No security in repression: an interview with May Chiu from the Chinatown Round Table

John: The idea of this zine is to talk about the idea of security on campus and how the university is using this idea of safety to repress and surveil the Concordia community. We wanted to get different perspectives on this and were thinking about how those kinds of similar narratives play out in communities that are right next door to the university as well. So, I wanted to let you talk about how the idea of safety is being used in Chinatown and what the reality of policing, surveillance and repression is like there. 

May Chiu: The concept of security and safety for the past few years has been automatically linked to homelessness and marginality. Chinatown, like many areas in Montreal, has been hit by the housing crisis. But historically there had always been a number of shelters on the outskirts of Chinatown, and for 20 years now, there has been an Indigenous shelter inside Chinatown’s territory. Or, as I prefer to say, Chinatown has surrounded an Indigenous shelter for 20 years now. 

Chinatown, like many other neighbourhoods, has seen expressions of homelessness become very evident to the point of provoking lots of outright social tensions on public space, just because housed and unhoused people have to share the same space and things don’t always go well.  

So for the past almost two years, there has been an organization, which ironically is an anti-racist organization, they’ve done really good work in terms of anti-racism, but they’re a very liberal organization, and for two years they’ve been organizing distressed housed residents and merchants in Chinatown to be extremely pro-police. Which is fine! I don’t have an issue with people being pro-police. What I do have an issue with is proposing increased policing and surveillance as the sole answer to a hugely complex crisis, such as the housing crisis, mental health crisis, addiction crisis, the crisis of poverty. Policing is being used to instrumentalize people who are looking for an immediate and quick fix. For example, last year these groups of residents held four press conferences to demand the city close a shelter inside Guy Favreau. 

We in the Chinatown Round Table try to offer other long term sustainable solutions, but they aren’t sexy. Our position was, if you want to ask for the closing of the shelter, fine, but that is a vastly insufficient solution to these multiple crises happening in Chinatown. So what happened? The shelter got closed, people got kicked out on the street, and this year the press conferences started again saying “We want to dismantle all these tents!” 

So this is our frustration, if we are going to put effort into finding solutions, let's find lasting solutions. Solutions that also center the safety and security of unhoused residents, along with the housed residents. Because I think we can come to a consensus on that. This is where the class prejudice comes out. Because when people talk about “safety” and “security”, they always think about it for their social class. They don’t look at the reality in terms of: Who are the people who are actually dying in Chinatown, and all over the city? Who are the people who are getting stabbed, robbed and beaten? They are the people who are the most marginalized and the most vulnerable, but we never talk about that discourse. 

They’ve been courting the police with such passion for two years now. Personally, I don’t think bubble tea with cops, or mooncakes with cops is going to fix the multiple crises. 

So this is our frustration: if we are going to put effort into finding solutions, let's find lasting ones.

J: It’s going to displace people, maybe at best right? Or criminalize people.  

MC: What will happen is we’ll push them out of Chinatown, they’ll go to the [Gay] Village, and then the Village will protest, and they’ll come back to Chinatown. We’re just playing ping pong with human lives. We need to live up to our capacity as human beings to work together and find solutions that are sustainable for everyone. 

J: It’s interesting hearing you talk about all this. Even though it’s a largely publicly funded university, [from my perspective] Concordia deals with the local homeless population by just kicking them off campus. And [I see this as] part of their surveillance apparatus: codifying who’s supposed to be here and who looks like they fit into the campus space. They then push away any sort of deviance, whether people that need a place to rest, or that be, social movements.  

MC: It’s the NIMBY (not in my backyard) phenomenon! This is the liberal approach of “oh ya we have to take care of these people so, we need more housing, but we just don’t want to see them here, in front of my house”.  

J: Are there other alternatives to repression and policing that you’d like to see people turn to when faced with these issues you’ve spoken about in Chinatown? 

MC: I think we need to have community discussions, to try to figure medium and long term solutions. Long term solutions are political mobilizations to get the political class to step up. In the short and medium term, we can build solidarities between different kinds of marginalized communities. One of the narratives that the pro-police have taken is that “we need to speak for those that can’t speak for themselves”, and that “all these vulnerable Chinese seniors who are afraid to call the police, we need to protect them”.  

They are pitting one class of vulnerable people against an even more vulnerable people. This summer there was an example that exposed some of these possibilities for solidarities. The pro-police group called for a demonstration against food distribution happening in Chinatown every Sunday by an NGO. On the day of the demonstration I went, and I observed who the beneficiaries of the food distribution were. Yes, there were unhoused people, there were refugee claimants, there were ALOT of Chinese seniors, there were youth. So food security is something that is a common issue that can unite people. 

J: Hmmm so realizing that there’s more in common than we might think. 

MC: That’s it! The seniors, even though they are housed, they are also hungry. They are on a fixed income. I know people who pay more than 50% of their pensions on rent [...]. Those are common needs that both housed and unhoused people have and it just makes more sense for us to mobilize together.  

How do you get more food on your plate by chasing unhoused people out of Chinatown? It doesn't work! But if the two of you work together and say “hey we need a program to address food insecurity in Chinatown, where everyone will benefit”, then you’re one step ahead of where you were previously.  

Another project we have is a garden. And we are really proud of this. It’s very basic. We can’t say we grow enough food to feed people seriously, but one of the goals is to build solidarities among the different communities that live in Chinatown. It’s the only Asian, Indigenous garden that we know of. It’s got a beautiful Medicine Wheel in the middle.  

Recently we had a workshop where we invited an Indigenous health expert with a Chinese traditional medicine doctor. There were lots of Chinese seniors who attended. One of the objectives was to show that Indigenous peoples are not only people that are in need, or on the street and consuming, but Indigenous people also have very valuable knowledge and expertise. They are interested in traditional healing, just as you are! It’s just a garden, and it’s not going to solve the multiple crisis points, but it’s an example of something we can do together! 

What I do have an issue with is proposing increased policing and surveillance as the sole answer to a hugely complex crisis, such as the housing crisis, mental health crisis, addiction crisis, the crisis of poverty.