tamils in toronto

Over the past few hours members of the Tamil community in Toronto blocked one of the main highways connecting downtown with the rest of the city. While I won’t claim any knowledge whatsoever of the situation in Sri Lanka, these demonstrations have me reading as much as I can about the current situation. I thought that was the least I could do, realizing that I live in the same city as 200,000 of them, according to MSNBC.

The protesters had been taking the streets of Toronto at least since January, in most cases in a very organized fashion. Perhaps too organized since I barely noticed them before. But only events like this one get the attention of the masses and quickly echo through the news, blogosphere and twitter-verse, generating an overwhelming voice difficult to ignore. The tools of civil disobedience seemed to have produced the results they were hoping for: attention.

As I got involved into the various streams of people commenting about the event, I realized there were two kinds of people participating in the online debate: the pervasive anonymous comment condemning the act and manifesting hatred for blocking a highway and the opinionated intellectual that has taken a position (for/against) the protests. This got me thinking about the role of a multicultural city like Toronto in the world scene.

Toronto is a diverse city. Over 50% of its inhabitants come from another country. What should the role of a metropolis like this one be in the international context? Is multiculturalism only a marketing tactic to attract more people or should it be a baseline for policy making and government action? On days like today, it feels like no one is prepared to see the big picture, yet I believe that the next few months will see a myriad of causes take the stage as minority groups face the consequences of the current crisis.

In a world that is posed to see radical changes over the next few months, flexing our participatory muscles should not be taken lightly. I’ve always believed that Toronto is among a very small group of cities that model what the future will bring us: a diverse population happily integrated into one very prosper society. Figuring out what our role is in events like this one must be a priority. For now, it seems that our civil role is to amplify the voice of these movements. I say that is good thing. But I suspect this is only the beginning.