The weather outside as I write this belies the fact that it is mid-March and we are less than a week away from the official start of Spring. But the frigid cold temperatures we have experienced in the past week did not deter the tens of thousands of women, children and male and non-binary allies who showed up to celebrate and protest across the province as we observed International Women’s Day.
As I walked the cold Toronto streets on Saturday February 4, in solidarity with Muslim Canadians and with immigrants and refugees from the seven Muslim majority countries banned by Executive Order by the US President, I couldn’t help but reflect how different this Black Lives Matter Toronto led solidarity march was from the women’s march held in January on these same cold streets. There was the difference in numbers of course – sixty thousand at the women’s march versus a few thousand at the Muslim solidarity march, but even more important was the make-up of the crowd. At Saturday’s march the crowd was primarily young and of colour. Muslim women in hijab and bare headed, Black and Indigenous people, college and university students, young and not so young workers, activists, Faith leaders and representatives from the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Yoruba, Akan, Voodun traditions, Agnostics and Atheists all chanting and marching in solidarity, saying with one voice “not in my name’.
November has been filled with surprises so far. Here it is mid-month and at the time of this writing we are enjoying weather that reminds us of early Fall. The leaves are mostly gone but the memory of the glorious reds, yellows, oranges and browns are fresh in our minds and remind us of why we treasure our country and its changing seasons.
There are two initiatives that have been my focus for the past few weeks that I want to share with you. While the links between the two may not be casually apparent, they are related as both their goals are about change – attitudinal and systems change.
Sometimes symmetry is what you don’t want to happen, even when it benefits one’s cause. This is the situation we find ourselves in as we launch the first phase of the Council’s campaign against racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. In our very many discussions and debates about the content, analysis, tone and messaging of the campaign we talked about competing isms, about intersectionalities, about social construction of identities and about the very real soul destroying experiences of individuals and communities who are marginalized, excluded and ‘othered’ within our society.
(This installment of the ED message is taken from a keynote address to the Employment Ontario Leadership Summit in May 2016. It has been edited for publication.)
This and That…
We are in the midst of an election that has exposed the ugly underbelly of Canadian racism and Islamophobia clothed in pro-women rhetoric and the hesitation of many of our elected representatives, except for a few brave and principled souls like Calgary Mayor Nenshi who took to the airways to denounce in no uncertain terms the slippery slope of racist wedge politics.