green bloc

Green Bloc at Toronto’s May Day march

Environmental groups in Toronto will be joining No One Is Illegal Toronto and their allies in the streets during the march for Status of All this May 1.  

We march for environmental justice. We march for justice for migrants. Join us!

Wear Green, bring signs, bring placards, and bring your friends!

Resisting environmental destruction means resisting displacement. We demand FREEDOM from Colonization, Military and Economic Wars, and Environmental Degradation.

Green Bloc

May 01, 2011

12 – 3 p.m.

Meet: Queen Street and Jameson Street (near Parkdale Collegiate)

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On May 1, 2011 No One Is Illegal calls upon all who care about environmental and climate justice to join us in the street to demand Status for All.

Canada is built upon the historical and ongoing plunder and exploitation of indigenous land at home and abroad.  Forced out of their homes by industrial mega projects, by timber clearcuts and by climate change, migrants face militarized borders and find themselves criminalized by the states responsible for their displacement.

Despite being one of the world’s leading emitters of climate-change causing greenhouse gases, Canada refuses entry to the great masses of people being displaced through climate change caused drought, flooding, crop failure and rising sea levels.  Denied a legal mechanism to come to this land, migrants are forced into Temporary Foreign Worker programs or are declared “illegal” and denied the legal protections available to other workers.  Treated as cheap, disposable labour, migrants are exploited to facilitate the smooth running of ecologically destructive industries, most notoriously in the Tar Sands.

Canada’s crimes of displacement extend beyond GHG emissions to being home to a global mining industry that poisons food and water, attacks communities with private thugs and state police, and blasts livelihoods into dust.  The Canadian-owned North Mara mine in Tanzania has displaced over 10,000 people, and local villagers surviving through artisan mining have been gunned down by Barrick’s security forces.  In Papua New Guinea, police officers supported by Canada’s Barrick Gold burned down the homes of people living around their Porgera mine.  Barrick is not alone and Canadian firms pillage land and displace communities around the globe,  sheltered from accountability by Canadian law and supported by diplomatic interventions by the Canadian state.

In the face of Canada’s ongoing displacement of people around the world through its support of pillaging companies, through climate wrecking mega projects like the Tar Sands, through livelihood-destroying trade policies and through its support and participation in war and occupation, we must unite against the Conservative government’s attacks on refugees and immigrants and demand that everyone, regardless of immigration status, be allowed to live a life with dignity and without fear of detention and deportation.

Join us on May Day as we take to the streets to demand Status For All!

Please see this Facebook page for updates.

Go Green Bloc Go!

Krystalline Kraus

krystalline kraus is an intrepid explorer and reporter from Toronto, Canada. A veteran activist and journalist for rabble.ca, she needs no aviator goggles, gas mask or red cape but proceeds fearlessly...