2008-09-10
I’ve been following your stories about the planned G8 summit in Huntsville with interest.
Some local residents appear concerned about what this summit might mean for your lives, businesses and families. You’re probably already hearing tales about the hordes of demonstrators who will come to your town in order to wreak havoc. You’ll be told about these “trouble-makers” whose goals and identities are murky and suspicious.
As someone who has participated in such protests in the past, and who does research on them at present, I want to try to calm your fears. The Group of 8 summit protests attract so much attention because they are the closed-door meetings of a small number of wealthy, powerful people whose decisions affect all of us. These events are incredible opportunities for ordinary people the world over to try to raise their voices about the world they want. In Japan this summer, ordinary people protested in order to say that something must be done and can be done about climate change, around poverty and disease, and around democracy. People protest at the G8 summit because it is the gathering of the most powerful people on earth, and a rare opportunity to collaborate, exchange ideas, and try to make the world a better place.
I know that in Huntsville, you are concerned about war, about the environment, about poverty and the lives of our children, not only locally, but globally. The summit offers us a chance to work together — people from Huntsville and the surrounding area, with people from Toronto, from across the country and around the world. Over the coming months, I hope that we are able to resist the fear-mongering in order to work together, to raise our voices and make clear that another world is possible. Let’s start that conversation now.
Lesley Wood,
Toronto