Migrante Canada speech at the Luksang Bayan held at the Peace Garden in Toronto on April 29th
- migrantecanada
- Apr 30, 2025
- 2 min read
Speech reads:
Tonight, we gather in sorrow — and in rage.
They will tell us: ‘It was just mental health.’
But we know:
Mental health is political.
Let us speak plainly tonight.
The tragedy must not be allowed to hide behind the language of ‘mental health.’
Mental health struggles are real — but they are not an excuse for violence, nor are they a shield for injustice.
Mental health does not arise in a vacuum.
It is shaped — wounded — by the world we live in:
by the crushing weight of poverty,
by the violence of racism and colonization,
by the loneliness bred by a society that values profit over people,
by the silent terror of surveillance and repression.
Mental health is not a personal failing.
It is a mirror held up to a broken system.
They will tell us to cope — to medicate — to be silent.
But we say:
No healing without justice.
They want us to forget.
But we carry the memory of the fallen like fire in our hands.
Yet when people cry out, the state offers not solidarity, but sedation.
Not justice, but diagnosis.
They tell us to cope, to medicate, to endure — but not to resist, not to dream of something better.
Tonight, we say: enough.
Healing will not come from pills alone.
Healing demands transformation.
Healing demands the tearing down of every system that thrives on suffering and silence.
They will tell us to cope — to medicate — to be silent.
But we say:
No healing without justice.
They want us to forget.
But we carry the memory of the fallen like fire in our hands.
We gather here not only to mourn those we have lost —but to carry their memory forward as fire.
Fire that refuses to be extinguished.
Fire that demands a world where no one is disposable.
And so tonight, we remember:
True healing is not found in forgetting.
True peace is not found in silence.
True love demands that we refuse injustice.
May our grief turns into courage.
May our love for the fallen ignite the struggle for the living.##
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