BY H A R S H A WA L I A

Young, Brown and Proud

Personal purpose and political
activism

When Brigette approached me to write a piece for this collection I hes-

itated for weeks. Despite technically being a youth, I have never iden-
tified as being a ‘youth activist’ and for weeks I pondered why that
was. I realized that even I had internalized the association between
youth and apathy. Or at best, I assumed that youth within social move-
ments were experimenting with counter-cultural politics. I have often
imagined myself or other young people around me as being particu-
larly ‘mature’, when in reality it is obvious that young people, as
young people, are deeply committed to struggles for liberation and
freedom. We should be celebrated and honoured as integral partici-
pants in the collective movements that we desire and are inspired by.
I decided it was an apt moment to reflect on more than 10 years of
engaging and mobilizing in grassroots multiracial feminist communi-
ties for social change as a young person.

No one is illegal, Canada is illegal

I have been involved in a myriad of inter-related movements, but
most recently have focused on anti-colonial migrant justice
organizing and Indigenous solidarity through No One Is Illegal
and feminist anti-poverty work in the Downtown Eastside of

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Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories. The local conse-

quences of the global forces of militarization and corporate glob-
alization are most evident in the displacement, migration, and
impoverishment of immigrant and Indigenous communities,
which disproportionately impact women.
Many of the reasons that people are displaced and migrate are
a result of the plundering of large corporations and the foreign pol-
icy of imperialist world powers. While exploiting the land and lives
of people in the Global South, for example through Canadian min-
ing operations and the military occupation of Afghanistan, Canada
is increasingly shutting its doors
to migrants — especially
The economy of Canada is refugees and elderly family
increasingly reliant on the members. Instead, the Canadian
cheap labour of migrants in government is ensuring that
migrants are recruited primarily
construction, farm work, garment
as indentured labour for big
industry, and service sector. business. Today Canada accepts
Women of colour are particularly more temporary migrant work-
over-represented in work charac- ers than permanent residents.
terized by low wages, irregular The economy of Canada is
hours, and lack of unionization. increasingly reliant on the cheap
labour of migrants in construc-
tion, farm work, garment indus-
try, and service sector. Women of colour are particularly over-rep-
resented in work characterized by low wages, irregular hours, and
lack of unionization.
This two-tier level of citizenship is justified in the media and
our own consciousness because in the post-9/11 climate migrants
are racially stereotyped and scapegoated as ‘criminals’ and ‘ter-
rorists’. In the current era of economic austerity, I can’t even
begin to count how many times I hear comments on the bus
about ‘these immigrants and illegals stealing Canadian jobs’.
Divisive, racist, and false ideas of migrants lets the government
off the hook for prioritizing the slashing of critical public servic-
es, bailing out banks and subsidizing corporations, destroying
Indigenous lands and the environment, and sinking billions into
prisons and the military. The work of No One Is Illegal has been
focused on shattering the dehumanizing myths of migrants,
exposing the racism of historic and current Canadian immigra-

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tion and deportation policies, linking global injustices to the vio-

lence of the border industrial complex, popularizing the demand
‘no one is illegal, status for all people’, and articulating a basic
premise for self determination: the right to remain, the freedom
to move, and the right to return.
As a recent immigrant whose grandfather fought in the inde-
pendence struggle in India, I have prioritized learning about the
history and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Conquest in
Canada was designed to ensure forced displacement of
Indigenous peoples from their territories to amass state and cor-
porate wealth, the destruction of autonomy and self-determina-
tion in Indigenous self-governance, and the assimilation of
Indigenous peoples’ cultures and traditions. Given the devastat-
ing cultural, spiritual, economic, linguistic, and political impacts
of colonialism on Indigenous people in Canada, I firmly believe
that all social and environmental justice movements must entail
non-Native solidarity in the fight against colonization.
A horrific effect of the pillage of Indigenous lands is the urban
Indigenous experience — disproportionate poverty and home-
lessness, tragic numbers of missing and murdered women, and
repressive policing and prosecutions in the criminal injustice sys-
tem. In the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, the poorest postal
code in Canada where much of
my work and activism is locat-
ed, this grinding and painful
Given the devastating cultural,
reality is stark. Every day I spiritual, economic, linguistic, and
bear witness to unjust police political impacts of colonialism on
beatings, children being appre- Indigenous people in Canada, I
hended because their mothers firmly believe that all social and
are forced into substandard environmental justice movements
housing, slumlords arbitrarily must entail non-Native solidarity
extracting guest fees and ille- in the fight against colonization.
gally raising rents, welfare
workers denying people $20
food crisis grants, the humiliation of elderly people lining up at
food banks, tourists jeering and gawking at the homeless, media
scavengers hunting for a shot of someone shooting up in the back
alley, the stories of women being raped and burnt but having no
escape. Every day I walk through the Downtown Eastside and
am shocked at our society’s complacency and apathy.

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Philosophers have sought to understand the world.

The point, however, is to change it.
So what do we do and how do we do it? When you try to explain
to someone that you ‘organize’, they assume you are a party
planner or a professional home organizer. The inability to even
communicate what it is that we do often creates a barrier
between activists and the people we claim to represent. Which is
why I think it is critical to self-define what it means to be com-
mitted to social movements and to reinvent social relations
beyond the ruminations of political rhetoric.
Community organizing is a continuous process by which a
group of people aims to collectively transform political and eco-
nomic policies or social and cultural dynamics around them.
Community organizing is based on a shared sense of social and
environmental justice values, and is inclusive and participatory
in creating a movement that confronts systemic injustice.
Community organizing also aims to be prefigurative, meaning
that the methods being practiced and relationships being facili-
tated should align with our overall ideals and visions.

None of us is free until all of us are free

Given the urgency of confronting state and corporate power, the
challenges of meaningfully addressing hetero-patriarchy, racism,
and classism within community organizing persist. Oppression is
based on systems of unequal power relations that give men,
whites, heterosexuals, able-bodied, and middle-class people a set
of unearned socio-economic privileges. Anti-oppression is not
about ‘hating straight white men’; it is about undoing these con-
structed — often unintentional and invisible — hierarchical ide-
ologies that pervade our society and movements. A commitment
to challenging the toxic impact of oppression is foundational to
building movements where all people are equally valued.
In my experience, there are two general ways in which oppres-
sion manifests itself in our social movements. First, there is an
uphill battle that recent immigrants, Indigenous communities,
poor and low-income people, and queer folks of colour face in
proving their intelligence and commitment to political issues.
The leadership, especially of the older generations, in many of
our movements has marginalized these experiences, trivializing

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our issues as ‘fringe’ or ‘divisive’. As articulated by Black feminist

Audre Lorde “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our
inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
The second way in which oppression is reproduced is through
the token representation of oppressed voices, which provides a
superficial veneer of diversity without actually changing the
foundation or framework of our activism. A common example of
this is inviting people from impacted communities to speak on
panels as the ‘authentic community voice’ without reflecting on
why or how one’s own organization is lacking in diverse repre-
sentation. Mobilizing on the basis on anti-oppression has unfor-
tunately often led to cycles of guilt, blame-and-shame, and paral-
ysis in our movements. While guilt is often representative of a
much-needed shift in consciousness, it does nothing to dismantle
entrenched systems of oppression.
What ‘oppression olympics’ has obscured is that anti-oppression
cannot simply be reduced to a politics of identity. Rather, a thor-
ough and meaningful anti-oppression praxis is also critical to
strengthening our analysis of capitalism. We should foster and cul-
tivate an ethic of responsibility which begins with privileged peo-
ple understanding ourselves as the unjust beneficiaries of the
appropriation of Indigenous peoples’ land and resources, the stolen
labour of migrants in the formal economy, and the reproductive and
gendered division of labour within our private spheres.

All power to the people

Race, class, and gender are not secondary issues to politics or
economics; they are foundational to understanding how these
injustices are structured and maintained. It is no coincidence
that Indigenous women and women of colour are most impacted
by poverty, inequality, militarization, violence, and environmen-
tal degradation.
And it is no coincidence that these women are at the forefront
of some of the most critical and vibrant movements across these
lands — Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Downtown Eastside
Power of Women Group, Homelessness Marathon, Howl Arts
Collective, Immigrant Workers Centre, Indigenous Defenders of
the Land, Indigenous Environmental Network, Justice for
Migrant Workers, Native Youth Movement, Native Youth Sexual
Health Network, No Bill 94 Coalition, No One Is Illegal, Stop the

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Cuts, Women’s Memorial Marches for Missing and Murdered

Women, Workers Action Centre, and more.
While many argue that a radical analysis will alienate the
mainstream, the success of these movements is a testament to
the yearning for systemic change that goes beyond simple
reforms. While strategic reforms are often critical, the collec-
tive vision that these groups represents is of a world based on
self-determination and self-governance over our own bodies,
lives, lands, and labour; economic equality; anti-oppressive
communities; environmental, gender, disability, and reproduc-
tive justice; and freedom for oppressed peoples from empire
and imperialism.
As a participant in and supporter of these campaigns, I have
noticed that they also share three key features at an organiza-
tional level.

1 . M A N DA R O B E D E C I E N D O ( L E A D BY O B E Y I N G )
The first key feature is the organization and leadership of these
movements. On the one hand, many organizations tend to mis-
takenly replicate the hierarchical structures of the Right. As
Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas has said “We have
come to realize that the problem is not that of taking power, but
rather who exercises it... Our work is going to end, if it ends, in
the construction of this space for new political relationships.
What follows is going to be a product of the efforts of people with
another way of thinking and acting.” On the other hand, many
movements tend to erroneously believe that any form of organi-
zation is coercive and produces oppressive power structures.
Between these dichotomous positions rests the potentiality of
group-centered leadership, where the lived experience and voice
of those most impacted is honoured and where pro-active steps
are taken to equalize skills and knowledge in building our col-
lective power. A group-centered approach is based on the notion
of abundance — an abundance of space for voice, empowerment,
and ownership within our movements. Many African peace
activists use the Zulu concept Ubuntu (“I am what I am because
of who we all are”).
Group-centered leadership also fosters greater communica-
tion and accountability. This form of organization disrupts the
traditional division of leader/follower; rather it recognizes that

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we are all leaders in different ways, and are all responsible for
serving our communities. Some of us are public speakers, others
are media producers; some create banners and art, others spend
time growing gardens.
What binds us together within a successful social movement,
however, is the ability to coordinate and network across these
skills towards a common goal. A life-long reminder of this for me
will be the experience organizing the Anti-Olympic Tent Village
with the Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group and allies.
With leadership primarily from women and elder residents of
the Downtown Eastside, the Tent Village brought together hun-
dreds of people from across the city to defend an ‘illegal’ tent city
occupation during the Olympics. Major decisions were made in
nightly assemblies, and committees coordinated tenting, cloth-
ing, food, safety, workshops, and media in a relatively decentral-
ized manner. Many who had homes decided to move into the self-
determined Tent Village to engage in the kitchen, hosting work-
shops, and drumming every night around the sacred fire. As a
result of the month-long grassroots campaign and the popular
support for the Tent Village, the government was pressured to
house over 80 homeless Tent Village residents.

2 . M OV I N G F RO M TAC T I C S TO ST R AT E G Y
A second defining feature of effective social movements is that
they have adopted a wide array of creative strategies to build
effective and winning campaigns. Not limiting themselves to
regurgitating dogma or writing petitions, movements have uti-
lized sit-ins, flash mobs, smart memes, spiritual ceremonies,
murals, storytelling, lobbying, social media, press conferences,
blockades, film-making, coalition-building, hip hop, wild-cat
strikes, street theatre, healing walks, speaking tours, marches
and occupations to raise awareness and affect concrete change.
Many activists struggle to break out of our bubbles and move
beyond solely a politics of antagonism. While we are most mar-
ginalized by society, we have to acknowledge that we also tend to
constrain ourselves. Vijay Prashad says that we “must breathe
in the many currents of dissatisfaction, and breathe out a new
radical imagination.” Narrative power and experiential story-
telling should be centered in our pedagogy as it connects us to
one another and is pivotal in moving people to action.

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A critical lesson in strategic thinking has been the realization

that we need a range and diversity of tactics; no tactic is immune
from criticism, and no tactic works in every context. Tactics are
tools, and as such should be based on overall strategy. Given that
we what we seek is systemic revolutionary change it is often
easy for activists to avoid the question of defining our goals and
identifying what tangible impacts we can have. It is also impor-
tant to think about language and language accessibility in our
popular education — both in terms of ensuring multilingualism
and avoiding rhetorical activist-speak. Finally, revolutionary
social movements prioritize a multiplicity of alliances. More than
simply building coalitions across single-issues or lowest-com-
mon-denominator politics, what has been inspiring and encour-
aging is the deepening of an interconnected and intersectional
analysis across communities. David Harvey’s words remain
etched in my mind: “Unities emerging around different vectors
of struggle are vital to nurture, within them are lineaments of an
entirely different globalization.”
The most intense learning experience I had on thinking
through strategy was in leading the anti-deportation campaign
of Laibar Singh, a paralyzed refugee from India. For over a year
No One Is Illegal organized intensely — daily Punjabi-language
radio shows, writing op-eds in multilingual newspapers, building
alliances at campus and union meetings, leafleting at the gurud-
waras (temples) to connect to immigrants with similar experi-
ences, and having to share stages with opportunistic politicians
at multicultural events. All of it was draining — a tremendous
feat for all volunteer organizers, the emotional toll of constantly
debating the illegitimacy of the deportation, and dealing with
heightened levels of racist backlash and numerous death threats
in the midst of a very public campaign. We had to navigate com-
plicated dynamics of gender, caste, class, and community proto-
cols and adapt our strategies accordingly. Not knowing the effi-
cacy of any of it and with the odds stacked against us (sadly, few
people were supportive of an irregularly-arrived refugee with a
permanent disability), we were amazed when over 2,000 people,
predominantly Punjabi elders, showed up in December 2007 at
the Vancouver International Airport to create a historic blockade
and prevent the deportation of Laibar Singh. This is the only
documented time in recent North American history that the vio-

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lence of deportation has been forcibly prevented through the

power of a mass direct action.

3 . TA K E C A R E O F E AC H OT H E R S O YO U C A N B E
DA N G E RO U S TO G E T H E R
Third, and the most important feature of powerful social move-
ments, is an affirmation of community. One of the contradictions
of capitalism is that while we are increasingly dependent on
global production processes for our basic clothing and food, we
are increasingly isolated from each other. Each of us plays such
an atomized role in the global economy — we are cogs in the
wheel — that our social relations come to mimic that atomiza-
tion. This social isolation justifies our addiction to consumer cul-
ture which feeds endless capitalist production and our fears of
one another which is necessary for the ever-expanding technolo-
gies of surveillance.
I have been moved by the power of movements which centre
interdependent communities of care. I have been humbled by
intergenerational kinship networks which nurture egalitarian
and regenerative forms of social relations. These transforma-
tions are subversive to the logic of capitalism, while fulfilling our
desires for spiritual commitment to one another and connection
to the Earth. As famed historian Howard Zinn reminded us “The
reward for participating in a movement for social justice is not
the prospect of future victory. It is the exhilaration of standing
together with other people, taking risks together, enjoying small
triumphs and enduring disheartening setbacks together.”
We cannot fall into the trap of replicating the political methods
of the Right. Instead, we have to commit ourselves to over-grow-
ing the material and psychological hierarchies of the state itself.
One of the most potent manifestations of horizontality in our
movements is consensus decision making. Consensus, meaning
“to experience or feel together”, is an inclusive method of reach-
ing agreement based on the active participation and consent of
group members to collectively reach a decision. Consensus deci-
sion-making focuses as much on the underlying processes and
values as the decision itself. Rooted in many traditional
Indigenous and peasant forms of self-governance, it is a testa-
ment of our ability to organize ourselves in accordance with the
principles of direct democracy.

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Gustav Landauer wrote almost a hundred years ago that “the

State is a condition, a certain relationship between human
beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other
relationships.” Decolonization is the process whereby we intend
the conditions we want to live and are accountable for the social
relations we wish to have. Decolonization requires us to exercise
our sovereignties differently and to reconfigure our communities
based on shared experiences, ideals, and visions. Through my own
decolonizing process, I have learnt that almost all Indigenous for-
mulations of sovereignty on Turtle Island — such as the Two Row
Wampum agreement of peace, friendship, and respect between
the Haudenosaunee nations and settlers — are premised on rev-
olutionary notions of respectful coexistence and stewardship of
the land.
In order for our activism to be purposeful, we have to engage
with our own activism with a sense of personal purpose. In
thinking about community organizing that keeps us inspired,
energized, and nourished, I want to close with these words from
Robin Kelley “Progressive social movements do not simply pro-
duce statistics and narratives of oppression; rather, the best ones
do what poetry always does: transport us to another place, com-
pel us to re-live horrors and, more importantly, enable us to
imagine a new society.”

***

Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist, writer, and popular educator

trained in the law. Based in Vancouver Unceded Coast Salish Territories,
she is a board member of the South Asian Network for Secularism and
Democracy and a co-founder of No One Is Illegal, Radical Desis,
Olympic Resistance Network, and the Northwest Anti-Authoritarian
People of Colour Network. She currently works at the Downtown
Eastside Women’s Centre and is a member of the February 14th Women’s
Memorial March Committee. Her writings have appeared in over 30
magazines, journals, books, and newspapers, and she is the co-creator
of a short film. Harsha has been named one of the most influential
South Asians in BC by the Vancouver Sun and one of the ten most
popular left-wing journalists by the Georgia Straight. You can reach her
at harsha@resist.ca or http://twitter.com/HarshaWalia.

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