Subject: Free Speech in Canada??????
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 231237 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
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......Connie Fogal is a member of our EMF-L group.....guru.....
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 18:24:30 -0700
From: CONNIE FOGAL
To: cfogal@netcom.ca
Subject: TO LEAFLET OR NOT TO LEAFLET AMONG FRIENDS
TO LEAFLET OR NOT TO LEAFLET AMONG FRIENDS
September 25,1998 at the expensive Hyatt Regency in Vancouver BC
Canada,at the Council of Canadians' first Hearing on the MAI, in answer
to a question of what can be done to unite the forces of opposition to
the globalization agenda, Judy Rebick answered, Be Nicer To Each Other.
One hour earlier Stephen Staples, BC Coordinator for the Council of
Canadians, threatened to eject Connie Fogal from the Hyatt Regency either
himself or through the hotel security because she insisted on her right
to leaflet in the hallway about the Defence of Canadian Liberty
Committee's Legal Challenge to Stop the MAI, and because she refused to
fold up her small cardtable with anti globalization and legal challenge
material. Fogal was stationed halfway down the hall from the doors to the
meeting. Fogal steadfastly refused to leave, take down her table, or to
stop leafletting. Faced with deciding on whether or how to follow through
on his threat, Staples went away and then came back with information that
a decision had been made that Fogal could leaflet elsewhere in the hotel
but not in the hallway to the meeting. Nor could Fogal have her cardtable
set up with its anti globalization and legal challenge material. Under no
circumstances was she allowed to distribute any leaflets in the meeting
room.
Fogal moved to the area at the top of the escalator and began to set up
her small cardtable. Hotel security arrived and told Fogal she could not
have the card table opened up and could only leaflet if the meeting
organizers allowed it.
Shades of Regina vs David Orchard, Marjalena Repo, and Rosemary
Larson of Citizens Concerned About Free
Trade,1995 when criminal charges of mischief
were laid against them by the organizers of a public meeting at the
Saskatoon Hotel for leafletting against the Free Trade Agreement at a
public meeting in the hotel on the subject of international grain trade.
The issue was freedom of speech. The question was Can the organizers of
a public meeting prevent leafletting on a related issue at their meeting?
and Can the Hotel using its private security guards eject the
leafletters? When Orchard, Repo, and Larson refused to leave or to stop
leafletting, they were arrested, Orchard was temporarily held in custody,
and all were charged with mischief. All were subsequently acquitted at
trial defended by Harry Rankin.
Connie Fogal and Jim Jordan did leaflet the people who stepped off the
main escalator, but they missed many who entered in other ways.
Later in the evening of the September 25th COC meeting, Murray Dobbin,
Director of the COC, publicly honored the Students of the APEC
demonstrations who are suing the Federal government. The COC publicly
made a financial donation to this worthy cause and made a plea to the
audience for financial help in that lawsuit against the federal
government on the issue of freedom of speech. Ironic, when an hour
before, Connie Fogal had to fight the COC's BC organizer for her right to
freedom of speech about an anti MAI action in a luxurious private hotel
to which the public were invited to a public meeting.
To the question of has the COC considered supporting a legal challenge in
conjunction with any First Nations group to stop the MAI, Murray Dobbin
answered that the First Nations and the BC government had been and
possibly still were considering a legal challenge, that the COC thought
that was good because both had legal standing, but the COC did not feel a
legal challenge was the best way for the COC to fight the MAI.
At no point in the evening did any speaker acknowledge or support the
existing legal challenge currently in process undertaken by the Defence
of Canadian Liberty Committee to stop Canada entering the MAI. The issue
could not arise from the floor because there were no microphones. Only
written questions were allowed, and only some of those were answered.
There are only two sides to the globalization issue. You either support
it or you oppose it. There is no middle ground except to be ignorant of
it. The goal must be to stop the concentration of power over
capital, not modify it. To adopt the language of the enemy is
to adopt the agenda of the enemy. The speaker actor R.H. Thomson called
the growing resistance to globalization a soft war. War it is. In any war
there is the enemy without, the enemy within, and there is the fifth
column. Those of us who truly oppose globalization must support the work
of each other! At stake is the survival of Canada. At stake is the
impoverishment of the people of the world.
Connie Fogal, and the Defence of Canadian Liberty Committee,Applicants,
action number T-790-98 in the Federal Court of Canada. See:
www.canadianliberty.bc.ca
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html