Fo Niemi

It was 1983, in Montreal.

An organization was born: the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations, CRARR.

Among its founders was Fo Niemi. He was its executive director from the start.

CRARR gave itself a mission: to promote racial equality and combat racism in Canada.

It is a small team. Three people. At least six lawyers who work with it. Interns.

CRARR deals with discrimination in employment, school discipline, hate crimes, online hate, media bias, racial profiling.

It opens about seventy-five new cases every year.

In 2002, CRARR intervened before the Supreme Court of Canada, in a case about the preference given to citizens for public-service jobs.

In 2003, it stood beside Mothers United Against Racism. From 2003 to 2006, it led a campaign against racial profiling in Montreal.

Racial profiling became one of its great battles.

It was March 2012, in Longueuil.

Joël Debellefeuille, a Black man, was driving his BMW. A police car followed him for more than a kilometre. It stopped him outside his son's daycare.

CRARR supported the complaint. About eight years later, the Human Rights Tribunal ruled. Judge Christian Brunelle found that it was racial profiling.

The Tribunal awarded $10,000 in damages. One officer had to pay $2,000 in punitive damages. The City of Longueuil also had to adopt a policy, train its officers, and collect data on the race of the people they stopped.

Fo Niemi summed up the victory in a few words:

He added that these battles would have to be fought in the courts, since politicians were not acting.

Elsewhere, in Repentigny, a Black teacher, François Ducas, had been stopped in 2017, driving his BMW, on his way to work. He was handcuffed and searched. His tickets were dismissed.

CRARR helped him file a complaint. The Tribunal ordered the city to pay him $8,000.

For Fo Niemi, it was the first judicial confirmation of racial profiling in Repentigny. He spoke of "so much denial."

Since 2000, CRARR has represented or assisted more than a thousand people. It has won them more than $400,000 in damages.

It has organized conferences on racial profiling, on the criminalization of youths of colour in Montreal, on the Quebec Charter of Values. It has studied systemic racism in Quebec's police ethics system.

It also trains institutions, all the way up to judges, to prevent and remedy discrimination.

Fo Niemi's work is complaints, hearings, rulings.

Behind every case is a person who no longer stands alone before an institution. This work echoes Ubuntu without being the same thing: a wound done to one concerns all the others.

In Longueuil, a man had been stopped outside his son's daycare.

About eight years later, a whole city had to change its practices.