The sounds of beating drums and Russian accordion music filled the air June 10 at Dundonald Park, as a crowd numbering in the hundreds gathered to march in protest of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s speech at the Ottawa Convention Centre.
Sitting in a circle, protesters played small drums and other instruments, and when the rally started, some brought their drums and continued to play as they marched, said Brittan Florczyk, a student activist from Algonquin College who participated in the protest.
“It created almost a hippie vibe,” said Florczyk, who recently finished a program in media and communications. “It was nice.”
The musical, flower-child atmosphere was also a direct contrast to the large police presence Florczyk said she noticed as protesters marched towards the convention center. Police lined the streets and some were standing on top of squad cars videotaping the hundreds-strong crowd as they made their way through the streets to the beat of their drums.
None of the protesters acted on the fact they were being videotaped, aside from a few who held umbrellas in front of the cameras, but Florczyk said she felt the videotaping of the rally “enhanced the image of the security culture we have after the G20.”
Florczyk said she expected police would be there, just as she expected to march, chant and cheer, but the realities of what might happen if the rally got out of control were made real to her when another protester gave her a legal number to write on her body.
“I wrote down the number and still participated,” she said. “But it made the realities of potential G20 violence more real.”
The fact that Harper holds a majority government despite 60 per cent of the population voting for other parties was her personal reason for protesting, Florczyk said. She believes that while this rally may not make a huge difference, it will inform others about what is going on politically in their country and urge them into action.
Florczyk has been participating in rallies for almost a year, hoping to make a change in the country and inform people of the problems she sees in the current system, she said. After working as a security guard for the government and seeing how the system worked, she found a lot of things that, in her opinion, use an overhaul.
Two of the many changes Florczyk said she would like to see made are a shift towards a less capitalist society and a reform of the political system so the views of the people of Canada are distributed appropriately.
Her ideal system would prevent a government with less than half the country’s support from being able to hold a majority and steer Canada in that party’s political direction, she said.
“A lot of students think the system is how it is and they can’t make anything happen or change,” she said. “Most students just leave it alone and focus on smaller things.”
Check out more photos from the protest in our web gallery: https://charlatan.ca/gallery
