BC Bullshit

This is about more than just the trees.

Last year, during the Wet'suwet'en protests, the British Columbia Minister of Safety declared a province-wide "State of Emergency."

Let me repeat that. Without informing the citizens of the province, BC's Safety Minister declared a province-wide STATE of EMERGENCY because of the peaceful resistance of Wet'suwet'en people.

Considering the fact that this declaration was made almost entirely privately, except for within a letter that was sent from the Minister to the RCMP Deputy Commisioner, Jennifer Strachan. This letter can be found at the link below.

One of the 'benefits' of declaring a state of emergency, as outlined in the letter, is that the RCMP can deploy additional forces for the maintenance of order. Because of this, a special task force was set up to deal with the Wet'suwet'en 'problem,' by suppressing community in order to sustain industry.

Many of these special, tactically-trained RCMP units have remained as a unique militant force deployed in times of resistance - such as today, with the Fairy Creek and surrounding blockades. Many of the officers who have been sent to arrest protestors here are the same as those who were deployed to squash resistance in Wet'suwet'en territory.

The letter from the Minister of Safety to the RCMP Deputy Commissioner doesn't specify how long this state of 'emergency' is supposed to last. However, that gives us an indeterminate amount of time to ask all sorts of questions.

Why does the Minister of Safety believe it's a provincial emergency when indigenous land holders are refusing to leave their territory?

Why would officials support industry at the expense of community?

Does the lack of transparency in this declaration of emergency bode well for our government? If something of this caliber can be slid under the rug, what other surprises have been withheld from us?

It's time to stop playing blind and open your eyes, folks. The 'conspiracy' is right at our front door. If you choose not to recognize this deceit, treachery, and outright betrayal from our leaders, then you are otherwise complicit. Complacency is what allows them to make decisions and enact emergency measures like this without our consent. In other words, if we keep trying to pretend this isn't happening, it's only going to get worse.

The reality is that our tax dollars are currently being used to fund a militant police force to violently remove indigenous people from their territory so that their forests can be devoured and pipelines shoved through their ancestral lands. This is NOT a good use of our money, and if we continue to ignore this dysfunctional and greedy behaviour from government officials then we're contributing to the problem.

Yes, I support the blockade at Fairy Creek, but I believe that the blockade is a symptom of a much larger, much deeper problem, the roots of which are much more difficult to identify. It's time to stop pretending that our country wasn't built on lies, murder, and theft.

Why would you want to do something that unpleasant, you ask? Because only by acknowledging the truth can we begin to make positive changes. If we just keep pulling the wool over our eyes, we'll never see how bad things are getting. On the other hand, if we open our eyes to the truth as it is, we can begin to recognize that things aren't as they should be. That there is imbalance, that there is greed, that there is a misuse of power.

We also begin to recognize that a misuse of power can only happen when the people are complacent to that power. If we resist, if we stop consenting to the violation of rights, if we stop pretending that these abuses of human rights are OK just because "we're luckier than some other countries," then the people committing these abuses will lose their power.

There is power in numbers, and when we stand together, we are in our true power. Consider how few people there are in the government, an entity that asserts authority over more than 30 million Canadians. Why? Because they share a common vision, and a common goal, one which we have consented to.

If enough of US share a common goal and a common ideal - one that doesn't involve racism, segregation, colonialism, the rape of planet, unsustainability, and violence - then it will become our reality. But to create a new reality we first have to accept the old one. Otherwise there won't be anything to change except the beautiful delusions that we like to stroll through in our daydreams.

Remember, the choice is yours, every moment of every day. You can continue to comply and pretend that things are OK, or you can decide that corruption should no longer be denied. If you choose to deny, then know that your world will not have a strong foundation, since the evidence is now tumbling down from all angles.

Don't get me wrong. Like I said, Canada certainly has it better than a lot of other countries. But that doesn't mean we should be complicit with the violation of our rights. It doesn't take much to see where that path leads. If we don't stand up NOW, then who knows how long it will be before we've sold off all our hopes and dreams?

"Fascism never looks like fascism from the inside. It just looks like occasional, illogical censorship or repression that doesn't affect you."

The more we comply with illogical censorship, the more we allow this repression, the closer we come to losing ourselves entirely. The hardest part is recognizing this as a potential reality. The saddest part is that, for many, it's easier to just pull the wool further over your eyes and be stripped naked of rights rather than admit that you've been violated by those who you have placed your trust in.