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FIGHT PROPOSED GRANT TO ARA BY METRO TORONTO COUNCIL

The terrorist Anti-Racist Action (ARA) group has applied for a grant from the Metropolitan Toronto Council for $18,000 to fund a two-day conference to be held at an undisclosed location in Toronto, June 22/23, 1996. The event is to be called the Anti-Fascist Co-ordinating Conference.

ARGUMENTS:

A) IN GENERAL 1. Government funds, taxpayers' money, should not be given to special interest lobby groups to fund their activities. If these groups truly do have public interest and support, they should be able to finance their own activities.

B) AGAINST THE ARA SPECIFICALLY

1. ARA is a violent terrorist group. In January, 1993 it attacked police and battled with them in an attempt to break through police lines and prevent members of the Heritage Front from attending a Canadian Human Rights tribunal to which they'd been summonsed. In June, 1993, ARA MEMBERS stormed the East Toronto home where Gary Schipper lived threw excrement at the house, broke windows and did other property damage. On December 9, 1995, about two dozen ARA members broke into a private dinner meeting sponsored by Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform at the Europe Restaurant in downtown Toronto. They ignored repeated requests to leave. They spat on the owner and on several of those attending the function. They threw cream at items on a bookstable and assaulted an elderly lady. On their wesite, they boast of having shut down the meeting. Therefore, ARA can be seen as a violence prone group, opposed to freedom of speech.

2. The ARA grant application is bizarre. None of the three individuals listed as responsible for the conference have no street address or personal phone numbers. All list their address as Box 664, Station C, Toronto, M6J 3S1 and their phone as 416-8835. It must be terribly crowded living in that box! Even more bizarre, the ARA, non being a non-profit organization, has had to get a B.C. group the Canadian Anti-Racism Education and Research Society to act as their financial trustee. Interestingly, the contact person, one Alan Dutton, is to be flown in all the way from B.C. to be one of the conference speakers.

3. ARA, therefore, has no provable roots or real legitimacy in Metro Toronto and should not be funded.

Here are the phone numbers of the Metropolitan Toronto Councillors. Call them and keep calling them to urge them to vote against a grant of $18,000 so that the terrorist ARA can't run their June 22 Toronto conference.

For more information about ARA's terrorist history, call 905-897-7221.