Everyday acts of resistance by racialised women do not get the same spotlight as western feminist campaigns.
On Mother’s Day in 2009 in Canada, over 2,000 Tamil protesters stepped onto Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, chanting “no more genocide”, blocking every lane of the highway, bringing traffic to a standstill. These protests were in response to an atrocity that took place near the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, a war that lasted 26 years and ended with genocide. The atrocity saw tens of thousands of Tamil civilians lured by the Sri Lankan government into “no-fire zones”, and trapped under gunfire. When news broke, Toronto Tamils took to the streets to demand justice after months of peaceful protests, hunger strikes and rallies across the city. The Gardiner protest was a pivotal moment for Toronto Tamils, in terms of both shaping their political identity, and recognising the strength of community mobilisation. Tamil women formed the front lines of this protest and deliberately chose this role to de-escalate any potential conflicts between other protesters and the police. Tamil women have been active leaders and participants in resistance movements, both in Canada and Sri Lanka. This is work that has been happening for decades. As an Eelam Tamil anti-racism educator and scholar-activist who has spent all her life in Toronto, my doctoral research is located within the intersections of trauma-informed migrant healing, liberation psychology and arts-based participatory action research. I am grounded in a decolonial theoretical framework and committed to global feminisms. This Mother’s Day, I encourage you to reflect on why mainstream media does not recognise racialised women-led global resistance movements as feminism. Western society’s narrow view of feminism is grounded in white assumptions and catered towards the privileged, excluding acts of resistance by racialised mothers as feminism. This article seeks to centre Tamil mothers in a feminist dialogue that otherwise would be drowned out by white noise.
