Say What You Will

Fuck knows people have and will say whatever they think. It doesn’t matter what it happens to be. Or what it is they have to say. If it can be said. It will be said. Fair enough, I guess, this is a “democracy.” But I wish citizens would take that right a little more seriously.

I’m mostly speaking to the “Tamil-Canadian protests” that have come to a “head” Last Sunday on a Toronto highway concerning a worsening “humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka.” I’m not arguing a point. Although, if I was to take a side, I’d take the side of the protesters. The fact that they, The Tamil Tigers, have been deemed a “terrorist organization” by the needle-dicks who run this country only strengthens my resolve.

On a side note; I started reading Yves Engler’s latest book, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (my views on my government haven’t changed any, I knew what expect going in, but even that wasn’t preparation enough). And every Canadian convinced our country plays a positive role on the world stage needs to remove their head from their hind-parts and read this book. NOW!

But as I was writing this I came across a “blog” post that jives rather nicely with a point I’m trying get at;

“Canadians are amongst the last people on earth who should be crying about ‘foreigners bringing their problems over here with them.’ Forget for a moment that the protesters blocking the Gardiner Expresway have family and friends facing death back home and that we’d all do the exact same thing if we were in their position. […]  I guess as long as patriotic morons wasting resources driving back and forth between their useless jobs and their meaningless lives in front of their stupid T.V.’s aren’t put out, that’s what’s really important!”1

For what it’s worth, I’m not so sure “we’d all do the exact same thing if we were in their position,” But what if?

My issue here, at least, isn’t so much with the issues that The Tamil community in Toronto has raised, as dire as they are, but rather the bigger issue. That being a recognition and respect for people standing up and saying what it is they feel needs to be said?

Imagine if Canadians felt so strongly, so passionately, so dedicated to a wrong they feel needs to “righted,” that we’d protest it at whatever cost? I don’t mean anonymously complain about something that doesn’t really matter. I’m talking about throwing your bodies where our loud mouths are. Do you think this country, this world, would be the way it is if we were responsible citizens “protesting our complicity?”

And I don’t mean protest as a bunch of opportunistic, ignorant schmucks protesting a protest. But saying what is on our mind, that isn’t about ones self, and, dare I say it, could potentially help someone else?

We should really try it sometime…