7.09.2008

and you ask yourself, how did i get here?

I've just come back from meeting and celebrating with resisters and campaigners. Whoo-hoo!

Many people confessed they thought this would be a very grim meeting: our first deportation. I have been working with the Campaign about a year, but most of my sister and brother Campaigners have been at it four times as long. And in four years, not one resister has been forced to leave Canada. Some have left on their own terms, but there have been no deportations. So the prospect of the first was dreadful.

But he's still here! And he ain't goin' nowhere.

There is no doubt in my mind that all our actions - cumulatively - brought this about. Our phone calls, letters, faxes, emails. Our demonstrations, pickets and speaking events. Our lobbying meetings, our letter-writing rallies. Our blogging, Facebooking, and petitioning. Our letters to newspapers, our contingents marching in parades. All of it worked together.

We showed the Liberals public opinion was on our side, that they wouldn't be hung out to dry if they backed the motion. And that motion passing in the House of Commons in turn showed the courts that they, too, would have support. That there was another point of view besides the Government's, and that point of view is the majority.

Courts are supposed to be apolitical, but in the real world, judges are affected by political climate. And our Campaign - and every single person who contributed to it, in ways large and small - created the climate that made these decisions possible.

Our work is not done. Robin Long is still in jail, and we sure as hell don't want to go through this with every single resister! We need a policy. We need the Government to implement the motion.

Short of that, we'll take a long, drawn-out process, then an election, a Liberal minority win, and we're done! And you know what? It's looking mighty possible.

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