05) VICTORIA ACTIVISTS REJECT MLA INTIMIDATION TACTICS

By Kimball Cariou

            Drivers along the Patricia Bay highway between Victoria and the Swartz Bay ferry terminal on Vancouver Island are familiar with a stretch of closely-packed billboards promoting a range of businesses, charities and social causes. For example, local supporters of Cuban friendship and solidarity often rented a billboard site at this location near Mt. Newton Cross Road, as part of the ultimately successful campaign to free the Five Cuban Heroes from U.S. jails.

            Most recently, the Victoria Friends of Cuba joined with the Victoria Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid for a similar project. On May 3, the groups erected a billboard condemning the Israeli state’s racist treatment of Palestinians, along the same stretch of highway owned by the nearby Tsawout First Nation. This band earns important revenue from these billboards, but the business side of the arrangement is contracted out to a few independent companies. As in the past, this deal was signed with the Direct Marketing Group operated by Robert Lynn, who has no role in the content of the billboards.

            But on this occasion, “controversy” suddenly erupted. Just four days later, Robert Lynn contacted Randy Caravaggio of the Victoria Friends of Cuba, regarding a letter complaining that the billboard was offensive and hateful, and requesting its removal. The complaint was not from an ordinary citizen, but from Andrew Weaver, the Green Party MLA for the neighbouring constituency of Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

            Considering the Green Party’s reputation as defenders of free speech and civil liberties,  members of the two organizations were surprised, but refused to meekly back down.

            In a letter to supporters, Caravaggio says, “We have received incredible support with letters and phone calls for our action in putting up the billboard. We also received a great number of copies of the letters that many of us have sent to MLA Andrew Weaver. We hope that we continue to receive more of them. We believe that the billboard has given space for open debate on the issue for a wider audience as we had originally intended before erecting the billboard.”

            Responding directly to Andrew Weaver (a climate scientist who became the first Green  elected to the BC Legislature in 2013), Caravaggio and Edwin Daniel of the Victoria Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid asked, “on what basis did you send your letter of complaint about the content of our billboard to Mr. Lynn? Mr. Lynn had nothing to do with the content of the billboard. He simply rents billboard spaces to anyone who wants to erect a billboard and makes a living from it... We believe that the reason you sent it to Mr. Lynn was that you as an MLA thought you could pressure or sway Mr. Lynn to tell us to remove the billboard. If this is the case (if it isn't please explain), we can only say that your action is entirely inappropriate in an open and democratic society. To use your office and position as an MLA to bully someone to silence debate and quash our freedom of speech is abusive to say the least. Why could you not simply have contacted us to discuss it? We are the ones fully responsible for the billboard and its content. Our name and contact are clearly visible on the billboard. We hid nothing. So why use this sneaky unprofessional manner to try to silence us?”

            They also object strongly to Weaver’s claim that “this billboard is offensive as it promotes hatred of a people," pointing out that “Our billboard concerns the state of Israel and NOT a people. The Israeli state is not sacrosanct. Criticism of any state for its wrongful actions or discriminatory laws is the right of each of us. As it is our right to criticize actions and policies of the Canadian government or the Liberal government in BC, so it is our right to criticize the actions and policies of foreign governments, including Israel or the USA. Jewish people in our group are in full support of our billboard and are opposed to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and the apartheid system Israel has imposed.”

            Weaver’s letter also argues that "the accusation of apartheid... promotes the disdain and hatred towards those accused of supposedly practicing apartheid."

            In response, Caravaggio and Daniel point to “ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 Palestinians in 1948-9, a more than 400 mile long illegal separation wall, the oppression under military law of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the illegal imposition of 600,000 Israeli settlers on Palestinian land, the fact that all Palestinians - unlike Israelis - have to carry and show ID cards when they pass through endless check points, ongoing destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes and villages, Israeli only highways, the illegal blockade of Gaza starving nearly 2 million people, the repeated attacks on Gaza with massacres of thousands including women and children, the breaking of over 70 UN resolutions, the racist plan to make Israel a state of the Jewish people...” Do these policies not constitute Apartheid?, they ask.

            In conclusion, the two groups express the hope that Weaver will retract the statements in his letter, and extend apologies for such his behaviour.

            At PV press time, it remains to be seen whether Weaver will back off from his attempt to censor the billboard.

(The above article is from the May 16-31, 2015, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)