Now marching through the streets of Calgary -- singing and dancing for social justice -- Rachel Engler-Stringer isn't merely a protester anymore.
Last year, at Quebec's Summit of the Americas, the 25-year-old Saskatoon native sang out her first cheer against the globalization of the world's economies.
And after tasting that experience with the Radical Cheerleaders, she said there's no turning back.
"We protest in a very visual, very musical, very colourful way," Engler-Stringer said, nearly out of breath from an afternoon of cheering, jumping, doing the splits and dancing.
"We try to use movement and humour in order to get our messages across.
"In the last few years, protesting has gotten very creative through and through."
Soon after last year's summit, she was piecing together trademark red and black clothes from thrift stores, and fastening shreds of black and orange garbage bags together to make the pom-poms to fit the calling of a Radical Cheerleader.
Radical Cheerleading started in the U.S. as a way to put a fun spin on activist marches and rallies with women and men from all walks of life turning typical cheers into social statements.
"We're acting silly, but we're spreading a message that is extremely important and extremely serious at the same time," Engler-Stringer said.
"For a lot of people, it's easier to hear a message that isn't coming in a way that's too serious."
Like typical cheerleading squads, the group's main purpose is keeping activists' and observers' spirits up, fuelling their will to demonstrate.
100 SQUADS ACROSS TWO CONTINENTS
There are about 100 squads of Radical Cheerleaders across North America and Europe.
About a dozen of them from across Western Canada are here this week to cheer on protesters during the G-8.
Engler-Stringer said she's found people who are leery of protesting find Radical Cheerleading to be a fun and educational experience.
Also adding colour to the streets of Calgary during the G-8 protests scheduled throughout the week are members of Bread and Puppet Theatre from Vermont, who joined protesters from B.C. and Alberta in getting their anti-G-8 message out.
"We came all the way to Calgary because of all the repression on the streets in Genoa last year and because organizers tried to see to it that we wouldn't come by holding this year's summit in such a remote area," said the group's head puppeteer, who declined to give her name.
"Our world is suffering heavily from the policies of these leaders, so we came to have our voices heard. No matter where they go, we'll always be right behind them telling them what we think."
She said puppets are an ideal way to poke fun at all kinds of targets, whereas a live performer offering social criticism might be less accepted.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.