Immense pressure is being brought to bear on the Toronto Public Library to cancel the “The War in Ukraine and How to Stop It” meeting to be held at the Lillian H. Smith branch on Sunday, June 4. Based on smears and lies, the far-right Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and prominent right-wing politicians, including Ontario Labour Minister Monte McNaughton and Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford, are demanding the meeting be censored. 

The claim that the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the organizer of Sunday’s meeting, supports Putin or any faction of the Russian oligarchy is libelous. The IYSSE, which includes members in both Ukraine and Russia, is fighting to build a global anti-war movement, led by the  working class and in opposition to all the belligerents—the US/NATO powers, their puppets in Kiev and the Putin regime. 

Those like the UCC that are demanding the meeting be shut down fear that any discussion of the historical roots of the conflict will explode their false narrative of an “unprovoked war.” It will demonstrate that the war in Ukraine is a predatory imperialist conflict that was provoked and is being escalated by the US and its NATO allies, Canada included. 

Workers and youth must not allow the capitalist establishment to shut down democratic debate about a conflict in which Canada is deeply implicated and which threatens to unleash a global conflict between nuclear-armed powers. 

We, the undersigned, emphatically urge the Toronto Public Library to rebuff the right-wing attempt to conscript it into acting as a pro-war state censor, and to stand by its commitment to uphold the democratic right of organizations to hold meetings, so long as they do not promote violence or discrimination (as outlined in its “community event spaces renting policy.”)