Waving at Bush with all five fingers

Bush extended thanks to the Canadians who waved at him with all five fingers. I can’t blog very much right now, but I can tell you there were tens of thousands waving. There was a spirited march from city hall to parliament hill, and at Bush’s dinner appointment at the Museum of Civilization there was a demonstration of several thousand that reached spitting distance (or at least shouting distance) of the venue. It was a good feeling – it feels like Canadians at least managed to come out in approximately the same numbers as Chileans did. As someone who was close to the Toronto organizing, I have to say that even though there were many people pouring tremendous amounts of energy into organizing these demonstrations, the sheer size and scale of the demonstrations was a pleasant surprise to all, and happened I think because there is massive repudiation of Bush in Canada as opposed to long patient organizing work (there was work done, but there just wasn’t time to build an event like this and there weren’t massive institutions mobilizing for it).

More tomorrow (I think!)

Author: Justin Podur

Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction. Teach at York U's FES. Author. Writer at ZNet, TeleSUR, AlterNet, Ricochet, and the Independent Media Institute.