Pro-Palestine protestors in Toronto are evolving.
Experience leads to refinement.
On March 18th, Israel “broke” the terms of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, and officially resumed their military campaign in Palestine. I use air quotes for “broke”, as Israel had continued lethal military activity during the entirety of the “ceasefire”; in truth, the difference is merely that Israel has stopped pretending.
In the time since March 18th, Israel has killed 600 Palestinians, in what Israeli newspaper Haaretz called “the largest child massacre in [Israeli] history.” Israel’s “Defense” Minister, Israel Katz, has threatened the civilian population of Gaza with “complete destruction and devastation”. Convicted terrorist Itamar Ben-Gvir has been welcomed back into Netanyahu’s government with open arms.
The genocide of the Palestinian people is set to resume at full pace, and the world either idly stands by, or gleefully assists in the slaughter. The Canadian government has refused to sanction Israel, refused to fully embargo arms, and refused to restrict trade; they are willing and complicit with Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinian people.
It is for that reason that, without a moment of hesitation, pro-Palestine demonstrators organized an emergency protest in Toronto that exact same day. Meeting at 17h30 ET in Toronto’s Sankofa Square at Yonge and Dundas, a veritable horde of protestors would gather, and show that they are a force which can no longer be ignored.
Pro-Palestine demonstrations are not new to Toronto; people have been protesting outside the Israeli Consulate at Yonge and Bloor for decades prior to my own birth. And the specific group managing these demonstrations isn’t new either; they’ve been active since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War in 2023, and had deep involvement in the encampment at the University of Toronto.
Disclosure Note: I visited the UofT encampment multiple times, and donated supplies such as air mattresses and drinking water. I am an opinion journalist, I am not neutral, and writing about my biases is my job. Deal with it.
It is because of that long history of action that many of those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause have grown disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of decades of protest. Empirically, these demonstrations have failed in many regards. They have gradually shifted public opinion over time, but this has not resulted in changing the concrete actions that the Canadian government takes.
So it is to the credit of the movement that the March 18th demonstration felt calculated to fix these deficiencies. As I moved around the protest, taking photos and talking to organizers, I saw many ways in which their tactics have been refined, both to keep their own people motivated, and to increase pressure on their opponents.
Firstly, the protest organizers have realized that the most effective tool of any protest is disruption. When you take up the street with a large mass of people, you disrupt the flow of daily life. When you join a thousand voices into a single chorus to shout your slogan, you disrupt the people trying to cover their ears and muffle the cries of the innocent.
Many people say that a protest shouldn’t be disruptive, and these people are either extremely stupid, or knowingly malicious. A protest cannot be effective if the public can ignore it. A successful protest is only one which the public cannot ignore.
So when the protestors marched up Yonge from Dundas to Bloor, blocking all through traffic for hours, they guaranteed that their demonstration would be at least partially successful. The Canadian public was forced to pay attention to Palestine, no matter how much they try to avert their eyes from what we all see on the evening news.
The pro-Palestine movement in Toronto has always understood the value of disruption, but with the benefit of experience they’ve figured out new methods to maximize disruption. They’ve discovered the sweet spot for stretching out time in each space just long enough before moving on to disrupt the next space.
In doing so, they’ve managed to prevent crowd attrition from beginning to conclusion. Indeed, the protest almost appeared as if it picked up demonstrators while marching along Yonge. The benefits of keeping the crowd energized cannot be overstated, especially when it comes to using that crowd to exert maximum pressure.
Keeping your protestors engaged with your movement is easier said than done. There are a thousand different things that a protest organizer needs to cover in order to maintain the energy and hype of their mass.
The protest leaders speaking into the megaphone are the obvious centrepiece; just the same as a politician or a standup comedian, they need to be able to feed off the vibes of a crowd, and create vibes when the crowd starts to lose them.
Volunteers like those on the drum line, much the same as military drummer boys of the 18th century, kept the crowd on a consistent pace, backing protestor chants with rhythm.
And considering we are in the Holy Month of Ramadan, one of the most important roles filled was by those who passed around dates and water after the evening sunset, allowing Muslims to break their fast.
Indeed, one of the most powerful symbols of the night was when Muslim protestors gathered for evening prayer on the street, right in front of the Israeli consulate. I did not take any photos of the moment, because I did not wish to violate the sanctity of their practice.
All of this is to say, there’s a lot that goes into keeping protestors comfortable at your protest. Even when the protest is about one of the worst things to happen in the world, the protest needs to feel like the best place to be.
The strongest moments of the protest came closer to the end, however, and I do like when a show ends on a high note. One of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat, a spiritual act of almsgiving to the needy, and this tradition becomes even more prominent during Ramadan.
Throughout the entire protest, multiple volunteers walked around with Zakat donation boxes, and protest leaders called attention to these boxes after sunset close to the evening prayer. This was just one example of an effort to create a positive outlet for the crowd to take action.
In the darkness of the night, one of the protest leaders started a FaceTime call on his phone, connecting with a Palestinian man in Gaza currently struggling to survive the Israeli military offensive.
Holding the phone out to the crowd, hundreds of protestors chanted Free Palestine with a single voice, and the man chanted back through the phone from halfway around the world.
Despite the distance of oceans, Canadians were able to connect to Palestine, and tell the people of Gaza that we see them, that we care about them, and that we will never give up the fight for their freedom.
Making protestors feel like they can make an impact, like their actions matter, is the key to a successful protest movement. It is not merely about keeping people engaged; it is about making that engagement mean something.
And in that regard, the biggest announcement of the evening was something unrelated to the day’s protest. The leaders of the demonstration announced that in preparation for the upcoming Canadian Federal Election, they will be endorsing candidates they deem sufficiently pro-Palestine.
Frequently, protest groups find themselves skeptical of engagement with electoral politics. Considering how politicians break promises like a fish drinks water, I cannot fault that kind of skepticism.
I still believe in electoral politics, however, and I’m optimistic about the VotePalestine.ca project. Everything in their protest, all the disruption and the engagement, is now building up to the goal of electing allies to public office, to act directly for the benefit of the Palestinian people.
If the biggest problem with the protests has been their inability to compel government to change behaviour, then it is only logical that the protests now seek to change government.
And if they can flip even one riding? If they can bring volunteers and donations to a candidate who meets their standards, and get them seated on Parliament Hill?
Well, that would certainly be interesting, wouldn’t it?