April 1, 2006 Ipperwash - a Canadian Tragedy Comments after seeing the film By YayaCanada The 'godfather' of the Liberal party's Quebec wing and one of the main witnesses at the Gomery inquiry, Joe Morselli dies in Florida of a heart attack.  Morselli made news when a bomb went off in his car in 1989. Neither a suspect nor a motive has ever been found in that case. How to choose from so many suspects and motives, that is the question. People die of natural causes every day, even political crooks, but when they're key witnesses in key hearings... For instance, in the Dudley George inquiry, three OPP witnesses died before they could even testify. Toronto civil rights lawyer Peter Rosenthal was only half joking when, after a showing of  "Ipperwash - a Canadian Tragedy" at Ottawa University on March 31st, he was smilingly hesitant to say whether the OPP deaths were murders or suicides. Coincidences do occur, but sometimes you gotta wonder if a lot of today's power freaks have seen too many "action" movies. If you're interested in seeing a real life, yet bizarrely surrealistic police action, and maybe taking some constructive action yourself, see the Ipperwash documentary and learn about the murder of Dudley George, and the brutal, near fatal beating of "Slippery" George, by the Ontario Provincial Police. The Ottawa Public Library has purchased the  video for lending, and if your library doesn't have it, you can suggest they buy it and they probably will. You won't have the benefit, as those of us did who attended last night's showing, of getting background from one of the public inquiry lawyers, but there is plenty of information to be found on the internet.  Just follow the many links beside this article for starters. You can also read a Rabble story: 10 years later, still no answers. Here is a timeline of the long history leading up to the fateful event, which also contains links to information about the malicious rumours that were spread about the small, unarmed band of natives who tried to peacefully reclaim their parkland, and how those rumours were used to justify excessive force in a surprise, nighttime assault. One of many terrible ironies in this case: some of the native protesters spent considerable time in jail, to be made examples of, yet the officer convicted of criminal negligence in the killing of Dudley George was sentenced to 180 hours of community service. If you ever get a chance to hear civil rights lawyer Peter Rosenthal speak, grab it.  He's the one who got former Ontario Premier Mike Harris to admit that the "f" word is a natural part of his vocabulary, so even if Harris doesn't "recall" saying "I want the f-ing Indians out of the park", it's been shown to be very likely that he did say it, and that the OPP took it as a license to kill. Rosenthal is a born communicator. His Ottawa presentation was more conversational than lectural; consequently the active listeners in the audience felt free to insert their own comments as he went along. During the question period, Rosenthal came out into the audience, creating an atmosphere of free discussion - a refreshing change from people having to line up interminably at microphones and getting rudely cut short by overly protective moderators. It's amazing how calm, polite and articulate an audience can be when there aren't a lot of rigid barriers set up between them and the speaker. Not surprisingly, quite a few women were among those who crowded around the charismatic Rosenthal to speak with him personally afterwards.  Not being an overt groupie myself, I helped wash coffee cups and worshipped Rosenthal from afar. Ottawa's Deputy Police Chief Larry Hill was in attendance, along with his wife who is herself aborginal.  She used her two cents worth of time to talk about the way North American indigenous peoples are stereotyped as lazy, good for nothing derelicts.  She assured us that she and many others come from good families who work for a living and are not substance abusers. She also reminded us that, when we do see some natives sitting on the street holding out styrofoam coffee cups, we should remember the long history of abuses that eventually put them there. It was good to see representatives of the police in attendance, but one would be foolhardy to take that as an indication that all is well concerning racism and brutality among the Ottawa police. Our police are now being trained in storm trooper tactics that depend heavily on night time surprise raids, and "tactical" police, who appear to model themselves after action film SWAT teams, lurk in the background at activist events waiting their chance to swing into action. They do the bidding of government, which nowadays pits the police against the very people they were originally intended to "serve and protect".  The ones being protected in this post-9/11 era are the rats in high places. As someone commented at the Ottawa U. Ipperwash event, "Why is it that whenever we want to talk to government, we end up talking to the RCMP?" As with everything else that threatens human rights and true democracy since 9/11, "national security" is the ambiguous, ad nauseum pretext. The biggest problem is that, like all bullies, these police thugs have shown themselves to be basically cowards. They become hysterical and lose control of themselves when their targets don't act frightened and submissive the way they do in all the TV movies. By their very tactics, they have created more activists and yet another reason for protest: that people who are guilty of nothing more than exercising their right to freedom of assembly and legitimate protest are being subjected to racial insults, physical injury and sometimes death. Related:  - The Ipperwash Inquiry - Live Webcast and Text  - Taser Accountability  - Racism colours justice: lawyer  - Police brutality and racism exhibited during arrests of non-status immigrant protesters.  - Police target us, blacks say   yayacanada