Stop the witch hunting and red baiting

Councillor Mamoliti is out to get the reds

The Communist Party is considering legal action, including a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal regarding Toronto City Councillor George Mamoliti’s witch-hunting at City Hall, and his attack on the public’s right to free political expression and association – rights guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Mamoliti is a member of Mayor Rob Ford’s Executive and an aggressive advocate for Ford’s agenda of privatization and confrontation with the city’s labour and democratic movements.

Mamoliti has attacked more than 300 City Hall deputants, asserting they were members of the Communist Party, after they stayed through the night and into the early hours to oppose the KPMG proposals to eliminate ‘gravy’, including the closure of libraries, old age homes, 2,000 subsidized child care spaces; ending funding to cultural and arts groups including Caribana and Pride events, ending AIDS related funding, increasing transit fares and reducing service, and more.

Mamoliti has attacked Councillors who also oppose the cuts, alleging they are members of the Communist Party and that opposition to the KPMG cuts stems from Communist Party membership.

While the Communist Party is opposed to the cuts and is fighting them, opposition to this agenda includes members of almost all parties, save the Tories, and people who are not members of any party. Suggesting otherwise is a smear – something Mamoliti is expert at.

This is a witch-hunt aimed to intimidate widespread and growing public opposition to the levelling of public services and programs in the city, and to frighten Councilors into silence and stampede them into voting for deep cuts and privatizations against the demonstrated wishes of the public.

Mamoliti is attempting to do what Joe McCarthy did in 1950s USA – crush free speech and free political association in an effort to crush opposition to this administration’s far-right political direction. It’s clear from Don Cherry’s remarks to Council at its inaugural meeting last December (“This is what you’ll be facing, Rob, with these left-wing pinkos — they scrape the bottom of the barrel.”) and from Mamoliti’s developing witch-hunt against some Councilors and the public, that red-baiting is part and parcel of this administration’s attack on public services and on labour and democratic rights. It’s a package.

It’s a dangerous combination that threatens all Toronto residents, and must be challenged.
With this in mind, the Communist Party is exploring legal action including a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, and is urging the labour and democratic movements and all those who support democratic and civil rights to speak up and demand an end to the witch hunt.

The Communist Party is the second oldest political party in Canada, and has worked over 9 decades to strengthen labour, democratic and equity rights, to raise living standards and improve social programs, with the aim of curbing corporate power and winning a socialist Canada. The CPC (Ontario) is fielding 8 candidates in the October 6th provincial election.

Contact: Elizabeth Rowley, leader, 416-469-2446, 647-994-4976

Real communists consider complaint against Mammoliti

This ridiculously funny graphic is from
the right-wing Globe and Mail Paper

The Communist Party of Canada is thinking about filing a human rights complaint against Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, the party’s Ontario leader said Sunday.

Mammoliti, a prominent ally of Mayor Rob Ford with a long history of provocative remarks, has gleefully escalated his red-baiting rhetoric over the last week. On Tuesday, he said he would ban “communists,” whom he creatively defined as citizens who spoke against budget cuts at City Hall, from his new Facebook group. By Friday, he had progressed to alleging, without any evidence, that six or seven sitting councillors are communists who want the municipal government to seize all private property and control the minds of Toronto residents.

“We are considering putting in a complaint about your behaviour and your attacks,” Elizabeth Rowley said on the NewsTalk 1010 radio show hosted by Councillor Josh Matlow.

It is not clear what provision of the Ontario Human Rights Code Rowley believes Mammoliti has violated. Political affiliation is not one of the grounds on which the code prohibits discrimination. Further, the code covers discrimination in employment, housing, union membership, and the provision of goods and services; Mammoliti discriminated, or attempted to, only on his Facebook group.

“If anyone should complain, it's me,” he responded. “Because it's them who attacked my Facebook, with their comments and with their logos and with their ‘comrade’ suggestions.”

Rowley compared Mammoliti's statements to those of former U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who alleged in the 1940s and 1950s that communists had infiltrated the American government. “McCarthyism is not appropriate,” she said, “and pretty ugly.”

Mammoliti was unrepentant. In language mirroring that of the McCarthy-era House Un-American Activities Committee, which infamously asked Hollywood screenwriters and directors whether they were or had ever been members of the Communist Party, he asked Matlow: “How many of those councillors at City Hall does she have a relationship with — a speaking relationship, an email relationship, a relationship of communication in one form or another?”

When Rowley said the last email she had sent to councillors was to oppose the closure of libraries, he said: “So you have no ongoing relationship, you don't write to any particular councillor, you haven't ever spoken, had dinner with, had lunches with, any of those councillors that I'm suggesting that you have?”

Rowley said, “You're asking me if I ‘am or ever have had lunch with’ — no, I haven't.”

Councillor Paula Fletcher led the Communist Party in Manitoba in the 1980s before becoming a supporter of the NDP. Mammoliti has not demonstrated that any other councillor has ties to the party.

Said Rowley: “What is really egregious here is that anybody who objects apparently to the proposals that are coming from the Ford administration is being attacked as a communist by prominent members of that administration.”

Rowley said “some” of the 166 people who spoke against cuts at a marathon executive committee meeting in July were party members. But she also said, “We certainly don't have as many members as would be implied by Councillor Mammoliti.”