Community honours activist Dudley Laws

22 March 2011 No Comments

Activist Dudley Laws

By Henry Stancu

Gravely ill and unable to attend the party, Dudley Laws was ever-present in the hearts and minds of the many people who came to honour him Sunday.

They packed the Jamaican Canadian Centre in northwest Toronto to celebrate the man who helped to bring change in the relationship between the black community and the establishment.

“An elder warrior” is how he was described by Itah Sadu, owner of A Different Booklist, a Toronto bookshop that features Caribbean literature.

Lying in a hospital bed, Laws watched the event via an Internet video camera.

Born in Jamaican in 1934, Laws came to Canada from England in 1965, taking a job as a welder. He became involved with various organizations, clubs and churches where people of island and African descent gathered.

From there he became involved in outreach programs that helped prison inmates, marginalized workers and troubled young people.

He co-founded the Black Action Defense committee along with Charles Roach, Sherona Hall and Lennox Farrell.

The group was created in 1988 in response to several shootings of black men by Toronto-area police and led several protests to push for more progressive laws.

At that time, Lester Donaldson was the latest victim in a series of police shootings.

“Many people here have benefited from his contribution and his effort to bring about change for all,” said Toronto Councillor Michael Thompson, who is also vice-chair of the police board.

“He is about humanity, he is about human rights, he’s about justice for all and he has worked really hard as a dedicated advocate of fairness,” Thompson added.

In 2003, Laws and other Toronto black community leaders pushed for change in the relationship with government institutions, police and social and health services which severely lacked black representation.

It was the same year a Star series on racial profiling showed Toronto police stopped, questioned, arrested and jailed black citizens more often than white citizens.

“Until the relationship between our community and the police improves there will be no co-operation from our youth with police,” Laws said then.

Toronto’s “Summer of the Gun” — 2005 — saw 52 gun-related homicides, mostly involving young black men.

“He is one of my heroes,” said Valarie Steele, chair of the event’s organizing committee, who’s known Laws for four decades.

“We are all indebted to him. The black community, the white community and even the police have benefited from his work. We know that resisting is the right thing to do when things are not fair.”

Originally published on thestar.com March 20, 2011