Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

400 reasons to listen to Reggae Music out front of the American Consulate!  Atlantic Mas puts on  carnival style BLM demonstration  By Stephen Weir for the Caribbean Camera In Toronto this year’s Fourth of July was marked with a Caribbean style protest parade through the downtown streets. And, maybe because a Mas Camp from the Toronto Caribbean Carnival organized the event, this was a protest that managed to score important political points along with a good dash of Jump Up. The Atlantic Mas bandleader Akil Heywood spoke to the media in an hour-long media scrum outside of the Toronto city hall last Saturday morning. There have been many Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations in Toronto this year, but Heywood noted to the Caribbean Camera that there has been little or no representation from the Caribbean community.  Turn up the Soca and Reggae music that all changed after the media scrum ended and the afternoon protest march began. Talk about a demonstration...

  At City Hall – Black Knight’s Brand New Day! By Stephen Weir in today's Caribbean Camera newspape r Scarborough’s Black Knight is currently stabled in the lobby of Toronto’s City Hall.   The real-life sized statue of a young black girl riding a jet-black unicorn is the first thing visitors now see when they enter the Queen St. Building. It was commissioned for Scarborough’s first all-night Nuit Blanc festival held in September of this year. The statue is built from 80,000 individual black Lego bricks. Named Cavalier Noir   (the Black Knight), it is meant to answer the question, “ If Scarborough was to commemorate its own heroes, what would the monument look like?” Created by two Scarborough stars - artist Ekow Nimako and video maker Director X – they say the Lego statue “ stands as an emblem of hope for the disenfranchised by drawing on hip-hop’s creative strategies: taking existing, discarded, often overlooked elements and flipping them to inspire and ampl...