Monday, July 6, 2015

My Favorite Marcher

There was a march yesterday in Toronto which protested, well, pretty much everything (with the exception, perhaps, of trans-fats and carnivorism). It was called the "March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate," and it attracted a wide array of the pissed off and the disgruntled, including aging activist/Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda.
 
But Jane's not my favorite protester--no, not by a long shot. That distinction goes to a bloke named Syed Hussan, who earned this blurb in the Sunday Toronto Star's run-down of some notable marchers:
For Syed Hussan, spokesman for No One Is Illegal - a grassroots advocacy group for migrants - climate change is personal. This crisis, he says, is the "newest result of centuries of exploitation of racialized people by colonization and neocolinization." In a way, Hussan believes Sunday's march could determine the future of the movement, "in so far as it must learn, and take direction and inspiration" from indigenous people and racialized migrants who are at the front lines of the crisis.
In a way, that's a small masterpiece of the jargon and bafflegab that fills the brains of such people. In so far as they can be said to have functioning brains, that is.

Update: Here's a bit more about Hussan, from his rabble bio:
Syed Hussan is an organizer and writer in Toronto working with undocumented and migrant people, in defense of Indigenous sovereignty, and against counter intuitive programs like war and capitalism. He enjoys apocalyptic sci-fi novels, low maintenance plants, not knowing how to drive and reading your comments.
Hey, me too! (What are the odds, eh?) Where Syed and I part company is in thinking that capitalism is "counter intuitive." He'd certainly find himself among the like-minded in, say, Greece, though, where such contrariness/counter-intuitiveness has turned the economy into a swamp of entitlement and dysfunction (non-function, really).

Update: How's this for "counter intuitive"--"social justice" is the root of all evil debt?

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