Harsha Walia


Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is known for her organizing work with No One Is Illegal, the February 14th Women's Memorial March Committee, the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, and several Downtown Eastside housing justice coalitions. Walia has been active in migrant justice, Indigenous solidarity, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist movements for over a decade. In January 2020 she was announced as the new executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Walia is the author of Undoing Border Imperialism, co-author of Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration as well as Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and has contributed to over thirty academic journals, anthologies, magazines and newspapers. She is a frequent guest speaker at campuses and conferences across North America and has delivered numerous presentations to the United Nations.
Walia has been named one of BC's top ten left-wing journalists and writers in 2010 by The Georgia Straight, one of the most influential South Asians in BC by The Vancouver Sun, and "one of Canada’s most brilliant and effective organizers" by Naomi Klein. She is also a recipient of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives Power of Youth Award and Westender's Best of the City awards in Activism and Change-Making.

Activism

No One Is Illegal

In 2001, Walia co-founded No One Is Illegal, an anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-capitalist migrant justice movement. In addition to providing direct support for refugees and migrants facing detention and deportation, NOII campaigns for full legal status and access to city/social services for all people, and works in solidarity with Indigenous self-determination, anti-occupation and grassroots anti-oppression movements. Although Walia has worked with NOII groups across Canada, she is primarily associated with NOII-Vancouver. She is a previous member of NOII-Montreal and has assisted the Pakistani Action Committee Against Racial Profiling and Refugees against Racial Profiling.
As a member of NOII, Walia has been involved in several sanctuary campaigns alongside communities and organizers from immigrant and racialized backgrounds. She has participated, for instance, in the campaign to stop the deportation of Laibar Singh, a paralyzed Punjabi refugee; the Let them Free, Let them Stay campaign for incarcerated Tamil refugee claimants aboard the MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea; and the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials, calling for the abolition of security certificates. Together with NOII-Vancouver, Walia organizes the Annual Community March Against Racism, which was initiated in 2008. She also collectively organized a No One Is Illegal, Canada Is Illegal contingent as part the 2010 No Olympics On Stolen Native Land convergence in Vancouver.
In 2013, Walia condemned the non-consensual filming of migrant workers by the reality television show during raids on construction sites by Canada Border Services Agency. She argued that the show, produced by National Geographic and Force Four Entertainment, took advantage of "the violence of detention and deportation," violated individuals' privacy rights and reinforced anti-migrant sentiments and policies. Along with NOII protests against the raids and filming, a campaign to cancel the Border Security series was backed by over 100 cultural producers in an open letter and a petition signed by over 25,000 people. The show was eventually cancelled in 2016 on grounds of privacy infringement.
In January 2014, Walia and NOII-Vancouver demanded an inquest into the death of Lucia Vega Jimenez, an undocumented Mexican refugee who lived and worked in Vancouver, who died in the custody of CBSA four weeks after being detained. Other migrant justice and civil liberties groups as well as over 7,500 petition signers also called for an inquest, which was announced by BC Coroners Service in February 2014 and led to several jury recommendations and overhaul of CBSA detention practices. In view of Vancouver Transit Police's involvement in the incarceration of Jimenez, Walia co-founded the Transportation Not Deportation campaign, which brought about the end of a Memorandum of Understanding between Transit Police and the CBSA. Transportation Not Deportation was awarded the 2016 Liberty Award for Community Activism by the BC Civil Liberties Association.
Subsequent to Donald Trump's election and signing of Executive Order 13769 on January 27, 2017 to establish "extreme vetting" procedures for refugees and immigrants attempting to enter the United States, Walia reported a greater volume of incoming calls to NOII from undocumented migrants in the US seeking to claim asylum in Canada. She has stated that, despite many government-sponsored messages that Canada is welcoming to refugees, the Safe Third Country Agreement prevents those who reach the Canadian border via the US from claiming refugee status. Consequently, she has added, many people cross irregularly into B.C., where they are often intercepted by the RCMP. NOII have urged the Trudeau government to repeal the STCA, although the agreement currently remains in effect. In April 2017, NOII-Vancouver released and distributed Border Rights for Refugees, a pamphlet available in 17 languages with information for those seeking asylum in Canada.
Walia and NOII-Vancouver also worked with the Burnaby school district to change registration procedures in 2017, ensuring that all children, regardless of immigration status, can access school.

Women's Memorial March

For over a decade Walia has worked with the February 14th Women's Memorial March Committee, founded in 1992 following the murder of a woman on Powell Street in Vancouver. Led largely by Indigenous women, the committee organizes the annual February 14 Women's Memorial March for women who have died in the Downtown Eastside. A 20-year history of the Women's Memorial March is documented in a 2011 short film co-directed by Walia and Alejandro Zuluaga, titled Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of Women in the Downtown Eastside. The film presents footage of recent and previous marches and centres on the voices of women in the DTES, including members of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group, who developed the concept for the film. With their film, Walia and Zuluaga seek to "debunk the sensationalism surrounding a neighbourhood deeply misunderstood, and celebrate the complex and diverse realities of women organizing for justice."

Downtown Eastside Women's Centre

From 2006 to 2019 Walia worked as a project coordinator at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, established in 1978 as a safe, community-driven space for women and children in the DTES of Vancouver. The centre offers support through daily drop-in and emergency shelters, as well as food, advocacy, counselling and housing outreach services. At the DEWC, Walia facilitated the Power of Women group, a program which is run for and by women living in the DTES. The Power of Women group organizes weekly community discussions and actions with the goal of identifying, resisting and transforming rhetoric and policies that marginalize women. POW is upheld by leadership and involvement of women most affected by systemic injustice, particularly homelessness, abuse, and child apprehension; the group's work, Walia says, is therefore "rooted in the experiences and voices of residents of the DTES."
Walia and the Power of Women group together help to organize the annual February 14 Women's Memorial March and have pressured the Vancouver Police Department to investigate and act on cases of missing and murdered women. They are also involved in numerous housing justice campaigns and coalitions, including the Downtown Eastside Is Not for Developers Coalition. 2006 marked the beginning of POW's Annual Women's Housing March for safe and affordable housing for low-income residents of the DTES.

Indigenous Land Defence

With NOII-Vancouver, Walia has assisted the Skwelkwek'welt Protection Centre since 2003 and the Sutikalh Protection Camp since 2004, in their fights against resort and hotel construction on Secwepemc and St'at'imc lands. She has convened Immigrants in Support of Idle No More and is a supporter of the Defenders of the Land Network, the Indigenous Assembly Against Mining and Pipelines, and the Unist’ot’en Action Camp in Wet’suwet’en territory, which she has visited on multiple occasions.

Olympic Resistance Network

Walia was active in the Olympic Resistance Network, which instigated a number of anti-Olympic actions and demonstrations during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. The actions were in response to escalating homelessness rates of low-income residents in the DTES and cuts to social programs due to urban gentrification in the build-up to the Games. The Women's Memorial March Committee and Power of Women group, both of which Walia is involved in, also resisted the Games by refusing to cancel or reroute the annual February 14 Women's Memorial March, and obstructing the Olympic Torch Relay as it passed through the DTES.
In alliance with numerous other groups, the ORN organized a No Olympics on Stolen Land convergence and several rallies, such as No More Empty Talk, No More Empty Lots. During the latter event on February 15, 2010, a tent city known as the Olympic Tent Village assembled on a lot owned by real estate developer Concord Pacific, which functioned as a parking lot during the Olympics. With the support of DTES Elders, residents, activists and organizations, including the Power of Women group, the site served as a community shelter and gathering place from which BC Housing was pressured to provide safe and affordable homes for those in the Village. Over 40 homeless residents were housed as a result of the two-week-long Olympic Tent Village.
Following an anti-Olympic demonstration on February 13, 2010, during which black bloc tactics were employed and windows of the Hudson's Bay Company in Downtown Vancouver were smashed, Walia defended the protestors, stating that several of them are devoted activists who support marginalized communities and adopt a range of tactics to do so. She also expressed that wearing masks during protests is a reasonable precaution in light of mass surveillance practices, and that black bloc methods can heighten the effectiveness of less direct actions such as the February 14th Women's Memorial March.

Other activism

An active member within Vancouver's South Asian community, with whom she aims to "lift up the reality of what’s going on in South Asia in terms of the global landscape of geopolitical warfare," Walia is on the board of the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy. She has been involved in Anti-Capitalist Convergence and the Northwest Anti-Authoritarian People of Colour Network, sits on the board of Shit Harper Did, and is a youth mentor for Check Your Head. Walia has also participated in the Occupy and Occupy Together movements.

Arrests

Walia was one of over 800 protesters arrested during the G8 and G20 protests in Toronto in late June 2010. She states that she faced "extremely serious and fabricated charges," which were withdrawn on June 29, 2010, after which Walia was released from jail.
Along with Alice Kendall and Angela Marie MacDougall, Walia was arrested on October 4, 2010, a National Day of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, after occupying a local Vancouver police station to demand an investigation into the death of Ashley Machiskinic. The group was promised a meeting with the chief of police, but the three still refused to leave. The three detained women were released the following day.

Written work

''Undoing Border Imperialism''

Undoing Border Imperialism is Walia's first book, published in 2013 as part of AK Press' Anarchist Intervention Series. The book features a foreword by Andrea Smith in addition to contributions by over thirty activists and cultural producers, including Carmen Aguirre, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Melanie Cervantes.
In the opening chapters of the book, Walia presents a theoretical analysis of what she refers to as "border imperialism." The four key components of border imperialism that are outlined include: the displacement of populations and securitization of borders; criminalization and incarceration of "illegal" immigrants; racialized hierarchies of citizenship and belonging; and labour precarity, which maintains the migrant worker's experience as "commodified and exploitable, flexible and expendable." In her analysis, Walia underscores the connections between these four characteristics of border imperialism and global systems of oppression, such as colonialism, racism, capitalism and the prison system.
In the book's later chapters, Walia chronicles the efforts of numerous movements, such as No One Is Illegal, that seek to undo border imperialism. She examines the "bordered logic within our own movements" and discusses ways in which movements can decolonize and grow through self-reflection, leadership from those directly affected by systemic injustice, as well as long-term solidarity with Indigenous communities and other justice-seeking movements.
Undoing Border Imperialism was referred to by Indigenous rights activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz as "the first extended work on immigration that refuses to make First Nations sovereignty invisible." The book has also received praise from figures such as Naomi Klein, Vijay Prashad and Ashanti Alston.

''Never Home''

In 2015, Walia and Omar Chu co-authored Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration, a report on the impact of Canadian immigration policies implemented by the Conservative government during Stephen Harper's nine-year tenure. The report was part of an "innovative" and collaborative multimedia project by NOII-Vancouver and Shit Harper Did, which included a series of refugee and migrant stories in video form and "put a human face on the impact of the drastic changes made by the Conservative government" with regard to citizenship, temporary foreign workers, family reunification, detention, refugees, deportation, security measures and funding.

''Red Women Rising''

Co-authored by Walia and Carol Muree Martin with contributions by 128 members of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is a 216-page report on gendered colonial violence in Canada. The report centres Indigenous women's unmediated voices, knowledge, and experiences of violence, displacement, family trauma, poverty, homelessness, child apprehension, policing, health inequities and the opioid crisis, and was submitted to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Released in April 2019 by the DEWC, Red Women Rising brings together the direct input from 113 Indigenous women and 15 non-Indigenous women participants in the DTES neighbourhood, with reviews of published research and over 200 recommendations on how to end state and societal violence against Indigenous women, girls, transgender and two-spirit people.

Anthologies and journals

Walia sits on the editorial boards of Abolition Journal, Radical Desi, and The Feminist Wire. Her writings have appeared in the following anthologies, journals, magazines and news outlets, among others.