The CUPE 3906 Executive stands in solidarity with the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI), who’ve recently received hate calls in response to collective efforts to protect Black youth from targeted arrest and state violence. We are pained to hear these hateful, unabated expressions of white supremacy and anti-black racism, and we condemn the on-going normalization of such violence and the deep harms of criminalizing Black community members who are working to protect our unhoused neighbours.
We unequivocally support grassroots organizing by those fighting to materially transform Hamilton into a livable city for all and those fighting to dismantle racial capitalism. We furthermore recognize and wholly appreciate how integral Hamilton’s Black community has been to these courageous and front-line struggles, and the subsequent risks they continue to endure. We join the HCCI and other organizations in calling for the charges against the six protesters and observers to be dropped.
Their courage and compassion values life over private property, and this stands in great contrast to the city’s repressive governance, its many unprincipled counselors and our callous Mayor Fred Eisenberger, and the brutality of Hamilton Police Services – all of whom are complicit in the emboldening of white supremacist actions in Hamilton. For these reasons and many more, we continue to call for accountability and transformation by defunding the police, by adequately funding housing and social services, and removing the police from union representation.
In Solidarity,
President Sharoni Mitra on behalf of the CUPE 3906 Executive
A PDF copy is available here: https://cupe3906.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/501/2021/12/Exceutive-Statement-in-Solidarity-with-HCCI.pdf