Lonely at the Top
To get close to power, Black advocacy groups often keep their communities at a distance
An image of a Canadian Association of Black Journalists mug, taken from the group’s Facebook page.
by Desmond Cole
The Canadian Association of Black Journalists would rather not talk about its dismissal of a board member who publicly voiced support for Hamas. CABJ recently removed Q Anthony Ali from its leadership, after learning of his November 2023 remark that he refuses to condemn Hamas because “ I hope they win.” Apart from a brief statement calling Ali’s comment “harmful to the Jewish community and to the work and reputation of the CABJ,” the group’s board of directors has stayed silent, and refused multiple interview requests interview from this publication.
Longtime board member and journalist Tayo Bero resigned in disgust over the decision, and suggested she wasn’t consulted on it. Bero was especially critical of her colleagues’ attentiveness to Canadaland owner Jesse Brown, who alerted the board to Ali’s comments by e-mail, and claimed they were “no different” than if Ali had pledged support for the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. Bero said on Twitter that “Gaza is literally being obliterated and I don’t have time for this.”
CABJ’s decision to police Palestinian solidarity, even at the cost of losing its leaders, is likely an attempt to stay relevant in mainstream Canadian media circles. For Black groups seeking institutional validation and funding, outspoken and dissenting Black voices are almost always a liability. Black organizations find favour in Canada by managing political expression, and by blunting Black people’s desires to align our struggles with those of other oppressed groups. Such organizations are often small and usually disconnected from everyday Black people—we are shunned in favour of access to mainstream institutions, nationalist narratives, and a trickle of funding and advisory opportunities.
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A part of Tayo Bero’s twitter thread condemning the actions of CABJ. Bero announced her resignation at the end of the thread
According to Ali, his board colleagues called a meeting after receiving Brown’s correspondence. He told them his comments in support of Hamas were in the context of Israel invading Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 attacks, and killing Palestinian civilians without recourse. Ali told me in an interview that the consensus at the end of this meeting was that CABJ would stand behind him. “They basically told me they understood my explanation, and wouldn’t allow outside forces to dictate to their organization,” Ali said.
But in the following days, Ali says the board called a second meeting without inviting him, and executive director Nadia Tchoumi ultimately told him he was being removed based on a decision at the meeting from which he’d been excluded. Bero’s resignation referred to “sending out statements without unanimous and prior approval,” a hint that she had not agreed to, or even been consulted on, Ali’s dismissal. Given Ali’s account of his removal, and the fact that he and Bero made up half of the board’s four members as listed on its website, the process that led to his dismissal is curious.
In his detailed reporting on alleged misappropriation of funds at a major Black Canadian charity, journalist Perry Douglas cites what he calls a “new era of the fake nonprofit elite” among Black orgs in Canada. “So-called Black leadership has turned into an announcement culture, with no accountability and responsibility, and no shame,” writes Perry. Although CABJ claims to advocate for Black journalists, its public profile aligns with a culture heavy on announcements, but short on meaningful engagement with Black journalists and their concerns.
Since its relaunch in 2019, CABJ has only notified mailing list recipients of one election: in 2021, subscribers were invited to an annual general meeting for “a vote of confidence for the current executive and board Executive director.” The majority of content on the group’s “news and updates” webpage is more than three years old; the events page has not been updated in over two years.
CABJ social media posts on Facebook and Twitter regularly receive little or no public engagement. With the dismissal of Ali and the apparent resignation of Bero (whose profile is still on the CABJ board of directors page at the time of publication), the org now boasts a public total of two board members. It isn’t clear how many or how few Black journalists have input into the organization’s regular operations and decisions.
The majority of CABJ website content dates back to 2021 or earlier, and does not feature several recently publicized issues within mainstream Black Canadian media: a recent study pointing to a lack of diversity in Canadian media; the ongoing human rights case of former CP24 host Patricia Jaggernauth; or last month’s decision by security at a Canadian literary event to escort out writer Kagiso Lesego Molope, after she gave a speech imploring more recognition of Palestinians that Israel has killed in Gaza, including Palestinian journalists.
Molope told the audience at the “Politics and the Pen” fundraiser in Ottawa that Canadian media will be asked in future, “what did you do with your power?” It’s an equally good question to put to CABJ leaders, who have been silent on Israel’s deadly siege of Gaza, if only they would answer.
I’ve worked directly with CABJ in the past to address anti-Blackness in Canadian newsrooms. But when I sent e-mails to its official address requesting an interview on Ali’s dismissal, no one replied. I had to reach out to individual leaders, one of whom finally confirmed that no board member was willing to talk. I concede that I may be mistaken about CABJ’s reach and engagement among Canada’s Black journalists. I wanted to ask about these things too, but given the board’s silence I can only cite its mostly dated public materials and my own experiences.
A screenshot from the CABJ Facebook page
CABJ has not spoken up for Palestinian-Canadian journalists like Zahraa Al-Akrass and Yara Jamal, both of whom were dismissed from mainstream Canadian media for challenging Israel’s colonial domination of Palestinians. Nor has CABJ commented on the killing of more than 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
While CABJ has been mum on these issues, which so many Black Canadian journalists care about and relate to, it made time for a white man who compared armed Palestinian resistance to the KKK. Brown’s cynical invocation of the Klan when talking to Black people, as if to provide an example they might understand, is as revolting as CABJ’s willingness to entertain him.
The KKK is a white power organization that once boasted tens of thousands of Canadian members, including an elected parliamentarian. Brown’s attempt to compare this group with Hamas, a political and military resistance movement created in defiance of Israeli occupation, is nonsensical. Yet Brown received official CABJ replies, while Black journalists have been brushed off.
CABJ leaders are also telling on themselves by claiming they only recently became aware of Ali’s comment, which Brown first critiqued publicly in November. Have these advocates not heard about Brown’s attempts to discredit multiple people in Canadian media, especially Shree Paradkar of the Toronto Star, after they expressed solidarity with Palestinians? Don’t they know Brown’s union at Canadaland has publicly distanced itself from his behaviour? Has no one in their circles been talking about it?
We should be wary of CABJ’s citing of Hamas as “an organization designated as a terrorist group in Canada” when justifying Ali’s dismissal. Media should be scrutinizing Canada’s terror lists, not using them as a measure of a journalist’s legitimacy. Aside from the obvious fact that Canada has classified many Black liberation fighters as terrorists and criminals, we live in a country whose designations of terrorism are rooted in Islamophobia, anti-Blackness, anti-Arab sentiment and anti-Palestinian racism.
One out of every seven groups on Canada’s terror watch list has connections to the people of Palestine, a nation the government does not formally recognize. At present, Canada deems virtually every organized, armed Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation as terrorism. There is no equivalent scrutiny of the state of Israel, whose control of Palestinian lands and people causes untold death and suffering. The tendency of journalists to take their political cues from their governments has dangerous consequences for our work.
As a reporter with Vice about a decade ago, Ben Makuch battled the RCMP after he interviewed a person suspected of fighting with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Canadian police demanded that Makuch hand over background materials from his conversations, citing the government’s listing of ISIS as a terror group. Makuch refused, and then fought the RCMP for five years before being forced in 2019 to hand over his materials under threat of imprisonment.
Journalists should scrutinize terrorism designations in Canada that overwhelmingly target Black, Arab and Muslim people through no-fly lists and police surveillance. Such scrutiny will upset power and may hinder access to government officials, but it can also produce principled, independent journalism, instead of the culture of patronage and access that so many Black organizations seem unable to resist.
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I agree that Ali’s comments have harmed CABJ’s reputation, in particular its reputation within Canada’s white mainstream media and government circles. But Black journalists should not accept the group’s claim that a defence of Hamas is “harmful to the Jewish community.” This reductive statement suggests that by saying of Hamas, “I hope they win,” Ali is wishing harm on all Jewish people. A journalism group that accepts this interpretation should defend it, not dismiss a colleague through a secretive process before refusing further comment.
It’s also disappointing that CABJ would use this explanation in the midst of a white nationalist movement in the West that preaches Great Replacement theory, warns of “white genocide,” and seeks to recast the teaching of Black struggle as “anti-white.” Expressing solidarity with the oppressed is not the same as feeling a dehumanized hatred of those harming them.
We should also never conflate a nebulous Jewish community with the state of Israel, as CABJ has implicitly done. Black people should be familiar with such lack of nuance about conflict and resistance, and we are hurting ourselves when we confuse the rage of colonized people with colonial hierarchies based on race, ethnicity, and religion.
I must also note a relevant observation by my Yes Everything! colleague El Jones in February. Jones pointed out that Black people in Canada are often attacked for their solidarity with Palestine, and that “so-called Black advocacy groups in Canada have not only never defended the victims of these attacks, but have allied themselves with pro-Israel groups instead.” The Supreme Court of Canada subsequently disinvited Jones from a planned event, saying her comments made some court clerks feel “unsafe.” While several writers’ advocacy groups spoke up for Jones, who is an award-winning Canadian journalist, CABJ said nothing.
Perhaps the strategies of silence and internal censorship will keep CABJ viable with Canadian media decision-makers. But as CABJ executive director Nadia Tchoumi noted while speaking to a government committee in 2021, mainstream Canadian media ignored her group’s advocacy and calls to action until the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The performative corporate attention Black people and causes received at that time has long since dried up.
CABJ’s efforts to win over a media elite that actively resists its agenda feel both limited and self-serving. An independent advocacy group with a loud, broad, and visible membership stands a far better chance at making change in Canada than the seat-at-the-table approach that institutions have learned to accommodate, exploit, and ignore.
They say it’s lonely at the top. It has to be when the power you’re courting will not tolerate your community’s wide range of desires and demands. I have to wonder if the caution from CABJ leaders is based on experiences in their own workplaces, where Black journalists and creators are routinely harassed, punished, and dismissed for our politics. I can only wonder, of course, because CABJ’s leaders won’t explain themselves. As much as they may want this moment to pass, silence can never be a long-term strategy for Black people who claim advocacy as their work.