Shocking!
Dave Pollard has posted an item on his blog entitled G20: A Corporatist Show of Force and Power in Toronto. It is a compendium of a number of videos showing what happened in Toronto last week. I have spent the last two hours watching these videos, and many more. I challenge you to do the same. Because frankly what I am seeing is terrifying and shocking, and I don’t mean the vandals. I mean the actions of the police.
None of these videos are the whole story, but they leave me futilely hoping for an explanation from the powers that be. The police are the people’s force, and they are there to enforce the laws of society. When they are challenged to cite the law under which they seize a man’s property, they refuse. If you have to use force against your own citizens, you better be able to explain why, who gave the orders and what laws you were enforcing. What I saw in these videos was a shocking and one-sided use of intimidation and arbitrary arrest against peaceful, non-threatening citizens who were asking for explanations and receiving no help at all. I’d love to hear someone in power explain what was going on.
When I was younger I used to join tens of thousands of people every year marching down University Avenue from Queen’s Park protesting against nuclear weapons. We had a massive peaceful march, without needing “free speech zones” and without thousands of police officers dressed in riot gear. There was always a little vandalism and garbage strewn around. One year in fact, I was working at a building on University Avenue and my job was to clean spray paint off our building. No big deal. Took four hours and a can or two of paint remover.
Back then, most of us looked like the young people in these videos: impassioned, aware, concerned about their world and PEACEFUL. The videos from Queen’s Park surprise and disturb me. I can’t help but think that dozens of those officers clad head to toe in riot gear telling peaceful young people to “GET BACK!” must have been thinking that the whole thing was a stupid charade. They were never in any danger. The protesters were milling around in the designated free speech zone and they were moved, intimidated, cajoled and randomly wrestled to the ground by heavily armed riot police.
What the hell is happening? What about the group singing Oh Canada in front of Steve’s Music on Queen Street? They sing and then are charged by the police. That is a frightening image. There isn’t a single one of them wearing the uniform of the so-called “Black Bloc.”
After watching videos of these young people for hours, I turned my attention to a few videos of the windows being smashed and the police cars being torched. I was immediately struck by how different the so-called Black Bloc anarchists were. They looked strong, powerful and well trained in martial arts. They were delivering accurate and well executed kicks to windows and cars, the same kicks that are used by police to knock in doors. Police all over the world have used agents provocateurs at all the major summits of world leaders to stir up chaos and violence. The Quebec police admitted to it at the Montebello Summit and there are many Toronto videos that show clean cut, muscular men posing as Black Bloc activists who are having nothing to do with the crowd. Back in the day on our anti-nuclear protests, it was all about joining the crowd, and even today, anarchists don’t look to be the best fed group of people.
So what is happening here? How is it that a massive police force can intimidate and push around unarmed and generally disorganized young people at Queen’s Park and yet not stop the torching of police cars left inexplicably alone and unguarded in the city centre by men who look very much like police or soldiers.
And who actually knows anything about “the Black Bloc?” Did they release a statement claiming responsibility for the havoc? Where is their website? I have no doubt that there are a few militant activists who undertake these kinds of tactics, and I condemn them. They distract from the real work of social change and they are easy to exploit. All it takes is a few bait cars, a couple of cops dressed up as a friendly faction and away they go. If they DO exist, they are naive and destructive and easily made tools of the very state and corporate agenda they claim to hate. If they don’t exist, then who are they?
What the hell is happening? Why this show of arbitrary force? Why was the limited but wanton destruction allowed to occur, but the free speech zone overrun by riot cops? What has become of this country?
I felt the same after watching the videos yesterday, and was asking the same questions. Depressing…
I am appalled at these actions, but not shocked. Perhaps it is my greater uncertainty about who the police are working for and whether the interests of the policy and government are the same as the people’s interests.
The most explanation that makes most sense of this evidence to me is that there was a deliberate strategy on the part of the government (and senior police) to paint the demonstrators as potentially violent and their protests as illegitimate.
This has 2 outcomes. First the public debate is focused on “security” rather than the issues like global economic inequality, climate change, maternal and child health, etc. Second, protest becomes less attractive to “normal” people. All protestors get seen as “extremists”.
If this is indeed the strategy, the government seems to have succeeded at least in part.
Though they may have gone too far and their strategy may have backfired. The policing of this event looked too much like the kind of thing we expect of totalitarian regimes, which has left a bad taste in many “normal” Canadian’s mouths.
For those of us who have lived in the UK and been involved in protests there, though, the police tactics seem like business as usual.
Thank you, Chris, for providing a link to a worthwhile source of info. We are recent Yank migrants to Australia, where this has not gotten much coverage (save for what shows up on The Daily Show and Colbert Report on the Comedy channel–faint laugh). We saw these techniques of agents provocateur in New Mexico during post-war demonstrations (and whenever W came to town). Worldwide, the corporatocracy coup appears to be a fait accompli! Here, the Prime Minister was ousted overnight (with an arm twisted resignation–not even a vote!) on a Thursday, and 9 days later the mining corporations have achieved the doom of a proposed tax on their profits. The stench is sickening.
It is difficult to decide how to respond to these violations of human rights and the ethics of sentient life. It appears that our very lives and limbs are on the line if we engage in peaceful protest. I want a revolution…..an evolution revolution…..but I do not want blood……I do not want violence. Thanks for giving me a space to learn and ponder and share kinship.
Blessings to you, to me, and to all those whose souls were tarnished in Toronto!
Kimberella of Sydney
Thanks Kim for the comment. There is a revolution underway I think, and it’s not one that is being controlled or driven by any centre. I think there may well be a cataclysmic change in the way things are within my lifetime. Unfortunately there has never been a revolution where people have not gotten hurt or left behind. i think there are many aspects of this world that need to be left behind, not the least of which is the delusion of control. Humans can coerce and exploit one another for so long and then there is an outburst of freedom seeking people. And we can only do the same with the earth itself before it shucks us off as well.
I’m afraid though that it is very likely that those of us who live in the privilaged west will be the ones who bear the brunt of the hurt from the shifts in power and balance with the earth. Scenes like what we have recently witnessed are becoming more common. What guarantee do we have that these scenes will not continue? And even more frightening, at what point will we find ourselves on the POLICE side of the line?
I wonder. The new is never birthed painlessly or without blood. It is the fate of our species that we often choose the hard road.
In the meantime, we can continue to build community and resiliency everywhere, in the hopes that our own resourcefulness will be put to use for peaceful transition. More than ever, prepare to live with uncertainty and confusion. That is the message I take when the police turn on their own people.