Joint Statement by the East Indian Defence Committee, the West Indian People’s Organization and the Canadian People’s (Citizens and Residents) Defence Committee, October 21, 1977
Racist attacks againt immigrant communities, particularly the East Indian and West Indian communities have been rapidly escalating in recent times. These attacks include physical racist attacks and racial and social discrimination in all aspects of life. What should the people do about these attacks? Should they depend on the rich and their state for salvation, for protection from these attacks, or should they rely on their own strength to defend themselves and the honour and dignity of their communities?
The rich in Canada and their state are organizing these racist attacks. To depend on the rich and their state for salvation is like expecting a cure from the gods of plague. The only solution for the communities under attack is to keep the initiative in their own hands, vigorously defend themselves and fight these racist attacks.
Actual life experience has shown that racist attacks on the immigrant communities are organized by the state. Was it not the Trudeau government that issued the “Green Paper” on Immigration which blamed the immigrants for various social problems in Canada and tried to whip up racist hysteria against the national minority communities? Far from seeking to call off these attacks, this same state has now taken measures to step up this campaign by passing the anti-immigrant Bill C-24 to further terrorize the immigrant communities. At the same time, the police themselves engage in physical racist attacks on the East Indian and West Indian communities, actively encouraging racist gangs to launch brutal assaults and defending the racists when the people fight back. The Immigration Department, too, is notorious for its harassment and persecution of immigrants of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This being the case, there is no point in asking the same government, police, Immigration Department or other agencies of the state to take action against racist attacks. We have to fight these racist attacks tooth and nail on the basis of our own strength.
So, why is the state organizing these racist attacks? Why are they being escalated at this time? As everyone knows, the rich in Canada are confronted by a serious crisis, an economic, political, cultural and all-sided crisis of their rotten capitalist system. These money-bags have no solution to this crisis. So they shift the burden of the crisis onto the people, using their state to launch vicious attacks on the masses. In this context, state-organized racist attacks are designed to force the immigrant workers to submit to the most vicious exploitation and repression, and to divide the people along race lines.
The communities that are facing this persecution are not taking it lying down. They are vigorously fighting against state-organized racist attacks. For example, in the East Indian community, the line of self-defence against racist attacks has taken very deep roots. The community is united and organized in the East Indian Defence Committee. Likewise, the West Indian community is getting organized in the West Indian People’s Organization. Now the Canadian People’s (Citizens and Residents) Defence Committee has been founded to mobilize a broad section of the Canadian people, including the immigrants and national minorities, against all forms of state-organized attacks and racial and social discrimination. A vigorous movement is developing against the attacks of the state on the people on the basis of the slogan Self-Defence Is the Only Way!
Faced with such a situation, the state of the rich is trying to divert the struggles of the people through phoney “solutions”. First, the state tries to confuse the target of the struggles of the people by saying that it is the people who are racist. Second, it tells the people to rely on the state for salvation. It promotes the “Ethnic Police Squad” whose aims are to stop the people from taking the path of self-defence and to “educate” them not to “take the law into their own hands” when they are faced with racist attacks. Other “solutions” are promoted such as having East Indian and West Indian policemen in the force, having members of these communities sit on education boards, city councils, or other “advisory” boards of the state, as if these were going to put an end to racist attacks. In addition, the state floats “humanitarian” organizations such as the Human Rights Commission. The experience of our communities over the years in dealing with the various agencies of the state, the police, the courts, etc. is that the “solutions” offered by the state are no solutions at all for our problems. These “solutions” are meant to disarm the people, take the initiative out of our hands, to leave us unprepared, to sit with folded arms while the state-organized racist attacks keep escalating.
The Joint Committee calls upon the people to very firmly reject all these phoney dead-end “solutions” offered by the state. The only solution is the path of self-defence, the path of relying on our own strength and in this way defending the honour and dignity of our communities and firmly repulsing the racist attacks!
As part of its campaign of opposition to state-organized attacks on immigrants, the Joint Committee is calling a vigorous mass demonstration in Toronto on November 6, 1977 at 2:00 p.m. in front of the city hall. All those who are opposed to state-organized attacks on immigrants are invited to vigorously participate. The demonstration will be followed by a rally against state-organized racist attacks. The main speaker at the rally will be Comrade Hardial Bains, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).
BLAME THE RICH AND NOT THE PEOPLE FOR RACIST ATTACKS!
DOWN WITH STATE-ORGANIZED RACIST ATTACKS ON THE PEOPLE!
FIGHT RACIST ATTACKS THROUGH REVOLUTIONARY MASS STRUGGLES!
SELF-DEFENCE IS THE ONLY WAY!