Dear reader – we know that CPT has a diverse constituency with varying viewpoints on justice issues. We believe that peacemaking is a journey we are traveling on together. Over the next few weeks we will be publishing articles reflecting on the theme of abolition. We invite you to read and reflect with us. Send us your thoughts at peacemakers@cpt.org.
This second article is written by Turtle Island Solidarity Network. You can read the first article in the series, ‘My journey towards abolitionism’, here.
“Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” This chant reverberates through street protests in North America. It is a reminder to people, and to the police, that we do not want, trust, or rely on police to keep us safe. Rather, as a community fighting for liberation, we work to build communities of safety and trust. The chant is not an abstract aspiration, but rather a call to action: to develop alternative safety strategies and dismantle the police. It is this chant in practice that we have seen grow and expand in Toronto in the last two years.
A very brief history of policing in Canada
The first federal police force in Canada was the Dominion Police, established in 1868. While they were tasked with “protecting” politicians, they also had deep ties to the “Orange Order,” a deeply anti-Catholic and anti-Irish club of British Protestant men that infiltrated all levels of government. At its root, the Dominion Police was tasked with guarding a “public order” based on the dominance of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Dominion Police did not exist for the public safety for all – they existed to maintain racial power.
Did you know? The Dominion Police was sent to fight in the Boer War with the British. It is through the Boer War the model of a “concentration camp” comes into existence with the British confining both Dutch and Black families into concentration camps.
The local Toronto Police force, established in 1834, was a municipal police force, similarly established to maintain a highly racist and classist “public order.” They too had strong connections to the “Orange Order” and took sides in sectarian skirmishes with Catholics. The Toronto Police were also tasked with upholding racial segregation and suppressing Indigenous resistance to colonization on Manitoulin Island.
As Canada sought to colonize the west, a regiment of Orangemen went to Winnipeg to displace and violently repress the Metis and First Nations, stealing land as they went and forming the North West Mounted Police (NWMP). In Toronto, police protected private property and the status quo based on a public order of capitalism and white supremacy. On the prairies, they violently established such an order: the NWMP invaded Indigenous lands, forced First Nations onto reserves, and murdered Indigenous leaders who dared to resist colonization.
In 1919, workers in Winnipeg rose up to demand better wages and better treatment. The government, fearing a left revolution, sent both the Dominion Police and the NWMP to try to squash the movement and support the local private militias that businesses had employed to attack striking workers. Following the Winnipeg General Strike, the Dominion Police (protectors of capital) and the NWMP (occupiers and violent thieves of Indigenous lands) merged to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Learn More!
Listen: The Mounties Always Get Their Land
Read: Policing Black Lives by Robyn Maynard
Read: Stolen City by Owen Toews
It is important to take a brief look at the history of the formation of both federal and local police to understand their function today. We can see that policing was not established for the safety and protection of all. The police exist to enforce a status quo: to maintain public order in a context of systemic oppression and violence. The police, despite their claims, do not uphold justice but historically and currently are the enforcers of laws that help maintain unjust conditions rooted in white supremacy.
The RCMP carried out the kidnapping of Indigenous children to force them into residential schools. Police enforced racial segregation in urban centers as well as the pass system that confined First Nations people to reserves, and the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. In 2000, the Toronto police raided an LGBTQ+ bathhouse, which a judge later deemed a “flagrant” violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The police are not the purveyors of justice; rather, they are often the force that blocks communities’ attempts to build justice. An example of this today is the policing of the Palestine Solidarity Movement.
Did you know? The current Toronto Chief of Police was part of the “vice squad” which raided the bathhouse which a judge later deemed a “flagrant” violation of people’s charter rights.
Over 115 people have been arrested in Toronto since October 2023 for supporting Palestine. Those who are arrested for Palestine solidarity actions are automatically investigated by the Toronto Police’s Hate Crimes Unit, despite the fact that it is a profound love of humanity that drives their actions, too often resulting in their criminalization. Trying to stop a genocide is just. But it shakes up the status quo, it disrupts public order, and threatens the function of imperialism and white supremacy in Canada. As a result, the state, through the arm of the police, is trying to isolate the movement, to dehumanize it, and to limit its impact.
Community Building is Abolition
The only way to achieve justice is to abolish the police and dismantle the violent and coercive approach to “safety” that they represent. Here in Toronto, within the Palestine Solidarity Movement, we have begun to make abolition a reality within our community. This is not exceptional – most communities in Toronto cannot trust police based on either their racial or class identity, and have relied on each other to build alternative structures for community safety.
Through the struggle to end the genocide, many people who believed they were protected by the police are now targeted by the police. For many in the Palestine Solidarity Movement, if they felt like they could call the police before for safety, now they cannot. Many in our movement have received death threats from Zionists. In this environment, safety is something we have had to build within our community. The police will not protect us; in fact, they have harmed and threatened us.
While Zionist vigilantes send death threats, the police prey upon the Palestine Movement. Many activists have been surveilled and followed by various levels of police (municipal, provincial and federal) for their support for Palestine. On several occasions in the last 18 months, the police have attacked protesters, doling out concussions, broken ribs and noses, and torn ligaments. The police have been the greatest purveyors of violence against us. In response, we have built our own communities of support and care. We have developed check-in systems and opened up our homes to each other when we are under threat of arrest or attack. We are a community that is rooted in care and in love, in liberation and decolonization.
The police do not serve and protect the people. Rather, they serve the interests of the ruling elites: they protect capital and private property. This means that the police must violently put down any act that threatens the “public order” of society’s unjust systems. Yet through our ability to build strong communities, we are able to keep resisting and build a more just world. “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!”
