Very Significant Investments
We ended up taking a bit of an unexpected pause due to the dynamics around police criticism given the officer deaths in March. In this episode we discuss how the officer deaths were politicized to further consolidate power and resources for police as an institution, and examine how institutional failures of police may have even led to these officer deaths..
Oumar had a with Hailey Yasmeen + Mae of the Asilu Collective, a grassroots abolitionist organization working towards policing-free schools in Ontario. Oumar talked with them about their approach to activism and education, a more holistic definition of abolition, and collaborating with other community groups to work around the system rather than in direct opposition.
Politicization of Officer Deaths
🎵 Intro Music – “Not Alone” by Melafrique
Oumar Salifou (Host)
Hi, Welcome back to the show. It’s been a couple of months since we’ve recorded an episode and it’s nice to be back, especially in this springtime weather in Edmonton. How’s it going, Nicholas?
Nicholas Yee (Producer)
Yeah, it’s been a couple of months. It’s weird to think that that much time has passed but I guess there’s a few reasons why we haven’t done an episode recently. I guess it’s a little catch up here, Oumar. What’s one good thing that’s happened to you since February when we last recorded, and maybe one not-so-good thing?
Oumar
I’ll start with the good. I went for a walk the other week, and the trails in Edmonton are very, very beautiful. I saw a moth, and I’m really into just trying to spot and just seeing different bugs in the wild. So that was a really, really nice thing that happened to me. Not-so-great thing that happened…
I’m kind of dealing with a lot of fatigue. I feel like I’ve been super exhausted just trying to juggle all the different parts of my life and keep up things. But yeah, taking time to rest has also been really good. So the bad is also partly good too.
Nicholas
Fatigue. Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around. For myself, good and bad. I think I’ll relate both of my answers to allergies. So I found out this week that I’m probably allergic to basil. It kind of sucks because obviously I love Thai food and dishes with basil in them. And it’s obviously never been a problem before. Definitely sucks, but I mean I think it’s also an easy enough thing to avoid.
And the good news, obviously you mentioned it’s spring and it’s nice. When I was a kid I had really bad springtime allergies, and usually they would be pretty bad around this time or maybe over the next month. But over the last, I would say 4 years, they haven’t really been bad at all. Or maybe not even noticeable at all. So I guess it’s a little bit of an allergy trade off there.
Nicholas
So yeah, it’s been a long time since we’ve done an episode. I mean we actually went into this year, I would say, with a pretty good plan. We were really happy with the last episode we did, episode 21. I think that’s probably our best episode yet. I think we were able to touch on a lot of really important things, most notably patterns of police funding and support for police, and kind of taking a step back and looking at just those trends over the last year, and looking at the kind of endless cycle of increasing police support that we’re in the midst of.
The last episode, we actually only recorded half of the notes that we had, because we just realized we were already at a pretty long episode time. So yeah, after that we were pretty ready to follow up with another episode, and felt like we had a lot of cogent arguments coming together. And it was actually right when… we were just about to post this breakdown of recent police funding increases when I saw the news that 2 Edmonton police officers had been killed on duty. Oumar, maybe you can give a little bit more context into what went down.
Oumar
Yeah, definitely. So 2 officers were responding to a family dispute at a northwest apartment on March 16, and a teenager — a 16-year-old — shot them multiple times and also critically injured his mother, the 16-year-old that did the shooting.
And it definitely changed the mood in the city a lot. I feel like there was obviously a period of grieving, a lot of memorials and a very large funeral happened at Rogers Centre for the police. And I think it was a moment that was a little bit difficult to kind of continue our plans as we had them laid out. But I think we’re ready to kind of talk about this and dive into this issue.
And we have an interview as well that took a little bit of time to put together, but I’m also really happy with how that turned out.
Nicholas
Yeah, it was definitely kind of a “read the room” moment in the aftermath of a tragedy like that, which is obviously horrible for those officers and for their families and communities on a personal level. It just wasn’t the time to be putting out messaging that is critical of police.
In the weeks since, that’s definitely just something that we’ve been asking ourselves, “why is that?” Logically, we know that we can separate individual tragedies that affect individual officers with the goals and premise of a violent colonial institution like the police.
Oumar
Yeah, I think this situation that’s gone down, like you said, is very tragic for the families and for the policing community generally. But I think it doesn’t detract from so much critique and so many broader institutional questions that can’t really be put on pause because situations happen.
But I think there are a lot of questions that come up based on the reaction or the sentiment that was put out, and how this situation has reinforced the larger institution and a lot of the pitfalls that we've mentioned before.
Nicholas
Yeah, a little bit more context into this shooting: the 16-year-old who killed the 2 police officers was previously known to police through a mental health call that happened a few months ago. And he had actually, just before this shooting, shot someone at a Pizza Hut and was at large basically.
So this obviously raises a few issues. One — how well equipped our mental health supports or our mental health system here in the city is for addressing these issues or addressing individuals like this in our society. And then another issue is how police respond to violent crime. And just what is the role of police in our society?
I saw this comment that someone had left on Reddit in the aftermath of the shooting just after the news had come out. I’m just going to read it here. So the post says:
I hope this leads to EPS putting more effort into their investigations of seemingly "random" shootings in the future. As someone who lives a couple blocks from where this all happened, the police response to the apartment shooting was massive compared to the response to the Pizza Hut. There was a very real threat to the public following the Pizza Hut shooting but there was zero visible police presence in the community afterward. EPS didn't even warn the public until the media got a hold of the story.
Oumar
Yeah, I think there’s been a larger conversation and action taken before this event ever happened, specifically based around Chinatown that’s been happening for a few years, and the social disorder that’s also connected to the LRT in Edmonton. And how, in order to protect not only people but also property, of course, there needs to be a higher police presence with the Alberta sheriffs moving in as well.
So policing has been allocated towards a lot of these social situations where we know the root determinants and the funding available can be directed towards things that, I think in the long term, actually solve these problems. Like housing that’s been critically underinvested in, safe supply access, health care and mental health care supports.
But this comparison in that comment really brings out a lot of questions around how certain issues are treated and how those issues represent themselves or are used to further continue a narrative, or to further support the police and the government of the day that wants to keep things going the way they are.
Nicholas
Yeah. In the last episode back in February, we talked about how the province had taken these millions of dollars that were supposedly earmarked for those root causes that you just mentioned — addiction, houselessness, mental health — and actually just put it towards installing more police in Chinatown to police that population rather than giving them the proper supports.
In those kinds of conversations, you hear a lot about what people like to call “crime prevention.” In any kind of conversation around violation of privacy, of human rights — when we talk about carding street checks, when we talk about putting those sheriffs downtown to over-police that population — the conversation and the rhetoric that you hear politically or from police is always about “crime prevention.”
“We need to basically violate people’s privacy and human rights in order to prevent crime from happening.” So there’s millions being put towards that. Millions from the province, millions from the city. It goes up and up, as we’ve seen with every budget increase over the past year, and especially the budget increases that were specifically going towards police in Chinatown.
Yet when it comes to an active shooter on the loose, potentially an active shooter who had just killed somebody — because the shooting victim at the Pizza Hut was in the hospital in critical condition — were there enough resources that were put towards that? The officers who ultimately died were sent to the domestic call with the same shooter as the Pizza Hut, knowing that the shooter was on the loose, and this 16-year-old having also been known to police through the previous mental health call. Yet they were kind of sent into that situation to their death.
So it’s like, how did that happen? And how is that not a reflection of misallocating resources or gaslighting the public into what crime prevention actually is? When millions of dollars are put into what’s being labeled as “crime prevention”downtown, but an active shooter on the loose who is known to police and potentially just killed somebody can then go and kill a couple officers.
Oumar
Yeah, definitely. And I think that what you’re mentioning here and kind of these issues, I think it also becomes an issue of what is centred in these conversations or in these decisions. If human dignity and providing a certain standard of living that isn’t based on centring business owners, that is and based on centring the ruling elite, how would decisions then be made?
Because I think what we see here is definitely decades of centring the rights and the interests of property owners at the expense of human dignity for everyone. This situation is especially tragic because the individual people that are caught and lose their lives for reasons that are built into the system and the institutions… those reasons aren't explored or questioned. This is just used to further justify and support, and continue to pour resources into what feels like more fuel to the fire, basically.
Nicholas
Yeah. So coming back to that dynamic of logically knowing there’s a difference between individual police officers putting their life on the line, and the role of the police in our society as an institution. In this case you might even say that, due to that misallocation of resources or the police as an institution and not putting the resources into a place that would actually protect police or protect citizens from this active shooter, actually led to this tragedy.
So you can say there’s a clear distinction between the tragedy and the institution, or in this case you might even say that the failures of the institution led to that tragedy. Yet what we’ve seen in the aftermath of this tragedy, the killing of those 2 police officers, is a clear renewed political support for police as an institution.
And this has come in the form of political rhetoric, political sentiment, public sentiment overall, media coverage and, of course, financial resources. Keeping the money train going, increasing the police budgets, giving police more control, more power, more resources.
Oumar
Yeah. So part of it was they had a huge funeral. They flew in hundreds of officers from across the country, paraded the RCMP through the streets, closed things down. They had a very large ceremony at Rogers Place that we don’t know the cost for, but I’m assuming — it’s a very expensive new arena, it’s going to be very expensive.
On top of that, there’s been a large political response. So the Government of Alberta announced that they would be giving Edmonton and Calgary 100 officers split between each city. Nearly $8 million in funding was announced for the PACT teams. So that’s police and crisis teams, which essentially amounts to more mental health funding under the purview and control of police instead of any other organization or institution.
And transit officers have also been consolidated and been put under the purview of police as well. And there’s been a rise of interest from the general public, according to police, for joining. So a potential increase in recruiting numbers. So there’s a huge increase of support and resources given towards police in response to the tragedy that they had a hand in causing specifically.
Nicholas
Yeah, it's pretty messed up. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of — maybe we mentioned it here on the podcast before… Basically, after Roe v. Wade was stricken down in the United States, the Democratic Party raised hundreds of millions of dollars. And people were were sharing that fact, basically saying that if you’re ever wondering why Democrats in Congress never codified Roe v. Wade into law, this is why. Because when it’s stricken down by the Supreme Court and it impacts people, they can basically use that response to fundraise, to generate more public support and political support for their institution.
I don’t know. I feel like it’s almost a similar thing here, where you hear about 2 officers dying, laying their lives on the line. This is a tragic, tragic incident. And when you look at where police as an institution put their resources, you might even say that the police service failed these officers by not protecting them, or putting them in a situation where they lost their lives.
Yet their deaths are actually used to venerate and celebrate the police as an institution, that same institution that you could say failed them. And the police as an institution are getting so much more resources and funding and political support from this.
And just to remind you what police actually use those resources for, it’s not to protect police officers. It’s not to prevent the kind of incident where these 2 officers lost their lives. Let me just go through just some news from the last couple of days here. No charges for Edmonton Police constable who kicked Indigenous teen in the head. Questions over video of Edmonton police arrest showing knee near driver’s neck. And then lastly, Alberta sheriffs and Edmonton police execute nearly 3,000 arrests. These are the officers that they deployed into Chinatown in February. Apparently, they’ve executed nearly 3,000 arrests in that area since February.
So yeah, this is where police’s resources go as an institution. It’s towards over-policing marginalized populations. It’s towards literally keeping a knee on the neck of racialized folks, of people going through the kinds of challenges that require mental health or addictions or houselessness. And that should really just remind you what role the police as an institution play in our society.
A Broader View of Abolition – Interview
Oumar
Yeah. And the role that they've historically played. And how that role is connected to an international struggle against larger forces, or at least how we’ve gotten to this point historically. So that really leads into the conversation that I had with Asilu Collective. Asilu Collective are a group of grassroots organizers in so-called Ottawa who’ve come together to essentially build community education and really take action against policing in schools, among other issues.
One of their real successful moments was actually getting SROs out of schools in the Carleton-Ottawa School Board. And they released a really great report that you should check out called the “Ottawa Students Speak Out: Cops Out of Our Schools!” report in 2021. Our conversation definitely focused on how they organize and the different beliefs that are behind their organizing, specifically about abolition and how imperialism takes shape not only in Canada, but how it can be exported in other places, and the influence that that has on the organizing that they do.
And yeah, I think it’s a really, really insightful conversation. And the fact that they’ve been able to be successful in the organizing that they do, while also providing services to their community in very effective ways that work outside of state institutions, was definitely something that really interested me and I think that listeners will enjoy as well.
🎵 Intro Music
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah. My name is Hailey Yasmeen. I’m a grassroots organizer and a member and co-founder of Asilu Collective, which is based on unceded Algonquin territory in so-called Ottawa. We are an abolitionist, grassroots collective fighting and struggling for policing-free schools in the city. And we ran a campaign that began in 2020. It was our No Cops in School campaign where we successfully were able to terminate the school resource officer program across the city, across all 4 Ottawa school boards. So that was a huge win for us and the broader Ottawa community. Yeah, that’s a bit about us and myself.
Mae
Hi, I’m Mae. I use they / them pronouns. I am an abolitionist and grassroots organizer located on occupied Algonquin territory in so-called Ottawa, the belly of the imperialist beast of this country. And I have been organizing with Asilu Collective since 2021, spring of 2021.
Alongside the win of summer 2021, removing SROs from the public school boards, we’ve also worked towards political education of youth through a radical reading group for high school students and recent graduate graduates, which I facilitated with Hailey Yasmeen. And we’ve been doing work alongside families at school and board meetings, mostly in 2022. And more recently, we’ve turned a lot of our attention inwards, creating better relationships within our organization and building resilience and sustainability in our organizing in general.
Oumar
So as grassroots organizers, when did you really realize that there was a need to create the Asilu collective. And how did your past, whether it’s through work or just life experiences, inform the community that you’ve built today?
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah, I can start us off. Asilu Collective was essentially born out of the Black rebellion and uprisings that came out of the movement for Black Lives in 2020, which we saw across the western world. And myself and Asilu’s 2 other co-founders, Grace and Lello, saw the heightened visibility that police violence had amongst the general population. Even like corporate media, mainstream media.
And we saw it as an opportune moment to speak to what has been happening to children and youth for decades in schools, because of policing. And just knowing that the phenomenon of policing in schools and having cops and presence in schools is absolutely not new. Community organizers and parents, youth themselves, educators support workers… they’ve all been identifying this for a very long time. And so we knew that the heightened visibility of police violence would be a way to galvanize the Ottawa community into taking action to address the longstanding issue of removing cops from schools.
And it did. It was able to mobilize a lot of folks across the city in support of removing cops from schools. And we, through this, were able to connect with parents and other folks who had been advocating this for a while. And we were able to work together to win our campaign collectively. Like it was a win, not just for Asilu, it was a win for a lot of us.
And I guess just to address the second half of your question about what informed building Asilu, I think for the 3 of us as co-founders, it really was like our first time organizing and engaging with grassroots organizing. And so a lot of what grounded us and directed us throughout our campaign and throughout making connections and building relationships with people was our differing lived experiences. We’re all young, racialized people. And thinking about how our experiences differ amongst the 3 of us, it kind of goes back to even Asilu’s name, which is bridging together the word ‘origin’ in 3 different ancestral languages.
And then I guess using these different differing lived experiences amongst the three of us — me, Grace, and Lello — and using this understanding of that to form an abolitionist material analysis and identifying folks in the communities, folks in schools who are the youth that are impacted by policing. Because it wasn’t necessarily the 3 of us who were experiencing this, but acknowledging that there are people with similar experiences as us who are impacted by policing.
And I feel like a lot of our analysis that we were able to build over the first little bit of our campaign and the founding of Asilu was strengthened and it was bolstered by whatever learnings we took away from organizing alongside older and more experienced activists, and of course, ongoing engagement with abolitionist theorizing literature. And I feel like that all has really set the foundation for what Asilu is today and the successes that we’ve been able to gain.
Mae
I completely agree. I wasn’t around for the formation of Asilu. I did join a little bit later once Asilu had already created a lot of movement in the community around the removal of SROs, particularly the Ottawa-Carleton district school board’s review of the policing presence. That’s where I was able to connect with Hailey Yasmeen and other Asilu members, and then eventually join the collective.
But another thing that I just wanted to note that Hailey Yasmeen brushed on, was how a lot of our community was kind of created and built and expanded upon through specifically our anti-imperialist politics. We view ridding police from schools as like a larger movement than just like student justice and racial justice within schools and our communities in so-called Canada. But how the imperialist motivations of the Canadian government and other colonial and imperial governments across the world really use policing as a means to suppress and oppress communities internationally. And that our struggle towards policing-free schools in one school board in one city in one province in one country is connected to the removal of imperial and occupying forces that are policing arms of states like Israel, of states like Canada here, and in the US and in other places across the world.
Oumar
So in that larger, broader context, but also in your specific location, what does abolition mean to you and how do you think that’s been communicated since 2020? Things have become a lot more mainstream, or let’s say a lot more visible to the larger public.
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah, I mean, even to just expand a bit on what Mae was saying. Abolition, when it comes to my mind, I feel like it means the elimination of these oppressive forces that Mae was just speaking about on a global scale, because these have arisen as a result of historical and ongoing colonial and imperialist exploitation.
So thinking about white supremacy and racial capitalism and whatever has resulted from that axis of domination. And so naturally, with that comes the elimination of prisons, borders, settler states like what Mae mentioned — Canada here, like the US, Israel, other states, the elimination of transphobia.
I feel like oftentimes as abolitionists, we’re immediately thinking about the abolition of cops and prisons and then end there… which of course is extremely important, and that is something we specifically organize around with Asilu. But I always try to remind myself, and we do this organizationally, why these things exist in the first place. And in Canada, it’s a result of ongoing settler colonial violence here. And then the state exports this violence elsewhere to subjugate our comrades and our siblings in the global south.
So abolitionist struggles, we’re always contending with the internationalist nature of what we’re up against. And abolition, to me and I know the rest of Asilu, means that these global violences cease to exist. And I do feel like within the context of policing-free schools in Ottawa, the global understanding that we have developed over the years, that Asilu has been active as an organizing collective, this global understanding has made abolition in the context of policing-free schools in Ottawa very relevant.
Like we have worked with migrant youth and their families. I know Mae can speak a bit more to this. But we’ve worked with migrant youth and their families, and these folks have fled countries where Canada ensures economic sanctions, environmental destruction, political instability, and just like ongoing war because it’s profitable. And not only is it profitable, but it’s also part of this larger system of domination where, across the world, whether it’s in your homeland or in the imperial core, you’re going to be policed, you’re going to be terrorized and coerced and violated no matter what, because you experience race, class and gender in a very particular way.
So, bringing it back to policing-free schools in Ottawa. The children and the youth who are facing policing in Ottawa schools, they’re experiencing it almost as an extension of global policing or even vice versa, because it operates within the same system of subjugation.
And we also throughout the past — I guess it’s now 3 years — Asilu has advocated for Palestinian liberation across different Palestinian groups. Palestinian Youth Movement Ottawa, specifically. And this is because, again, the oppression that Palestinian youth are experiencing specifically in Ottawa schools… it’s happening in Ottawa as a result of imperialist domination that Canada exports, and the way it operates here in our country as well.
They’re being silenced. They’re being punished and threatened specifically because of their identity as Palestinians. And the policing of Palestinian youth is so tied to the policing of youth in Palestine as well. So just like what Mae was saying, when we’re struggling against policing in Ottawa schools, we’re part of this struggle against all forms of policing and oppression. And it’s even seen in our solidarity work with policing-free schools comrades in the US as well. And we frequently meet with those folks. And it just kind of demonstrates how global the nature of policing is.
Mae
I completely agree. That resonates a lot with me, and I was thinking a lot about — specifically in this question — what abolition means in the struggle for policing-free schools. For us in Ottawa, policing-free schools looks a lot different, like our struggles for abolition look a lot different than in cities and places where the student resource or school resource officers have not yet been abolished. There’s this idea that because we do not have cops in schools in a formal program capacity, that we’ve somehow achieved this police-free school.
But in reality we still are fighting for abolition, even in these so-called police-free spaces. Because even though we may not have the same frequency of police in uniform and in an authoritative roles interacting with youth and with schools and educational spheres, we do have a lot of policing that continues to go on at the hands of parents, at the hands of other youth who have some form of power over their peers, and moreso and most commonly, at the hands of administrators and teachers towards mostly racialized youth.
And that relates directly to the policing that Palestinian students often face in Ottawa schools. Because even though the policing that they experience, may not be directly tied to an SRO, it is tied to the idea that these spaces are meant to be where we assimilate. Where we learn to fit in in white supremacist dominant cultures to the best of our abilities, and to be coerced into certain hierarchies that make schooling a place of violence and a place of assimilation instead of a place of curiosity and exploration and learning.
So that idea of abolition being beyond just police and prisons and their outright nonexistence anymore in our world, it also just moves into the idea that policing as an infrastructure and as a way of relating to each other is used to further the settler project here in so-called Canada. And to resist policing in schools means to resist — like Hailey Yasmeen mentioned — transphobia, to resist white supremacy in all its forms.
And that can be seen in more interpersonal relationships, and not just in a really straightforward “police with a gun in a school punishing someone.” But we can see how things like academic streaming will target racialized and disabled youth and place them on a track towards the kind of life that white administrators think is inherent to their existence and to their journey and education.
We also see that in things like suspensions and expulsions, and who is most likely targeted in those forms of removals. We see that in so many different ways than just a cop being present in the hallways. So abolition of all forms of policing is part of the struggle very intimately in Ottawa right now.
The Role of Education + Stories in Abolition
Oumar
Mm-hmm. That’s really well said. And in the context of global imperialism and a lot of the other points that you just made, you have a very central role when it comes to education in the organizing that you do. And in 2021, you released a report titled “Ottawa Students Speak Out: Cops Out of Our Schools!” What role does education play in your collective, as police departments and school boards and just the government generally organize to defend the practice of SROs specifically, but also policing in a wider context.
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah, I really like this question because I feel like Asilu as a collective, we’ve really prioritized political education in our campaigning and in our movement work more broadly. And the report you mentioned, “Ottawa Students Speak Out: Cops Out of Our Schools” that we released in 2021… and it’s on our website, if anyone listening wants to check it out.
I feel like the report was really generative of the lived experiences of youth — youth that we’re organizing with and other folks — and the realities that they faced within schools and Ottawa as young, racialized, migrant, indigenous, disabled, queer and trans people. And throughout our no cops and school campaign, we really wanted to capture these lived experiences and uplift them through the report and the campaigning we were doing. But we also wanted to ensure that youth were building upon the understanding they had of themselves and their own lived experiences, and then form an analysis that could be applied more broadly.
And so political education has just played a huge role in our collective. I mean, since the formation of Asilu, we’ve hosted many teach-ins and workshops on policing, the abolition movement, building for youth, and also the wider community. Like parents and educators, other folks have shown up, which is great. And we’ve also hosted multiple abolitionist book clubs for youth called Asilu’s Radical Reading Club. And we’ve built great relationships with youth through these different things that we’ve done.
And I feel like without political education, it’s really easy to be led astray from a concrete abolitionist analysis. Like we can accidentally become reactionary, we can fall into reformist traps and think that diversity in the police force will stop police violence, which it absolutely will not. And to stop this, we need to ensure that access to political education is ensured. It’s so much easier for youth and community members to hear and then agree with what school boards and Ottawa Police Service, other state entities, what they’re saying about keeping cops in schools for so-called safety. It’s a lot easier for them to agree with this when they don’t have access to political education.
And so I do feel like we have a responsibility as grassroots organizers who are struggling for abolitionist liberation. It’s our responsibility to educate and mobilize our community around having a correct abolitionist analysis and ensuring folks aren’t being led astray, because that does happen. And even actions like postering, or outreach to youth groups in the city to notify them of events, and building relationships through this. This is all part of the political education that we’ve been doing over the years, and we’ve found it really effective and meaningful.
Mae
We’ve also engaged in some education around specifically our experiences as a collective in creating movement and creating change, and almost reality-checking to our supporters about those actions. So for more detail, we’ve hosted a Twitter space around the municipal election for Ottawa in 2022, due to the rise of fascist candidates specifically seeking school board trustee office in order to put forward their own racist and transphobic agendas within schools.
And a part of our education piece on that was to make our supporters and followers and the wider community aware of the rise in specifically fascist candidates and transphobic candidates, while also giving folks a reality check that we had already been dealing with racism and transphobia at the time from the current board of trustees. And that it was not as simple as voting in the “right people” and everything will be fixed, but it’s actually that consistent and constant public pressure, community push for change that will get us where we all desire to go, which is liberatory futures where we can see education as a real space for youth to excel and thrive rather than what seems to be just really carceral and repressive spaces that pose as educational spheres. So a lot of that education around our own movement and what we’ve had to face, sharing can be public and education can be public.
And then there’s also been — like Hayley Yasmeen was mentioning — just that sharing with other youth, with other organizers, with other community members about our experiences, and that mutual sharing back and forth as education around local contexts, and around safety and around sustainability, and keeping each other motivated and well and alive.
And that education piece is so important because for ourselves, at least within the collective, we would not be where we are without very intentionally engaging in our own education, as well as educating those around us, because all of our wins have been really grounded in educating ourselves and others about the reality that we’re living in and the reality of our experiences, and the reality of our power when we work as a community against state forces.
Oumar
Mm-hmm. So in the context of your report, you shared a lot of student experiences through stories. And I think on this topic of sharing I just want to ask, why is it so important to share not only stories, but resources, strategies, other things, especially given the unique shape of policing and how it takes shape in school environments with children and youth?
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah, I think one of the reasons that we chose to do this was Asilu’s membership is made up of young people, including Mae and I, but not any current high school students. So we’ve organized with high school students and alongside them. But youth haven’t made up our actual membership. And so this is one of the reasons why sharing stories from youth was important for us. It’s to uplift the voices and experiences of those who are currently impacted by policing in schools. I mean, I had an SRO, like a school resource officer in my high school in Ottawa growing up. But that doesn’t mean that I necessarily understand the material conditions of today’s youth under the current regime of policing in schools as time has evolved.
So I feel like storytelling was a great way of not only ensuring that the voices of youth were uplifted and that their stories were prioritized in our campaigning, but also I found that we were able to empower a lot of youth through storytelling. It let them know that they can organize to create change, and it also mobilized a lot of them very effectively.
And going back to the last question, it was a form of political education, which was a huge part of our campaign. So sharing the stories of impacted youth, and letting the broader community in Ottawa know what the daily reality was for them with cops in their schools, it was very crucial in demonstrating to everyone in Ottawa how violent policing youth actually is. I mean, some people didn’t even know cops were in schools in their own city, including students actually.
So when they heard that other schools were facing this crisis — notably, it was usually schools with a predominantly racialized student body who had the most police presence in Ottawa. But when other students who weren’t aware of this heard, they were often called to action and it was an opportunity to bring them into the movement, let them share their own story with oppression, with other forms of policing or other forms of subjugation that they have experienced in school or elsewhere, and how they can relate to other students in the movement for policing-free schools.
Mae
At some point in time in 2022, Asilu opened up an anonymous reporting tool in the so-called “post policing in schools era” for Ottawa school boards… or I guess more accurately, just a post-SRO environment for Ottawa school boards. And that was really generative in that it gave youth, parents, and educators, as well as anyone else who is in the community of schools in Ottawa, were able to share their stories about experiencing policing at the hands of teachers and administrators without giving away any identifying information that they did not feel comfortable to share with us.
There’s one school that really took advantage of this reporting tool, and before Asilu Collective came forward with our own plan of action to support those students, the students had already organized themselves, and they had created a movement within the school that caused real change, material change for the students. And they stood up and spoke up in a way that really inspired Asilu members. And we got involved in that as well. But it really was the youth sharing their own stories and then connecting with each other and finding power in that way.
So I’ve found that sharing stories, especially in a way that is peer to peer, that’s more mutual than just ripping your soul open to some administrator who’s not going to listen, to some board member who doesn’t really care, was a lot was a lot of power building and a lot of community building that wouldn’t have happened without the space to share our stories in more genuine and heartfelt ways where people are actually listening and people actually care for each other. So the sharing stories, I think, went hand in hand with creating an environment for children to be honest and for their voices to be valued and for their experiences to not be seen as unimportant or theoretical or silly, but as really human and valuable.
Moving Away from State Options
Oumar
We’ve already touched on a lot of different ways that you build community through teach-ins, through outreach in schools as well. But are there any other ways that you’ve built community that you do today, and how does that work fit in within the larger vision of moving away from state options that often fall short for what people need on the ground?
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah, this is a really good question. It’s something Mae and I have talked a lot about together in terms of moving away from state options. It’s something that I feel like is still very much in the works as we figure out what this means for our collective and the people we’re in community with.
But of course, the state does not protect us. It never has. It operates to commit violence and generate profits through ongoing genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples on these lands that we occupy. So for us, moving away from state options is very crucial, because we’ve seen the way these systems are built to destroy communities and violate their rights. Even down to thinking about suspensions and expulsions for students at the Ottawa-Carleton district school board. And I know Mae can speak a bit more to this as they’ve done advocacy with a lot of the youth and their families who are experiencing this.
But the suspensions and expulsion policies, and the way that you have to navigate the school system and the bureaucracies within it, it’s really terrible. The results never serve the interests of the students or the families. It’s extremely punitive and carceral. It exists just to regulate the behaviour of youth rather than meeting them where they’re at and supporting their needs.
And of course, ultimately it’s part of this system of racial control as well. Even alternative programming that students are provided with during expulsions and suspensions, for example, they’re also not sufficient, and it’s not supportive of the student needs or the fact that they’re missing so much class and coursework. And then thinking about the family as well, and who’s caring for the child while they are suspended, because so many of the families who are experiencing this… if there are 2 parents, they’re working full time to provide for their families, because a lot of the time these are low income communities. Even down to that, it functions extremely oppressively.
And so what is coming to mind is really showing up for our community in place of the fact that the state does not and will never serve our communities. For this to be done on an organizational level that is consistently building capacity, is able to provide large supports in place of a literal state, this is like a huge job. And how that happens, I think for me, is to be determined. Again, this is something Mae and I have talked a lot about together, but I’m not sure where it kind of leads for us because there’s so much balancing that has to be done with other things in our lives as organizers, and thinking about how we do this in a sustainable way.
But I know, of course, this is already happening around the world. And people are really effectively building community and moving away from state options. So even looking at mutual aid projects is a great example. Something else that comes to mind are safety plans that many women’s groups have in how to respond to gender based violence and abuse, and how these groups show up for women and house them in their own homes, whether that’s in a spare bedroom or on a couch, to ensure safety. And how these plans are in place in a sustainable way to ensure that everyone involved is able to meet their own needs, and the person who is impacted, their needs are met as well.
Yeah, I hope that answers your question. Again, I feel like this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about in terms of like Asilu’s work. But yeah, I’m sure Mae has lots of thoughts as well.
Mae
I do. I do. I think what comes to mind, first of all is the idea around independent infrastructure in the sense that it’s independent from the state. And I think it’s a long haul, really long term focus. And it’s something that at Asilu we’ve been talking about a lot, as a collective and just interpersonally amongst friends, that we haven’t figured out all the answers to.
And it’s one of the reasons why, as Asilu, we’ve stepped back from engaging at the school board level. Not completely, but we have highly reduced the amount of committee meetings that we go to or school board meetings that we go to, the amount that we will delegate at a board or provide any kind of intervention in that means. Because as much as it burns us out, it’s also a balancing act of trying to hold these institutions accountable for the violence and the harm that they commit while also not wanting to engage with them as the only means forward in terms of a form of justice or liberation for our communities and for ourselves.
So I think a lot of the work that we’ve done more recently kind of fits into this question, being that we’re trying to move away from state options that fall short for us as a collective and as friends for each other. So like Hailey Yasmeen mentioned, creating safety plans, turning to each other in times of need when some of our our members identify as Mad — like with a capital M — and as disabled, and how can we show up for each other in times of needing support so that we don’t end up getting the police called on us or end up needing to check ourselves into a hospital against our will or along with it. And finding ways to combat isolation and loneliness during the pandemic and while our membership is spread out across multiple cities at the moment.
So we've had a bit of a motto recently, “less meetings and more friendships,” trying to find ways to create more independent infrastructure amongst ourselves. How can we show up for our members with children? How can we show up for our Black members who are experiencing anti-Blackness in their educational settings or in their workplaces? How can we show up for trans members during this heightened time of fascism and specifically transphobia tied to that? How can we continue to show up for our members, specifically immunocompromised or disabled members during an ongoing pandemic?
What ways can we rely on each other and uplift each other so that this work can keep going and that we can start to see — quite materially see — how we can move away from state options on a smaller scale amongst us as members, so that we can envision it and build it into a larger framework with other communities beyond our membership?
Oumar
Mm-hmm. So, Edmonton is seeing organizers come together to keep carceral systems out of schools here. Is there knowledge from your experience in Ottawa that people here can take to find success and keep movements alive to do the important work that we’ve been talking about for this entire interview?
Hailey Yasmeen
Yeah, I mean, we know folks in Edmonton. I had a meeting with organizers earlier in the year. It’s so great to hear the amazing things they’re going to be up to and how they’re going to be pushing for policing-free schools in unique ways that are specific to the conditions in so-called Edmonton, and in the schools and how youth are experiencing policing in comparison to Ottawa.
I think policing-free schools as a movement… we organize across so-called Canada, and so I feel like, generally speaking, we’re very well-connected with one another. And I think this is really something that has led to a lot of successes in different cities. And so something that I would encourage is for all of us to continue to stay connected, cross-strategizing and sharing how we have been able to find success in our movements and in our campaigns and continue to generate wins.
Asilu has been able to do this throughout our existence as a collective, but also specifically during our campaign — the no cops in school campaign — it was really helpful for us to talk to other folks in Ontario who were operating under a lot of the same provincial legislation in terms of removing cops from schools and in terms of like addressing policing. And so, being able to speak with folks who were operating under the same conditions was very helpful. And so anytime I’m able to connect with other policing-free schools organizers is really great, and I know something good is going to come out of it.
And then also, in terms of keeping movements alive, the latter part of your question, I feel like Mae really touched on a lot of this in the last question about prioritizing internal care organizationally. I feel like that is, it’s exactly what Mae said. Like it’s something that we’ve really been prioritizing. Like we have all been able to come together and speak about the different capacities that we have and what that means for our organizing, and how, in order to create sustainable movement, we need to ensure that we’re caring for one another. And this means building relationships and strengthening relationships with one another as friends and as comrades.
So this is something that I also am constantly encouraging other comrades of mine. And just thinking about the financial needs of folks in your membership and also the emotional needs of your membership, even spiritual needs, all these different things. And it really is unique to everyone’s different situation. And I think that is why building individual relationships amongst one another is so important, because everyone has a unique experience and has unique needs. And in order to keep movements alive and find success, we really need to ensure that we’re all coming together and building solidarity on an interpersonal level, but also an organizational level. One has to happen in order to get the other.
Mae
That was wonderful to hear. Hailey Yasmeen, I’ve just been nodding along very vigorously to all of that. I wanted to expand a little bit on some of those points. Logistically, some knowledge that I would pass for based on my experience, specifically with the win for SRO-free schools, would be leaving room for escalation. Always think about what’s next when you’re putting time and energy towards any form of action that is trying to reach policing-free schools. Having room to escalate is always a really good key strategy in campaign building.
Find space for joy. It’s really hard sometimes to find joy in anti-carceral organizing just because of the violence that these carceral systems rely on. They seem to be fueled by violence, or they are fueled by violence, and they are violent. So that input and output for these institutions that you are often up against is really draining. So finding joy in different ways somehow is really crucial in the sustainability point.
I also think that that goes hand-in-hand — the finding joy — with making connections and sharing knowledge as a group, as an individual, as an organizer. One is never going to know everything and never going to have all the resources at their fingertips. But those connections with unions who have money, those connections with school teaching unions, you have resources in terms of knowledge and insider experience with the system from a different perspective than a past student, which I find many grassroots abolitionist organizers and school spaces tend to be alumni from those schools.
Making connections in different places so that instead of having to focus on what we don’t have, we can go, “who has that? Who would be willing to share this with me and with us?” That has been really important in finding success. Those key partnerships, whether they’re just interpersonal or whether they’re really about the movement to start, those can all build either way. So if you meet somebody who’s for policing-free schools, that can build into a personal relationship and the other way around as well.
And I don’t think that it would have been possible for me to continue at Asilu Collective and do the work that I’m doing if I hadn't been doing it alongside people like Hailey Yasmeen. And the friendships that I’ve built from Asilu Collective will last my whole life. And I think that the work that we will do will last beyond our lifetime if we are able to continue to do it in the way that we have. And finding joy, and finding knowledge and resource-sharing is so key, to not only success but sustainability.
I’m really grateful for the people that I’ve found at the collective. So I hope that folks can look past outputs, look past like the wins a little bit sometimes, and think about what it is that you and your comrades need in order to survive together and thrive together as a collective, but also as individuals trying to navigate this hellscape of both worlds that that we are all forced to.
Oumar
That was very, very well-put. Thank you so much, Hayiey Yasmeen and Mae, for your time and for all this insightful information. I think listeners are going to be able to take away just a whole lot from this experience that you had and the organizing work that you do. Is there anything that you think we missed with this conversation, or any other information that you want to add that people should know?
Hailey Yasmeen
No, I think we covered a lot of ground. Thank you so much for having us here. Yeah, if anyone wants to… I’ll just plug our socials. If anyone wants to see what we’re up to and support our work, we can be found on Instagram and Twitter @asilucollective.
Mae
On our website, and in our Linktree, we also have all of our past reading group materials. So all of the political education that we’ve put forward in the past few years is still accessible on those platforms as well. I just wanted to flag that the learning can happen asynchronously as well. So if folks missed our reading groups, they’re still there.
Engaging with Local Community – Interview Debrief
🎵 Intro Music
Nicholas
Wow. Oumar, that was a really great interview. I feel like a lot of what they were talking about is actually really relevant to basically the conversation we were just having at the start of this episode about the dynamic between individual police doing their duty and the role of a harmful institution like police in our society.
When they were talking about the idea of perspective and keeping a focus on broader abolition of colonial systems and oppressive systems, rather than just focusing in on cops in a specific context, like removing police from schools.
Oumar
Mm-hmm. Yeah, having that kind of larger focus and really pinning it to education and putting that at the forefront, I think is what has led to them being successful and building more sustainability. And even things like streaming that they mentioned which, in my own mind, usually when I think of SROs, I don’t really think of educational practices that segregate or put people on a path that’s very different than others as a part of that conversation.
But I think it’s really useful, and it was really nice to hear them really broaden that conversation. So yeah, thank you a lot to Hailey Yasmeen and Mae for all their insight and knowledge. I think it was a really, really great idea to have them on the show.
Nicholas
Yeah, and something that Mae mentioned towards the end of that interview is this idea of “less meetings and more friendships.” Basically, putting more of a focus on interacting with community partners rather than trying to engage with the system itself or trying to basically push for change, not necessarily within that system, but like directly with that system.
And in an Edmonton context, that really reminded me of the way that councillors will always respond to concerns about police with this idea of “take it up with the police commission. Oh, this is actually under the purview of the police commission. So go to the police commission meeting and make your voice heard there.”
In that framing, it's up to the community and those negatively impacted by these institutions to then continue to put themselves in those unsafe spaces in order to push for any kind of change to those harmful institutions. And I think what Mae is getting at here is just that that’s futile, but also just not worth it to have to put yourself in that situation. And I don’t know, Oumar, I think you’ve obviously been through similar experiences and can probably speak to that.
Oumar
Yeah, I think it really boils down to something that Hailey Yasmeen mentioned early in the interview about taking a reform position or not. But I think that, just like engaging with people and doing it at the level of community makes so much more sense to really get the results and the outcomes that are really wanted, because those outcomes will appear and you’ll see the success of the work that’s being done at a community level.
Those things don’t really appear when a reform is passed at City Hall, for example, or at a police board. So spending all of the time, really in the community doing education or connecting with people, or providing resources instead of the exhausting work that can take place at a council meeting or a committee meeting, I think just makes a lot more sense from an organizing perspective, right?
Nicholas
Yeah. It’s not necessary to put yourself in a situation where you’re going to be bullied, you’re going to be made to feel unsafe. Where you’re going to be misconstrued, where your opinions are going to be invalidated, dismissed, or at the very best, watered down and diluted into some sort of semblance of change that’s convenient for the system.
And I guess following their advice, I think that’s probably something we’ll try and do a lot better to is just more connecting with local groups, with community organizers, and basically trying to make stuff happen from the bottom up.
Oumar
Speaking of that, locally I have to thank Alex DaCosta, who has been a part of Policing Free Schools Edmonton, which has just launched recently. So that is a great initiative that everyone listening should go support. And yeah, I think there’s a lot to be learned for the work that we do, and just generally trying to support organizers that are trying to make change on the ground.
Nicholas
Yeah. And thanks so much also to our Patreon supporters for supporting the show, and putting up with our unpredictable schedules here. I guess you already know if you’re a Patreon supporter. But just to clarify: it’s a monthly thing, but we pause it or turn it off at any time we’re not going to get an episode out. So yeah, no one’s ever charged obviously if we don’t end up putting out an episode that month. But yeah, thanks so much for the support, especially over the years since we’ve started this project now. And yeah, we’ll keep trying to have good discussions here and produce something informative or just that that resonates with you.
Is that good?
Oumar
I think that’s a good place to end, yeah.
