Mother's Day Liberation Rally and Community Supper

BLOG POST posted on May 10, 2011 by Vargas

Paul and Nadia.

Filipins moms.

Moms and their kids are right- using solidarity, we can strike against any hint of inequality and discrimination.

I think what happened at Rhizome café last Sunday could become a reference for any struggle for social justice across Canada. Why? How? By listening to the key words of the poor: love. Love, their love, is now emerging as a radical statement for freedom.

Is love emerging as a true democracy in these depressing electoral times? That was what happened at Rhizome Cafe when a group of low income single mothers with the support of Vancouver Status of Women, No One is Illegal-Vancouver, the Philippine Women’s Centre and the Transformative Communities Project Society celebrated a Community Supper.

The huge dimension of love emerged, and gave a place to Filipina immigrants, the homeless, oppressed Indigenous folks, Muslims, lesbians, and all the low income moms and their children who struggle against a social order which only guarantees them a cell phone and horrible inequalities.

Our lives are not only measured in order to supply a master that makes war, discriminates against difference, exploits  immigrants and ignores the more fundamental rights of the children. No!!

There are also people who are working in the opposite way, who make the hope by putting their endeavors to create spaces in which children speak for love, freedom and the social responsibility, creating a space where everybody enjoys life regardless their status, ability, color or sexual preference.

It is with low income families where we can feel hope, and truly formulate a world where most of us would like to live. That night, those families said: we need to love each other, and let the magic happens.

Last Sunday they stood up and recognize the gap between those who said that there is no money for health care, food, shelter, all universal rights that many people are dying for in these times in the Middle East and North Africa.

With regard to social order, my friend from Justice for Migrant Workers and I were surprised when a child named Paul stood up and said: "I love my mom who is a social organizer."

For us this was an authentic message, which rejects the wisdom that this hierarchical, heterosexual order is our destiny.

Moreover, I cannot imagine as a teacher explaining to the children that they have to see and obey the line between the rich and the poor. I mean wouldn't it make your mouths hang open/agape if I were to say that a child's attempt to dream for unconditional, egalitarian love for the people is impossible.

What is your social insurance number?

At Rhizome the children put their skills into practice and avoided the contradictions of this social order. They played and created art, and were were never asked for their SIN number. The SIN number that adults use in order to force Filipina moms to leave their own children, to clean up the houses of the rich, to force the poor to pawn their few possessions, to live on grass or weeds as long as they could, like the farm immigrant worker without food.

Instead these children, from different backgrounds but all from low income families, imposed a new social order through which they could create an invaluable “collective” piece of art.

For these reasons, the efforts of the moms and children must be remembered. They participated in a a long walk in the rain on Saturday, standing for what they deserve: universal child care and dental care. On Sunday, with the help of the Rhizome, people were fed with beans, corn and a chocolate cake.

That night ended with a wonderful feeling that humankind could seriously do and think the impossible.