TORONTO REPORBACK! (via Toronto Against Fascism):
Good day to our comrades, friends, and supporters. We’re working on delivering biting and comprehensive analysis about Saturday. In the meantime, please accept this short message of thanks while we work on something more comprehensive.
To those of you who followed to our call for support as we responded to reports of the hate march detouring on to Yonge street, you have our gratitude. Thank you for understanding our distrust of the claim that Police would never allow such a detour to happen. It is cold comfort to be vindicated by another incident where state representatives claim to support us, and the thugs under their control betray whatever trust they claim to be building with our communities.
Whether you joined us at King, when we were drastically outnumbered both by the march itself and the police, or arrived as reinforcements as we worked to hold the line along Yonge, we’re grateful for your support. We thank you for your militancy in confronting the bigots and the riot officers who repeatedly and violently forced us aside. We thank you for your eloquence in speaking to the crowds that outstripped our own prepared remarks.
We are outraged, but not surprised, that the police would dare claim to defend us, while gleefully inflicting violence upon people from marginalized community members, whether they are racialized people, Indigenous people, 2SLGBTQ people, gender-oppressed people, or a person who sites themselves at the intersection of any of these identities. We want to be clear: our mandate is not to “show the flag”. One of our primary missions is to oppose and shut down any manifestations of bigoted ideologies, wherever they might tread.
Naysayers will claim there is no reason to defend any and all streets of Toronto from bigot marches, but for every person claiming we fed the bigots a victory, we respond with asking you to consider being in the shoes of a marginalized person on the streets having to encounter, alone, an unopposed and police-escorted march that would deny their humanity.
If there’s anything you need in the coming days that we can provide, please let us know. We support one another with true material aid, not by following the politician’s path of issuing empty platitudes while arranging a violent security apparatus to abuse marginalized communities. Our militancy against hate is powered by our love for our fellow human beings.
Again: we say:Don’t trust the police!
No platform for fascists!
No pasaran!
