[mobglob-discuss] Canada - Weekend anti-war protests / Toronto Star

[Tom_Childs at Douglas.BC.CA]

Subscribers,
	  Organizers for the anti-war march/rally in Vancouver are
calling for 100,000 to hit the streets here on Sunday Nov 17th.  Let's
not dissapoint them!  Ottawa needs a BIG message from the West Coast!
Regards, Tom

 ---- Forwarded message: ----On behalf of: Irene MacInnes
				   <iremac at shaw.ca>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 09:32:04 -0800
Subject: CANESI: Toronto Star article on protests
To: childst
To: briembem


Below is a great article from todays Toronto Star. It takes up, with a
picture, the whole page.

Ritch

Age of protests makes a comeback
Saturday peace rally likely to be biggest since 1991


LESLIE SCRIVENER
FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER
Here in Toronto, we've never hesitated to take to the streets or take
over the streets to make a point, mostly to the government, and
sometimes we can even make a change.

On Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons, we've been for peace,
against nuclear testing. We're against government cutbacks but rallied
to buck up Ottawa in the Quebec referendum. We're sometimes pro-choice,
but also pro-life.

We're against poverty. We hate repression in foreign lands, and
expressways cutting through our leafy neighbourhoods. Mostly we are law
abiding, though sometimes we lose our heads and end up handcuffed in the
back of a police van.

Continuing our anti-war tradition, which has been quiet in recent years,
thousands are expected Saturday at a peace rally beginning at Queen's
Park to tell Prime Minister Jean Chr=E9tien not to join the United States
as it moves closer to war with Iraq.

"We want to persuade the Canadian government to be a voice for peace,
not for war," says one of the rally organizers, Anthony Rapoport, a
musician who plays the viola in several chamber orchestras. "The larger
the movement, the greater the chance that we will be listened to."

It's expected to be the most significant peace march in Toronto since
the Gulf War in 1991, though not likely to draw hundreds of thousands =8B
the numbers who joined recent marches in London and Florence.

Similar weekend rallies are planned in 24 cities across Canada, from St.
John's, Nfld., to Prince George, B.C., but, without question, the
largest peaceful assembly in Canada will be Sunday's Santa Claus parade.

Canada has supported the U.S. in its war on terrorism and sent troops to
Afghanistan. And Canadians learned this week that, if the audiotape is
authentic, Osama bin Laden has now threatened Canada as a U.S. ally.

Will the news bring more people into the anti-war movement? Rapoport
thinks it likely.

"Some who might stay at home might find some urgency because of this,"
he says.

About 50 organizations are supporting Saturday's rally, a diverse group
that includes the Canadian Peace Alliance =8B which has 120 member groups
=8B the TARIC Islamic Centre, Ryerson's Muslim Students' Association,
Steelworkers locals, the Canadian Auto Workers, and Young Koreans
United.

The United Church of Canada is also a key participant.

"The world we have is not the world God wants," says Rev. Chris
Ferguson, who will march under the banner of Bloor Street United Church.
"The well-being of the Earth, the people who inhabit it, is at its core
a religious issue."

Most march with hopes that government leaders will change their
thinking, a view sorely tested in the '90s in Ontario, as union members
demonstrated relentlessly and mostly ineffectively against the Mike
Harris government's cutbacks.

"But think, if there hadn't been resistance, how much further would they
have gone?" asks John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

In Ontario, Clarke says, the concept of civic protest has been
challenged by the Tories. "The difference is, the ideal of a social
compromise has been revoked by the other side. Our side has relied on
the notion that we can be indignant and be heard."

It seems clear that even a global movement protesting war with Iraq will
not have a drop of influence on U.S. President George W. Bush.

"My belief is that these people demonstrating will be wasting their time
if they think they will have any impact on the United States," says
historian Michael Bliss. "Canadians don't really understand that impact
of Sept. 11 on Americans."

But Stephen Lewis believes that, while Bush appears unstoppable, protest
is not ineffective. It may bring future change.

"If George Bush is intent on attacking Iraq, it's going to happen. All
the anti-war rallies will not stop this," says Lewis, the United
Nations' special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. But intransigent
governments don't last forever, he adds.

"These are moments in time. Eventually the pendulum swings, and though
we are in a particularly difficult moment with extremely reactionary
governments, it won't go on forever. If you are undeterred, you will
eventually make an impact."

Protests can make policy-makers sit up and listen, sometimes quickly.

The explosive demonstrations at the World Trade Organization meetings in
1999 in Seattle have led to a shift in agenda that now includes
agricultural subsidies, issues of critical importance to the developing
world, Lewis says.

He's seen effective protest in South Africa, where the coalition
Treatment Action Campaign filled the streets, forcing the government to
provide drugs to mothers that prevent transmission of HIV to babies.

Some Toronto protests have appeared to be one man against the world.

At Christmas, 1969, Rev. Leo Reilly, a Basilian priest, tried to draw
attention to the famine in Biafra. For four hours a day, for six days,
he walked outside Queen's Park =8B alone. "My feeling was that I can't do
much, but I can't do nothing. I can't sit in the comfort of St.
Michael's College and ignore what is happening in Biafra," he said.

The largest demonstrations of the '60s were the anti-Vietnam War
protests, though none on the scale of some in the U.S. It took a decade
for American leaders to realize they had lost support for an unpopular
war.

In 1973, police called a march by 30,000 teachers protesting a ban on
teachers' strikes the largest and most orderly demonstration in
Ontario's history.

David Lewis Stein, now retired from the Star, sometimes joined in
anti-poverty demonstrations.

"These marchers want to help the poor through politics changing the
system, rather than through the discipline of social work. They want to
be leaders as well as helpers of the poor. They make some people very,
very nervous," Stein said.

Protests in the '80s tackled cruise missile testing in the north and
abortion rights =8B for and against.

Planners with the Toronto Committee Against Sanctions and War on Iraq
aren't estimating how many people will join Saturday's march, which
begins at 1 p.m. at Queen's Park with short speeches and music, and ends
on University Ave. near the U.S. consulate at about 4 p.m.

They say they do not support Saddam Hussein's regime, which they call
brutal and anti-democratic. They just want to give peace a chance.


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