My 2021 Canada Day

 

I don't celebrate Canada Day anymore. Not for the past several years. My explanation for that is here. I tend not to do anything on Canada Day, one way or the other. But this year, well, there are these weekly "De-Fund the Police" rallies in front of the Toronto Police Headquarters on College Street and this week the rally happened to fall on Canada Day. The organizers announced that they would be demonstrating on College Street and then marching down Yonge Street to Dundas Square to join the Anti-Canada Day rally that had been organized by Idle No More.

I thought that the recent attack on the homeless encampment at Trinity-Bellwoods Park and the discovery revelations of the mass graves of First Nations children on the grounds of former residential schools made me want to join these rallies just to stand and be counted. 

I mean, the money that went into the Trinity-Bellwoods action, and the sheer barbarism of the policy! Rents are sky-high. Incomes are stagnant. The pandemic has thrown thousands of people in Toronto out of work. People have no homes. They get a tent and they live in parks, or under bridges or under the Gardiner Expressway. And what do the authorities do? They destroy the encampments, throw the homeless people's few belongings into garbage trucks, and tell them to go to the overcrowded, COVID-infested shelters. 

[To be fair, the city did make new temporary housing available during the pandemic, in hotels that would otherwise be closed and in other places, but the crisis is so enormous that these efforts are clearly insufficient.]

And then there's the mass graves. As I said in a recent post, someone on the rabble/babble discussion board informed me about how often times, when First Nations children died of tuberculosis or abuse at a residential school, the school authorities wouldn't even bother informing the parents. They'd just dump the childrens' bodies in pits and ignore the eventual pleas from the families asking after their loved ones. (I did see a case where a school did inform the parents that their child had died. But they rejected the request that the child's body be returned home. In a typed letter, the authorities write that it wasn't "policy" to pay the freight costs to send the body home by train. Of course the Canadian government did pay to transport the stolen children TO the residential school!)

And, despite what partisan lunatics and scumbags will tell you, these crimes took place under BOTH of Canada's major parties. (And I've no doubt, seeing them in action at the provincial level, that the NDP would have been no different.) 

And the Canadian state and Canadian governments have known about these mass graves the entire time. Imagine this: After years of denial and lies, the wealthiest man in town admits that he was wrong to kidnap poor people's children and force them to join his cult, while all the while starving and abusing them. By some mysterious process, the town had come to sympathize with the poor people and the courts had ruled that he'd done them wrong and forced him to admit it and pay them some compensation. He did apologize and he did pay some of the money. But the poor people wanted to know where the bodies of the children who never came back were buried. He ignored them. At their own expense, they found the bodies. And then he uttered yet more empty apologies and platitudes.

So I dragged myself down to College Street. I got there a few minutes late and it was already in full swing. Maybe fifty people, ... maybe one hundred at the most. A speech about colonization and imperialism from some Arab guy was winding up. Then they started chanting: "From Turtle Island to Palestine, Occupation is a crime!" Over and over. Then a First Nations woman took the megaphone. She said that she had been sexually trafficked and that the police knew and did nothing about it. They only do things TO her people, nothing FOR them. Then the Arab guy started up again with his rhymes and getting the crowd to chant: "If they won't offer a solution; We will start a revolution!" "Revolution! Revolution!" Over and over again. 

I thought: "Are you really planning on revolution? With these numbers? Are you being serious?"

Then he returned to "From Turtle Island to Palestine; Occupation is a crime!"

I've heard enough empty chanting at rallies to last me a lifetime. I couldn't take anymore so I headed down to Dundas Square early. I got there and saw lots of orange shirts. Many worn by white people. There were nowhere near enough demonstrators to fill the Square but the rally wasn't due to start before another 45 minutes. Eventually almost twenty more people showed up and they started the rally. A line of activists (including children) held up letters that spelled out "No Pride in Genocide." Little else happened and then the crowd from the De-Fund the Police arrived. 

The young man with the megaphone started up with the rhyming and the chanting again. The "Turtle Island to Palestine" one. The "No Solution/We Will Start a Revolution." Then they threw in "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!" Finally, the old standby: "No Justice? No Peace!"

That last one: How do non-violence advocates imagine their shouting "No Justice, No Peace!" sounds? If you're dedicated to peaceful protest, that chant is merely empty verbiage. 

I've heard all these stupid chants before. They only left out: "Hey-hey! Ho-ho! [Insert Name Here] has got to go!"

Listen: If you threaten "revolution" while making no serious plans for a revolution, you're just being childish. If you shout "The people united will never be defeated" when you're just a tiny band of activists, you look silly. If you threaten "No peace!" while professing non-violence and while also not having any plans for any serious non-violent disruption, you're just blowing smoke. 

I'm a dispirited, pessimistic, cosmic nihilist. I couldn't take it anymore and so I went home.