WHAT: March Against Racism to Commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
WHEN: Sunday March 18th at 2 pm
WHERE: Starts at Park on Commercial Drive and 14th, Vancouver Coast Salish Territories

Marches in other cities and communities this year include Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, and unceded Traditional Splatsin Secwepemc Territory.

WHY: March 21 is marked every year as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to commemorate the anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa when police opened fire on hundreds of South Africans protesting against Apartheid’s passbook laws, killing at least 67 and wounding 186.

According to Brian Peaslee, march organizer and member of No One Is Illegal, “Although we would like to believe that racism no longer exists; countless academic studies, statistics, and people’s own lived experiences demonstrate that racism is alive and well.”

In Vancouver, Robertson de Chazal, Shawn Donald Finlay MacDonald, and Alastair Miller, three men with known links to the white supremacist neo-nazi group Blood and Honour, are being charged for a number of violent hate crimes. They include attacks on a Black man, a Latino man, and an Indigenous woman as well as dousing a Filipino man with gasoline and setting him on fire as he slept on a bench on Commercial Drive where the march is taking place. According to Statistics Canada, there has been a marked increase in reported hate crimes against communities of colour in the past few years.

As march organizer and member of No One Is Illegal Nassim Elbardouh states, “Racism manifests itself in hate crimes, as well as institutional racism embedded in law and policy. The omnibus crime bill and omnibus refugee exclusion act will disproportionately incarcerate communities of colour. Minister of Deportation Jason Kenney continues to restrict immigration while exploiting migrant workers as cheap labour pools for big business, reminiscent of the days of the Chinese railroad workers and the Head Tax.”

“Indigenous lands and resources continue to be trespassed upon despite a clear rejection of environmentally–devastating corporate development such as the Enbridge Pipeline. The tragedy of missing and murdered women continues against the backdrop of a sham missing women’s inquiry. At the global level, Canada continues its involvement in military occupations in countries such as Afghanistan. We are marching to make visible that these daily realities of colonial occupation, immigration controls, labour exploitation, corporate profiteering, discrimination, violence, poverty, and marginalization are marked and marred by racism,” further states Elbardouh.

-30-