Blog
January 22nd 2010
Knee-jerk protesting
Winnipeg has seen a lot of protesting in the past month, and some of it has been sort of sketchy.
The Windsor Hotel became the focus of a lot of attention when rumours got out that it would be closing/torn down/turned into a parking lot.
A rally in front of the hotel was scheduled almost immediately, but soon after, letters from the owners and yes, even a phone call from Sam Katz to organizer Kathy Kennedy (as posted on her Facebook status) said that none of it was true. This didn’t stop the demonstration, but they quickly changed the aim from “stop the demo” to “prevent the possible demo.”
I love it—the idea of a general “keep things as they are” demonstration. Like the annual Day of Action set up by the Canadian Federation of Students, calling for the government to “Keep the freeze,” which was more refreshing than the years-long cry of “reduce tuition fees” while Manitobans enjoyed some of the cheapest tuition in the country.
Remember when the Olympic torch came through Manitoba? Protesters decided that they would try to cash in on the publicity to piggyback their own agenda. Demonstrators were insulted (according to the article) that they were ignored. They demonstrators set up a roadside demonstration to highlight the issue of murdered and missing aboriginal women. Certainly a valid and important topic, but was this an appropriate venue?
That was outside of Winnipeg. In the city, protesters held up the torch on Broadway to distribute leaflets about the negative aspects of the Olympics.
At least they were on topic.
In the end, the Windsor is still standing, the torch has just entered British Columbia and the Olympics are still set to go in Vancouver.
At least they tried, right?
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