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Let’s talk about what happened to Jaahnavi Kandula
Our timelines are covered with people— largely South Asians — who don’t usually talk about police violence, amplifying what happened to Jaahnavi Kandula.
If you’re talking about police violence for the first time, thank you. Thank you for engaging in a discourse that is often incorrectly labeled as ‘too political.’ It’s always scary the first time you do something new, so we want to thank you for taking this first step.
Our invitation to you is to take another step, and another after that. Because this may be your first time, but this has been a conversation that Black and Indigenous people have been leading for decades.
The One Where Everyone Misses The Point
On Canada Project, and we hope you’ll join us, is rejecting any climate solution by the people who have been historically failing us, that does not comprehensively and inclusively and sustainably address the climate catastrophe we are currently in. Call us old fashion, but we like our air clean and safe to breathe.
Since we don’t feel that the vast majority of the politicians in Canada have our back (most politicians prioritize political party over public interest at best, and private side deals with corporations over public at worst) — the advocates we trust to take care of our planet is Indigenous peoples.
Indigenous peoples across Canada and the world, have been fighting alone to protect our planet for much longer than any Western climate activist group, and they have seen the most gains in protecting our planet (especially when you consider they did all this while facing land theft, systemic violence, physical violence (@ rcmp) and ongoing human rights violations). They aren’t just saying we need to protect the land, they put their bodies on the line to do so and have been successful.
“British Columbia has been dealing with wildfires for years and *now* Ontario cares?“
White folks and non-Indigenous POC in Ontario should have paid more attention to the lived experiences and needs of people in Western Canada over the past 10 years. Doing so is the right thing to do and likely would have minimized the disaster we're experiencing in Ontario.
– and over the past 100s of years, white people in Canada should have listened to Indigenous peoples – who were forced to migrate from their lands* because Indigenous peoples are disproportionally experiencing, for significantly longer, the catastrophic effects of this climate emergency they played no part in creating.
We’re angry at the past 30+ years of politicians in Canada for failing to meaningfully mitigate climate change.
I’m angry at the politicians who are currently in office across our country that still (to varying degrees) deny our climate emergency.
These are politicians that - at best are detached from reality and, at worst, are actively colluding and benefiting from the destruction of our planet, and either way – are failing at representing public interests while still being paid a salary from taxpayer dollars.
