Every May 1st militant extremists from OCAP and No One Is Illegal organize a May Day march through downtown Toronto. The marches feature most of the same people we see at most labour movement led protests, each year a guest of honour gets to sit on the back of a rented truck, take charge of the mic, and agitate the crowd. This year’s honoree was the now infamous Yusra Khogali of Black Lives Matter Toronto.
It was a rainy Sunday, not a great day for a parade. Between the inclement weather and dwindling support since the days of Occupy Toronto, the crowd was smaller this year- last year there were about 1500, 3,000 the year before, yesterday only about 500 participants. Curiously, it seems that none of the major unions backed the protest this year- could it be they’re starting to get afraid of the public knowing they support this crowd?
May Day is often an occasion for violence and there was no shortage of that in Montreal, where masked thugs got into a street fight with the police and smashed-up windows. Vancouver was rather tame this year, no reports of arrests or calls for violence like we’ve seen in the past. Toronto’s march was tame at first, but all hell broke loose after a bystander senselessly assaulted two cops. And, of course, Khogali accused the arresting officers of being racists.