If the message delivered by speakers wasn’t obvious enough at Wednesday's solidarity rally and call to disarm, defund and divest the police, the one left in thick black paint outside the Guelph Police Headquarters drove it home: “DEFUND THE POLICE!”
The Black & Indigenous Solidarity Rally: Disarm, Defund & Divest From The Police event drew roughly 275 people at its peak on Wednesday.
The two-and-a-half hour event began with guest speakers at Lyon Park then marched with signs, music and chants on a route that finished in front of Guelph Police Headquarters.
There protesters painted and chalked slogans, demands and messages.
Fireworks were let off and more speakers were heard, including Indigenous leaders from other parts of the country who called in.
The names of people killed by police or during police interactions in Canada were read aloud, along with their stories. Wooden tombstones bearing their names were then planted on police headquarters property and a moment of silence was held.
“We are here as a preventative action, because we see all these deaths happening around this continent and we see them creeping closer and closer,” said event emcee Xico.
“It’s getting harder and harder for many people to ignore, I think. And while we may not have had one in Guelph in recent times, within the past year, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen here and that’s why we’re here to ensure that it doesn’t happen here. We’re here to demand that it won’t happen here,” Xico said.
“That’s for all the people that say ‘we haven’t had something like that,’ well we have had things here like that … and there’s a lot that goes unreported.”
All eight speakers were Indigenous, Black or people of colour. Some choose not to be identified by name.
David James Hudson, a University of Guelph librarian, scholar and poet, launched the event with a stirring speech/spoken word offering.
“I spent two decades of my life focusing as a scholar and an artist on race, racism and anti-racism, but for a lot of the period of this last uprising, of these last few weeks, I found myself struggling to find ways of processing all that’s been going on,” Hudson said.
He spoke of the fears he has for his daughter as she grows, fears and worries because she is Black and because she may someday be one of the other marginalized people who suffer at the hands of police.
“Is it police brutality we oppose or police violence?” Hudson asked. “Where we find ourselves questioning police who cross a line towards extremity, we might ask instead what lines they guard in the first place: what bottom lines, what company lines, what party lines, what colour lines, what lines of geography, what borders, what land as property.
“I hope that we see many more opportunities like these to pursue, together, the difficult work of unfolding worlds that seem unimaginable by most accounts,” he concluded.
The event was intentionally held on Canada Day to protest colonialism and the harm and hurt it has caused Indigenous people.
“F*#!* Canada Day!” yelled one of the Indigenous activists on the phone.
Guelph Police kept a modest distance, with marked cruisers blocking off streets to prevent traffic from interrupting the event.
Other police, some in unmarked vehicles, parked nearby.
Many of the speakers were not identified by name. At least two were Indigenous.
By early Thursday morning, most of the messages left on Wyndham Street by the protesters had been washed away and the tombstones removed.
City work crews worked on removing the more permanent DEFUND THE POLICE! Message.
“Police do not need to be armed,” Xico said outside the police headquarters in wrapping up the event.
In a city like Guelph there is not enough gun crime to justify every single officer having a lethal weapon on their person that they can use whenever they want, he said to cheers.
“We are sending police officers armed to wellness checks and it is literally just a ticking time bomb until someone is dead.
“Guelph has 134,000 people, we have a police budget of $42 million but a social services budget of $22 million. We are quickly becoming over-policed when what we need is strong community supports for our people," Xico said.
