Anti-Racists 2, Gary McHale & CANACE 0

Anti-racists scored another decisive victory over Gary McHale this Sunday when more than 40 anti-racist activists joined about 30 of McHale’s supporters for the March 28th “Anti-Racism” rally. The anti-racists held signs stating their opposition to McHale’s approach in Caledonia, but they stood by quietly waiting for McHale and his followers to begin their rally, having made clear before hand that they had no intentions of disrupting the rally or stopping it from taking place.

The following is some video footage showing what happened. Higher quality versions of these videos are forthcoming.

1. Merlin Kinrade uses his megaphone to speak to the quiet and peaceful crowd about why he is unable to speak to the quiet and peaceful crowd. Doug Fleming then takes the megaphone, and like Kinrade continues without interruption to say his thing. Then McHale comes on the scene to blather on to the media — explaining rather incredibly that he is going to charge the OPP for nuisance because they didn’t break up a peaceful rally to separate the two groups.

2. The real reason that McHale didn’t want to continue his rally is because he is afraid that the people that he brings out to his rally will get another opinion on the matter. The FNSWG encouraged its members to talk as much as possible in a spirit of peaceful engagement with people from Caledonia, and here is the result of some of our conversations. As you can see both the people that we brought to the rally and the Caledonia residents are quite able to conduct themselves peacefully as they debate the issues.

3. Here is some footage of the gathering that shows how ‘unsafe and dangerous’ it really was. The song of birds enjoying the spring rain mingles with the hushed tones of Caledonians and out of town anti-racist activists talking about the issues that brought them out. Newsflash to Kinrade: nobody was breaking any laws, we live in a “free” country, and this was a public event. If you want to call a public “anti-racist” rally but are then upset that some anti-racists show up to the event holding signs expressing their belief that anti-racism means having an anti-colonial analysis, then that’s really your problem. This clip closes with FNSWG member Tom Keefer thanking the crowd for coming out and explaining that we did not stop Kinrade and McHale from speaking.