THE FALLING RATE OF PROFIT EXPLAINED – WITH NO MATH!

And Why the Green New Deal Can’t Save Capitalism

(published in The Spark!, theory magazine of the Communist Party of Canada)

Saleh Waziruddin is a long-time Niagara Peninsula activist and student of capitalism.

Why does Marx say that under capitalism the rate of profit has a tendency to fall? Why can’t capitalists escape this tendency, or can they? Why can’t they keep making profits at higher and higher rates? Could investing in “green jobs” and the “green economy” keep capitalism from crashing?

Marx said even if workers lived on air and worked 24-hour shifts, capitalists would still face a falling rate of profit.

It is important to make a distinction between (total) profits and rate of profit: the capitalists’ total profit may keep increasing, but the rate of profit per amount invested as capital will decrease. This is important because capitalists are driven by getting a higher rate of return for their investment. It’s all well and good to make $1 million profit, but it makes all the difference to the capitalist if they made that profit from a $1 investment or a $1 billion investment to begin with. There may still be a profit based on the cost of labour, materials, wear-and-tear on machinery, and other costs, but how much investment was needed to extract that profit?

Marx’s Labour Theory of Value

The key to understanding the falling rate of profit according to Marx is to understand the difference between Marx’s labour theory of value and the labour theories of value of those before him, namely Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Unlike previous economists Marx said the value of a commodity isn’t embodied in it by labour for always and for ever, but the value of a commodity changes as society and technology change. The value is not the labour required to produce that particular item or service but the share of society’s total labour required to reproduce that commodity (called socially necessary labour time).

To clarify, a commodity is something produced primarily for exchange as opposed to being used by the producer. It doesn’t have to be a physical product; a commodity can also be a service if it is done for exchange. Under capitalism this exchange is done for a profit accumulated by the capitalist who hires the worker who produces the commodity. Those workers are said to be “productive” as in productive of capital; they produce the wealth the capitalist invests or accumulates. As Marx points out in Theories of Surplus Value (Addenda to Part 1) “A singer who sells her song for her own account is an unproductive labourer. But the same singer commissioned by an entrepreneur to sing in order to make money for him is a productive labourer; for she produces capital.” Her song would be a commodity if produced for sale even if it is not a physical object, e.g. at a live concert. (See Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 34, page 136.)

It doesn’t matter if some inept person took 10 hours to make something that could be made in one hour by one person with the current technology in our current society (the way it is organized for production). The value represented by that commodity would be the share of society’s labour represented by one person-hour because that’s how much labour would be required to make another one like it.

Note that although in the example above there is concrete (specific) work being done by one specific person, labour for Marx is social and abstract. The best analogy I have found is pyramid-building: no matter how much or for how long one person tugs at a pyramid’s block, they won’t be able to move it one inch. Working together a team of people can move it and build a pyramid. We can mathematically break this down into person-hours but the labour is the social result of a group of people working and not the contribution of any one person.  

To scale-up to the level of a whole society, the wealth of the society has value because it is produced by the working class as a whole; every worker’s activity contributes in some way to the value to society of a commodity. “Corporations are the pyramids of today” as someone once observed.

Anti-Marxist propaganda dating back to the early 1900’s takes advantage of ignorance about Marx’s labour theory of value to purport to show that management creates value too, not just labour! If a team of brick layers takes a certain amount of time to build a wall, but a manager can re-organize them to take less time to build the wall, then the value represented by the difference in time must have been created by the manager, or so argue these anti-Marxists. However, no matter how long it took a particular group of workers to build the wall, the value of the wall is from the generalized (abstract) share of all of society’s labour the wall represents, as a generic wall and not just that particular wall. 

If a group of wall builders were more inept or worked slower, or someone was able to get the wall built with less than society’s average necessary labour required, it doesn’t change the value the wall represents. It only means that either the wall will have to be billed at higher than its value (if they are less productive than average), or can be billed below its value (if they are more productive than average), or someone will have to pay the extra cost of being below average productivity, or someone can make an extra profit from being above average productivity. But the particular wall’s value itself is from society’s labour reflected in all walls, because another wall like it could be built for the socially necessary labour required for any wall in general.

Understanding specifically Marx’s labour theory of value is key to understanding why the rate of profit falls. When capitalists compete with each other they can only go so far by cutting wages and getting labour for more hours, as there are only 24 hours in a day and you can’t get (much) lower than free labour. The way they can get ahead of other capitalists is to invest in technology (e.g. machines) that will get more product out of a given amount of labour. This way their labour and material costs are spread across a higher volume of product and they can either undercut their competitors on price, or can make a higher return on their investment which will attract more investors than their competitors who need investments to continue.

At first, when a technology is new, this works out well for the capitalist who gets hold of the technology first. Eventually, the technology spreads throughout society and everyone is using it, getting more commodities from a given amount of labour than before.

Because the value of commodities reflects the share of society’s labour which is required to reproduce that particular commodity, the value of commodities falls because under the new technology it takes less labour to make the particular good or service. 

Why Pre-Marxist Labour Theories of Value Miss This Insight: Okishio’s Theorem

If capitalists are going to end up with a lower rate of profit why would they invest in the first place? As you may have guessed, it is because they have no choice: whoever invests first gets an advantage and could destroy some of their competitors through undercutting them on price or attracting all the investment with initial higher rates of return. If a capitalist doesn’t invest in the new technology and their competitor does they might find themselves in the ranks of the working class applying for a job with their erstwhile competitor.

But Marx’s tendency of the rate of profit to fall was (apparently) shaken in 1961 by a Marxist, Nobuo Okishio, whose theorem used math to show capitalists would only invest if it reduced their costs and in some industries this would either increase or maintain the profit rate, and so their profit rate wouldn’t fall. This convinced many Marxists to abandon the theory of the falling rate of profit altogether, saying it’s unnecessary, or something Marx was wrong about even though it shows exactly us why capitalism is doomed no matter how the capitalists try to save it, even with a New Deal or a Green New Deal.

One of the reasons why Okishio came to his conclusion, and many Marxists have believed him, is because he did not understand Marx’s theory of value, specifically that values would change once productivity increases relative to costs. Okishio said investment will occur if it decreases production costs, but not necessarily increase productivity. 

At first Okishio’s point will be true: the initial introduction of the new technology will decrease production costs for some capitalists and hold or increase their profit rate, and the same for other capitalists as they adopt the new technology. However, once the technology has become widespread it decreases the social labour required to produce a given mass of commodities, because even the costs of production which are reduced by the new technology represent less of society’s labour, even if the labour involved in the direct production (not production of the raw materials or machines) of the commodity is the same. 

But it’s all of the working class’s labour as a class which gives commodities their values, not only the labour of a particular group of workers. So while for at first some parts of the economy may be able to avoid a falling rate in profits, as Okishio says he has proved, eventually, despite the selected investments of those capitalists in cost-cutting technologies, the general rise in productivity in society leads to a general fall in the values of all commodities.

As capitalists invest more and more into technology and machines to get more value out of the labour of their workers, more and more of their total investment is going to other capitalists, who hire other workers to make the machines or technology. This other labour is “dead labour” when it gets to the capitalist using the technology, as it has already been used to produce the technology for a profit for another capitalist, while the “living labour” is used with the new technology to generate value which brings the profit to the capitalist investing in the technology. As capitalists are forced to invest more into technology to avoid being driven out of business by their competitors, more of their capital (investment) goes into “dead” labour than “living” labour,. 

More of their profit has to be shared with other capitalists who are paid for the technology they bring, but they only make their profit from the “living” labour which is a smaller and smaller share of their capital. As their profit is coming only from the “living” labour which uses the technology, the values of their commodities  must eventually fall as it takes less and less labour to produce, and so their profit rate also falls as they had to invest more into “dead” labour represented by the new technology than the “living” labour they employ to use the technology.

In this way also workers of a particular capitalist are not just working for that capitalist, but they are working for the capitalist class as a whole as more and more capitalists take a share of the profit from the value created by the labour of the workers. As value is from social and not individual labour, it is the workers as a class working for the capitalists as a class which produces the wealth then divided by the capitalists among themselves.

Does the rate of profit fall or not?

Marx wrote about various ways capitalists could fight against the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, but some Marxists have turned this into agnosticism saying the economy is too complex to know whether the rate of profit will fall or not, and that after all this law is only about a tendency (a law for a tendency). But Marxism does not, to borrow a phase from a TV character, tell us “oh, on the one hand this, and on the other hand that.” (Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, Season 2, Episode 1, BBC Four) 

The value of a theory is in what it tells us about the interaction of, and how to determine the outcome of, the phenomena it describes, and Marx’s labour theory of value tells us that no matter what the capitalists might do the rate of profit must eventually fall. This has been shown empirically, whether in the form of the rate of profit of corporations or of recurring economic crisis.  See the following chart of the estimated rate of profit for the world from 1869 to 2010 from the blog of Michael Roberts based on “The historical transience of capital” by Esteban Ezequiel Maito published online here.

[Graph 1: estimated world rate of profit 1869-2010 based on a weighted average from 14 countries: Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, Japan, United Kingdom, Sweden, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Spain, and Mexico.  Graph is from Michael Robert’s blog extracted from Figure 5 on page 13 (PDF) in Esteban Ezequiel Maito’s paper.]

Also the following graph, Figure 3 in the original, from Anwar Shaikh’s “The Falling Rate of Profit and the Economic Crisis in the US” on page 121 of The Imperiled Economy, Book I, (Robert Cherry et al, editors Union for Radical Political Economics, 1987) shows the overall decline in the profit rate for the USA:

[Graph 2: profit rates in the US with and without adjustment for capacity utilization.  Graph is Figure 3 in Anwar Sheikh’s article on page 121 of the book The Imperiled Economy, Book I.]

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE RATE OF PROFIT STARTS FALLING?

When the rate of profit is increasing capitalists can expect to make a profit from investing their capital. Marx in Capital vol 3 described that when the rate of profit starts to fall, however, the smaller, more vulnerable capitalists can no longer sustain the return on their investment and, in order to avoid being destroyed by more secure competitors, start to engage in speculation and outright swindles. There is little need for them to take large risks if they can make a high return with only a moderate or lower risk, but it is only when they can’t profit from what they had already been doing that they resort to increasingly desperate schemes.

The conventional understanding, even by radicals, has this phenomenon reversed: the source of the problem is misunderstood to be the financial swindling and speculation, and that the “productive” or “real” economy (which produces commodities, which may be goods or services) is fine. But actually Marx points out it is because the profit rate of the “real” economy can’t be sustained that the swindling and speculation is resorted to. Otherwise why wouldn’t these schemes be predominant all the time? Glib explanations such as “financialization” are offered but these are only superficial explanations that don’t look at the deeper phenomena within production itself as Marx did.

Another conventional misunderstanding is that the “real” economy which produces commodities is only a small part of the economy compared to the “speculative” part of the economy. Actually those who engage in highly risky speculation or outright swindling are the smaller, more vulnerable capitalists compared to the larger capitalists who can weather the storm of crashing profit rates better. As Lenin pointed out in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism banking capital and “industrial” (manufacturing) capital are inter-connected and not separate.

It is the relatively smaller capitalists who get destroyed in crisis and there is an increasing consolidation of capital by fewer and fewer companies which can survive the drop in the rate of profit.

Attempts to reform capitalism so that it is crisis-free by focusing on the “real” side of the economy, or with massive public investment including into the environmental infrastructure and “green jobs” in a Green New Deal, as important as those are, cannot escape a financial crash from the falling rate of profit. This is because value and wealth are created socially but under capitalism are appropriated privately or individually, and so as values fall from increasing productivity profits will fall over time compared to when investments in technology were made in a race to not be driven out of business by competitors.

What happens when the rate of profit has fallen?

Capitalist rhetoric says government doesn’t create jobs, business does. But when the profit rate has fallen business doesn’t invest, because they can’t get a return on their investment. In fact, as Marx described in Capital Volume 3, it becomes more important to hang on to cash to pay debts which can’t be financed because the economy slows down as companies collapse.  

This is why the then Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney accused companies of hoarding “dead” (i.e. uninvested) money (“Free up ‘dead’ money, Carney exhorts corporate Canada”, Kevin Carmichael, Richard Blackwell, and Greg Keenan, The Globe and Mail, August 22, 2012). Central banks lower interest rates to encourage investors to free up money from savings and invest them in stocks for a higher return than the interest rate. But when the rate of return on investment (profit rate) goes down to even zero, the Bank of Canada has to threaten that it is considering negative interest rates (in other words, charging interest on deposits!) as Governor Stephen Poloz said he would consider in 2015 (“Bank of Canada unveils new measures to deal with economic shocks”, David Parkinson and Barrie McKenna, The Globe and Mail, December 8, 2015). As of 2016 the central banks of the European Union, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Japan already had negative interest rate (“Will Canada join the negative interest club”, Jonathan Ratner, The Financial Post, March 14, 2016).

As a candidate for the Communist Party in federal and provincial elections, I could put this point across simply and be clearly understood by pointing out that “businesses don’t invest when the economy is down,” and during the few years after the financial crash in 2008 there was little evident investment.

Capitalists want the working class to pay for the crisis, but it is at least as plausible (if not more plausible) to demand the capitalists to pay for it. This was demanded by a co-worker of mine at a call centre who, when told in a group meeting with other workers that the global economic crisis means our employer would be freezing our wages, responded by saying “we have been working for the employer for so long, producing all the profits they enjoy, that it is the employer who should make the sacrifice and absorb the cost of our raises.”

How do the capitalists put the rate of profit back together again?

A fall in the rate of profit does not mean the end of capitalism. Once the values of commodities have fallen, those capitalists who survived the fall can invest at the lower values and make profits from investments made at the newer, lower values of commodities.

Capitalism has many falls in the rate of profit followed by investment picking up profitably at the newer level of technology. This doesn’t mean capitalism can go on forever, but it does mean the fall in the rate of profit and economic crisis does not automatically mean the end of capitalism, it must be overthrown by the working class and its allies who use their political power to completely end the system of the private ownership of wealth and its production.

What happens if the rate of profit goes to zero?

There is a Marxist organization in the USA which has an unpublished theory that Marx’s theories are superseded by the advent of robots. None of their publications cite this theory but their members hint at this belief. It is a pity they did not read Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital where in the end he remarks “If the whole class of the wage-labourer were to be annihilated by machinery, how terrible that would be for capital, which, without wage-labour, ceases to be capital!” because the value of commodities would fall to zero, as would profits, requiring no socially necessary labour. (See Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 9, page 226.)

If automation reached such a high level that all production operated in a kind of perpetual motion, where all maintenance and shut-downs/restarts were themselves done by robots (which may be possible as there are robots which can build or repair other robots, and even Marx noted in Wage Labour and Capital that since 1840 machines have been used to produce other machines), then no human labour would be required for production at all. As commodities can be reproduced without any labour they would have no value. As everyone would be out of work, hopefully enough of us would see the sense in just getting rid of the capitalists and taking over the production for the benefit of our class.  

Unless of course the machines take over, in which case we would need to call The Terminator from the future. This, I admit, Marx may not have foreseen. This is an additional reason to overthrow capitalism before it reaches such a hypothetical stage, as if we needed more reasons.

Niagara College taking steps to expand diversity on board of governors (St. Catharines Standard)

(https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news/niagara-region/2021/11/06/niagara-college-taking-steps-to-expand-diversity-on-board-of-governors.html)

Niagara College taking steps to expand diversity on board of governors

Ten of 18 governors, including chair and vice-chair, now women

By Victoria Nicolaoustaff reporter

Sat., Nov. 6, 2021timer4 min. read

updateArticle was updated Nov. 07, 2021

Since the fall of 2019, 10 new members have joined the Niagara College board of governors.

Of those 10, six have been women.

With the announcement last month by Niagara College of the addition of four new governors — two women — as well as a new chair and vice-chair for the 2021-22 academic year, currently 10 of the 18 board members are women.

In terms of gender equality, the college has made a concerted effort to have those representing the college reflect the student body and local community.

The next step is cultural diversity.

Michael Wales, college communications manager, said the focus of diversity and inclusion is “an important priority” for the college, and is a concern shared by the board.

“At a meeting last spring, the board’s new member search committee identified cultural diversity as an important consideration in identifying prospective governors, with a goal of ensuring the board reflects the stakeholders it serves,” said Wales.

“This year the board specifically prioritized identifying a candidate with an Indigenous background, and Lora Tisi was among the new governors who joined the board this fall.”

Tisi, a Niagara College alumna and an international retailer with more than 30 years of experience, in a press release said she is “currently exploring her mixed-race Six Nations Indigenous ancestry, creating change, hope, unity and self-determination for Indigenous People.”

Tisi is joined for the 2021-22 academic semester by Andrew Harber, chief executive officer of Abatement Technologies; Becky Sciliberto (support staff representative), a graduate of the college’s business accounting program; and Kevin Smith, chief of Niagara Emergency Medical Services.

Elected as board chair was Wendy Wing, who has served on the board since 2016. Caroline Mann, who joined the board in 2017, was elected as vice-chair.

Among the board’s duties this year is approval of a multi-year strategic plan for the college, including a large focus on diversity and inclusion.

“The majority of our board is made up of accomplished women who are business and community leaders — including the chair and vice-chair,” said Wales. “We’ve also been fortunate to welcome governors who bring Indigenous and Black perspectives to the board (since 2019).”

The governors selection process is a combination of both chosen and elected individuals, with turnover each year typically between three to five members.

Eight members are appointed by the board itself based on recommendations from the new member search committee. The committee identifies individuals who represent industry sectors that align with Niagara College’s key program areas. They also look for individuals who bring specifics areas of expertise.

Four members are appointed by the province and four internal governors are elected by their peers in faculty, support staff, administration and student groups.

Sam Jemison, Niagara College student administrative council president, said from what she has seen at school, and the conversations she has been a part of, Niagara College is productively pushing diversity and inclusion throughout the school.

But, because of the specific selection process and turnover every few years, the board is always just a “snapshot in time.”

“(It) is better captured by seeing where they are pushing diversity, as the work they do now is what will set the foundation for the future. I am under the impression that a diverse background, with diverse perspectives, is an important quality in new candidates they elect” she said.

As a representation of the student body, Jemison said people want to see the board have “persons they can relate to in positions of power” and she hopes Indigenous students “find comfort and safety” in having Tisi on the board to represent their interests.

“I think it is only a natural progression that (diversity and inclusion) is and will be reflected in the board.”

Saleh Waziruddin, a member of the executive committee of the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association, said while he does not have knowledge specific to the college’s board recruitment process, he can speak to the general issue of diversity on boards — which he said represent the student body as well as the community — and issues around recruitment and selection.

“There’s barriers in getting interest from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) applicants, but there’s also barriers in getting BIPOC applicants who are qualified to be selected. So I think that’s where there is, in general, more work that needs to be done,” Waziruddin said.

Over time, as racism is addressed in society, Waziruddin said maybe that will remove some of the barriers, but organizations themselves need to identify the impediments within their own processes.

That has to be done by being targeted and intentional, because issues of diversity will not be solved spontaneously, he said.

For example, there can be some difficulty in “successfully recruiting BIPOC people” because there can be a lack of awareness and something they don’t understand the importance of the job, said Waziruddin.

It can also be an issue, once an applicant is ready to take the next step, in understanding how to put their “best foot forward” and make themselves stand out.

“They may still have good qualifications and maybe they need help in finding (out) how to show those qualifications on their resume or the applications,” he said.

“Somebody else who has the advantages of having a great job and having had many formal accomplishments, they might not need the help. But people who don’t come from that background, they may just need a little help in the details.”

‘Our housing needs to grow’: St. Catharines advocates want more help for Indigenous communities (Niagara This Week)

(https://www.niagarathisweek.com/news-story/10498398--our-housing-needs-to-grow-st-catharines-advocates-want-more-help-for-indigenous-communities/)

‘Our housing needs to grow’: St. Catharines advocates want more help for Indigenous communities

Elizabeth Sault from the Niagara Regional Native Centre says we need to look at the biases that exist in the community

Abby Green

Niagara This Week - St. Catharines

Thursday, October 21, 2021

What was once a saving grace for Mary Ellen Simon has now become more of a burden.

The Indigenous woman rents a large home in St. Catharines that fit her late son’s wheelchair he used after he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

“I had a child that was very ill, so housing was a saving grace for us because the rent geared to income could flex so that I could stay home, if necessary,” she said.

Unfortunately, her son died late last year. Now Simon is stuck with a large house that she says she can’t move away from. Simon’s eldest son, partner and their baby still live with her.

“I am the lease holder, and there’s a policy that says I can’t pass the lease on to my adult children that have grown up in the same house. So, if I wanted to move out of the city for work, my children would be homeless.”

Faced with that dilemma, she’d be stuck between choosing a job and a home for her son’s family.

“I’m not going to leave them homeless, especially in a market like this where everything is so terribly expensive and them being young, it’s harder for them to obtain a lease.”

She said another problem her family faces is a lack of intergenerational wealth.

“You can’t even buy a house in the city anymore on a single income, so really the only options for us right now are to find a place that’s maybe a basement or a top floor of a home, for more than what I originally had a mortgage for,” she said.

OUT OF REACH: Niagara's housing crisis

Read the entire series

Elizabeth Sault, healing and wellness co-ordinator at the Niagara Regional Native Centre, said there are many barriers in the way for Indigenous people to obtain affordable housing.

“Ontario works, ODSP, etc. is not enough to support a family,” she said. “And when you work as a member of the Indigenous community, you’re making half of what your non-Indigenous co-workers are making.”

For some of the assistance programs, there are credit checks, bank statements and other requirements that people must qualify for, and Sault said a lot of Indigenous people have trouble meeting the criteria.

“Just recently, one of our seniors from our communities said she could not get housing, so she pays $1,500 a month for a motel room,” she said. “The motel is asking an extra $200 a month for a mini fridge and a microwave.”

Sault would like to see an increase in funding for Indigenous housing. She said it’s impossible to house people in Indigenous specific housing, as the wait time is years.

“If you do not have a status card or belong to a community, you do not qualify for Indigenous housing,” she said. She said we need to take a look at the biases that exist in the community around Indigenous people.

Saleh Waziruddin, an executive member for Niagara’s Anti-Racism Association, said the region doesn’t do enough when it comes to housing discrimination.

“In the U.S., the government does paired testing, where they will send people who have the same qualifications on paper, but maybe one’s white and one’s Black or Indigenous, and they will see if the landlords discriminate,” he said. “That isn’t done here.”

“I think our Indigenous housing needs to grow; opportunities for Indigenous housing should be increased. I don’t think there’s enough,” said Simon.

“It’s a shame to see these families ended up in the Niagara region because they were displaced from reservations for whichever reasons, and now the cities say, ‘We can’t do anything either,’” said Simon. “It feels like they only want to capture high market rents, and everything is getting so expensive so how do you live?”

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: The housing crisis is having a big impact on every facet of life in Niagara. With that in mind, reporter Abby Green wanted to connect with those in the Indigenous community to hear about the unique challenges they face when looking for appropriate housing.

The uglier side of living in Niagara (The Fort Erie Post)

(https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/local-fort-erie/news/2021/08/10/the-uglier-side-of-living-in-niagara.html)

The uglier side of living in Niagara

Harassment of Fort Erie woman not an uncommon event, anti-racism group says

Set Fort Erie as My Local news

By Richard HuttonReporter

Tue., Aug. 10, 2021timer3 min. read

Is Niagara — and Fort Erie in particular — a racist community?

The issue of race came to a head in town recently after one family was threatened via a letter left in their mailbox. In an anonymous letter, the writer threatened the life of Natalee Cole, who is Black, and her daughter. It was the culmination of a months-long campaign targeting Cole.

“I will burn your house down with you inside,” the letter stated.

Cole had finally had enough and went public.

“I’ve been suffering in silence for eight months,” she said. “I just couldn’t bear it anymore.”

It’s not something she experienced in an ethnically diverse community in Brampton, where she lived prior to moving to Fort Erie in December 2018.

“It would happen more in the workplace,” she said.

As horrendous as the incident may seem, it’s not something that is uncommon, according to Saleh Waziruddin of the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association.

“People are being harassed by neighbours using bylaw enforcement and police to get at them,” Waziruddin said. “It’s almost always been Black residents. Fortunately, with one exception, bylaw and police have not taken the bait.”

It’s difficult to gauge how big a problem racism is in Niagara. Information, Waziruddin said, is sparse.

“We know racism is there,” he said. “We hear from people who move here from the (Greater Toronto Area), that they are experiencing it more than they were back in Peel or the GTA, but it’s anecdotal.”

He said that the Niagara Regional Police have begun reporting incidents of hate crimes as a part of the service’s annual report.

“So we’re getting some information,” Waziruddin said.

The NRP, meanwhile, are continuing their investigation into the incident, said Stephanie Sabourin, manager of corporate communications for the police service.

“Due to the active nature of this investigation, we are unable to provide further information so as not to jeopardize the investigation nor, would we be able to speak to conversations with persons involved in investigation,” she said in an email response to the Fort Erie Post.

She added that the Fort Erie incident, for the moment, is not being classified as a hate crime.

“At this time, charges have not been laid and while being actively investigated, there is no evidence to suggest race-based motivation at this time,” Sabourin wrote. “Detectives take numerous aspects into consideration in the course of the investigation, ultimately they need to be able to prove a nexus between a crime and their bias towards an identifiable group.”

She also said that Niagara as a whole is not seeing an increase in reported crimes that reach the threshold of a hate crime, which are investigated by District Detective Offices with assistance of a designated member of the Intelligence Unit trained in hate-motived occurrences.

“In 2020, there were 10 reported hate-motivated incidents with one criminal charge laid,” Sabourin said.

The NRP has an Equity Diversity and Inclusion Unit that is active in the community, Sabourin said.

“On a daily basis, they are developing relationships with community members and providing education and support to equity seeking groups within our community and addressing any concerns.”

Cole, meanwhile, is managing as best she can given the situation.

“I have an impeccable attitude,” she said. “I’ve done 20 years of door-to-door sales. I’ve learned to suck it up.”

That being said, it doesn’t mean the experience hasn’t affected her or her daughter, Miracle.

“It should have not taken place in this day and age,” she said. “We have to be able to identify that person.”

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY: The Fort Erie Post wanted to look deeper into the issue of racism in Niagara after documenting the experience of a local Black woman who was sent a threatening letter where the anonymous writer threatened to burn down the woman’s home with her and her daughter inside.

'I will burn your house down with you inside’: Fort Erie woman who is Black receives threatening letter (Toronto Star and Niagara This Week)

(https://www.thestar.com/local-fort-erie/news/2021/08/01/i-will-burn-your-house-down-with-you-inside-fort-erie-woman-who-is-black-receives-threatening-letter.html)

'I will burn your house down with you inside’: Fort Erie woman who is Black receives threatening letter

Community rallies to show support for Natalee Cole, who is terrified by anonymous letter threatening her family

Set Fort Erie as My Local news

By Paul ForsythReporter

Sun., Aug. 1, 2021timer3 min. read

updateArticle was updated Aug. 03, 2021

Warning: This article contains content that may be disturbing to some readers. 

Natalee Cole can’t help but wonder if it’s her skin colour — and not her taste in music — that prompted a hateful, anonymous letter in which a stranger threatened to burn her Fort Erie home down with Cole and her seven-year-old daughter, Miracle, inside.

Cole, a Black woman in a predominantly white neighbourhood, says she has been living in terror since she received the handwritten letter in her mailbox a week ago, the third such letter from someone demanding that she turn her music down.

The latest letter ramped up the vitriol, demanding she turn her music down “or the neighbours and I will burn your house down with you inside … stop the noise or burn in hell.”

Cole said a number of other letters have also been sent anonymously to Niagara Regional Police and town hall, demanding action be taken against her.

NRP media officer Const. Phil Gavin said police began an investigation into the threatening letter on July 23 and the investigation continues.

For Cole, who moved to the border town two years ago from Brampton, the harassment seems motivated by something other than the karaoke machine in her home that she likes to play.

“I was shocked beyond belief and I was really scared, overwhelmed and wondering why,” she said in an interview. “I feel I’m being targeted. I am a Black woman and I feel this has something to do with it.”

“(But) I can’t afford for them to break my spirit and my happiness,” she said.

Cole said she feels vulnerable, fearful for the safety of Miracle. “Who knows if they’re watching me?” she said. “It’s really creepy.”

But on Saturday, her community showed her that she’s not alone: upwards of 100 people, including many of her neighbours, turned up in front of her home to show her support.

“I love your music,” one woman said, hugging Cole.

“We’re there for you,” said another neighbour, a man who lives behind Cole.

“We want you to know you’re not alone and we’re here for you,” said resident O’Brien Martinez.

Two teen girls brought Cole a package of fresh cookies. “God bless you,” she told the girls.

Cole told some of the visitors that the stress of the threat has taken a huge toll on her and Miracle.

“Emotionally I’m broken,” she said. “It’s traumatizing for a seven-year-old.”

Aidan Barron, who lives a few doors down, said — after telling Cole the community is behind her — that he only found out about the letter the night before. “I was devastated,” he said.

As a white man, he acknowledged he can’t fully understand what people who are Black, Indigenous or people of colour experience in terms of intolerance or racism. “All I can do is say ‘I love you and I support you,’” he said.

Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association (NRARA)’s Saleh Waziruddin said the type of intimidation Cole is experiencing won’t work and will not be tolerated.

“We have seen many Black residents in Niagara targeted by racist neighbours who try to use the police and bylaw enforcement to harass Black people to leave,” he said in a statement.

The NRARA’s Vicki Lynn Smith told the crowd the community needs to collectively stand up against hatred.

“We must fight, fight, fight,” she said.

Martinez, a man of Mexican descent who grew up in Texas, said he knows the sting of racism all too well.

“I’ve been pulled over by the cops and I was scared for my life,” he said. “You get that kind of ugly look when you walk in a restaurant.

“There are too many people who pretend it doesn’t happen.”

Cole told the large gathering, including Mayor Wayne Redekop and Niagara Falls MPP Wayne Gates, that as rattled as she is, their support is making a difference.

“Just your presence allows me to feel we’re in this together,” she said.

“This stops today,” she said. “I’m taking my power back today.”