Executive Director's Message

Toronto / January 2024

2024 arrived amid the echoes of war for land and the richness it holds, in the various diasporas here in Ontario and across the country. From Palestine (Gaza) to Sudan; and Congo to Ukraine many of our communities here in our cities and towns are engaged in some discussion, debate, protest, anguish and fear for their loved ones caught in the violent power play of capital and its unrelenting greed.

Toronto / December 2023

Sankofa: An Akan term that means “to go back and get it”, the idea of moving forward while reaching back to connect to one’s heritage. The Akan people are primarily found in today’s Ghana in west Africa.

Toronto / November 2023

Toronto / October 2023

“End renovictions! Bring back rent controls”! “What do we want”? “Rent controls”! “When do we want it”? “Now”!

The chants - the call and response of rallies and demonstrations of years past and current moments of protests, echoed faintly along University Avenue as a scraggly group of just over one hundred concerned residents walked from Toronto City Hall to Queen’s Park.

Toronto / September 2023

It is anti-Black racism. Intentional or not, the result of a shelter and housing crisis and an ongoing flow of asylum seekers into the larger urban centres of Ontario - has resulted in hundreds of refugee claimants sleeping rough on the streets or unsustainably housed in makeshift emergency shelters in the halls of Black churches in the GTA. Many had been moved here by the federal government to appease and support Quebec’s capacity challenges.

Toronto / August 2023

And before I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free…

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen….

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine

Shine all over the world…

By the river of Babylon, where we sat down, and where we wept, as we remembered Zion…

July 2023 / Toronto

The first note of alarm came by email through the African Solidarity Network e-list. The Network is an alliance of leaders of African descent from the continent and the diaspora.

June 2023 / Toronto

May 2023 / Toronto

The stories of escape from escalating indiscriminate violence are harrowing. An adult daughter sharing how it took her and her diabetic mother six days to get to the Egyptian border. Another telling of calling Global Affairs Canada to register herself and family as bullets and bombs dropped all around them and being told to ‘shelter in place’; not hearing back until weeks later when a call came that there was space on a German airlift at a place twenty-five kilometers away. She made it and is now back home in Canada.

The last week of March was a perfect storm. A gathering or cascade of negative news for our most marginalized communities and individuals made vulnerable by systems and political priorities that broaden and deepen the chasm between those who own and control points of access and those who are seen as expendable.