General Urban Cambridge Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

I'm not sure that "in a modern context" really carries much weight given that we can't get them safe drinking water. The historical harms have not been righted, that's what the whole conclusion of the TRC.

I just mean that if the Wet'suwet'en asked for the required changes to the relevant Canadian legislation to allow them to change their government, I’m pretty sure their request would be granted. I think a strong argument can be made that they shouldn’t have to ask, but the point is that as far as I know they’re not forced to stay with their current governing rules.

Whereas if they had made the same request in the ’50s I assume they would have been dismissed entirely.

Lol...the BLM protest absolutely did block roads...I have video of it if you want, they went right past my window...there were tens of thousands of people on Charles St. and Joseph St.....nobody was driving through, hell for that matter, they blocked the LRT for a time.

I wonder if I went through before or after that happened? Anyway, they didn’t block roads for days at a time, and didn’t block major transportation routes at all (OK, except for the LRT, briefly).

While I think you are right, blocking the 401 would be cleared much faster, I don't think it's actually the same. More people and frankly, more freight tonnage would be affected by blocking the 401 than one rail line--at least anywhere near here, maybe near Quebec it would be similar.

Don’t count on it. A single freight train can have over 100 cars carrying goods that would take closer to 200 trucks to carry. A single track can carry more traffic than an entire expressway while just sitting there quietly most of the time. I don’t know the actual numbers but I believe the blockaded freight line was the double-track main line. This is not some backwater passenger line that is maintained as a government project.

I don't really think telling someone their protest is mis-targeted is different from telling them they are protesting wrong. Again, the point of protest is to change people's minds, ultimately, we are the ones with power, and getting our attention and changing our minds is the point, their protest has been effective in getting attention. I guarantee you we wouldn't be talking about it if they had protested as you suggest.

As for imposing our will, I don't really understand the history of their various governments, but given our history, I really really don't think we should be insisting that the government we chose to negotiate with has to be the valid government--regardless of how we feel about "royalty".

Well, again, the project has been democratically approved by the Wet'suwet'en. So complaining on grounds of injustice towards Indigenous people as a whole that the project is unacceptable simply makes no sense. What am I to make of a protest that makes no sense? Maybe the hereditary chiefs should stand for office and change both the decision and the governing system when they win.

If the protests were strictly on environmental grounds then they would have a better point. Although even there, for how long is it OK for the protests to continue? No society can continue to operate if every or even any interest group, no matter how well-intentioned, is allowed to veto the continued operation of the economy indefinitely. Remember, it’s not really the big bad railway companies that need the trains to roll: it’s everybody who depends on our modern economy, which is everybody.

Perhaps it would, but this is where I think anti-racism and just "not racist" differ. Yes, the current policies are not explicitly racist, but they exist in a context where we have enforced our power structures on them. Yes, they could change their government now, if they chose, but only if they were able to mobilize and organize, an ability that we actively took from them for many years. It may recover on their own, but continuing to rely on those structures that we created in the past, isn't neutral, just because we aren't actively enforcing them now. Again, I don't know anything about the actual wishes or governance of the nations involved, but given our history, I pretty much assume we are not in the right now.

And that's assuming our policies now are actually neutral now is in itself a stretch...we have continued to break treaties and have failed to invest in infrastructure like water, right up to today.


Yes, fair, this isn't exactly the same, but I think it still qualifies to the point. Not you, but someone after you, is not the decision maker here, but they were impacted by the protest.


As for the 401, yes, trains carry a lot, but the 401 is massive, AADT on the busiest sections are close to half a million. Even taking conservative estimates and accounting for trucks being a minority on the highway, you are still looking at hundreds of trains a day to match that. I don't think even our mainline rail lines will hit that frequency, but I could be wrong.  Mind you, that highway gets block on the daily, so we're kind of accustomed to that kind of problem. Of course, instead of resignation over the inevitability of traffic violence, people would probably respond differently to a protest blocking it.