majority of the examples he draws from concern African-Americans, his argument for intersectionality sometimes comes up short. It would have served his argument to address the plight of Native Americans, for instance.

Still, Hill’s book is undoubtedly worth reading for anyone concerned with the present state of affairs in the U.S. And it’s analysis can easily be applied to the current standoff in North Dakota between the Standing Rock protesters and a militarized police force over the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Though it may lack the poetic vigour of Coates or Alexander’s laser-like focus, Hill has nonetheless provided a very valuable addition to the canon of non-fiction regarding the African-American experience in the 21st century.

What’s the deal with CETA?

Belgium has agreed to support the European Union’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, removing a major roadblock to the contentious deal’s implementation. The deal, however, must still be approved by the 27 other EU governments, who may raise objections to its entrenchment of corporate power over the state.

Last Friday, Canadian International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland angrily stormed out of a meeting with her Belgian counterparts, as the agreement appeared to have collapsed under Walloon dissent, the product of an increasingly global anti-trade sentiment.

Belgium is essentially split in two – a Dutch-speaking Flemish region, Flanders, in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. (There’s also a small German-speaking region in the east.) Flanders and Wallonia must both consent to the deal in order for it to move forward. Today the Walloon government, no doubt under immense pressure from the rest of the EU, agreed to support CETA.

Once the deal is signed, which is expected to occur on Sunday, the European parliament and its constituent nations must ratify it, which could take between two and four years.

So what is CETA? Why was Wallonia opposed and why are Canada and Europe so adamant about its passage?

CETA defined

Like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did with Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, CETA seeks to reduce trade barriers between Canada and the EU. In other words, it would make it easier for Canadian and European businesses to trade with each other by reducing tariffs on foreign goods, which are designed to put domestic industries at an advantage.

“CETA covers all aspects of our broad trading relationship with the EU, including goods, services, investment, government procurement and regulatory cooperation,” according to Global Affairs Canada, so it is very far-reaching, providing Canada with access to a $20-trillion market.

Overall, the Canadian government says 98 per cent of tariffs on goods traded between Canada and Europe will be eliminated.

It will make it easier for Canada to sell maple syrup to Europe, for example, by eliminating the 8 per cent tariff imposed on that product, while making it easier for Germany, Canada’s second-biggest trade partner and largest economy in the bloc, to sell their cars to Canadians by eliminating Canada’s 6.1 per cent tariff on European-made cars.

The question is how will this effect auto manufacturers in Oshawa and Windsor when the Canadian market is flooded with less expensive German cars? There are anti-dumping rules as part of the agreement that created the World Trade Organization, which is still in effect, meaning Germany, in this case, cannot sell its cars below market value. But as the wealthier and more populous nation, Germany has an inherent competitive advantage, able to produce more cars cheaper than Ontario’s struggling auto sector.

The Canadian government’s summary of the pact has vague provisions near the end about “seeking high levels of labour protection” and “commitments to foster environmental governments,” but does not elaborate significantly on how they’ll be achieved.

The U.S. is in the process of negotiating its own CETA-style deal with the EU, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). There’s also the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would similarly reduce trade barriers between its signatories, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Japan.

Interestingly, the United Kingdom, which voted to leave the EU earlier this year, is part of CETA, as negotiations began prior to the Brexit vote.

CETA can be read in full here.

What does Wallonia have against CETA?

Most controversial, and where it departs most significantly from past trade agreements, is the deal’s investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, whereby companies are empowered to sue governments for reducing their profits, which critics say will reduce governments’ ability to impose regulation and was the linchpin of Wallonia’s rejection.

As a condition for Wallonia’s approval, an adjustment was made to have the European Court of Justice approve any ISDS application, which still doesn’t address the issue of shifting power away from elected representatives, for all their flaws, to unelected corporations. It just uses the unelected European judiciary as a middleman.

The problem with this aspect of CETA, writes copyright lawyer Michael Geist, is that the deal has extended its reach by forcing “changes to domestic regulations and the creation of dispute settlement mechanisms that may prioritize corporate concerns over local rules.”

Wallonia has been hit hard by unemployment – 11 per cent, which according to the Financial Times is nearly double that in neighbouring Flanders – so there is little appetite for giving multinational corporations more power to move away.

This is why the Walloons also demanded the ability to re-establish tariffs if a specific agricultural market will be negatively impacted by the deal. They have one year after signing the deal to determine which markets these are.

Walloon Prime Minister Paul Magnette, a social democrat, is now reportedly “extremely happy” with CETA.

Why are the Canadian and European governments so eager?

According to the Globe and Mail, Freeland called CETA “the most progressive trade deal negotiated,” which may not be saying much. While the deal certainly pays lip service to environmental and socioeconomic sustainability, there is little in terms of enforcement.

The same article cites a joint Canadian-EU study from 2011 that says CETA “would boost Canada’s income by up to $12 billion a year,” which “is the equivalent of adding an average of $1,000 to Canadian household incomes,” yet it doesn’t indicate how this wealth will be distributed.

European President Jean-Claude Juncker echoed Freeland when he called the pact “the best and most-progressive agreement we have ever, as a European Union, negotiated,” emphasizing its “new approach to investment that is transparent and … impartial.”

The Globe concedes the agreement is “a mixed bag for Canadian consumers,” with cheaper cars and cheese, “which could take a bite out of the market shares of dairy in Ontario and Quebec,” and more expensive drugs for the average Canadian, due to a two-year extension on European pharmaceutical patents.

Canadian and European leaders are eager to pass CETA because, to put it simply, it’s good for business.  This is precisely why the Canada Business Council, along with its European counterpart, demanded the “swift approval and implementation of CETA to boost trade and investment and create jobs.”

As a result of this rapidity, “The announcement of the completion of CETA was … the first time people in Canada and Europe were allowed to see the official text of the agreement,” reads a statement from the left-leaning Council of Canadians. “The deal was signed without any public consultation.”

In other words, this purportedly transparent deal was negotiated above Canadians’ and Europeans’ heads, primarily to benefit big business. The negotiators will no doubt take credit if some jobs trickle down to the working class.

Denial: An impressively nuanced depiction of Irving v. Lipstadt

I caught a screening of Denial yesterday, the dramatization of British author David Irving’s libel suit against Emory historian Deborah Lipstadt, and was quite impressed.

The film is largely based on Lipstadt’s account of the proceedings, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, so it is told from her perspective. She is played exceptionally by Rachel Weisz, while Irving is depicted by Timothy Spall, who the audience may recognize as Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter films, or J.M.W. Turner in Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner.

David Irving, author of some acclaimed works dealing with the Second World War from the German perspective had always been criticized for having a pro-Nazi bent. By the 1990s, however, he started engaging in full-scale Holocaust revisionism, denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, for instance, and speaking at white supremacist gatherings.

He sued Lipstadt after she called him a Nazi apologist, “falsifier of history” and “dangerous spokesperson” for Holocaust revisionism in her book Denying the Holocaust. As is pointed out in the film, Irving chose to file the lawsuit in the U.K. where Lipstadt would be put on the defensive, having to prove that what she said about him is true. In the U.S., Irving would have had to prove that he is a legitimate historian.

Though the film is told from Lipstadt’s purview, which is difficult to avoid since she won the trial, it doesn’t present Irving as a cartoonish villain.  He is a loving father, shown playing with his children in between meetings with Lipstadt’s legal team.

Nor is Lipstadt depicted as a flawless hero. In the film, she’s obstinate, repeatedly demanding Holocaust survivors testify against her lawyers’ wishes.

Ultimately, she doesn’t take the stand, nor does a survivor, but one of the film’s major tensions is Lipstadt coming to terms with the distinction between her work as a historian and the legal system.This tension is encapsulated in her relationship with a Shoah survivor who attends the trial and continuously asks Lipstadt to ensure their voices are heard.

Her lawyers, led by Anthony Julius, insisted that bringing Holocaust survivors to testify would make the trial about whether the Holocaust occurred when it should be about demonstrating Irving’s unsavoury worldview.

There is a view held by many civil libertarians, myself included, that prosecuting Holocaust denial only serves to draw attention to deniers’ repugnant views. However, this case is different, as Irving initiated the lawsuit, putting Lipstadt’s right to harshly criticize him under risk of censorship.

As in reality, the film’s Irving is highly articulate and scrupulous, keeping an entire library’s worth of diaries, which Lipstadt’s team pored over for Third Reich sympathies.

The film’s Irving is also gracious, offering to shake hands with  Julius, after the judge’s ruling, an example of what Hannah Arendt, herself a Holocaust survivor, called the “banality of evil.”

Towards the movie’s conclusion with the Judge Charles Gray’s ruling, the justice asks a question that represents one of the film’s key themes – What if Irving sincerely believes the Holocaust was a lie? Perhaps he’s an anti-Semite, but Lipstadt accused him of deliberately falsifying the historical record.

Ultimately, the judge ruled in her favour. The mistakes found in Irving’s work were not the result of simple errors or genuine conviction, but malicious intent rooted in anti-Semitism.

But this is a question that has always vexed me about Holocaust deniers – are they genuinely convinced that the Holocaust was exaggerated, or is denial merely a neo-Nazi recruiting tool?

With its nuanced approach, the film does a good job of bringing this question to light without providing a definitive answer.

Hate speech laws face Charter challenge in B.C. court

Jeremy Appel
Originally published at CJFE.org (Canadian Journalists for Free Expression) 

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) is supporting a Charter challenge against the Criminal Code’s restrictions on hate speech brought forward by Arthur Topham, a B.C.-based blogger convicted under these provisions in 2012.

Topham runs a website called Radical Press, which espouses views that have been characterized as anti-Semitic and white supremacist, including Holocaust denial and repeated references to “Zionist Jew lobbyists.” The site also provides links to Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf, and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fabricated tome from Tsarist Russia that alleges a Jewish plot for world domination.

Topham was charged under section 319(2) of the Criminal Code, which prohibits the willful promotion of “hatred against any identifiable group” under threat of imprisonment for up to two years.

OCLA intervenes

OCLA Executive Director Joseph Hickey claims the major problem with this provision is that it concerns “speech that does not have to be proven to have caused physical or psychological harm to any person. The Crown does not have to show there was a victim or someone who suffered any actual harm.”

It’s cause for concern, he continues, when the state wields such extraordinary power without having to provide any evidence of victimization by simply declaring certain phrases and writings as “hate speech.”

The OCLA has called for the repeal of section 319, stating in a press release that it violates both section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—which protects freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression—and a “continuous international consensus that any allowed limit to expression must adhere to the principles of necessity and proportionality.”

The latter refers to a 2011 U.N. Human Rights Committee General Comment, which places the onus on the state to demonstrate “in specific and individualized fashion the precise nature of the threat, and the necessity and proportionality of a specific action taken” to mitigate it, in particular by establishing a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the threat. “Imprisonment is never an appropriate penalty,” and cannot be deemed proportionate or necessary punishment for speech, however distasteful the words may be.

Hickey says the application of the law, as it currently stands, is subject to the whims of the attorney general, who is given the power to prosecute some forms of speech and not others. “There is a political nature to these provisions. When you have a mechanism that allows the attorney general a direct say in whether a prosecution will happen or not, that’s unconstitutional.”

“The OCLA doesn’t take any position about Topham’s views or anybody’s views,” he emphasized. “That’s not the point. The point is to defend and advance freedom of expression.”

Public denunciation through the courts

Anita Bromberg of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation helped bring forward a human rights complaint against Topham in 2007 when she worked for B’nai Brith. The complaint was brought under section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which targeted Radical Press as a publication that promotes “hatred or contempt” based on race or ethnicity.

Section 13 was removed in its entirety in 2013, in a move welcomed by CJFE, by the federal Conservative government, who said it was an overly broad infringement on freedom of expression. The Conservative government later went on to pass Bill C-51 in 2015, which is challenged by civil liberties groups, includingCJFE, on much the same grounds.

Though not a direct complainant against Topham, Bromberg notified the police about his website and testified against him, because, in her view, his site crosses a line from merely expressing his beliefs to demonizing Jews.

“I don’t think you can keep [Topham and others like him] under a rock,” Bromberg said. “The fact is that young people are increasingly being exposed to views that, unless countered, [put them] at risk for indoctrination. The criminal system has always been a way for the public to express its denunciation. That’s [its] purpose—making it clear that certain behaviour is contrary to Canadian principles, good citizenship and life within a civil society.”

But is criminal prosecution the best way to go about to denounce certain forms of speech?

It’s up to “learned judges” to find equilibrium and determine what sorts of behaviour cross the line, Bromberg said. “That’s the nature of the Charter. There’s not always a clear line but we trust our judges to find that balance.”

Topham’s take

Topham has contended that he is the victim of “ongoing harassment, vilification, slander and litigation” by B’nai Brith, the B.C. government and mainstream media.

“What I see when I look into these multi-million dollar [organizations] is GATEKEEPERS in capital letters. And when I say gatekeepers, I mean gatekeepers for the Zionist Jewish lobbyists that now control Canada’s media, academia, judicial system and all the rest of the nation’s infrastructure.”

He has rejected requests for a formal interview on the grounds that this writer is “still caught up in the Marxist matrix and unable to understand or challenge the Zionist ideology and its program of control of Canada’s institutions and judiciary.”

B.C. Attorney General Suzanne Anton declined comment for this article, “as this matter is still before the courts.”

The challenge began hearings in the B.C. Supreme Court on October 3, 2016.

Trudeau’s climate plan: necessary but insufficient

Canada’s federal government introduced a national carbon pricing plan on Monday as a prelude to signing the international Paris climate accord.

The plan, which goes into effect in 2018, begins with a $10 per tonne tax on carbon emissions in provinces that won’t yet have a pricing system in place. The price increases $10 a tonne each year, ending at $50 in 2022.

The nation’s four largest provinces already have some form of carbon pricing in effect – Alberta and B.C. with direct carbon taxes, and Ontario and Quebec with a more complex cap-and-trade system in conjunction with California – so the financial impact of Prime Minister Trudeau’s plan on most Canadians will be negligible.

Sounds like great news for environmentalists, right? The reality, as you may have anticipated, is more complicated, given the stakes at hand.

Greens unimpressed

Though receptive to the idea of a national carbon pricing initiative, Green Party leader Elizabeth May says that is just a starting point.

“I commend the Trudeau administration for being first to implement a national carbon pricing plan, but $10/tonne is too low to be taken seriously,” May said in a statement. “I remain perplexed as to why this administration refuses to update our climate targets to meet our Paris Agreement commitments.”

The Saanich-Gulf Islands MP was especially critical of maintaining ex-prime minister Stephen Harper’s emissions targets, calling them “among the weakest in the industrialized world.” Harper pledged to cut emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Dale Marshall of Environmental Defence Canada shares this sentiment.

“Trudeau’s planned pan-Canadian price on carbon emissions is welcome, but the planned price starts too low and takes too long to take a bite out of Canada’s emissions,” he said in a statement.

“To be effective, the federal carbon price needs to rise at the same rate beyond 2022. Polluters, not Canadians, must pay the costs of carbon emissions. Those costs will be paid one way or another, either through a price on carbon or through health impacts from air pollution and the impacts of more severe floods, droughts, and forest fires.”

Marshall also called on the government to stop promoting “high-energy carbon projects,” namely the recently-approved Pacific Northwest LNG pipeline.

Clare Demerse, Clean Energy Canada’s federal policy adviser, concurs. She told the Toronto Star that although the carbon pricing initiative is “significant,” it is ultimately “not enough … to close the gap” between the administration’s words and deeds on climate change.

The government will need to invest more in green jobs and infrastructure, said Demerse, if it is to have a hope of meeting even the previous government’s paltry targets.

Still, Trudeau’s carbon pricing system is a definite improvement, as it was the NDP, not the governing Liberals, who campaigned on a specific national system – cap-and-trade – for reducing carbon emissions in last year’s election. The Liberals had promised some form of carbon pricing that would be agreed upon with the provinces.

Premiers divided

Speaking of the NDP and provinces, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley supports Trudeau’s plan, albeit under the contradictory condition that he agree to build more pipelines.

“The federal government needs to understand that Alberta — and Albertans, collectively and individually — have contributed over many years to the economic health of this country,” said Notley at an Edmonton press conference.

“For us to continue doing that, we need the federal government to now have our back. We need them to move on the matter of a pipeline to tidewater.”

Alberta is currently in dire straits financially, so in exchange for imposing its own provincial carbon tax, Notley promised to push hard to get a pipeline built and increase Alberta’s oil exports. These goals are naturally at odds.

Notley is in a tough position as the leader of a social democratic, environmentally conscious party in a traditionally conservative, oil-friendly province.

However, the plan’s most outspoken critic is the nation’s most popular climate change denier, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who opposes any form of carbon taxation.

Wall called the plan “one of the largest national tax increases in Canadian history” and vowed to fight it with “all options” at his disposal.

He also characterized the federal government’s unilateral action as “disrespectful,” though some would say his inaction on climate change is disrespectful to future generations.

Newfoundland Premier Dwight Ball and Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil joined Wall in his criticism of the plan, while B.C., Quebec and Ontario – the nation’s three largest provinces – endorsed it.

Overall, it appears that Canada’s federal energy policy will be the cause of larger tensions regarding national unity, as was the case under Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s premiership. But the prime minister is unable to take the threat of climate change seriously without alienating energy-dependent provinces to some extent.

Ultimately, Trudeau must pick a side.