Susan Clairmont: Hamilton activist Sarah Jama: ‘I make people feel uncomfortable sometimes’
The day Sarah Jama won a Woman of Distinction award for community leadership, she was also facing criminal charges.
That dichotomy nicely sums up the activist's relationship with Hamilton.
Some want to honour her. Others want to denounce her.
Many underestimate her.
Jama, 27, is familiar to those paying attention to the city's most contentious social issues. Homelessness. Poverty. Black Lives Matter. Defund police. The environment, LRT, disability rights. Food insecurity, mental health funding, urban expansion. Land occupation, mask mandates, vaccine clinics, the crisis in long-term care ...
Jama is often the face of protests. The voice of campaigns. She is the one quoted by the media, the one racking up the likes and taking the hate on Twitter, the one being arrested.
Regardless of what side of the Jama divide you fall on, it is difficult not to be intrigued by her story.
She is a beguiling underdog with a razor-sharp intellect.
Her entry into this world wasn't easy. Jama was born in Toronto, three months premature and with cerebral palsy. Doctors tried to convince her mother to have an abortion, saying the child would be a vegetable."
I was a burden to the world," Jama once wrote of herself.
But her mother, Amoun, a Somali from Kenya, wasn't having it. Her baby would be given a chance.
Jama moved from Toronto to Edmonton and back to Toronto in her youth. She was Black and disabled and Muslim. She grew up on social assistance. She was bullied.
She was also resilient.
In kindergarten, she went to a school for children with disabilities. For Grade 1, Amoun enrolled her in the same school as her older brother and sister. Her mom pushed the school board to install railings for the stairs and bathroom.
My mom is one of the strongest people I know. She fought to get me everything I needed," Jama says. She fought the system."
Her mom encouraged her to advocate for herself.
She remembers being four years old and hearing parents in the schoolyard ask her mother what was wrong with Jama.
My mom would say, Ask her yourself. She's right there.' I had to learn to define what disability means to me in my own words."
Then she met George.
George was a friend in high school who, like Sarah by that time, used a wheelchair. He dreamed of going to a specialized Toronto arts school but couldn't because it didn't have an elevator.
That blew my mind," says Jama. It was her awakening to ableism.
Using public transit alone for the first time, Jama made her way to a Toronto District School Board meeting. She wanted to tell the board about George.
But she hadn't known the rules. She was not on the agenda.
They told me I didn't have the right to talk to them," she says. I didn't understand bureaucracy until then."
That demoralizing experience taught her something critical: Unless I could speak the language of people in positions of power, I would never be able to make change in a world that wasn't built for me."
She immersed herself in learning about structural barriers for people with disabilities, organizational power structures and procedures for committee meetings.
You can't really take down a building without understanding its blueprints first."
Jama also confronted other major components of her life.
Mental illness, for instance, runs in her family.
For a while, Amoun moved the children to a shelter for victims of domestic violence.
We didn't have a lot, but we had each other," she says emotionally. I learned about caring for somebody you don't know ... I learned that a life can be changed because of that one nice social worker. That one nice shelter worker. That one landlord."
In 2012, Jama and her mom landed in Hamilton.
Jama was accepted to McMaster University for social psychology, becoming the first person in her family to go to university.
One of her classes was Critical Perspectives on Mental Health with associate professor Ameil Joseph.
Jama has a humble curiosity," Joseph says. He looked forward to her wheeling over after class to ask even more questions.
The teaching flowed both ways.
I never felt Sarah was a student of mine," Joseph says. I learn from her all the time. She always has a perspective I hadn't thought about."
Jama easily draws connections between issues that others struggle to see, Joseph says.
Sarah's activism is something else. It's so coherent. She is thinking about intersection all the time."
The legacy of colonialism on racism, or ableism, for example.
Then Jama takes it a step further. She transforms theory into action. She moves the conversation out to the front lines, visiting homeless encampments or delivering food to the hungry.
She is always thinking about how to mobilize. Always thinking about ways of bringing people together. Always thinking about who we've left out."
Joseph teaches a course on people who have contributed to social movements. Angela Davis, he lectures, changed the way we talk about abolition.
Sarah is one of those people," he says. We will be talking about her for generations."
Rogue radical?
Joseph knows not everyone sees Jama as a positive force in the community.
Some see her as a rogue radical who is only up to no good," he says.
A quick scroll through comments on Jama's social media accounts reflects that.
I've had some really mean messages that I've had to go to therapy for," Jama says. Trolls have been blocked. Lately, the mention of her name on social media brings a barrage from those who say she is a scofflaw who ought to do as police say.
Yet she has no plans to stop.
The people who are angry at me for not following the system's way are comfortable with the way things are functioning," she says. I make people feel uncomfortable sometimes."
When Jama was in second year at Mac, her mom was accepted there too as a sociology student.
We actually went to school together," Jama says.
Jama saw university as an opportunity to learn outside the classroom as much as in one. She wanted to make friends, which she finds difficult because she has social anxiety.
So she joined clubs and helped create positive spaces. She learned to organize, rally and protest.
It helped me learn how to connect with people."
When Jama ran for president of the McMaster Students Union, her mom helped put posters up around campus. Jama didn't win, but became the first visibly disabled elected student assembly representative.
Jama also became president of the McMaster Womanists, a gender-based, anti-Black violence healing group.
It was at a Womanists coffee house that Matthew Green - then a new member of Hamilton city council and now an MP - laid eyes on Jama for the first time.
This young student rolled up to the front of the room and proceeded to sing Lean on Me' with her mother. It was Sarah Jama."
This was someone who was constantly pushing outside of her comfort zone to have her voice heard," he says. It has become a metaphor for the way she has taken on really critical and serious issues."
After graduating, Jama interned as a community engagement liaison in Green's office.
He says she has a piercing analysis that cuts through the bullsh-t of politics and of power and really exposes some fundamental ugly truths about the experiences of people living in Canada."
Like Joseph, Green says Jama is destined to be a historical figure."
Jama used her city politics experience to become campaign co-manager for Nrinder Nann in her successful bid to win a seat on council.
Around that time, the broader community began to notice Jama.
The Hamilton Spectator wrote its first story about her in 2017 when she won a John C. Holland Award for political action.
Within days of the pandemic shutting down Ontario, Jama launched a Facebook group called CareMongering, to connect people with necessities.
Later, public health leaders asked Jama, who was working at the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, to become a vaccine ambassador" to help the racialized community get access to COVID vaccinations.
Even while she was working alongside some community leaders, she was challenging others.
She has advocated against police brutality and called for a defunding of police, with that money being reallocated to affordable housing. It is a position taken by defund police supporters throughout North America and has even garnered some support within Hamilton's city council.
However, Jama's stance has pitted her against Hamilton police Chief Frank Bergen and Mayor Fred Eisenberger, former chair of the police board.
In November 2020, as many as 100 protesters from the Hamilton Encampment Support Network (HESN) pitched tents alongside homeless people in front of city hall to demand defunding. The protesters called their enclave Freedom Camp.
Jama was an organizer.
Police issued her a $100,000 ticket for violating pandemic gathering rules in the Reopening Ontario Act. She ripped it to bits as fellow protesters cheered.
We're not going anywhere," she shouted.
Eisenberger refused her invitation to come out to the tents and meet with her. (He did offer to meet privately inside city hall, but she refused.) He said defund police is not a rational notion" and one that's certainly not supported by the broader community."
Bergen said she was conflating" policing with a housing crisis.
The occupation culminated on Day 10 with Hamilton's bylaw department ordering the removal of the tents, citing violation of the same laws that prohibit encampments. Workers handed out trespass notices and tore down tents.
In response, protesters moved inside city hall to stage a sit-in near the mayor's office. Jama and others were physically removed by police.
Jama has been highly critical of the role the mayor and chief have played in dismantling homeless encampments.
See what I'm fighting for'
Which brings us to Jama's most notable moment.
On the morning of Nov. 24, 2021, there was a fire in an encampment at J.C. Beemer Park. It engulfed several tents and damaged a hydro line.
Jama rushed over to help.
Firefighters, hydro crews and police were there. Bylaw officers came to enforce an eviction notice and tear down what remained of the encampment. Police have said that was so hydro workers could make the area safe.
As police cordoned off the area, about two dozen HESN members arrived. Protesters, including Jama, broke through the police tape.
There was a physical clash between police and protesters.
They're using the fire as an excuse to get rid of people," Jama told The Spec that day.
Jama was arrested and charged with assaulting police and obstructing police. On Nov. 26, outside police headquarters, HESN members attempted to put up a tent. Officers began making arrests and another clash occurred.
One protester was pinned to the ground under an officer's knee, a moment captured on video. The person pinned said the officer was on their neck. Police called it a shoulder pin." The province's Special Investigations Unit reviewed the matter and ruled there was no wrongdoing by the officer.
Supporters of Jama and five others facing charges related to those encampment protests began a social media campaign to demand the charges be dropped.
In December, Chief Bergen sent an email to leaders of the Black community, advising them police would work closely with the Crown to seek out all possible resolutions."
He also said the events that have transpired in recent weeks have left the Black community hurting and I want to acknowledge that police interactions with community have played a part ... While I think we can all agree that things could have been done differently, my hope is that there is opportunity to move forward in good faith and in the interest of developing a relationship with the Black community in Hamilton."
Jama points to this email as an acknowledgment that police bear some responsibility for the volatile clashes between officers and demonstrators.
Earlier in March, in a Zoom court appearance, Jama and the others formally took responsibility for their actions and agreed to a peace bond that will last until November. Conditions include not crossing police tape to enter a restricted area; not interfering with police operations related to the homeless; not participating in demonstrations in public places unless it is peaceful and lawful.
Jama is currently executive director of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario and is preparing to teach a course in Disability Justice at McMaster.
And she is raising her 15-year-old nephew.
All I want is for people to be treated decently," she says. For people who don't have a lot, to be treated with care and compassion."
People see what I'm fighting against. I want them to see what I'm fighting for."
Susan Clairmont is a justice columnist at The Spectator. sclairmont@thespec.com