Canada antiwar protests
1988Barry Weisleder 1988-03Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 3 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 3
SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1988 TORONTO—Over 200 Central America solidarity and anti-intervention activists gathered here Feb. S-7 to share information about the U.S.-backed war in Central America and to discuss ways to pressure the Canadian and American governments to end U.S. intervention in the region.
Sponsored by the Ontario Central America Solidarity Network, the Toronto Anti-intervention Coalition, Tools for Peace, and 20 other groups, the conference attracted activists from 27 communitiesmainly from across southern Ontario, but also from Montreal, New York state, and British Columbia.
The opening event, on Friday evening, was a public meeting that drew nearly 400 people to hear exceptionally informative and personally moving presentations by the widow of Herbert Anaya Sanabria, the recently assassinated president of the Nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, and Rigoberta Menchu, author and star of the video "When the Mountains Tremble" from Guatemala.
Plenary registers progress
A highlight of the weekend was the Sunday morning plenary discussion of proposals for action from the Saturday workshops.
Recommendations adopted, with nearunanimous approval, included the following:
1) participation in mass Central America anti-intervention protests at the World Economic Summit scheduled for Toronto, June 19-21.
2) participation in similar protests on or around April 30, in conjunction with anti-intervention actions expected to occur in the United States.
3) agreement that there be another Ontario-wide Central America solidarity conference in the summer or fall with a dual emphasis on "popular education" and the development of strategies for the Ontario movement. Such a conference may create the organizational framework for an Ontario anti-intervention coalition.
No contra aid!
In a related story, over 300 people picketed in front of the U.S. Consulate in Toronto in opposition to President Reagan's request to Congress for an additional $36.2 million in contra aid.
The need for similar protests against the continuing war throughout the region and against renewed attempts for contra aid will grow over the coming months. The April 30 anti-intervention actions in the United States should become an international day of protest.
Protests in Canada should demand that Ottawa end its silent complicity and fake "neutrality" on Central America.
No more Canadian "peace-keeping troops"-which will side with reactionary forces-but rather peace-making policies that denounce imperialist aggression at its source.