We wish to acknowledge the land on which this event is being organized. This area has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years and is the unceded territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. We acknowledge that this territory is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, which is an agreement between first-nations people and settlers on this land that we must work together to respect and maintain the land and resources surrounding the Great Lakes. Today, this place known as Toronto is home to many Indigenous people and communities, and we are grateful to be able to share space and work with these communities. Many organizing and attending this event are settlers on this land, and we intend to honour the land we occupy and our agreements with the First-Nations People in our organization and execution of this event.

In four days, Donald Trump will become the President of the United States. When that happens, he will bring a dangerous collection of far-right extremists, climate change deniers, predatory billionaires, open Islamophobes, anti-semites, and white supremacists into power with him.

If half of what he says can be believed, he will also begin punishing free journalism, strip millions of their health insurance, deport and indefinitely detain millions of undocumented migrants, force Muslim citizens to register themselves as such with the government, and build a wall across the border with Mexico at the expense of US taxpayers. He will bring people into power who challenge the humanity and rights of women, queer and trans people, racialized people, disabled people, as well as the entirety of the working class which makes up the majoirty of the country he plans to govern.

In response, groups across the USA have called for a GENERAL STRIKE on Friday, January 20th, in protest of their country's undemocratic and corrupt neoliberal political system, which promotes and sustains the racism, classism, and misogyny that fueled Trump's rise to power.

The strike is also in defiance of the extreme-right, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi groups who cloak themselves in the euphemistic label of "alt-right," who have found empowerment in this new political climate, both in the US and right here in Canada.

In solidarity with all those whom Donald Trump and the alt-right have promised to make their victims, we have also chosen to make January 20th a day of action and resistance. Join us in love and rage, in defiance of fascism and hatred at home and abroad.