Halifax rally protests U.S. border policy
Nova Scotians who have privately railed against the U.S. policy of separating migrant children from their parents got a chance to do it in public Saturday afternoon.
Under the blistering midday heat, some 75 people, several carrying signs and placards, gathered at the Grand Parade in Halifax to consolidate their voices with 200 other Families Belong Together events scheduled around the world.
“In the last few weeks, the world has watched while thousands of families have been separated and detained in government-run facilities in America,” Katharine MacDonald, the event organizer, told those gathered. “While these actions have been widely condemned on the international stage, our own Canadian government has said that they won’t play politics. We want to show them that protecting human rights is not playing politics.”
Mary Crowley of Halifax and many like-minded people were offered the opportunity to write a message to the Canadian government to relay that sentiment or another of their choosing.
“Please have the courage to speak
out against the injustice of separating children from their parents,” Crowley said of the postcard memo she will have sent along to Andy Fillmore, the Liberal member of Parliament for Halifax.
“I think it has long-range psychological effects,” Crowley said of the practice of separating children from their parents. “The Americans say that children will forget. They may forget but
their bodies won’t forget.
“It’s very hard to believe that the children may not get back with their families. It is just unfathomable.”
Crowley said the purpose of the gathering was to let the Canadian government know that it needs to take a stand.
“Government to government, who knows what influences somebody like (President Donald) Trump? Will he remember if it’s 1,000 or 1,001 cities across the world? No, but there is a sense for us as individuals here to be speaking out. Who knows what’s heard?”
Crowley alluded to the “butterfly effect,” the poetic notion that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas. But she worried there weren’t enough butterflies flapping at Grand Parade.
“I am quite worried about people being apathetic. I am concerned that there are not more people here. It’s hard to know what to do but at least this is a first step for us.”
The numbers weren’t an issue for Mi’kmaq elder Billy Lewis.
“What’s more important is that this struggle continue,” said Lewis, paralleling what’s happening in the United States to the Mi’kmaq experience ever since Europeans arrived on the shores of their new world.
“It’s not new,” Lewis said. “We are sitting here today dealing with children being snatched in the States. That’s been happening to our people for I don’t know how long. Today, there are more children than there were at the height of the residential school system. I’m dealing with that very personally, with friends of mine who are trying to get their kids back from the system that we have here right now.”