Reports on the Montreal demo
Here are some reports on the Montreal demo in support of protesters in the US. Radio-Canada says thousands turned out and TVA had an en direct with reports, tweets and photos. Twitter photos from CBC’s Simon Nakonechny, video from CTV’s Billy Shields. La Presse reminds us of the police deaths of people of colour here: Fredy Villanueva, Nicholas Gibbs, Pierre Coriolan, Alain Magloire.
david112 08:59 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
There was a big protest against the American cops in Berlin too.
Like, do these people just want to be part of the American party? I think again of my cousin who follows US politics ultra closely and yet knows next to nothing about politics in his town, in Quebec, or in Canada.
Losers.
That joke that Reagan used to tell: An American and a Russian are chatting about political freedoms. The American says that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, ”To hell with Ronald Reagan.” Unimpressed, the Russian replies: ”That’s nothing, we are just as free. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan,’ too.”
david112 09:18 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
And I see that they had a big demonstration in Vancouver too, with signs directed to Trump and all the rest.
Just want to again underline the fundamental strangeness of a bunch of Canadians protesting stuff happening in a foreign country.
Their actions are totally irrelevant to effecting any sort of change in the USA, where virtually nobody will ever know that they were protesting up in Canada or over in Berlin.
Even if Americans knew about these protests, the American responses would be confusion, annoyance at the presumptuousness, or a polite “thanks, but we’ve got this.”
And it’s not just following the freakshow like it’s Game of Thrones, which would be the obvious assumption if a person were forced to explain it to an American.
No, it’s something much stranger. The marxists talk about false consciousness, and psychologists talk about fantasy prone personalities – for some reason, there’s this collective delusion that grips a small but significant segment of the population, causing them to believe, in some important way, that they belong to the American family.
This bizarre delusion causes them to neglect their basic responsibilities in the polity of which they actually form part.
walkerp 09:26 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
David, there is police brutality against people of colour (and other marginalized groups) here in Canada. Plenty.
Tee Owe 09:26 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
David112 – These protests are not so much against American cops as against racism, which people experience in all of these countries.
Douglas 09:49 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
David112
The protestors in Canada protest because they need to feel like they are a part of something important and they don’t know how to do that in their own personal / professional lives.
Like the American Psycho once said, “I need to fit in”.
Kate 10:29 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
David∞, Douglas, walkerp is right. It isn’t wanting to play along, it’s that this is a moment when people want to emphasize that racial profiling by police, and the attendant disproportionate numbers of arrests and police killings of people of colour, are not acceptable.
Think about it. The conversation a black parent has to have with their children about interactions with police is completely different from the one you would have with your white kids as a white parent. It’s an entirely different experience, and you have to make an exercise of your imagination to grasp that.
Meezly 10:46 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Douglas – “The protestors in Canada protest because they need to feel like they are a part of something important and they don’t know how to do that in their own personal / professional lives.”
davdi112 – “Just want to again underline the fundamental strangeness of a bunch of Canadians protesting stuff happening in a foreign country. ”
It’s not strange at all. It’s called solidarity.
Kevin 11:20 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
While it’s crucial, in this era of fading MSM, to pay attention to news in our own neighbourhoods…
everyone knows we’re all globalists now.
Canada is a nation of immigrants and anyone who doesn’t have friends and family in other countries is an outlier. Geez, there are even U.S. presidential candidates who grew up in Canada!
But riddle me this: how is it that the two guys who have been the loudest advocates for reopening businesses are the only guys who fail to understand how intimately and intrinsically Canada is linked to the United States?
david112 12:06 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
I mean, there are straight up no black people in Vancouver, yet the protesters were shouting “black lives matter” and doing the black power salute (which is a truly strange thing to see a huge group of white people doing). You’re telling me that’s because of an “intimate link” to the US or a vague call to end racism? No way. I could buy that it’s a solidarity protest, if I didn’t already know exactly what’s going on.
Kevin touches on it – a lot of Canadians simply feel like they’re part of the American family, which they know “intimately” by consuming an enormous amount of American media/entertainment/culture. Since Canada’s culture is very weak, many Canadians have adopted the American one as a co-culture, and that co-culture has in many ways supplanted many of the functions that culture plays in normal places, for instance, in Quebec.
A Quebecois talks about Americans as “they” and many Canadians are a whisper away from talking about the Americans as “we.”
However, as most Canadians are rudely reminded whenever they actually visit the US, Americans do not think of Canada very often, do not feel any sort of kinship to it, they 100% think about Canadians in a way that would be considered offensive “othering” by these people protesting, and this “globalist” ethos is definitely not an American attitude, at all, so that this feeling that many Canadians have that they’re American by dint of a global identity is, ironically, a super un-American sense of belonging/citizenship.
Which brings me back to the fundamental strangeness of these deeply-held feelings – so deeply-held that you have my cousin talking about Arizona senate race elections, you have large groups of white people shouting slogans that only make sense in the context of the US history of segregation and the rest, and you have back-filling (at most semi-plausible) justifications for these when we all know what the story is.
david112 12:08 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
And that story, friends, is very strange.
Tee Owe 12:14 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
David – I’m getting drawn into this against my better judgment – it’s about racism – check out New Zealand, and in Germany racism bubbles under the surface all the time. This murder in Minneapolis is a catalyst, solidarity is part of it but it’s got more to do with what people have been repressing for too long.
Thanks for the Reagan joke BTW – I have some others, another time
qatzelok 12:17 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
@David112: “Just want to again underline the fundamental strangeness of a bunch of Canadians protesting stuff happening in a foreign country. ”
Everyone is reacting to things that happened on their own television or electronic device in their own home. Everyone is reacting to an event that mainstream media has decided to spotlight. This makes it fairly easy for (USA) media to decide how we (viewers) feel and how we act.
Kate 12:20 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
David∞, our lives in Canada are always affected by American politics, yet we can’t vote there and have little or no impact on social change there. It’s not unusual that some people’s interest in it is disproportionate. I find it odd sometimes myself: I told a brief anecdote not long ago about observing someone more interested in the minutiae of U.S. politics than the immediate effects of local politics on his life, and it isn’t uncommon.
But what’s happening in Vancouver is not germane to this blog. We’ve seen police here, in Montreal, overreacting to situations involving people of colour, arresting them and sometimes killing them well out of proportion to their numbers. People of colour are a red flag, a red rag, to police, and despite repeated promises over the years, nobody seems to be able to get a handle on this.
That’s why march.
david000 16:37 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Qatzelok – I agree. It was Adorno who said that “to dance the jitterbug is to express a desire to obey” – essentially, that participation in these mass rituals is a sort of call-and-response activity. The cultural vacuum into which – for many Canadians – American culture swept has basically put Canadians on the same call-and-response cycle as Americans. That’s depressing enough, but the really important thing is that America, a foreign country, has a very different history to Canada’s! Like, it doesn’t even make sense for thousands of white Vancouverites to shout Black Power! They think they’re acting politically, they’re in reality shouting into a void.
I think part of it too is that there’s not too much to complain about in Canada, and some people just want to be in on the action that they read and watch videos about. It’s boring to pick fights and get outraged that people use the masculine articles in French, or spend all your time scanning people’s behavior for racist undertones, when you can jump into the whole American racial thing.
I’ll really be laughing if they start rioting here too.
But in order to feel like you *can* jump into the American thing, which many Canadians do, for a variety of strange reasons, which I’ve speculated about above.
Meezly 18:00 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
I do hear what you’re saying, david. I mean why doesn’t Korchinski-Paquet’s name get shouted by Canadian protesters as much as George Floyd? Or other Canadian victims of police violence or racist attacks? I agree the media does present a lot of US-content. Probably because the incidents of racial violence is way higher and more extreme. Personally, I too would like to see more Canadian content in these protests.
However, as a POC seeing anti-racist protests sweep my country (well, at least the few major cities), I admit it gives me some hope and encouragement. Yes, some protesters are misguided in their American-centred approach, but I see their hearts are in the right place. It is undeniable that Trump has emboldened people around the world who harbour racist views, so I really don’t find it strange for Canadian protesters to direct their ire against Trump.
This is why it rankles me when someone (who may not have experienced racism perhaps) are belittling these protesters and calling them losers. I would call an apathetic couch critic a loser, but not someone who took time to go out on the street to express their solidarity, however their message is directed.
Mark Côté 18:34 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
“I think part of it too is that there’s not too much to complain about in Canada”
Putting aside the colour of the people shown in protest photos here for the moment and focusing on this statement, how many serious discussions about racism in Canada have you had with people of colour?
Meezly 18:46 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Also I find the comment “there are straight up no black people in Vancouver” strange. So only black people should be protesting at these anti-racism events? BLM happens to have a chapter in Vancouver, so there seems to be enough black issues in BC to warrant one and the Vancouver chapter also helps out with other marginalized folk in the spirit of y’know, inclusivenes. Because isn’t inclusiveness a big part in the fight against racism? Isn’t it important that those who happen to be part of the dominant race out on the streets? Not that white people are needed to bring legitimacy but if I were one of the few black people in Vancouver, I would be heartened by that. And actually, looking at some of the photos of the anti-racist rally in Vancouver, I saw a lot of white, black, brown and yellow faces. Predominantly white, yes, but many different faces.
If all anyone can do is rain on their parade, then I’m sorry, they are not the losers.
Alison Cummins 19:18 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
« There are straight up no black people in Vancouver. »
Oh no! Are you telling me the only black person in Vancouver was my stepsister and that she has died within the last few days? Yikes. I’ll have to investigate. Thanks for letting me know.
Blork 21:31 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
“there are straight up no black people in Vancouver” is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in the comments of this blog. I mean there’s not a ton, and in fact it’s only 1% of the population according to the 2016 Canada census, but that still means more than 6000 in Vancouver proper, not including the suburbs and other surrounding communities.
(BTW, about half the population represents one visible minority or other.)
Blork 21:34 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
BTW, almost 30,000 blacks in the Greater Vancouver area. (Same source.)
walkerp 22:34 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Yes, that comment is definitely in the top ranking of stupid things said in the comments here. It is ignorant and revealing on so many levels.
I would also add that Vancouver has a significant First Nations population and a large population of homeless and addicted, who suffer disproportionately from police abuse.