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“A significant number of us have been involved in organizing around anti-capitalism, migrant justice, Indigenous sovereignty, low-income housing, homelessness and the Downtown Eastside,” she said. “A second layer is youth who have been activated through climate justice stuff in the past year.”

Photo by JENNIFER GAUTHIER / REUTERS

That includes youth inspired by Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, which brought climate strikes to Vancouver, including one that attracted more than 100,000 participants last September.

“There’s always NGOs but they are not — and I can’t stress this enough — they are not involved in on-the-ground organizing,” Knight said. “It’s truly grassroots. It’s people who have community connections to events, who have been up to Unist’ot’en (camp), who are involved in other similar struggles in the city.”

Much of the organizing is done on Facebook but people are also connecting on Instagram, particularly through the @voicesfrontlines account, Knight said. The demonstrators are alerting each other to action using the hashtags #WetsuwetenStrong, #ShutdownCanada and #AllEyesOnWetsuweten.

Ivan Drury of the Red Braid Alliance for Decolonial Socialism said many of the participants have been young Indigenous activists who have become leaders of the movement in Vancouver.

Drury said he met five of them when Red Braid participated in the CP Rail blockade on Thursday night. They had been at the occupation of Eby’s office earlier that day, and two told him that their first act of protest had been a blockade on Granville Street Bridge on Wednesday, he said.