What happens in Gaza, Sudan, or Brazil has everything to do with Canada

Every time we take to the streets, we are told by passersby —and read in comments on social media— that our protests “have nothing to do with Canada.”
No matter how much we try to explain that our demonstrations are not only legitimate but deeply connected to Canada’s foreign policy and the suffering it causes across much of the world, the denial persists.

A bubble of indifference

Many of our critics live trapped in a superficial bubble, caught in exhausting routines that prevent them from looking beyond and understanding how deeply interconnected everything is.
The lack of empathy toward what happens in Gaza, the Congo, Sudan, Brazil, Syria, Iraq, or Palestine is no coincidence — it is the result of deliberate construction.

Corporate media, consumer culture, and the precariousness that suffocates most people have shaped a culture of indifference, where compassion and solidarity are seen almost as weaknesses.
We are taught to focus only on the immediate, to disconnect from others’ pain, and to accept injustice as something inevitable.

Manufactured consent

The manufactured consent that justifies the genocide in Gaza —and the absolute silence surrounding what is happening in Sudan, where thousands are executed by militias financed by the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Canada and Israel— is producing a new threshold of dehumanization.
To that moral abyss are added other criminals, elected or not, who apply the same logic of death in the name of “security.”

Take, for instance, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, who in the midst of his reelection campaign decided to storm the favelas —those “cardboard houses,” as Alí Primera once sang— with blood and fire, leaving more than a hundred people killed by his criminal police.
Sound familiar? It’s the same policy Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have practiced for decades: killing with impunity, invoking security as an excuse.

Canada’s role in the architecture of violence

Canada is not neutral in what happens beyond its borders — it cannot be.
One of the main sources of revenue for Canadian corporations comes from the mining sector.
Canada not only exploits vast territories within its own borders —as First Nations can attest— but also maintains an extensive network of extractive operations abroad, especially in Africa and Latin America.

These companies take advantage of the institutional and political weakness of many countries to impose their interests — bribing corrupt leaders, financing local militias, and sustaining criminal structures that act as their armed wings.
Mining companies —Canadian or not— are a cancer for the communities where they operate. They have promoted wars to maintain control over resources, overthrown governments to obtain exploitation concessions, and ordered the assassination of land and environmental defenders who dared to resist.

This is the hidden face of Canada’s so-called foreign policy: a diplomacy of exploitation, disguised as cooperation and progress.
Behind the polished language of “responsible investment” and “sustainable development” lies a machinery dependent on violence, corruption, and environmental destruction.

The politics of power

Alliances in foreign policy matter. So does where pension funds invest our savings, and the kind of consumption we choose to sustain.
A world led by figures like Trump and Netanyahu —who make the rest of the countries dance to their rhythm— is not safer, neither today nor tomorrow.

Their standards in business, human rights, and political discourse endanger the majority of humanity.
The Brazilian governor who ordered the killing of dozens of poor residents in the favelas would never have dared to act without the precedent set by Trump and Netanyahu.

And Trump’s renewed focus on South America —with his eyes on Venezuela and Colombia, both rich in oil and minerals— should alarm everyone in Canada.
Not long ago, he even expressed his wish for our country to become “the 51st state,” saying so openly, knowing that, if necessary, annexation by force could be an option — much like Israel’s ongoing attempt to annex all of Palestine.

Our answer: solidarity and defense of life

In the face of this reality, we are left with three tools: solidarity, understanding, and the search for alliances built on empathy.
They are our only means to comprehend the world we live in and to protect one another — those of us who hold no power.

So, when they ask us again why we march for Palestine, for Sudan, for the Congo, or —soon enough— for Colombia and Venezuela, the answer is simple:
we do it in legitimate defense.

Because tomorrow it could be us who are kidnapped, tortured, or killed.
Because defending life anywhere is also defending our own.