Speech at City of St. Catharines Harriet Tubman Day (as chair of the Anti-Racism Advisory Committee)

Full video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpGQwjMNk5s

We in St. Catharines proudly claim the heritage and ongoing legacy of Harriet Tubman and the freedom seekers who made our City a City of freedom seekers. But we should be aware this very legacy and symbol has been under attack in North America, which is why we must redouble our efforts to defend it and the rights of freedom seeker descendants.

We saw the vandalism a year and a half ago of the statue of Harriet Tubman not far from here, and then the vandalism at the Harriet Tubman Public School, represented here by Hala and Leo, and the nearby Caribbean Eatery. And then in December another attack on a Harriet Tubman statue, this time in Maryland.

As far as the vandalism of the Harriet Tubman Public School, it's difficult for any reasonable person to understand why, when the n-word and racial hate was brazenly displayed, there aren't hate crime charges, when meanwhile in Ottawa two high school students WERE charged with hate crimes for displaying a hate symbol. The students, faculty, and staff at Harriet Tubman Public School have been resilient, but to give them true justice we should show we take hate and anti-Black racism seriously in St. Catharines by using the laws we already have against hate crimes.

As the mayor said recently in his State of the City address just yesterday, we need to put our actions – our money – where our mouth is, it's not enough just to make declarations that's only the beginning. A lot of the work of the last few years of the City's anti-racism advisory committee's recommendations to Council have been lost in the turnover into the new Council as the list of outstanding staff reports became a new, clean slate. This include relatively simple things like an anti-street harassment by-law enjoyed by residents such as in London, Ontario and has stood up in court. I hope that the new anti-racism advisory committee will put these recommendations back on City Council's agenda.

We must also not forget that while our city has been a home to freedom seekers looking for refuge through the underground railroad, it was also a refuge for the other side. Historians have shown many confederates also fled from the United State into our City and there was support for the Confederacy here during the US's civil war.

But the need for a refuge for those fleeing persecution and hardships, though not the same as the freedom seekers, continues. The idea of welcoming and helping refugees is being challenged today by those who pit refugees against those who immigrated or fled here in earlier times on Indigenous land. This is why it is important that there is a rally being held Sunday, March 19, 2pm at another City Hall, this time in Niagara Falls, by the Migrant Rights Network, to unite against racism in all its forms.