The one thing you have to give Trump credit for.
He's doing a fantastic job of uniting anti-racists.
Mass celebration of diversity overwhelms anti-Islam rally at city hall
VANCOUVER — In the end, the organizers of a planned “anti-Islam” rally Saturday in Vancouver only spurred a celebration of diversity, anti-fascism and tolerance of Islam so massive it spilled onto the streets outside Vancouver City Hall and shut down a nearby street.
At the peak of the counter-protest at around 2 p.m., when organizers from the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam Canada and the Cultural Action Party of Canada had been expected to speak out against federal immigration policy, about 4,000 people surrounded city hall, according to a police estimate.
The anti-Islam rally organizers were nowhere to be found.
WCAI Canada president Joey De Luca, who told media this week he was flying to Vancouver from his hometown Calgary for the rally, did not return a request for comment before deadline.
It seemed all but a handful of the 4,000 people at city hall had shown up to speak against the anti-Islam rally, which a Facebook event page indicated was expected to draw two dozen people.
Those with dissenting voices who made themselves heard — about a half dozen men who exercised their Charter right to freedom of expression on public property — took turns engaging in debates with counter-protesters while each was surrounded by dozens more who shouted, “Let him speak,” just as often as “Kick him out.”
Often, these heated debates were drowned out by the sounds of bagpipes, accordions, saxophones and kazoos, which counter-protesters brought for that purpose.
Police guarded the dissenting speakers, watching that they didn’t resort to hate speech or that the debates didn’t turn physical. In some cases, when the discourse became too nasty, police escorted these speakers off city hall property to the jeers of the counter-protesters.
Mass celebration of diversity overwhelms anti-Islam rally at city hall | Vancouver Sun
He's doing a fantastic job of uniting anti-racists.
Mass celebration of diversity overwhelms anti-Islam rally at city hall
VANCOUVER — In the end, the organizers of a planned “anti-Islam” rally Saturday in Vancouver only spurred a celebration of diversity, anti-fascism and tolerance of Islam so massive it spilled onto the streets outside Vancouver City Hall and shut down a nearby street.
At the peak of the counter-protest at around 2 p.m., when organizers from the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam Canada and the Cultural Action Party of Canada had been expected to speak out against federal immigration policy, about 4,000 people surrounded city hall, according to a police estimate.
The anti-Islam rally organizers were nowhere to be found.
WCAI Canada president Joey De Luca, who told media this week he was flying to Vancouver from his hometown Calgary for the rally, did not return a request for comment before deadline.
It seemed all but a handful of the 4,000 people at city hall had shown up to speak against the anti-Islam rally, which a Facebook event page indicated was expected to draw two dozen people.
Those with dissenting voices who made themselves heard — about a half dozen men who exercised their Charter right to freedom of expression on public property — took turns engaging in debates with counter-protesters while each was surrounded by dozens more who shouted, “Let him speak,” just as often as “Kick him out.”
Often, these heated debates were drowned out by the sounds of bagpipes, accordions, saxophones and kazoos, which counter-protesters brought for that purpose.
Police guarded the dissenting speakers, watching that they didn’t resort to hate speech or that the debates didn’t turn physical. In some cases, when the discourse became too nasty, police escorted these speakers off city hall property to the jeers of the counter-protesters.
Mass celebration of diversity overwhelms anti-Islam rally at city hall | Vancouver Sun
