An anti-Asian-racism march and vigil is happening in Montreal

On Sunday, March 21, a march against anti-Asian-racism will start at Cabot Square (Ste-Catherine and Atwater) in downtown Montreal at 1 p.m. Organized by the community groups Progressive Chinese of Québec and Groupe d’entraide contre le racisme des asiatiques du Québec, the march aims to “demand effective government action in ending racial discrimination.”

At 3:30 p.m., the march will meet up in Chinatown’s Sun-Yat-Sen park (Clark and de la Gauchetiere) with a vigil for the victims of the spa shootings in Atlanta, GA. The vigil was organized by Montreal sex-worker support organization Stella.

From the event page for the march:

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, members of Asian communities in Quebec have been physically and verbally assaulted, stabbed and even hit by cars. Our religious, cultural and commercial artefacts have also been vandalized. Across Canada, members of other Asian communities and Indigenous peoples have also been attacked. Some have been mistaken for being of East Asian descent. Vancouver reported a 717% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes while the SPVM reported a five-fold increase in racism crimes.“

From the vigil event page:

“The events in Atlanta were not an isolated event, they are part of a decades-long history of targeted violence against Asian women, inspired by a particularly hateful mix of racism, misogyny and whorephobia. While the public might expect that this event will lead to increased protection for sex workers in parlours, we know that this is likely to be a catalyst for more repressive measures and more policing, as well as renewed prohibitionist mobilization to eradicate the sex industry. It is more important than ever to listen to what Asian sex workers have to say about the harms of anti-trafficking and anti-sex work policies and campaigns.“
—Les Ami(es) de Stella

See the march details here, and the information about the vigil here.

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