A white supremacist rally set to happen in Vancouver this Saturday could be eclipsed by a counter-demonstration, both in attendance and impact.
Scheduled to take place at City Hall on Saturday, Aug. 19, at 2 p.m., the anti-Islam white nationalist rally, organized by the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam (WCAI), had to create a new Facebook event page after their first page was taken down, and currently only has 27 people replied as attending and 56 listed as “interested.”
An anti-racist counter-protest entitled Oppose the Racists in Metro Vancouver, on the other hand – scheduled to take place outside City Hall at 12:45 p.m. the same day – has more than 3,400 people replied as attending on its page and over 5,500 indicating they’re interested. To top it off, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has said the counter-protest is both important and necessary.
The Vancouver rally comes on the heels of a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend in which a far-right extremist drove his car into a group of anti-racist counter-protestors, killing one person and injuring more than 19 others.
In a press conference on Wednesday, the mayor encouraged the counter-protest and denounced hate speech.
“I know there will be a vigorous turnout of people protesting the white supremacist rally-– whatever that turns out to be,” Robertson said. “People have the right to demonstrate, but hatred and racism have no place in this city, and I expect people to confront that, and make sure there is a peaceful and direct push-back on racism and hatred.”
UBC Professor of sociology Rima Wilkes says counter-protests are effective in sending a message through the media but ineffective at creating dialogue between opposing groups.
“When you talk about the [effectiveness of ] counter-demonstrations … you're really talking about whether it's effective for two audiences,” she said. The first is with white supremacists and whether a counter-demonstration can create meaningful dialogue, she continues, “and to that I would say no. But the second audience is the audience that is watching the media and learning about the story … it's effective in terms of speaking to the larger audience.”
Beyond sending a larger message to society, Wilkes says that protests are most effective at creating solidarity among like-minded citizens, rather than accomplishing a specific task.
“…We know from social movement research that one of the functions of a protest isn't necessarily that the protest itself changes anything, but it builds solidarity among the people that protest, and so the idea would be that when people show up to demonstrate against the white supremacists, it's reaffirming their values against that kind of behaviour … [and they see] other like-minded people.”
