youth

The last few weeks in Toronto have shown us that living in a global city means that a conflict half way around the world in a place like Sri Lanka can appear in our streets in technicolour, forcing us to face issues that seemed remote only days before.  The global city will make another appearance on Monday at 1:30 pm in Queen's Park with a march to free recentyly arrested Aung San Suu Kyi.  Yet another sign of the global city was the extraordinary stewards' meeting held at the Metro Convention Centre on May 7 where more than 1,000 shop stewards and union officials discussed a common response to the economic crisis.  The diversity you can see in the photo is a sign of how our movements are changing with the participation of people from all around the world.

Yesterday I visited the Tamil sit-in in front of the US embassy.  After a couple of months of protesting in Ottawa and Toronto in the largest demonstrations in memory with little response from the government,  the Tamil community has decided to block University Avenue demanding that the Canadian and US government pressure Sri Lanka to stop killing civilians and allow humanitarian aid into to assist Tamils trapped in the war zone.  More than 6,500 ethnic Tamils are already dead according to the UN.