MAYDAY

Happy Mayday to everyone !

Here's an article to clarify what this actually means, and why it's still important for the working class.

The Brief Origins of May Day

By Eric Chase - 1993.

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:

• Workingmen to Arms!
• War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.
• The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.
• One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!
• MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.

Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.

The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.

More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.

Full of rage, a public meeting was called by some of the anarchists for the following day in Haymarket Square to discuss the police brutality. Due to bad weather and short notice, only about 3000 of the tens of thousands of people showed up from the day before. This affair included families with children and the mayor of Chicago himself. Later, the mayor would testify that the crowd remained calm and orderly and that speaker August Spies made "no suggestion... for immediate use of force or violence toward any person..."

As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.

Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. The jury in their trial was comprised of business leaders in a gross mockery of justice similar to the Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the trials of AIM and Black Panther members in the seventies. The entire world watched as these eight organizers were convicted, not for their actions, of which all of were innocent, but for their political and social beliefs. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out steelworkers struggling for justice. We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.

Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

 

TOO FUCKING EASY

 It's all to easy for liberal fucks to be against the invasion of Ukraine, isn't it ? They put their Ukraine flag stickers on their electric cars beside the "coexist" and "save the earth " ones, but where the fuck were they when the bloodthirsty yankee imperialists invaded and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan ? Where were the bumper stickers then ? Of course the russians should get the fuck out of Ukraine, but no one should be invading anyone. When the amerikkkans talk at the u.n., they do so in front of over 80 fucking countries that they have invaded. Fuck the imperialists and fuck nato.

AMERICA: Truly a Model —
of DEPRAVED RACIST GENOCIDE

How can any decent person deny that we need a revolution to overthrow this system?!

by Bob Avakian

January 13, 2023

This is an excerpt from a talk given by Bob Avakian last year to a gathering of revcoms, which he has edited for publication.

Download the PDF:

AMERICA: Truly A Model—of DEPRAVED RACIST GENOCIDE

There is a very sharp conflict now within this country over whether the history of slavery can even be talked about in any real way, with white supremacist fascists attacking and attempting to prevent any serious discussion of this, and especially its actual horrors, with public education a particular focus of this conflict. Sometimes these people will actually say that slavery was not that bad!—or they will insist: “Oh, slavery, that was a long time ago. I had nothing to do with that. That’s long gone. That’s all over. That has nothing to do with what’s going on now. Quit complaining about things that have long been done and over with.” But when you’re talking about this country, as horrific as slavery actually was, it is not a matter of slavery as just some ancient history.

In 2003, I began the speech Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About talking about the “postcards of the hanging,” referring to an opening line in a song by Bob Dylan. Think about the real history of this country. Think about what was going on for nearly 100 years, after the end of the Civil War and the very brief period of Reconstruction, when there was an attempt to actually allow Black people to win some rights—which was then completely overturned and reversed with the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and systematic terror in the South, which the entire ruling class of the country went along with, and institutionalized, as part of a “compromise” that they made in the 1870s. Think about what this means: For nearly 100 years, not only were thousands of Black people lynched, but at many of these lynchings there were mass gatherings of white people, in a picnic and celebratory atmosphere. And then, when the bodies were hung and often burned, many of these white people would go and cut off body parts of the person who’d been lynched as souvenirs, in a carnival atmosphere.

Is this what Biden means when he says America has been an inspiration to the world? (He recently said that America has been an inspiration to the world for over 200 years—which includes the time of slavery, with all its very real horrors, as well as Jim Crow segregation, Ku Klux Klan terror and the thousands of lynchings to which I have referred here.)

And that's not all. Photographs were taken and postcards were made and sold all over the country—postcards of the lynchings. Think about what that says.

In terms of depravity, you can’t find anything Hitler and the Nazis did that was worse than this. You had the Nazi Dr. Mengele who went to the concentration camps and performed grotesque experiments on the bodies of the Jews who were imprisoned there. And that’s horrible. That’s part of one of the worst atrocities in the history of humanity, the whole Holocaust (the systematic slaughter of millions of Jews by the Nazis). But, again in terms of depravity, even after slavery, what was going on for nearly 100 years in this country is no less horrific—it belongs in the same category with the Nazi atrocities—while all the time we are being told that “this is the greatest country in the world, this is the leader of the free world, this is an inspiration to people all over the world.”

And the treatment of Black people in particular in the United States, as well as the whole eugenics thing that arose in this country—where you had the idea put forward that people who were declared “inferior” in one way or another, including disabled people, should not be allowed to reproduce, because it dragged down the human population—that eugenics and that genocidal racism in the United States was a model for what the Nazis did, particularly with the Jews. Just think about that, while we’re being told what a great inspiration this country has been… apparently it was a great inspiration to the Nazis.

And that’s still not all. Even with the ending of the Jim Crow system of segregation and systematic discrimination that was centered in the South but actually existed throughout this country for nearly 100 years—even with the ending of that overt legal segregation and discrimination, with all its terror—there is the continuing horrific oppression of Black people, as well as other people of color.

Today, instead of the Ku Klux Klan in their white robes and hoods, it’s the police in blue (although some of them may still be in the Ku Klux Klan) who carry out the murder of Black people over and over again, as well as Latinos and Native Americans. It is a fact that since 1960 more Black people have been murdered by police than the thousands who were lynched in the time after the Civil War up until 1960. And this, along with mass incarceration, particularly of Black people and Latinos as well, is a concentration of their overall oppression.

Finally, beginning in the 1960s there has been society-wide opposition to all this racist atrocity—opposition in which masses of Black people were joined by large numbers of white people, and others, especially youth. But, despite such massive opposition—which has repeatedly been demonstrated, once again in a huge way in 2020—the racist oppression and terror, yes of genocidal dimensions, goes on and on. Why? Because it is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, which rules in this country and dominates in the world as a whole.

This is the reality of a country and a system that we’re told to celebrate as a great inspiration. And it is only part of the horrors of this system—as much as it is, in a real sense, a concentration of those horrors.

How can any decent person deny that we need a revolution to overthrow this system?!

PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

 This sums up nicely what people's priorities should be. Pull your head out of your ass and see what the fuck is going on here:

PRONOUNS AND STARVING CHILDREN

by Bob Avakian

June 18, 2022

I have previously pointed to this horrific fact:

in the period of slightly more than 75 years since the end of World War 2, because of the way the world is dominated by the system of capitalism-imperialism, at least 350 million children in the Third World have needlessly died because of starvation and preventable disease—a number greater than the entire population of this country!*

And this terrible reality of what amounts to mass extermination of children is just one of the truly horrendous atrocities which this system of capitalism-imperialism imposes on humanity.

Do you think that any of these children—or their loved ones helplessly watching them die these terrible deaths—cared anything about what pronouns people use to describe themselves?

I am not here to argue about what pronouns people use—but I am here to argue about what people’s priorities should be: focusing on things like pronouns, or becoming part of a serious revolutionary struggle to transform the world so that the monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism, all the very real horrors it imposes on the masses of humanity, and the very real threat it poses to the future of humanity, will be swept away.

 

*  See Imperialist Parasitism and “Democracy”: Why So Many Liberals and Progressives Are Shameless Supporters of “Their” Imperialism, and In Light of the Urgency Spoken to in “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating”: A Renewed Challenge: Searching For An Honest Liberal Or Progressive. These articles by Bob Avakian are available at revcom.us. [back]

LEATHERFACE

 I've loved this album for literally decades, so why the shit did it take me so long to buy it ? I had a recorded copy on cassette ( and still do ) that a former bandmate made for me years ago, and I've listened to it thousands of times. 

The album "Mush" by Leatherface came out in 1991, and is one of my favourites of all time.

Poetic lyrics, driving music, some poppier thoughtful songs, and gruff yet melodic vocals make for a masterpiece. Please give it a try.

Good night.

 

DALAI LAMA THE FUCKING CREEP

 Years ago I encountered some friction due to the AK-47 song "Dalai Liar", which calls the dalai lama out on his fucking hypocrisy , along with all of his stupid braindead pandering followers.

And now he asks some child to "suck my tongue "?! What the fuck is that ? His publicists say he likes to tease for innocent fun, but how could that ever be taken out of fucking context ? Fuck his creepiness, his megastar moron followers, and anyone who tries to defend this garbage.

Dalai Lama apologises after kissing boy 

and asking him to 'suck my tongue'

Mon, April 10, 2023 at 1:39 a.m. PDT

The Dalai Lama has apologised after footage emerged showing him kissing a young boy on the lips and asking him to "suck my tongue".

The Buddhist spiritual leader's office said he wanted to apologise to the boy and his family "for the hurt his words may have caused".

It said the 87-year-old "often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way" but he "regrets the incident".

The footage was taken from an event on 28 February when the Dalai Lama addressed a group of students at the Tsuglagkhang temple in Dharamshala, northern India.

In it, a young boy can be seen approaching a microphone and asking the Dalai Lama: "Can I hug you?"

The Nobel Peace Prize winner invites the boy on stage, saying "first here" and pointing to his cheek, which the boy kisses, before he says "then I think finally here also" and points to his lips.

He then pulls the boy's chin towards him and kisses the child on the lips.

Laughter and clapping can be heard on the video.

They then touch heads, before the Dalai Lama says "and suck my tongue" and sticks out his tongue.

When the pair embrace later in the video the Dalai Lama tickles the young boy under the arms.

'He regrets the incident'

In a statement the Dalai Lama's office said: "A video clip has been circulating that shows a recent meeting when a young boy asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama if he could give him a hug.

"His Holiness wishes to apologise to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused.

"His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras. He regrets the incident."

Sticking out one's tongue is a form of greeting in the Dalai Lama's native Tibet.

Previous controversy

It is not the first time the Dalai Lama has caused controversy.

In 2019 he apologised for saying if his successor were a woman "she should be more attractive".

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was born in Tibet and has been living in India as a refugee since 1959 after he fled his home country following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Read this excellent article also :

Revolution in tibet.

PLEASE HELP

 Please find time to help a living legend of the Victoria and international punk scene.

Read about Murray here .

Canada's punk rock and free speech legend Murray Acton has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer... Here in his own words:

"So I guess many of you have seen that the Dayglo's will be on tour next month with Toronto's Random Killing. Well I can now finally say that yes that tour will happen and I will be there. The reason I say this is because something has happened in my life that has made me unsure of how my immediate future would unfold. Two months ago I was diagnosed with colon cancer. It did not really come as a big surprise to me because I had been tested for it right before covid and there was an indication that further testing needed to be done. Well the lockdowns prevented that from happening for the better part of three years. Through that time I could tell something was up so when I finally did manage to get the testing done I had a nasty looking tumour up my ass that had a three year head start on me. I have two oncologists that I am seeing. One of them is a surgeon, and the other is a radiation oncologist. They have decided to give me a 5 day radiation program starting on April 24th. Just today they gave me a cat scan and tattooed a couple of targets on my abdomen. They will then wait for two months to let the radiation shrink the tumour, then sometime at the end of June or early July they will surgically remove a fair bit of my colon. I hope that they will be able to connect what is left of it to my asshole because, well I probably don't need to explain why. I have had this thing in me for three years now which is not good. There is concern that it is metastable and spreading to my other organs but that is not something that I am going to dwell on. I have it firmly in my mind that I am going to defeat this thing. I am not a passive victim of cancer. I with the help of my friends have been reading up on all the latest alternative cancer treatments. I have found a lot of information in the form of peer reviewed papers in medical journals that contrary to what I was told by multiple people during covid-mania I am perfectly capable of reading and understanding and I have selected multiple alternative methods of fighting cancer that have shown promising results in trials, and don't interfere with each other or the traditional therapy. In fact they seem to enhance the effect of each other by attacking the cancer from different angles. In the long run they might end up to be more effective than the traditional therapy but it is not my goal to prove anything here. My only goal is to still be here 10 years from now. Anyway, I am telling you all this because enough people already know that it is only a matter of time before the rumours start flying around and I thought you deserved to hear it from me rather than some distorted gossip. It is the least I can do out of respect for all the years of support you have shown my bandmates and myself. I don't have much choice about touring. It is my only source of income and I'm not going to kid you, these alternative cures come with some expensive supplements, and it is important to me to really kick the shit out of that tumour as much as possible until the surgery date. Besides it's either getting out and visiting all of you again doing the one thing that relieves all my stress or staying home sick and alone with all the stress, worry, and depression, that goes along with that. It's an easy choice, and I am grateful that I have the ability to do that. I want you all to know that the only reason I can do this is because the venues know that if I show up with my guitar, you will all be there buying drinks off of them. I can't thank you enough, it could very well be the thing that makes the difference in my battle. So come on out and see us next month and help me beat cancer."

So let's all give back a little of what he has given us over the past 40 years and let Murray know that he is not taking on this fight alone.

BEYOND FUCKED UP

 This fucking pig has been collecting his over $120,000 annual salary despite all of the fucked up shit he's been doing and has done ? He raped an unconscious woman to "teach her a lesson"?!

I'm sure some people would hope that this stupid fucker gets a lesson taught to him also.

OPP officer found guilty of sexually 

assaulting unconscious woman and 

filming it

Sat, April 1, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. PDT

OPP Const. Jason Redmond was convicted of sexual assault. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press - image credit)

A judge has found that Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Const. Jason Redmond sexually assaulted an unconscious woman while recording it on his mobile phone, and heard from witnesses that Redmond did it to show the victim "how easily she could be raped when she was drunk," and "to teach [her] a lesson."

In a two-day, judge-only trial at a Brockville courthouse last August, Justice Janet O'Brien heard Crown witness testimonies that she recounted when delivering her decision earlier this year, a court transcript obtained by CBC News shows. Redmond was convicted of sexual assault.

The judge read in her ruling that according to one witness, Redmond was "proving a point" to the victim that she had a drinking problem, and "he made the video to show that anybody could rape her."

Redmond was previously convicted of drug trafficking in 2018 but received only one year of probation and no jail time. He has been on paid leave from the OPP since he was charged in that case in 2015.

In Oct. 2021, Redmond was arrested and charged with sexual assault, according to the OPP. In an emailed statement, the OPP said it did not issue a press release informing the public of the charge at the time "in an effort to protect the identity of the victim." Redmond pleaded not guilty.

The final ruling was delivered on Feb. 16, just over five years after the assault happened.

'He thought it was funny'

The court transcript shows that justice O'Brien heard about the assault and the video from five witnesses, including the victim and others in Redmond's inner circle.

CBC News is not naming the victim or the witnesses in this case, as the victim's identity and some of the circumstances surrounding the sexual assault are protected by a publication ban.

Cort Sloan/CBC

According to the court transcript, the judge found that the assault took place in December 2017, after the victim "consumed a large amount of alcohol to the point of extreme intoxication." The court also heard that both the victim and Redmond had used cocaine several times that day.

"[She] lost consciousness either because she went to sleep or as a result of the effects of alcohol, or a combination of these," the judge said.

According to the judge, Redmond told the victim the next day that "he had sexual intercourse with her while she was passed out, that she wasn't aware of it, and that he had recorded it on his phone," and held his phone out to show her.

Justice O'Brien recalled the victim testifying that she was embarrassed she couldn't remember what had happened, so she pushed his hand away, did not watch the video and went about her day as normal.

Shortly after, several people in Redmond's inner circle became aware that the video existed, including those who testified in court.

Three witnesses, not including the victim, said they learned about the video directly from Redmond, who tried to show it to them. Another witness claimed to have unintentionally found the video.

The judge said she heard from one witness who said when Redmond told them about the video, they "thought at first it was a joke because [he] was kind of laughing."

"He appeared to find what he had done funny and was making fun of [the victim]."

Another witness testified that on a different occasion, Redmond said he was "teaching [the victim] a lesson," and laughed about a member of his inner circle finding and watching the video.

The witness who found the video told the court that when they confronted Redmond about it, he said "he did it to teach [the victim] a lesson about how easily she could be raped when she was drunk."

In his defence, court transcripts show that Redmond said none of the Crown witnesses were credible or reliable, including the victim who was "drinking excessively" at the time of the incident. According to the judge, Redmond also brought up how no video was shown to the court, despite several witnesses testifying to its existence.

OPP seeking dismissal

In an emailed statement, OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique said the police force has been seeking dismissal of Redmond since his initial conviction of drug trafficking in 2018.

"This behaviour is unacceptable for any police officer and cannot be tolerated," Carrique wrote.

Carrique explained that the OPP's Professional Standards Unit laid charges under the Police Services Act shortly after Redmond's initial conviction.

He was then convicted on the charges, and the adjudicator for the case ordered that Redmond be dismissed from the OPP but denied a request to avoid automatically staying the conviction and penalty if appealed.

CBC

The OPP wrote that the dismissal ruling was immediately appealed by Redmond, which has allowed him to continue to collect his salary for the last seven and a half years while being suspended on paid leave.

The appeal is now the subject of a hearing on June 15, before the Ontario Civilian Police Commission.

Redmond's name was included on the 2021 Ontario Sunshine List, which is annually published by the province and publicly discloses the names of all public sector employees who earned $100,000 or more.

According to the list, Redmond made $121,047.96 that year.

According to OPP, Redmond is still before the court "facing 17 additional serious criminal charges including assault, aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and others in connection with multiple victims."

He's set to appear before the court for sentencing in this case on April 14.

The Police Association of Ontario, which is the official provincial representative of 45 police associations across the province, told CBC in an emailed statement that it does not condone criminal conduct of any kind, by anyone.

"This case is disturbing and we're glad to see the individual will be held responsible," a spokesperson wrote.

Support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You can access crisis lines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.