We need more of it, but to sustain ourselves it’s important to recognize our victories. Activism works when enough of us participate.
Justin Trudeau cancelled a meeting with the Italian Prime Minister. Chrystia Freeland failed to show at a $750 plate fundraiser. Arms firms’ operations were slowed in many cities. Palestine solidarity protesters accomplished these and other feats over the past week.
In the previous weeks Trudeau backed out of a Winnipeg fundraiser, Vancouver’s port was shuttered for half a day and a minister was forced out of the BC cabinet due to protests. Over the past five months dozens of politicians’ offices have been occupied while ministers and MPs have been heckled hundreds of times by anti-genocide activists.
Alongside a slew of targeted actions, there have been hundreds of large-scale demonstrations against Canada’s complicity in Israel’s violence. In Montreal there have been mass protests 23 weekends in a row. The smallest march was around 1,000 and the biggest 50,000. In most other major cities, the dynamic has been similar with basically every Canadian city witnessing its largest ever Palestine solidarity demonstrations.
In a quarter century of activism, I’ve only seen one more intense/sustained popular uprising: 2012 Quebec student strike. The movement against Canada’s contribution to Israel’s genocide is the most intense and sustained international focused movement since the struggle against the US war in Vietnam.
It’s also the biggest ever protest movement of racialized Canadians. A disproportionately large percentage of those taking to the streets are of Palestinian or Arab background as well as Brown and Black folk.
I recently heard representatives of a predominantly older white left organization talking about bringing in younger racialized activists. But the group has offered little in the way of support to the popular uprising led by Arab and other racialized youth. It’s remarkable seeing the X accounts of leftists such as Jim Stanford and Maude Barlow. Imagine claiming you were on the left during the Vietnam war and never even tweeting a statement opposing Canada’s role in the genocide. Whether motivated by western chauvinism or their mainstream standing, it is shameful.
While any movement that challenges power will be vilified, there has likely never been a more intense outpouring of slander against the justice minded. In a comical example, the National Post recently launched Channel Israel to respond to “constant protests that have disrupted businesses and religious institutions, reshaped the political landscape and specifically targeted the Jewish community, leaving many Canadian Jews feeling unsafe.”
The protests reflect decades of grassroots organizing, as my personal experience attests to. During my first days at Concordia University in 2000 some activist handed me a booklet, which I later read at a nearby pizza shop, opening my eyes to Palestine dispossession.
Whenever Israel finally stops murdering and starving Palestinians in Gaza, the protests are likely to subside. But the political landscape has changed forever. Palestine solidarity organizational infrastructure has grown substantially and Zionist forces will never have the same influence in leftist and social democratic institutions, including the NDP. While quite weak six months ago, broader anti-war infrastructure has also been bolstered.
For many, Canada’s role in enabling Israel’s genocide has punctured benevolent Canadian foreign policy mythology. Seeing the decrepit nature of the political and media establishment may also spill into a broader anti-systemic challenge.
To mark 150 days of genocide there will be a National March on Ottawa on Saturday. La lucha continua.
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