Solidarity with Sadie, Nikita, and Devoney: For Conscience, for Gaza

We, at the Migrant Action Centre, stand with deep respect, fierce solidarity, and unbending commitment behind Sadie Mees, Nikita Stapleton, and Devoney Ellis (who also is an organizer on the Migrant Action Centre’s board of directors) as they sail aboard Conscience with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Their act is not symbolic; it’s a refusal to be complicit in the siege of Gaza, and an insistence that when governments abandon humanity, people will act from conscience.

Why their voyage matters:

• Acting from conscience is a radical refusal. In a world where state violence is normalized and bureaucratized, choosing to act from care becomes revolutionary. Their journey embodies that refusal: the refusal to let policy and apathy decide who gets to live.
• Borders and blockades are cut from the same cloth. We know this as migrant justice organizers: the border is not a line, it is a weapon. Whether it’s the blockade of Gaza, the criminalization of migrants at Canada’s borders, or deportations justified through paperwork, it is the same system deciding whose movement is allowed and whose suffering is ignored.
• Migrant justice and Palestinian liberation are inseparable. Both reject a world where freedom of movement and access to life’s essentials are rationed by empire.
• When institutions abdicate, the people must act. Canada’s government has failed to stand on the side of life as it continues arms exports, funds complicity, and offers empty statements while violence escalates. Flotillas and direct actions remind us that human rights can’t wait for permission as rights continue to be eroded.
• The flotilla faces drone strikes, sabotage, and violent interception in international waters, and yet they go anyway. That is not recklessness; it is the highest form of solidarity - to face danger so that others might survive it.

To the Canadian state and its institutions, the Migrant Action Centre calls to:

• Affirm the right to conscience and solidarity. Defending life should never be criminalized, especially in a time where people around the world are increasingly facing persecution for speaking up and ensuring accountability. The Canadian government must guarantee safety and non-interference for all aboard the flotilla.
• End complicity in genocide. Enact a two-way arms embargo and halt all trade in military goods with Israel. Investigate Canadian complicity in breaches of international humanitarian law.
• Lift the blockade. Demand an immediate and permanent end to the siege of Gaza and unrestricted access for food, medicine, fuel, and rebuilding materials.

To movements, unions, and communities everywhere, we call upon you to:

• Amplify the stories and struggles of Palestinians resisting occupation, apartheid, and displacement.
• Organize locally against deportations, displacement, and state violence. These are the same systems that uphold the same hierarchies that make genocide possible.
• Build mutual aid and solidarity that transcends borders because freedom must travel farther than oppression does.

The voyage of Conscience is not charity; it is a shared struggle. It is the same heartbeat that drives migrant workers to organize, refugees to resist detention, and displaced families to rebuild against all odds.

At the Migrant Action Centre, we recognize that the border cuts differently but the blade is the same. Gaza’s blockade and Canada’s immigration systems are parts of one global machinery that divides lives into “deserving” and “disposable.”

We reject that division. We choose solidarity over silence, action over despair.

For Gaza. For migrants. For all who move through the world seeking dignity and freedom.

Claiming space, creating change... always!