Speakers include:
Bridget Tolley, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Sophie Larmarche Harkat, Faye Estrella (Festrell) and more...
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination honoured on March 21st marks the anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa when white apartheid police opened fire on hundreds of South Africans protesting against Apartheid's passbook laws, killing 67 and wounding 186. It has become a day for anti-racist action around the world, not only to remind ourselves of the past and present racism in our society but also to strengthen our resistance against white supremacy in all facets of life. The 1960 incidence in South Africa will not be remembered as a single example of racialized violence that happened in a far off place and in a distant past, but as a continuing process of colonization that has also existed here on Turtle Island (also known as North America) for more than 519 years.
Canada is a white settler country established on stolen Indigenous lands. Canada is also an apartheid state that supports other Apartheid regimes such as Israel that occupies Indigenous Palestinian territories. The legacy of ongoing colonialism lives on as the Canadian government actively participates in the violent dispossession and destruction of Indigenous peoples’ lands through resource extraction projects like the Alberta Tar Sands and through assimilation legislation such as the Indian Act. The consistent silencing and lack of restorative justice for the over 600 missing and murdered Indigenous women and the socioeconomic deprivation of First Nations peoples living on Reserves like Attawapiskat exposes Canada's ultimate objective of genocide of Indigenous peoples.
The speedy and undemocratic passing of the Omnibus Crime Bill and the ironically named Human Smuggling Bill C-4 now in its second reading, are further examples of the Conservative's racist agenda. These racist laws backed by the recent expansion of prisons are intended to criminalize and incarcerate marginalized peoples including Indigenous and other racialized peoples, migrant workers and asylum seekers. In addition, the racial effects of mechanisms such as Security Certificates that targets foreign nationals and non-citizens living in Canada, has had devastating effects on the lives of those subject to a certificate and on the lives of their families. We also know that in communities of color, racial profiling is often practised by the police to put our youth behind walls and bars, stacked like sardines, their bodies commodified into the prison industrial complex. Once these prisons are full, private industry then lobbies the state for private for-profit super prisons.
Racism is dehumanizing. Ending racism is a precondition of a just world; it is the responsibility of all peoples.
Please join us in solidarity on March 24th as we rally in our communities to expose and oppose racism. On this day we are remembering those who have fought and died fighting against racism and other forms of oppression by actively renewing our steadfast resistance within our communities.
We encourage our friends and allies to be pro-active in countering racism.
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