Councilor’s remarks “reek of privilege”
To the editor,
I want to take a moment to respond to Council Chair Paul Johnson’s remarks in the March 19, 2021 Scarborough Leader regarding the ICE facility that is now present in Scarborough. Mr. Johnson’s remarks reek of privilege and societal ignorance.
To say, “forget the national politics about it” is indicative of challenge our greater society has because there this tacit clinging on to local parochialism. As if the greater global dynamics will simply not matter because the bubble of Scarborough is rooted strong. To further say, “I just want people in Scarborough to feel like they belong in Scarborough and they’re safe in Scarborough,” assumes that in a monumentally predominantly white demographic of Scarborough, the minority of us who are immigrants, of color, and economically marginalized actually feel like they belong. Really? This biased subversion of the spectrum of humanity that is the “other” is rampantly toxic and the doorway to injustices past, present and future.
And how is one supposed to feel safe? Or better yet, who is supposed to be safe? This misbegotten believe that only the people in Scarborough are somehow deserving of safety is a result of cultural isolation. The citizens of Scarborough are emphatically not the only one’s worthy of transparent due process and a demonstrable verification of human rights. Mr. Johnson’s wish is akin to a lament for the good old days where the nuance of life was absent, where the complexities of our actions were hidden from us; those days no longer exist and shouldn’t.
Statements such as this by town leaders demonstrate the myopia, the bias towards preservation of status quo and the lack of believing in the social contract that binds us together. How does one have a constructive conversation about the presence of a facility that by definition is an instrument about the denigration of human rights and the subversion of due process?
Mr. Johnson says that other actions like ordinance changes can be enacted by the council to prevent future facility such as ICE to be built. Such statements are made from comfortable seats of colonial power. There is always a later; always. The problem is that there is a present we all live in which demands intentionality; Mr. Johnson’s absence in doing anything in the present is an abrogation of his responsibilities as an elected official.
As someone who has been on the very sharp receiving end of the instruments of physical and psychological hurdles imparted by society in order to “make him fit”, what I do know is that the grace, love and beauty life offers us is not independent of an intentional commitment to engage with justice and being a servant to the holiness of equality and inclusion. So engage we must.
Kerem Durdag
Scarborough
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