last week I watched a video that was
shot in downtown Toronto of a man who
was being tortured by the Toronto Police
this man was facedown on the ground and
his hands were cuffed behind his back
and he wasn’t moving in the 90 second
video that I saw one of the police
officers one of the many police officers
that was standing around this man
deployed a Taser against him twice and
you could see his body convulsing as the
electricity ran through it
another officer repeatedly kicked this
man in the back there were people
standing around watching and many of
them were frozen in horror while others
just simply walked by and why not why
not simply walk by the police after all
were just doing their job right
the police were preserving order and
maintaining public safety
they were maintaining Public Safety by
brutalizing a defense of defenseless
black man while people watched or just
walked on by now I don’t have time for
public safety its of no use to me I have
come to recognize as a black person that
Public Safety is we define it not only
seems to exclude me not only seems to
exclude my need for safety as a black
person black people actually know that
it’s more than that we know that Public
Safety is actually defined as an absence
of our safety as black people it’s
defined by the ability of people like
those police officers in that video to
follow us wherever we go to stop us to
interrogate us to ask us questions to
ask us for our identification to pull us
over while we’re driving in our cars to
put their head
on us to arrest us to throw us to the
ground to kick us to run electricity
through our bodies and of course just to
shoot us dead
public safety as we define it in Canada
right now it doesn’t exclude us as black
people it is antithetical to our
blackness and it’s not just a function
of policing it’s of all of our
institutions and a large large swath of
the general public public safety the way
that we conceive of it today is anti
black let’s break that down okay let’s
think about one of the major fundamental
underlying ideas of policing that’s the
idea that really in order to keep the
entire public safe the police need the
ability to hurt individual members of
the public that might sound like a weird
way of saying it but if we are actually
honest that’s the truth but let’s go
further in order to really keep public
safety the police actually need to be
able to kill individual members of the
public without consequence that’s what
we’re talking about when we talk about
public safety in Canada when it comes to
the police they need to be able to kill
in order to maintain your safety so who
do the police kill in 2015 my colleague
Wendy Gillis at the Toronto Star wrote a
piece entitled how many black men have
been killed by Toronto police we can’t
know now the reason that we can’t know
is because the Toronto Police do not
keep statistics about how many black
people they kill neither does the
Special Investigations Unit which
investigates police brutality in Ontario
neither does the ministry that oversees
the siu and the police and neither do
statistics Canada so none of those
agencies keep information about how many
black people are killed by police
Wendy Gillis had to do it by using the
available siu information and
cross-referencing it with news stories
so what did Wendy find in a period
between 1990 and 2015 the Toronto Police
just the Toronto Police killed by
shooting 51 people of those 51 18 were
black men that is 35 percent of police
shootings targeting black men and by the
way 17 out of the 51 men we couldn’t
identify their race so that 35% of black
men being killed could actually even be
higher even though black men make up
only a tiny fraction of the population
in Toronto that we’re talking about so
this leads us to an obvious question why
aren’t our institutions keeping this
information why aren’t our institutions
telling us how many people are killed by
the police and what their racial
identity is well it’s easy I told you
our institutions are not interested in
black safety our institutions are
interested in public safety and what’s
more than that our institutions are
actually afraid that if they break it
down and if they stalk specifically
about blackness and the brutality that
we experience well that that might be
you know divisive that might be
corrosive it might make people upset and
anxious and disturb the general public
order so in order to preserve that
general public order what do we do we
hide and we cover up all the statistics
that relate to blackness and anti black
violence and this conversation is not
simply about it’s as black people being
killed by our police that’s the worst
outcome it’s also about the police
having the ability to surveil us under
practices like carding as in you get
stopped by the police and they ask for
your identification card this is a
practice that happens to people who are
not suspected of a crime it happens
millions of times every year in our
country and it doesn’t matter where you
look
Halifax Nova Scotia Ottawa Ontario
Hamilton Ontario Peel Toronto Windsor
Waterloo everywhere where there are
statistics about this whether the black
population is really large or whether
it’s really small
we are always disproportionately stopped
and documented by our police and that
carding information goes into police
databases and is kept there in
definitely and by the way while we’re on
this subject it’s actually not even just
about police let’s talk about black
children black children in this country
are disproportionately taken from their
parents through the child welfare system
black children are disproportionately
suspended and expelled from schools
across this country and when they are
able to stay in school black children
are disproportionately put into special
education programs and lower academic
streaming programs even if those
programs are not suitable for them now
many people want to attribute these
things to problems in black culture they
want to attribute it to poverty or
recent immigration status or the in dual
individual biases of teachers or social
workers and let’s be honest non black
people have to believe these things
about us they have to believe it so that
they can continue policing us and not
police themselves
this has to be believed about us so that
that policing can continue and and and
so that all the things that are
projected on us by non black people all
of the ways in which violence is
reproduced against us all the problems
that are caused through these ideas
don’t have to be
examined that’s what’s really going on
white supremacy is the ideology that’s
at play here and when I talk about white
supremacy I’m saying that white
supremacy derives its safety and its
comfort directly through violence
against black people you do not have to
be black or sorry you do not have to be
white to benefit from white supremacy
although I admit it helps actually white
supremacy is for anyone and everyone who
accepts the power and the comforts that
come along with a hierarchical structure
where whiteness is at the top and
blackness is at the bottom anchoring
that entire structure that’s what we
mean when we talk about white supremacy
now as a result of that since black
people are among the most vulnerable
people in our society and I’m trying to
focus when I talk to you specifically
about anti black racism and the problems
the singular problems that we face as
black people I’m not trying to
marginalize the struggles of other
groups I’m trying just to talk about us
right now but since we know that we are
set such vulnerability improving our
safety as black people would necessarily
improve general safety would it not but
there’s a problem that idea of it’s
focusing on us and improving our safety
that idea is threatening to white
supremacy let me explain what I mean I
talked about the police shooting black
men disproportionately and killing us
the easiest way to stop police from
killing black men with guns is to take
those guns away now some of you in this
room who are listening got nervous when
I said that why did you get nervous I
just told you that black men keep
getting shot and killed by the police
and I would imagine that you want that
to stop but when I suggest the most
logical way for that to happen
taking guns away from police you got
scared I should imagine that some of you
in this room got scared because you
started thinking to yourself but wait a
minute if the police don’t have guns
that will make who Oh everyone unsafe I
actually think it would make me much
more safe as a black person but you’re
thinking about everyone and so in the
name of keeping everyone safe it’s
better to have guns in those police’s
hands even if they end up
disproportionately killing me and my
people and let’s go even further than
that when we talk about disarming the
police what is the number one excuse
that we are given why it can’t happen
well it’s the gangs you know the gangs
the gangs of yes black people who are
always used as the excuse to continue to
harass and scrutinize every single black
person that is the justification that is
being used and so I can’t even say take
away the guns from the people who are
killing us I have to submit to a system
where the police are allowed to have
those guns where the schools are allowed
to suspend and expel where the child
welfare system is allowed to break up
our families where the prison systems
and the immigration detention systems
are allowed to keep us behind bars all
for the general safety all for a general
sense of comfort when we say the black
lives matter when we use that rallying
cry to try and fight for our liberation
you know what we are told we are told
well no no all lives all lives matter
when we try to fight for our freedom we
are told that by singling out our
blackness and making it important that
we might even be being racist but I have
to tell you that that is actually the
only way black lives have
the matter enough to be singled out and
cared for and investigated not erased
through generalization as we are so so
prone to doing in these conversations
saying all lives matter is actually a
way of saying that there’s nothing truly
special about being black I disagree
we have endured a very special kind of
Terror
across centuries and yet somehow we are
still here and more than being here and
surviving we intend to be liberated we
intend to thrive and to become free and
safe that’s our goal
black safety means keeping us together
with our families bak safety means
keeping us in school black safety means
us having the right to walk our streets
without being surveilled but it also
means keeping very detailed information
about how the state is treating us so
that we can better understand the areas
where the state is failing to protect
black life but I have to be honest more
than any of these things black safety is
about non black people accepting the
idea opening yourselves up to the
possibility that we are not actually the
most dangerous ones but that you are and
that you always have been I would like
to read a poem by Audrey Lorde it’s just
the end of this poem and it’s called a
litany for survival and when the Sun
rises we are afraid it might not remain
and when the Sun sets we are afraid it
might not rise in the morning when our
stomachs are full we are afraid of
indigestion when our stomachs are empty
we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid that
love will
finish when we are alone we are afraid
that love will never return and when we
speak we are afraid our words will not
be heard nor welcomed but when we are
silent we are still afraid so it is
better to speak remembering that we were
never meant to survive those conferences
theme is ellipses and I quote Audrey
Lord to you because I believe that the
words and the actions that we need now
they come after that uncomfortable and
fearful pause that we have when we have
to confront anti-black racism and white
supremacy once we have to accept that
reality how do we keep moving how do we
speak how do we break that silence well
we do it with love we do it with
compassion we do it with courage but I
would say above all above all of these
things we do it with a commitment to
black life to black liberation and to
black safety the only way that we as
black people can get ourselves free is
to insist on focusing specifically on
our safety and that is also the mission
of any person who claims that they want
to help us get free thank you
[Applause]
shot in downtown Toronto of a man who
was being tortured by the Toronto Police
this man was facedown on the ground and
his hands were cuffed behind his back
and he wasn’t moving in the 90 second
video that I saw one of the police
officers one of the many police officers
that was standing around this man
deployed a Taser against him twice and
you could see his body convulsing as the
electricity ran through it
another officer repeatedly kicked this
man in the back there were people
standing around watching and many of
them were frozen in horror while others
just simply walked by and why not why
not simply walk by the police after all
were just doing their job right
the police were preserving order and
maintaining public safety
they were maintaining Public Safety by
brutalizing a defense of defenseless
black man while people watched or just
walked on by now I don’t have time for
public safety its of no use to me I have
come to recognize as a black person that
Public Safety is we define it not only
seems to exclude me not only seems to
exclude my need for safety as a black
person black people actually know that
it’s more than that we know that Public
Safety is actually defined as an absence
of our safety as black people it’s
defined by the ability of people like
those police officers in that video to
follow us wherever we go to stop us to
interrogate us to ask us questions to
ask us for our identification to pull us
over while we’re driving in our cars to
put their head
on us to arrest us to throw us to the
ground to kick us to run electricity
through our bodies and of course just to
shoot us dead
public safety as we define it in Canada
right now it doesn’t exclude us as black
people it is antithetical to our
blackness and it’s not just a function
of policing it’s of all of our
institutions and a large large swath of
the general public public safety the way
that we conceive of it today is anti
black let’s break that down okay let’s
think about one of the major fundamental
underlying ideas of policing that’s the
idea that really in order to keep the
entire public safe the police need the
ability to hurt individual members of
the public that might sound like a weird
way of saying it but if we are actually
honest that’s the truth but let’s go
further in order to really keep public
safety the police actually need to be
able to kill individual members of the
public without consequence that’s what
we’re talking about when we talk about
public safety in Canada when it comes to
the police they need to be able to kill
in order to maintain your safety so who
do the police kill in 2015 my colleague
Wendy Gillis at the Toronto Star wrote a
piece entitled how many black men have
been killed by Toronto police we can’t
know now the reason that we can’t know
is because the Toronto Police do not
keep statistics about how many black
people they kill neither does the
Special Investigations Unit which
investigates police brutality in Ontario
neither does the ministry that oversees
the siu and the police and neither do
statistics Canada so none of those
agencies keep information about how many
black people are killed by police
Wendy Gillis had to do it by using the
available siu information and
cross-referencing it with news stories
so what did Wendy find in a period
between 1990 and 2015 the Toronto Police
just the Toronto Police killed by
shooting 51 people of those 51 18 were
black men that is 35 percent of police
shootings targeting black men and by the
way 17 out of the 51 men we couldn’t
identify their race so that 35% of black
men being killed could actually even be
higher even though black men make up
only a tiny fraction of the population
in Toronto that we’re talking about so
this leads us to an obvious question why
aren’t our institutions keeping this
information why aren’t our institutions
telling us how many people are killed by
the police and what their racial
identity is well it’s easy I told you
our institutions are not interested in
black safety our institutions are
interested in public safety and what’s
more than that our institutions are
actually afraid that if they break it
down and if they stalk specifically
about blackness and the brutality that
we experience well that that might be
you know divisive that might be
corrosive it might make people upset and
anxious and disturb the general public
order so in order to preserve that
general public order what do we do we
hide and we cover up all the statistics
that relate to blackness and anti black
violence and this conversation is not
simply about it’s as black people being
killed by our police that’s the worst
outcome it’s also about the police
having the ability to surveil us under
practices like carding as in you get
stopped by the police and they ask for
your identification card this is a
practice that happens to people who are
not suspected of a crime it happens
millions of times every year in our
country and it doesn’t matter where you
look
Halifax Nova Scotia Ottawa Ontario
Hamilton Ontario Peel Toronto Windsor
Waterloo everywhere where there are
statistics about this whether the black
population is really large or whether
it’s really small
we are always disproportionately stopped
and documented by our police and that
carding information goes into police
databases and is kept there in
definitely and by the way while we’re on
this subject it’s actually not even just
about police let’s talk about black
children black children in this country
are disproportionately taken from their
parents through the child welfare system
black children are disproportionately
suspended and expelled from schools
across this country and when they are
able to stay in school black children
are disproportionately put into special
education programs and lower academic
streaming programs even if those
programs are not suitable for them now
many people want to attribute these
things to problems in black culture they
want to attribute it to poverty or
recent immigration status or the in dual
individual biases of teachers or social
workers and let’s be honest non black
people have to believe these things
about us they have to believe it so that
they can continue policing us and not
police themselves
this has to be believed about us so that
that policing can continue and and and
so that all the things that are
projected on us by non black people all
of the ways in which violence is
reproduced against us all the problems
that are caused through these ideas
don’t have to be
examined that’s what’s really going on
white supremacy is the ideology that’s
at play here and when I talk about white
supremacy I’m saying that white
supremacy derives its safety and its
comfort directly through violence
against black people you do not have to
be black or sorry you do not have to be
white to benefit from white supremacy
although I admit it helps actually white
supremacy is for anyone and everyone who
accepts the power and the comforts that
come along with a hierarchical structure
where whiteness is at the top and
blackness is at the bottom anchoring
that entire structure that’s what we
mean when we talk about white supremacy
now as a result of that since black
people are among the most vulnerable
people in our society and I’m trying to
focus when I talk to you specifically
about anti black racism and the problems
the singular problems that we face as
black people I’m not trying to
marginalize the struggles of other
groups I’m trying just to talk about us
right now but since we know that we are
set such vulnerability improving our
safety as black people would necessarily
improve general safety would it not but
there’s a problem that idea of it’s
focusing on us and improving our safety
that idea is threatening to white
supremacy let me explain what I mean I
talked about the police shooting black
men disproportionately and killing us
the easiest way to stop police from
killing black men with guns is to take
those guns away now some of you in this
room who are listening got nervous when
I said that why did you get nervous I
just told you that black men keep
getting shot and killed by the police
and I would imagine that you want that
to stop but when I suggest the most
logical way for that to happen
taking guns away from police you got
scared I should imagine that some of you
in this room got scared because you
started thinking to yourself but wait a
minute if the police don’t have guns
that will make who Oh everyone unsafe I
actually think it would make me much
more safe as a black person but you’re
thinking about everyone and so in the
name of keeping everyone safe it’s
better to have guns in those police’s
hands even if they end up
disproportionately killing me and my
people and let’s go even further than
that when we talk about disarming the
police what is the number one excuse
that we are given why it can’t happen
well it’s the gangs you know the gangs
the gangs of yes black people who are
always used as the excuse to continue to
harass and scrutinize every single black
person that is the justification that is
being used and so I can’t even say take
away the guns from the people who are
killing us I have to submit to a system
where the police are allowed to have
those guns where the schools are allowed
to suspend and expel where the child
welfare system is allowed to break up
our families where the prison systems
and the immigration detention systems
are allowed to keep us behind bars all
for the general safety all for a general
sense of comfort when we say the black
lives matter when we use that rallying
cry to try and fight for our liberation
you know what we are told we are told
well no no all lives all lives matter
when we try to fight for our freedom we
are told that by singling out our
blackness and making it important that
we might even be being racist but I have
to tell you that that is actually the
only way black lives have
the matter enough to be singled out and
cared for and investigated not erased
through generalization as we are so so
prone to doing in these conversations
saying all lives matter is actually a
way of saying that there’s nothing truly
special about being black I disagree
we have endured a very special kind of
Terror
across centuries and yet somehow we are
still here and more than being here and
surviving we intend to be liberated we
intend to thrive and to become free and
safe that’s our goal
black safety means keeping us together
with our families bak safety means
keeping us in school black safety means
us having the right to walk our streets
without being surveilled but it also
means keeping very detailed information
about how the state is treating us so
that we can better understand the areas
where the state is failing to protect
black life but I have to be honest more
than any of these things black safety is
about non black people accepting the
idea opening yourselves up to the
possibility that we are not actually the
most dangerous ones but that you are and
that you always have been I would like
to read a poem by Audrey Lorde it’s just
the end of this poem and it’s called a
litany for survival and when the Sun
rises we are afraid it might not remain
and when the Sun sets we are afraid it
might not rise in the morning when our
stomachs are full we are afraid of
indigestion when our stomachs are empty
we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid that
love will
finish when we are alone we are afraid
that love will never return and when we
speak we are afraid our words will not
be heard nor welcomed but when we are
silent we are still afraid so it is
better to speak remembering that we were
never meant to survive those conferences
theme is ellipses and I quote Audrey
Lord to you because I believe that the
words and the actions that we need now
they come after that uncomfortable and
fearful pause that we have when we have
to confront anti-black racism and white
supremacy once we have to accept that
reality how do we keep moving how do we
speak how do we break that silence well
we do it with love we do it with
compassion we do it with courage but I
would say above all above all of these
things we do it with a commitment to
black life to black liberation and to
black safety the only way that we as
black people can get ourselves free is
to insist on focusing specifically on
our safety and that is also the mission
of any person who claims that they want
to help us get free thank you
[Applause]
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