Ester Reiter lived through discrimination as a Jew in Cold War America, marched to protest the Vietnam War with two babies in tow, and visited a mass grave in a southern Poland forest where her grandparents, aunts and uncles were likely murdered in the Holocaust.

When she woke up on Wednesday morning, the 77-year-old didn’t hesitate to stand up for what she says is another great injustice — the Ontario government passing legislation that a judge ruled violates the Constitution.

She cancelled her recorder quartet practice and made her way to Queen’s Park.

“You can’t let them get away with these dirty deeds without witnessing the thing,” said Reiter of the Progressive Conservative government invoking the “notwithstanding” clause to ram through cuts to Toronto city council in the middle of a municipal election campaign. “This is outrageous. It’s like shredding everything I care about.”

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Within minutes of grabbing a spot in the legislature and watching others make noise as question period began, Reiter and the rest of the audience were told to leave. She refused, and made it known why.

“I am 77-and-a-half years old and I hate the destruction of democracy,” Reiter yelled from the balcony as opposition MPPs below clapped in support.

Two security guards intervened and escorting Reiter out of Queen’s Park. She later told the Star the only reason she didn’t try to stay longer was not out of fear of being criminally charged, but because she was concerned that if her wrists were handcuffed behind her back it would injure her shoulder.

“Why do I care about having a record?” said Reiter, a retired professor of women’s studies at York University.

She wasn’t arrested or charged, nor were two other protesters who were also escorted out, according to Toronto police.

The last time Reiter was at Queen’s Park was in 1996, when she went to protest the Progressive Conservative government of then-premier Mike Harris. She was kicked out of the legislature that day, too.

“How I honour my identity as a Jew is to get my ass out and protect everybody, to protect the rights and freedoms of everybody and really try to struggle against any injustice,” she said.

Reiter’s Brooklyn accent hints at her past. Her parents immigrated to New York City from Eastern Europe in the 1920s. When Reiter was on born Jan. 13, 1941, her mother and father were struggling to find out what had happened to their own parents, brothers and sisters, who were still overseas during the Second World War. They would later discover that almost the entire family was murdered in the Holocaust.

“I didn’t live through that hell, but I inherited my parents’ grief and the understanding you don’t fight (injustice) for yourself. You fight it for everybody,” Reiter said. She still remembers her mother mourning her little sister, who had been trying to escape to the United States but never made it.

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Reiter would eventually move to Winnipeg with her two boys in 1968, and then later to Toronto to get her PhD in sociology at the University of Toronto, driven to make a difference.

“I ask myself, what can I do to make sure what happened to my people doesn’t happen to other people — to make sure my voice is there saying, ‘No, no, no, it isn’t right?’ ”

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