Organizers of pro-Ferguson events in Ottawa and Toronto, asked white people not to appropriate vigils for Michael Brown, sparking intense debate on social media.<\/p>\n
White people were told by organizers to not appropriate a recent vigil for Michael Brown and Ferguson in Canada, sparking intense debate on social media.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of protesters chanted and carried signs through the streets of Washington, DC, Tuesday night to show solidarity with Michael Brown, a black teen offender\u00a0shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson in August and other victims of police violence.<\/p>\n
In a post, published on the Facebook page of the Ottawa vigil, she stressed that fair-skinned people \u201care there in support of black folks, so should never be at the centre of anything,\u201d adding that \u201cblack voices are crucial\u201d to the movement at the moment.<\/p>\n
The same suggestion was posted on the Facebook page of a similar event in Toronto.<\/p>\n
Arte\u2019s post attracted nearly 300 comments, prompting one user, Hamdi Loukoum, to ask: \u201cWow, is this an anti-racist rally or a pro-segregation one?\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to the appeal Darian Parsons, stated: \u201cI’m not sure why white people would have to refrain from taking up space\u2026. won’t that push them away from coming to support and won’t it help to have support from the whole world, not just the black community\u2026? I think it would be a terrible idea to ask non-black people to not talk to the media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other participants were sympathetic with Arte\u2019s message. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s really important to come up and show our solidarity and make sure black voices are leading this \u2014 that their feelings and opinions are front and centre for everything happening here. We\u2019re just here to show support and be allies,\u201d Paige Jackson and Rebecca Macintyre, both white, told CBC News. \u201cIt’s not about us. It’s about showing solidarity with people whose lives are affected by Ferguson \u2014 and that’s not really us. That’s not really white people,\u201d Macintyre added.<\/p>\n
The peaceful rallies were held in Ottawa and Toronto under the banner \u201cBlackLivesMatter\u201d following a night of rioting in Ferguson, sparked by the grand jury\u2019s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer who fatally shot the African-American teenager. Thousands have reportedly participated in the two vigils braving cold weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose folks who are here tonight don’t believe that’s OK,\u201d said Lena Peters, the leader of the protests, as quoted by the Huffington Post. \u201cWe believe that it is part of a larger system that doesn’t value black life,\u201d she added during the rally held outside the US Consulate in Toronto.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur message is that black lives matter,\u201d said Janaya Khan, one of the organizers of the Toronto vigil, as quoted by the Global News. \u201cOur message is that we unequivocally stand against the no indictment ruled in favour of Darren Wilson and that we completely support Mike Brown and Mike Brown\u2019s family. We support any kind of actions against state sanctioned violence and police brutality and we want to draw parallels to what is happening here in Canada to black and African peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n
The grand jury\u2019s decision came after nearly three months of deliberation over a case that has highlighted issues of race and police brutality throughout the United States, inciting massive protests around the country over the summer.<\/p>\n
Thirty-eight US states, Washington DC and over 140 other US cities have organized demonstrations throughout the day on Tuesday under the banner of \u201cEmergency Response Protests to Ferguson Grand Jury Decision\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Organizers of pro-Ferguson events in Ottawa and Toronto, asked white people not to appropriate vigils for Michael Brown, sparking intense debate on social media. White people were told by organizers to not appropriate a recent vigil for Michael Brown and Ferguson in Canada, sparking intense debate on social media. Hundreds of protesters chanted and carried … Continue reading “Whites asked to stay away from rallies for Brown in Canada”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[156,718,9695,2597],"class_list":["post-17008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-blacks","tag-blacks-only","tag-ferguson","tag-racial-segregation"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17009,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17008\/revisions\/17009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}