Activists Stage Die-in, Call on Scotiabank to Divest from Elbit Systems

A hundred Palestine supporters staged a die-in outside the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre at admission time for Scotiabank’s Hockey Day in Canada, to denounce the bank’s massive investment in Elbit Systems, which supplies the Israel Defence Forces in weapons used to commit unspeakable atrocities in Gaza.

While the link with the Palestine crisis may be tenuous, there is no bad target for a protest over a crisis which has moved public opinion worldwide and mobilised millions in support of the beleaguered Palestinian people—even sports fans notoriously divided about activism.

This wasn’t the first event in town targeting Scotiabank. One month ago, another protest was staged at the bank’s branch at the corner of Douglas and Yates, that one less disruptive and drawing a smaller crowd. Yet the formula remained essentially the same, to engage the public with banners and leaflets in an attempt to educate the masses in how the flow of everyone’s money ends up funding genocide abroad.

This also wasn’t the first time this group staged a Palestine solidarity die-in. Another took place at the Victoria Convention Centre during the BC NDP Convention two months ago, which may have been decisive in passing a motion in support of a ceasefire in Gaza.

Since my camera is terrible at capturing video in low light conditions, I volunteered for leaflet duty instead of trying in vain to record everything. Public reception turned out to be mixed. Most people walked by indifferently and some outright avoided us. Many were receptive and even supportive, but about as many were hostile and we earned a lot of pejorative epithets, although no outright heckling. We still managed to find hundreds of leaflets a taker and ran out well within the hour. One warden commented I had an easier time approaching the crowd than most since I was the only one in attendance not to wear a face mask.

Only two police officers showed up, and only belatedly. Since they clearly did not have the numbers to take on us, they wasted time with the police liaison officer under the gaze of the legal observer, and left befuddled as we were about to disperse. No incident or arrest occurred.