By TAYTYN BADGER

This article is based on a speech that the author delivered on April 27 at a Palestine solidarity rally in Saskatoon.

Good Afternoon everyone! My name is Taytyn Badger, I’m from Sucker Creek First Nation, and a member, as I imagine you can figure out, of a revolutionary socialist organization called Workers’ Voice. It’s amazing seeing all of you, so many people, representing so many groups, standing up for the people of Palestine against over a hundred years of settler-colonial invasion, occupation, and genocide. What I’d like to talk about today are mass demonstrations like this one and how incredibly important they are.

Usually, a demonstration like this is theoretically meant to inform the Canadian government, its politicians, and the business interests they represent of the brutality of what they support, or appeal to their democratic conscience. This, I would argue, is impossible. They are all well aware of what they are doing, and how people feel about it. They are well aware of the century of genocide they are supporting and its human cost. If they cared about human rights, or democratic will, they would have responded already, and rallies would be redundant.

Because of this, people sometimes become disillusioned with demonstrations. They wonder what the point is, coming out week after week, month after month. Some abandon the fight for Palestine entirely, thinking it’s all a waste of time. Others say, “The government doesn’t care about democracy, and supports genocide of Palestinian and Indigenous peoples” and respond in a different way, giving up on mass rallies and calling for direct confrontations with the goal of causing damage, costing money, or otherwise irritating the government into changing their mind.

Of course, as demonstrations in the streets swell in size and number, the rich and powerful can be forced to change their policies, not because they have changed their minds, but in order to try to protect their interests against the power of an aroused population. But there is another, highly important value of mass demonstrations. It is in mobilizing and developing the consciousness of all the oppressed and exploited people of the land occupied by Canada, the vast majority of the population, and the only ones capable of restraining and challenging them.

Demonstrations are a deliberate break with business as usual. Gathered, as we are, in opposition to the authority and policies of the government, we show not just observers, but ourselves, that independent organization and mobilization is possible. We show that, even if only for a moment right now, we can commandeer public space into a stage for our convictions and demands.

By coming out like this, we are able to break the illusion that we are some small minority, that we are alone in our opposition to Israel’s genocide of Palestine. We are able to share with and educate each other, and observers, about what is really happening in Palestine, and give them the immediate opportunity to join in and become part of mobilizing themselves.

As people of diverse backgrounds come out here, as they see us, they also learn to question and struggle against the other forms of oppression and exploitation. People learn about how the oppression of Indigenous people here in Canada is another example of the same process taking place in Palestine. They learn how both result from capitalism’s need to constantly extend its reach and exploitation of land and people. We connect our struggles and become conscious of our shared interests, and shared need to challenge them. A few months back, a friend in the States overheard a Muslim organizer say, on the LGBTQ+ contingent, “To Hell with the Hadith. If they are standing up for us, we should stand with them.”

Not only that, but people learn that they can apply demonstrations to their own struggles. People here, or who see us, will remember these protests, and when the opportunity arises, organize their own.

Finally, each person who comes out represents more than just themselves. On one hand, you have delegates from unions and other organizations, like the CUPE and CUPW, that officially represent large numbers of sympathetic workers, capable of shutting down entire industries and putting real pressure on capital if provoked. But even the rest of us are connected to our families, our communities, our class, which, if mobilized, have the power to bring the country to its knees.

Some say that if demonstrations mattered, the government would shut them down. It’s true that the government, and interests it represents, would like nothing more than to shut down this and every other Palestine protest. But instead, it skirts around the edges, sending cops to watch us, harassing organizers, trying to limit our reach and visibility. It tries to redirect us into the safe, controlled confines of electoral politics, telling us to vote for this or that politician who will stand with Palestine until the moment it matters.

The reason is that they are forced to balance their desire to maintain support for Israel and quash opposition against their fear of mobilizing all the people we are connected to and represent, and those who support the right to protest, and freedom of speech. If they miscalculate, you get the massive outpouring of support across the land occupied by the United States after the mass arrest of protesters at Columbia.

And the more of us there are, the greater our effect will be.

Photo: Thousands marched to the U.S. consulate in Toronto in November 2023 to protest North American support to Israel’s war on Gaza. (Toronto Star).