Yesterday, May 2nd marked the No One Is Illegal march against the massive deportations of migrant workers and discriminatory immigration policy. We saw a crowd of about 2,000-3,000 people come out. At one point I raced to the front of the line to watch the procession go past. It took a good 25 minutes for everyone to pass by. It was a grand success, we'll see if things are picked up on in the next few days I imagine. At one point heavy rain started to fall, by this point the demo had marched along the streets towards City Hall. It dissipated after a bit and the sun shone once we were finished. A procession then proceeded to University Ave. to join the Tamil Demonstration.
This demonstration by the Tamil Community of Toronto had been ongoing for a few days and nghts now. Initially the demonstration had taken over the entire street in front of the US Consulate, but was recently rounded up along the sidewalk by the police. Today I read some sanitized article in the Toronto Star congratulating Toronto Police on their peaceful means of doing this. What I say yesterday from the police seemed far from peaceful.
I have been disgusted over the past few days hearing Torontonians complaining about being 'inconvenienced' by these protestors. If I was residing elsewhere and back home a massacre, perhaps a genocide, was unfolding in my home country, damn well I would do everything I could in my power, even in my limited power, to do something, anything about it. To many in this sheltered, inward-looking, overly individualistic society, concepts such as genocide and ethnic cleansing are but mild abstractions; events of a past or some distant region. One can imagine to Rwandans and Cambodians, survivors from the Nazi Holocaust, whether they be Jewish, Roma, Slavic, Poles, it is a far more real thing. To many in Toronto the Tamils are coined into the term of 'other' as are often Palestinians, Lebanese and other people who originated from elsewhere other than 'The Occident'. To them it is but an 'other' cause, not connecting the humanity to it and only concerned with one's immediate 'inconvenience'.
Do the streets of Toronto only belong to the European Canadians? I search myself and find this mentality is common...looking at some of the disgusting, racist comments I've seen on various youtube videos covering the Tamil Rallies.
Back to my narrative; I along with a good 30-40 or so other people made our way down University Ave, some with No One Is Illegal signs, others bearing Palestinian flags in a sign of solidarity between struggles, and other banners. From what we saw the Police were quite imposing, as one would expect them to be, friends of mine claimed they saw officers grabbing posters from some of the Tamil demonstrators, posters of blown up images of dead Tamil children and tearing the posters and disposing of them. The Police, who had penned the Tamil Protestors onto a large sidewalk area formed a human barricade disallowing the demonstrators from our demo into the Tamil Protest. Why? The official reason they gave us is: "we had too many sticks".
Ali, a friend of mine, with a megaphone made a speech, announcing that the Toronto Police here were complicit in this (their disposal of the Tamil's signs and posters was evidence of this) and that they wanted to prevent our two movements from merging. With that, the police leapt upon him and made an arrest. Within moments the police human barricade gave through and the crowd filtered into the space, a mere metalic makeshift barricade between them and the larger Tamil rally. The people from the Tamil community came to the forefront, giving out their hands in welcome, thanking us for coming to support them. The police horses then came in. We'd walked into a trap. Children were trampeled on by police horses and we witnessed a young women hit by a cop and kicked on the ground.
Congratulations Toronto Police. As usual, lacking an holistic sense of things, you have radicalized yet another community with overt and plain-to-see brutality. There is a great movement in the works, against racism, brutality & poverty. I am ashamed to be Torontonian today, this is the first time I've ever felt it and I will continue to be ashamed until it's accepted that this city belongs to everyone. I'll hope to have pictures up soon. If anyone lives in the area around York U/Jane-Finch listen to my radio show tomorrow at CHRY 105.5fm at 5:00pm I'll have a bit on it and on the larger Tamil situation in Sri Lanka and in Toronto. If you cant listen on radio stream it at www.chry.fm
