A crusader who dodged animosity
There ought to be a statue of Bromley Armstrong, the late crusader for civil and human rights, buried in Pickering on Wednesday.
He might best be placed in a cluster comprising giants of the Black community — Dan Hill, Wilson Head, Don Moore, Stan Grizzle, Lincoln Alexander, Charlie Roach, Dudley Laws, et al.
The union movement will honour Armstrong’s 92 extraordinary years on Sept. 17. A roster of organizations rooted in media, human rights, social justice, immigration, housing, civil rights and community service could hold similar tributes week after week and it would be a year before we run out of deeds and feats to recognize.
Of all his accomplishments — marked by his fearless, unrelenting, nonyielding drive for equality among all people — Armstrong’s most impressive quality might have been his ability to speak truth to power, without engendering lasting animosity.
He had a way of saying hard things in a strong way, with a loud voice and delivered with an indomitable spirit — and still have people listen to him.
Maybe the success is rooted in the cross-sectoral and multiracial partnerships he formed and his belief that his resident community would grow and succeed even as other targeted and marginalized groups gain mainstream status.
It’s a skill often devalued by today’s young activists — a Twitter-trigger-happy troupe so self-absorbed in public radicalism that they dismiss pre-millennial activism as slightly above Uncle Tom-ism.
To listen to the young whippersnappers, if you work for the police department you cannot represent Black people. If you are employed by “the man” you can’t be trusted to advocate for the victims of “the man’s” racist practices. If you work for “the system” you are predisposed to maintaining its racist underpinnings, not dismantle it.
It may be an arguing point, but an immature, discredited and frustratingly debilitating one. For our city and country and resistance movements everywhere are littered with thousands who impede, block, obstruct, frustrate, and topple bravely and effectively without brandishing placards or joining a protest march.
By now, with mounting evidence that it takes advocacy in the halls of power backed by screaming protesters at the barricades, the debate should have been over.
Except, here we are in 2018 and Justice Donald McLeod is being hauled before the Ontario Judicial Council — under threat of being reprimanded, suspended or fired — because he dared to organize his people; because he received an audience with the government of Canada; because he used that meeting to deliver some strategies that might bolster the country’s Black communities against the crippling reality of racism, degraded opportunities, despair and violence.
Worse, the young hotheads give fuel to this spurious campaign to silence the judge. With jealousy dripping from their lips — who is this guy, we didn’t send him as our emissary, and how did he manage to score this audience when we the real activists have been unable to — they have created controversy where there should be commendation; skepticism instead of sanction.
The end result is the extremely conservative elements of the judiciary — content to have justices ensconced from society, muted in some ivory tower befitting their lofty status — have swooped in to silence Justice McLeod. And his noble, righteous cause. (How one leads to the other is a treatise in itself ).
And so, the sadness was palpable among mourners at the Holy Redeemer Church Wednesday. We were not just missing Bromley; we expected his death after decades of advocacy dating back to the 1940s. We were missing the young warriors who will shoulder the movement because so few were there; and we were discouraged by the silly dismissal of stalwart resisters who choose tools of opposition that are not street weapons.
Bromley was unique. He resisted in the street and in the halls of power. Appointments to the Ontario Human Rights Commission neither abated his efforts nor reduced the volume of his voice. So he was then named to the Ontario Labour Relations Board. And he continued to speak.
When he arrived in 1947 Canada was a country still trying to keep out Black people. He and others travelled to Ottawa to advocate for relaxed immigration policies and the West Indian Domestic Scheme resulted — so that 280 Caribbean women were allowed in as domestic workers each year.
He was right in the middle of a1950s sit-in and sting operations in Dresden, Ont. that exposed restaurants and landlords who discriminated against Blacks and Asians, actions that led to the nation’s first anti-discrimination laws. Toronto landlords received similar scrutiny in staged “rent-ins” where media were called into to accompany Armstrong and exposed the racist practice of not renting units to Blacks.
These “sit-ins” predated the famous lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement in the American south.
One could make you dizzy with the list of organizations bearing his fingerprint as a founding member: the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, National Black Coalition of Canada, Black Business and Professional Association, Canadian Ethnocultural Council, Jamaican Canadian Association, and the Harry Jerome Awards. Caribbean Soccer Club. Jamaican Canadian Credit Union.
The young hotheads embraced Armstrong as the tributes poured in over the past two weeks. How could they not.
But if social media had been around when Bromley was bouncing from one closeddoor meeting to the other with mayors and premiers and prime ministers and thought leaders, he would have been railed and skepticism would have greeted his appointments.
More than anything, Bromley Armstrong taught us that every strategy, every method, everyone’s role and resistance — private and public — is needed to deliver a fair and just society.