Toronto declared ‘sanctuary city’ to non-status migrants February 23, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Immigration, Toronto.Tags: Immigration, refugee claimants, regugee, richard lautens, roger hollander, sanctuary, sanctuary city, toronto, undocumented
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Supporters of a motion to turn Toronto into a sanctuary city for non-status migrants raise their arms in victory as the vote is announced. The so-called ‘Solidarity City’ motion was passed by city council by a vote of 37-3.
Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter
Toronto has made history by affirming itself as a “sanctuary city,” the first Canadian city with a formal policy allowing undocumented migrants to access services regardless of immigration status.
On Thursday, City Council passed the motion by a vote of 37 to 3 that also requires training all city staff and managers to ensure Toronto’s estimated 200,000 non-status residents can access its services without fear of being turned over to border enforcement officers for detention and deportation.
The vote puts Toronto in the same league with 36 American cities, including Chicago, New York City and San Francisco that already have such policies. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday and councillors Denzil Minnan-Wong and David Shiner are the only council members who voted against the motion.
“It is an enormous step for the city in the right direction. We are all contributing to the city, the well-being of Toronto. It’s important that we are not making a distinction between those who don’t have rights or access to services and those who do,” said Harald Bauder, associate professor of Ryerson University’s graduate program in immigration and settlement studies.
“Distinctions are divisive. They establish second-class citizens. That leads to all kinds of other problems, not just a rift in the community, but other issues of exploitation.”
Council’s vote was significant at a time when the undocumented population is expected to surge in 2015, when many legal but temporary foreign workers will see their four-year work permits expire under a new federal law and potentially move “underground.”
Proponents of the policy argued that the city must embrace and monitor the changing reality rather than just bury its head in the sand.
Although undocumented migrants — often visitors overstaying their visas or failed refugee claimants dodging deportation — have been able to use city services such as library and public transit without hassles, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has not been consistent in other areas.
“This is a historic moment because we are saying we are a sanctuary city and that anyone who is in the City of Toronto will be able to access all the services the city offers, be it in the areas of health, in the area of parks, in the area of library, in the area of health and safety,” said councilor Joe Mihevc.
“That is the kind of city we want. We want to open our arms to anyone who comes here while they are here.”
However, Mihevc pointed out the new city policy will not address barriers faced by non-status residents for services under the provincial or federal jurisdictions such as housing, income security, welfare and labour protection.
“With the police, their policy is, ‘don’t ask.’ But if they find that someone tells them, they actually have a legal obligation to report it to Immigration Canada. That’s the nuance with respect to the police. This doesn’t change that,” Mihevc explained.
Thursday’s motion was a second attempt by migrant advocacy groups to formalize the city’s sanctuary policy; the previous administration under mayor David Miller did not commit to affirming the policy but opted to simply put a poster online to promote it.
“This is a great show of what community organizations can do. But this is only a policy . . . The only way we’re going to get changes in our community is if our community is organized and standing strong, and we keep councillors to what they said today,” said Tzazna Miranda Leal of the Solidarity City Network, a community umbrella group behind the campaign.
However, councillor Minnan-Wong, a vocal critic of the motion, said undocumented people are illegal in Canada and do not deserve government services.
“We shouldn’t encourage them. We shouldn’t help them. We should not facilitate them. They are an insult to every immigrant who plays by the rule to get into the country. They are an insult to every immigrant who is waiting to enter this country legally,” said Minnan-Wong.
“It sends a message to the world that it is okay to break the law to come to Canada and it says that the City of Toronto is an accomplice to this lawbreaking.”
Council also voted to ask Ottawa to establish an amnesty program for undocumented migrants and the province to review its policies to ensure their access to health care, emergency services and community housing.
Sanctuary cities in U.S.
So far, 36 American cities and three states have declared themselves sanctuaries for non-status migrants.
Anchorage, AK
Chandler, AZ
Mesa, AZ
Tucson, AZ
Davis, CA
Downey, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Oakland, CA
San Bernardino, CA
San Jose, CA
Watsonville, CA
New Haven, CN
Denver, CO
New York City, NY
Fort Collins, CO
Deleon Springs, FL
Miami, FL
Chicago, IL
Cambridge, MA
Baltimore, MD
Detroit, MI
St. Paul, MN
Newark, NJ
Bridgeton, NJ
Tulsa, OK
Albuquerque, NM
Farmingville, NY
Durham, NC
Portland, OR
Philadelphia, PA
Brownsville, TX
Salt Lake City, UT
Fairfax County, VA
Seattle, WA
Madison, WI
Jackson Hole, WY
State of Oregon
State of Maine
State of Vermont
Hundreds mark G20 anniversary with calls for Blair to resign June 26, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice, Democracy, Toronto.Tags: anarchism, bill blair, bridette depape, Canada, catherine porter, chief blair, civil liberties, democracy, free speech, G20, g20 summit, leah henderson, peaceful protest, police brutality, police riot, political activism, political protest, richard lautens, roger hollander, sandro contenta, sid ryan, Stephen Harper, toronto, toronto g20, toronto police
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A festive reveller joins the gathering at Queen’s Park to mark the first anniversary of the G20 at Queen’s Park.
RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
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Leah Henderson spent 25 days in jail before being released on a hefty, $100,000 bail. The conditions of her release were harsh.
RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
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Sculpture of Jesus the Homeless rejected by two prominent churches April 13, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Housing/Homelessness, Religion, Toronto.Tags: Christianity, homeless, homelessness, jesus, leslie scrivener, regis college, religion, religious sculpture, roger hollander, sculpture, timothy schmalz
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Ontario sculptor struggled to find a home for his haunting sculpture of Jesus sleeping on a bench.
Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star
Sculptor Timothy Schmalz has created a bronze sculpture called Jesus the Homeless outside Regis College, the Jesuit college at U of T.
Jesus has been depicted in art as triumphant, gentle or suffering. Now, in a controversial new sculpture in downtown Toronto, he is shown as homeless — an outcast sleeping on a bench.
It takes a moment to see that the slight figure shrouded by a blanket, hauntingly similar to the real homeless who lie on grates and in doorways, is Jesus. It’s the gaping wounds in the feet that reveal the subject, whose face is draped and barely visible, as Jesus the Homeless.
Despite message of the sculpture — Jesus identifying with the poorest among us — it was rejected by two prominent Catholic churches, St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
“Homeless Jesus had no home,” says the artist, Timothy Schmalz, who specializes in religious sculpture. “How ironic.”
Rectors of both cathedrals were enthusiastic about the bronze piece and showed Schmalz possible locations, but higher-ups in the New York and Toronto archdiocese turned it down, he says.
“It was very upsetting because the rectors liked it, but when it got to the administration, people thought it might be too controversial or vague,” he says. He was told “it was not an appropriate image.”
The Toronto archdiocese tried to help him find an alternative location, including St. Augustine’s Seminary in Scarborough. But Schmalz, who describes his work as a visual prayer, wanted to reach a wider, secular audience. “I wanted not only the converted to see it, but also the marginalized. I almost gave up trying to find a place.”
Now the sculpture stands near Wellesley St. W., outside Regis College at the University of Toronto. It’s a Jesuit school of theology, where priests and lay people are trained, with an emphasis on social justice.
Bill Steinburg, communications manager for the Toronto archdiocese, says the decision not to accept the sculpture at St. Michael’s may have had to do with renovations at the cathedral and “partly to do with someone’s view of the art.”
To some who have seen it, it speaks the message of the Gospels. When theologian Thomas Reynolds came upon it he felt “the shock of recognition.” He quoted the biblical passage: “ … the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
“I’m so used to seeing images of Jesus that are palatable,” says Reynolds.
But recent depictions of Jesus in political and social contexts have spurred controversy.
At Emmanuel College, the educational arm of the United Church where Reynolds teaches, there is a graceful sculpture showing Jesus’ suffering in a crucified woman. Schmaltz says he intended that his Jesus the Homeless can be interpreted as either male or female.
At Regis College, there is a small crucifix of Jesus as a landmine victim, missing a leg; another at the college shows Jesus as an Aztec.
A sculpture in a church in Uckfield, England, shows a euphoric Jesus wearing jeans and a collared shirt.
In 2011, British sculptor David Mach, created an agonized, shouting Jesus out of 3,000 straightened coat hangers that emerge like barbs from the body.
Jesus the Homeless is provocative, says Reynolds, because it ‘punctures the illusion of normalcy.
“In certain ways, Christian communities have been privileged and considered themselves the norm in society and that has made Christians comfortable in our complacency.”
Schmalz, 43, roots the sculpture in his experiences in Toronto, where he trained at the former Ontario College of Art. “I was totally used to stepping over people. You’re not aware they are human beings. They become obstacles in the urban environment and you lose a spiritual connection to them. They become inert, an inconvenience.”
He now lives with his wife and family in St. Jacobs, Ont. When he returns to Toronto, he sees the city differently.
“A lot of people who don’t live in Toronto or a big urban place are shocked to see human forms under blanket on too many street corners.”
The Regis sculpture shows Jesus as a wanderer who depended on the hospitality of others, says Reynolds. “The counternarrative in Christianity is Jesus the outsider.”
Not all embrace this interpretation, as Bryan Stallings and his wife Amy discovered. They run a mission in Branson, Mo., called Jesus Was Homeless, where they serve about 1,000 people a week, many of whom live in the woods and extended-stay motels. They’ve been criticized for the mission’s name.
“People who have issue with it are usually the staunch religious people,” says Stallings, “especially those who follow prosperity teaching and doctrine that says if you are homeless or poor you don’t have enough faith.”
Critics tell him that Jesus wasn’t homeless. “Then we reference Scripture and it sparks tons of conversation.”
The Toronto sculpture, funded by Kitchener real estate developer Peter Benninger, is situated near the front entrance to Regis College. “It’s one of the most inviting and authentic representations of Jesus,” says Rev. Gordon Rixon, dean of the college. “There’s the suggestion there is the king and he is answering our culture with his poverty, vulnerability and weakness.”
Though the slender figure occupies most of the two-metre bench, Schmalz purposely left space at the end for someone to sit close to the slumbering figure, “as uncomfortably as possible.”
Regis College is holding a panel discussion on homelessness in Toronto on Wednesday. For more information email: inquiries@RegisCollege.ca