I just want to give everyone a quick heads up about an action that is in its planning stages so I don’t have any idea what’s to come of it, but I know the organizer could use some help.
The premise of the demonstrations seems pretty simple: to prevent “business as usual” politics across Canada on February 13, 2014. Again, that might seem a tad bit far away, but there are logistic meetings to be had and art builds to organize.
While the organizing group is calling themselves Solidarity with Land Defenders, it seems to be shaping up as a catch all for civil unrest and they are calling their action #ShutDownCanada.
There seems to be different manifestos based on the different regions and struggles in Canada — everything from GMO crops to police brutality — but here is a quick snapshot from their main page which does reference the high number of cases of murdered and missing Indigenous women:
“CALLOUT for communities across Canada to blockade their local railway, port or highway on February 13th. Don’t buy, don’t fly, no work and keep the kids home from school. A diversity of tactics is highly recommended! Get everyone involved. The goal is to significantly impact the Canadian economy for a day and demand there be an independent inquiry into the 2000+ cases of missing or murdered indigenous women. It’s Time to #ShutDownCanada.”
You should also note from that statement that these events are being billed as Diversity of Tactics — which pretty much sounds like what the words mean.
Whatever people plan on doing, it looks like could get pretty big and I’ll be keeping a close eye on things here on rabble.ca through the Activist Communiqe and through Twitter @krystalline_k
While I did say this looks like a huge catch all demonstration, a lot of focus is being paid on Indigenous Rights issues and the Termination Plan. I will be writing a more in depth article about this Termination Plan later but for now here is a brief backgrounder article by Idle No More Chiefs should stand with their people against Harper’s plans to terminate Indigenous rights and identity
While in the meantime, it seems these demonstrations are geared primarily towards empowering Indigenous communities to stand up to attacks by the Harper government, the police and judicial system and against environmental destruction.
Here are links for local events created so far. Click on the city’s name.
More details to come.
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