As racialized communities in Canada know well, cracking down on protesters by police is not new

This column is an opinion by Hamilton-based writer Sarah Adjekum. For more information about CBC’s Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

For those who have never faced an encounter with police, the images in Ottawa last weekend may have seemed shocking. But cracking down on protesters is not new. Police and government response in Canada to Indigenous and Black-led causes has historically been heavy-handed, and prompt — leaving Indigenous people and racialized Canadians to wonder why this protest went largely unencumbered for several weeks. 

We know this first hand in Hamilton, where calls from a growing list of organizations, community leaders, and even some elected