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Protesters don “ethnic costumes” for Harper

When Conservative staffer sent out an email calling on supporters to show up to a Etobicoke Centre photo-op with Stephen Harper wearing their “ethnic costumes,” people responded. Only not quite the way the Conservatives hoped.

The event in the ethnically diverse riding was intended to show that Harper is a man of the multicultural people, but more than a few Canadians objected to the idea of the Tories using their cultural symbols as political props. A group of demonstrators trekked to the Airport Hilton to voice their objections, clad of course in their “ethnic costumes.” It was a small group but Canada’s different ethnicities were well represented, with a witch, a Na’vi alien, and a fake Toronto Maple Leaf goalie thrown in for good measure.

Salman, a Ryerson politics student who attended the protest, said, “Well, these are just clothes aren’t they? That’s one of the reasons why we’re out here. To point out how ridiculous it is to refer to what people wear as costumes.”

“We’re all here in solidarity because we are not props,” Rathika Sitsabaiesan told the crowd. “We are Canadians who need to be treated with dignity and respect as equal Canadians, as equal citizens. But we continue to be tokenized. We’re not posters.”

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