Left I on the News

During my recent trip to Canada I was made aware of the case of Alison Bodine, a leading antiwar and Cuba solidarity activist in Vancouver, who was attending the same Cuban Five solidarity conference that I was. Alison is a U.S. citizen who was recently returning to Canada (where she was until her recent graduation a student at UBC), and was refused entry because her car contained a box of antiwar and Cuban Five literature! She returned later without it and was allowed into Canada, but when a Canadian friend tried to bring the same material across the border, it was confiscated, and when Alison returned with the receipt to retrieve it, she was arrested! Several hearings later, she has been ordered to leave Canada by Nov. 17 (three days from now) and excluded from reentry for two years. Not for anything she actually did, but fundamentally, for being an antiwar activist.

Your help is needed urgently to demand that the charges against Alison be dropped. Some things you can do:

• Visit her website to learn more about the case
• Email Canadian Immigration Minister Diane Finley and demand Alison be allowed to stay in Canada
• Download a petition and sign it and send it back
• Watch a video about the case

Incidentally, Alison is not the only dangerous person Canada wants to protect its poor citizens from associating with. Right around the same time (a month ago), Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright, two well-known antiwar activists, headed to Toronto (where I've just returned from) to an antiwar conference, were detained, questioned and denied entry.

Stop the removal of Alison Bodine! Add your voice to her defenders today!