May 17, 2006

Protest on the Hill on the occasion of the vote to extend the Afghanistan mission.

By Alma

The banners were terrific, our Grannie songs were great - though I wonder if they were heard very well without a mic - but the crowd was disappointingly small.  And of course no media. No doubt resting up for the IMPORTANT event tonight when the vote takes place.

I really don't know what to say.  It's important that we were there, and great to have Joan with us.  But not only was our turnout small, there were also relatively few people visiting the Hill.  Jan did get some ( 27 I think) to sign a petition to bring the troops home, though some of these signitures were from the protestors.

The demo itself was pretty short - about an hour, and ended with the reading of names of those Canadians who've been killed in the Afghanistan war, and a reminder of those many more Afghan civilians who've died.

Perhaps the most useful thing we did was to speak to individuals on the Hill about the issue in hopes of influencing them through one to one conversation.  I went up to the group of schoolgirls and a teacher from Sudbury, and asked if they ever discussed the issue at school. Most said they didn't, but one girl said she herself was very opposed to this venture. The teacher with them, a High School history teacher, also opposed to the Afghan war, said he did bring it up in his grade 12 history class when appropriate.

I left the Hill feeling very frustrated and despondent - not at our effort, but at the obvious lack of public interest.  We really have to figure out some way of getting NEW faces  to come out. Two ideas stick with me: one, that if this goes through we will have to do something very dramatic to highlight its significance to all Canadians -perhaps Grannie enlistments, or maybe  we should concentrate more on quick guerrilla type actions unless there's going to be a large well organized event - as I hope will be the case with the Security Certificate Caravan in June.