My Experience Delegating at Regional Council
Researcher Positionality and Gaming Culture : My Experience Delegating at Regional Council
Introduction: Contextualizing the Event
I recently gave a delegation at regional council in response to Mat Siscoe, the mayor of St. Catharines, signing a letter asking Doug Ford to use the notwithstanding clause to forcibly remove encampments of unhoused people (Draaisma, 2024). This clause allows the provincial and federal governments to violate certain aspects of the charter of rights and freedoms. Regional Councillor Haley Bateman put forward a motion that would see the region oppose its use, and I was to speak in support of her motion (Sawchuk, 2025). My delegation mostly focused on the colonial underpinnings of the housing crisis, how the region refuses to truly reckon with that fact, and the cultural consequences of not taking a firm stance against forced displacement (Waziruddin, 2025).
While the motion technically passed, it was rendered toothless via an amendment spearheaded by Diana Huson. It’s no coincidence that Diana Huson and Mat Siscoe played key roles in suppressing the political rights of the Palestinian community last year (Iorfida, 2024). When the community requested that the Niagara sign be lit in pan-Arab colours to honour those murdered by the Israeli military, they pulled out every dirty trick in the book to deny us fair treatment under the law. Similarly, it’s also no coincidence that Councillor Haley Bateman was the one who motioned to have the Palestinian community respected. These politicians have constructed their identities in such a way that renders their positions on issues wholly predictable. For worse, or for better. Since I’m not a politician in a liberal democracy, my identity doesn’t have to quantify or encapsulate itself for public consumption. However, as I will detail in this article, my identity—whether Muslim, researcher, or Palestinian in diaspora—shapes and is shaped by my political interactions.
Constructing Identity Through “Activism” and Research
I’m not sure if I like the term “activist.” I don’t tend to call myself one, nor do I particularly like when others attribute that label to my actions. From my perspective, that title is reserved for those who act within the status quo, and when someone deviates from it, they are transformed from “activist” to “militant,” and criminalized just as quickly. The story of how my Ummah (the concept of a community of believers) in general, and my family in particular have been criminalized is out of scope, so for lack of a better term, I’ll label my actions “activism.” I engaged in this “activism” for a few key reasons. The first is that I believe no one should remain silent when human rights are being violated, and the notwithstanding clause is by definition only invoked when the already flimsy charter of rights and freedoms is being violated. This belief comes from my identity as a Muslim. As such, I look to the teachings of our Prophet, may peace be upon him (PBUH), to guide my actions. In that tradition, I will share one of the most widely quoted Hadiths (oral anecdotes) of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH):
Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or he is an oppressed one. People asked, “O Allah’s Messenger! It is all right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?” The Prophet said, “By preventing him from oppressing others” (Mujahid, 1997, p. 362).
I interpret this Hadith to mean that I’m obligated to fight oppression from whatever angle my position affords me. The other reason is positionality — as defined by the position one has chosen to adopt within a given project. This is a slight deviation from the concept of positionality in the article by Holmes (2020), since while I am using it to encapsulate both my political action and my research, Holmes is specifically writing about researchers undertaking a study. Politically, the position I decided to take here was to stand with Indigenous people, who constitute a disproportionately large portion of those victimized by the housing system in the Niagara region. While 28% of the unhoused population is Indigenous (Start Me Up Niagara, 2025), they make up only 2.9% of the broader regional population (Government of Canada, 2020). This suggests that violating the human rights of the unhoused would disproportionately impact the Indigenous peoples in Niagara. But what led me to interpret this as oppression? Holmes suggests that:
Novice researchers should realize that, right from the very start of the research process, that their positionality will affect their research and will impact on their understanding, interpretation, acceptance, and belief, or non-acceptance and disbelief of other’s research findings (p. 7).
I knew that to be the case coming into my Master’s degree, since I was committed to centralizing the Palestinian struggle for liberation in all my work (Gebril, 2024). My experience as a Palestinian forces me to see my plight reflected in the impact invoking the notwithstanding clause would have on Indigenous communities. The familial experience of forced displacement from Palestine during 1948 (Pappé, 2006) in general, and my forced displacement from Lebanon in specific (Nafaa, 2008), compels me to interpret this political moment as Indigenous people being forcibly displaced for no reason other than the comfort of White bourgeoisie settlers. I saw this connection while applying for research grants last year. The grant proposal I ended up writing would have me looking at the various ways videogames perpetuate the Canadian housing crisis via the reproduction of colonial rhetoric. It was the research I had already conducted for that grant proposal that led to my interpretation, and my position against the use of the notwithstanding clause.
In this way, my position as a Muslim, and a member of the Palestinian diaspora influenced my research, which, in turn, fed back into my “activism.” I expect this give and take will continue. For instance, the videogame culture discussed by Paaßen et al. (2017) has clearly forged contemporary politics. That the Mayor of St. Catharines is a prolific Reddit user, whose base is composed of the same #GamerGate White men mentioned in the article, speaks to that fact. When The Standard quotes me as “[accusing] councillors of spending their time on Reddit farming internet points and wanting to look cool rather than resolving the problem” (Sawchuk, 2025), I’m very specifically addressing Mat and his neo-conservative supporters. That Paaßen et al. are hopeful the gamer stereotype can be diversified is of cold comfort. The fact that this group of neo-conservatives from the #GamerGate era have consolidated their political power worries me that it’s ‘too little, too late.’ The big question on my mind after this experience is: Given the position videogames occupy in the status quo, can they be used in mounting an effective resistance against it? The desire to explore this question is what inspired my presentation for the Humanities Graduate Students Symposium (2025), and as I continue to navigate this political landscape, I’m certain new intersections between the academic and the political will emerge.
Conclusion: Impact and Identity
It’s easy to get cynical when occupying those intersections. Both academia and politics can feel like making tiny steps on the shoulders of giants, and like there is no end in sight. Here again, my Deen (way of life or “religion”) provides me with meaning for continued action:
The Prophet (PBUH) said, ‘If the (signs of the) Hour [(the apocalypse)] appear and one of you has a palm-cutting in his hands and it is possible to plant it before the Hour (actually) comes, he should plant it’ (al-Bukhari, 2014, p. 318).
While the tafsir (commentary) by al-Bukhari emphasizes the benefit of planting trees, and there is certainly a lot of evidence for that interpretation, my interpretation of the anecdote is that of acting in the face of apocalypse. That one must strive towards a goal even in the face of disaster, perhaps specifically because a disaster is coming. This meaning is what allows me to continue on this path, despite the hardship, and the perceived lack of impact. It’s the painkiller that keeps this process manageable (Marx, 1970).
I’ve spent much of this article embedding my experience in Islamic tradition and anecdote. However, the primary political current among Palestinians in the diaspora is the Marxist-Leninist tradition; therefore, much of my political education comes from that tradition. Marx (1970), Lenin (2010), and Kanafani (2022) are the usual suspects in politically active diaspora circles. In that tradition my interaction with the local legislature is as Marx described:
That all as individuals want to participate integrally in the legislature is nothing but the will of all to be actual (active) members of the state, or to give themselves a political existence, or to prove their existence as political and to effect it as such. The fact, therefore, that civil society invades the sphere of legislative power en masse, and where possible totally, that actual civil society wishes to substitute itself for the fictional civil society of the legislature, is nothing but the drive of civil society, to give itself political existence, or to make political existence its actual existence (p. 118).
My experience isn’t embedded in one tradition or the other. My metaphysics and my politics do not have a such a dividing line. During the apocalypse in Gaza brought on by American bombs (Abdo, 2024), it was prayer and the Ummah that kept me sane. Neither political action nor research can be effectively conducted if one is overwhelmed by the pain of these crimes. Therefore, in my case, the metaphysical was what allowed me to engage in the political. Some may view my Deen as being at odds with my political education, especially considering Marx’s (1970) critiques of religion. While I’m sure scholars and activists have opined about the intersection of religion and Marxism, anecdotally, that has never been much of a contradiction in my circles. In my community — regardless of one’s “secondary identities” — we continue fighting for what’s right, despite our setbacks or failures, because that’s who we are (Janet, 2023).