My impression - and it is only that - is based on my local experience and conversations with the activists who steadfastly came out week after week before the ceasefire. Our numbers remained constant but did not grow apace with the mounting popular sentiment against the genocide in Gaza. IMO this was at least due in part to the slogans and symbols employed in the demonstrations. Mark commented on the prominence of the kaffiyehs and Palestinian flags. I would add chants such as “intifada, intifada, long live the intifada”, “who is the revolution? we are the revolution!”, and “people, people, where are you? kids are dying, shame on you.”
In fairness, these were not the only chants and others did address the massacre of Palestinian children and other innocents and the complicity of the Canadian government and various corporations supporting Israel, but activists interested less in displaying their solidarity and, in not a few cases, their revolutionary bona fides would have been more attentive to the effect their shaming and identification with the Palestine resistance (which was widely identified with Hamas) might have had on the many otherwise sympathetic observers to whom they were appealing. I was not the only one who had these concerns, but we were a small minority and not part of the youthful leadership we admired whose tremendous energy and commitment kept the marches going, whatever their shortcomings. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#35067): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/35067 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/111004330/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
