At protests across the country, queer and trans people are insisting that LGBTQ2S+ liberation and Palestinian liberation are intertwine
Protestors gather to call for a ceasefire in Toronto, November 12, 2023 Credit: Jordan Currie
At around 7 a.m. on Nov. 15, as rush hour ramped up in Montreal, traffic ground to a halt on the city’s Jacques Cartier Bridge. The structure, which connects Montreal with the south shore at Longueuil, is the third-busiest bridge in Canada—on a typical morning, commuters and large trucks flow continuously across it. But last week, as the morning light rose overhead, about 100 protestors calling for a ceasefire in Gaza stretched out across the bridge’s entrance on the Montreal side, blocking the flow of traffic with their bodies and with benches and picnic tables carried over from a nearby park.
The group chanted, waved Palestinian flags and held up banners: “Stop funding genocide,” read one; “Free Palestine, ceasefire,” read another, in French. As police arrived on the scene, protestors donned goggles and masks, and used umbrellas to shield each others’ faces and conceal their identities. Traffic was eventually diverted back across the bridge to Longueuil while protestors continued to chant, lit up by the glow of nearly two dozen police vehicles’ lights, and the steadily rising sun.
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