Marchers’ protest spills over to stage
A group of Black Lives Matter protesters from Toronto and Montreal took over a stage at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on Sunday afternoon, chanting “Jazz is Black.”
Protesters marched to Montreal police headquarters and then climbed a stage at the jazz festival after a holding a vigil in protest against the shooting of Pierre Coriolan, a black man killed in his apartment Tuesday night in Montreal’s Gay Village.
Neighbours say Coriolan was distressed and could be heard screaming from his apartment. He was facing eviction on July 1.
The event was organized by Hoodstock, Black Lives Matter Montreal and Montreal Noir.
Dressed in black, hundreds at the vigil stood on the steps of the Robillard Ave. apartment building where Coriolan was shot, and named other black men in Montreal who lost their lives — all of them shot or Tasered by police.
Among them: Jean-Pierre, a 46-year-old black man, who died four days after being shot with a plastic bullet while trying to flee a drug raid in March, 2016. André Benjamin, 63, was fatally shot on April 25, 2016, after police were called to his apartment to check about a man with a knife in psychological distress. Alain Magloire, 41, was shot and killed by Montreal police near the Station centrale bus station on Feb. 3, 2014, after apparently threatening people with a hammer.
“Tragically, the chances of Coriolan ending up in that situation was very high,” said Brian, an organizer who gave only one name. Police brutality is an issue for everyone, he added. “But for us it’s especially scary because of racial profiling.”
Speakers recalled shootings of black people in other parts of Canada and the United States. A coroner’s inquest into the fatal police shooting of Andrew Loku in Toronto last year made several recommendations, including training police on implicit bias and anti-black racism, as well as collecting race-based data, and funding research to analyze the data.
The coroner’s report into the shooting death of Magloire by Montreal police made similar recommendations calling for officers to be better-trained and equipped to deal with the mentally ill.
Police should have no role in responding to mental health crises, said Venetta Gordon of the Black Lives Matter movement. The groups are seeking statistics on racial profiling, better funding for mental health resources, and black-run social and mental health services.