There are some people who’d argue it’d be impossible for racism to exist in a multicultural city like Toronto.

Alexandria Williams would disagree.

The 26-year-old Bermudian is one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Toronto chapter (BLMTO). Over the past seven months she’s helped to organise rallies against the racial profiling and police brutality happening across North America.

She’s also worked to bring instances of police brutality in Ontario to the forefront.

“One of the challenges in working in Toronto is that people don’t see racism and police brutality as happening right here in our backyard,” Ms Williams said.

“That makes it hard for people to listen to you because you are under this ideal that multiculturalism and racism don’t coexist.”

BLMTO has made it its mission to highlight cases like the one involving Jermaine Carby, a young black man shot and killed by Brampton police on September 24, 2014.

“There was no investigation into his death and they still plan on doing no investigation,” Ms Williams explained.

“We wanted to bring light to the fact that police brutality is a real issue in Toronto. It was all hush-hush about what happened to his life. The media was not talking about it and nothing was being done about it.”

Ms Williams got interested in social activism as a university student in 2010.

There was a huge spike in violent crimes on her campus at York University and police were called in to monitor the situation.

“While watching the police officers I realised they were targeting black men mostly, as well as a few men of colour.

“They asked them to hand over their backpacks and show their ID to verify that they went to the university.

“I ended up following two cops around for five hours and recorded them asking a majority of black students. That is illegal. You can’t ask people to do that if they haven’t committed a crime.”

At the time she was the president of the York United Black Students’ Alliance; she used the group’s social media platforms to ask students about racial profiling on campus.

“We got a lot of responses,” she said. “It was overwhelming at the time, but we reached out to some community groups in the city like Black Action Defence from the Jane and Finch area. We also talked to The Centre for Women and Trans People and TBLGay Alliance, who also helped us.”

Then she built up the courage to bring those concerns to the attention of university leaders.

Her efforts didn’t stop there. Ms Williams did tons of research and joined with others to create BLMTO.

First on their agenda was Mike Brown, an 18-year-old black man fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson.

More than 3,000 people turned up for that rally, despite only posting about it on social media 24 hours before.

A second rally held at Nathan Phillips Square last December was also a success. They asked members of the black community to share their stories of racial profiling — and got over 350 responses.

They used chalk to write those stories, as well as the names of people who had died from police brutality in Canada and the US, on the city streets.

“Then we took to march in the streets and ended up at Dundas and Yonge square at the centre of the city,” Ms Williams said.

“We shut that down so that no one — buses, people or cars — could get through. It’s an economic epicentre of Toronto so to [block that off] was huge and there was complete silence. We laid there for about 11 minutes and after that was done we spray-painted the words ‘We can’t breathe’ and held that space for 45 minutes.

“After that the media had no choice but to listen to us and what we were saying. That was the first time Jermaine Carby’s name had been brought up in the national media.”

Ms Williams said she was very proud of how accessible the campaign has been.

There are people of different genders, races and nationalities and also people with disabilities on the BLMTO board.

It’s also rewarding to know she’s part of a collective global movement, she said.

Aside from her activism she’s kept busy as the vice president of Campus Life for the York Federation of Students.

Ms Williams is expected to graduate with a theatre degree this autumn. Her ultimate goal is to become a theatrical therapist and help people with special needs and delinquents express themselves through drama.

Visit Facebook: Black Lives Matter Toronto Coalition.