posted June 26, 2010 06:19 PM         

G20 protest devolves to violence.

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Anarchists+crash+protests+clash+with+police/3206511/story.html

TORONTO — Clashes with police broke out Saturday as an estimated 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Toronto as part of a massive anti-G20 protest that saw two police cars set on fire.

While most of the protesters were content to sing songs, wave placards and dance, a smaller group, estimated at roughly 100, were doing more serious damage, smashing windows at banks and shops in the downtown, as well as attacking two media vehicles.

Hundreds of riot-gear-wearing officers watched from a distance for much of the day.

Dressed in helmets, gas masks and body armour, they were attempting to block protesters from walking down toward the Toronto Convention Centre, the site of the G20 summit.

At one point, after flames and smoke had finally stopped streaming from the burnt-out police cars, which had been parked when they were set ablaze, officers formed a line four deep to block off a street.

Hundreds of protesters, filling an entire city block, chanted angrily at the officers: “Let us through,” and “This is what a police state looks like.”

The crowd cheered when a charred police car was towed away.

Elsewhere, police on horseback erected a barricade, and tear gas was used by officers at one location.

The G20 security zone was put on lockdown as were several other locations, including the Eaton Centre shopping mall, SickKids Hospital and Toronto General Hospital. The Eaton Centre lockdown was lifted later in the afternoon.

Officers had both golf balls and flowers thrown at them, a symbol of the dichotomy security officials faced.

“As you can see the officers are out there and they’re reacting to the crowd or to the incidents as they come along with the response required to keep the control of the situation,” said Const. Rodney Petroski, a spokesman for the G20 Integrated Security Unit.

“It’s fluid, but they are responding as the incidents arrive.”

Toronto EMS confirmed three people had been injured.

“We have a call of three people bleeding from the head in the area of the protest. . . . They are stable. Toronto EMS is trying to get into the area. We’re close by and waiting for it to be safe to enter,” said Kim McKinnon.

At Queen and Duncan, the CTV store, a Scotiabank and a Subway restaurant all had windows smashed.

posted June 26, 2010 09:03 PM         

Natch, they have practiced & organized means to avoid arrest (and failing that, to avoid prosecution).

posted June 26, 2010 11:33 PM         

This meeting took a billion dollars to plan out. Making it a billion plus only ****** the tax payers off.

I mean look at this! That place is just blocks away from where I work:

posted June 28, 2010 03:48 PM         

All this has done is bring attention to the fact that these Anarchists have about as much a value to the good law abiding citizen as the dirt under my shoes. I want the police to pummel em and pummel em good! So good that they wouldn't dare try anything like this anywhere else. I sympathize for the peaceful protestors who got caught in the middle of the riot rush of these brainless gimps. Tear Gas and handcuffs aren't enough for these moofs. I want them beaten in bad and have their assets taken from them to pay for the damage they caused.

Oh wait! They probably don't have much since they are probably still living in their mommy's basement.

They want to experience REAL Anarchy? Fine! Ship em off to Somalia. I bet you after spending just a day there, they will be begging for a jail cell in North America.

posted June 28, 2010 09:54 PM         

however as someone who has lived through revolting times the result i saw was more police, more laws, and a more subversive approach to the populace as in taking control of our food source, ad infinitum...

posted June 29, 2010 01:33 AM         

I also don't think they're good for changing things. Interesting enough a very intelligent anarchist who was trying to organize peaceful activities and alliances with other political parties was arrested while an anarchist with the Black Bloc advocated attacking the police (he tried recruiting me for that and I believe he was hoping they'd make a martyr out of me that he could use as propaganda) was left alone. I don't know of the cops were just stupid or if they realized that the smart, peaceful one was an actual threat while the hothead was not (and I even suspect the hothead was a cop & agent provocateur himself).

And that violent Black Bloc anarchist who tried recruiting me also organized a boycott against Amazon IIRC because some anarchist commune wrote a manifesto "for the poor" that they charged over $50 for. Someone who bought it then offered it used over Amazon at a price that someone poor could finally afford it and they claimed this was stealing from them, never mind that they'd already gotten paid for it and it was finally affordable.

And the other time some of them tried to recruit me was when some of them stopped where many anarchists (not like them for the most part) stayed at on their way to the Democratic National Convention in LA in 2000 and they offered me the chance to go with them.

I found it odd that they seemed to have pride in being filthy and while I admired their willingness to refuse to support the corporations that they didn't agree with (as they claimed that was why they were filthy because they didn't want to buy corporate products to clean themselves with), they also refused solar showers, a pressure handwasher (for laundry), and even Fels Naptha laundry soap for washing their clothes. (I was in an area that embraced these things and having my sun & Venus in Libra I was sure to offer them these alternatives. This was where quite a few anarchists stayed, too, so they'd be supporting that instead of corporations.)

When they showed no interest I figured them for fanatics, but I admired their ability to stick to their principles, even if I didn't fully understand them. Still, I thought I wouldn't enjoy the trip to Los Angeles with them that they had invited me on.

That is until I found the Dread Head, a big corporation product one of the guys used to put dreads in his hair.

I TRIED to tell him how he could get dreadlocks without a corporate product, but I was laughing too hard, and they left me angrily, one of them calling me a "bur-goiz" *****. Not entirely sober at the time, I didn't point out that I, as a 17-year-old runaway that was given sanctuary by something of a holdover hippie and her anarchist and survivalist friends, was hardly bourgeois. Instead, I laughed even harder, yelling, "The word is French and it's pronounced Burzjwah! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!"

At first part of me regretted not being able to go to Los Angeles with them but I found some Black Bloc people documented what they did there and it was so pathetic that I then felt relieved. For example, they BRAGGED about "seizing a fence" that didn't even have anything to do with the DNC. Strangely, the cops showed they could be stupid as well by shooting pepperspray at them which had the effect of chasing them back to the convention they'd meant to be disrupting anyway (if the cops had been smarter they'd have used psychology to keep the Black Bloc there until the event was over).

posted July 03, 2010 04:18 PM         

Planet Waves Daily

What Happened Here?
Posted: 02 Jul 2010 06:32 AM PDT

Editor’s Note: Last weekend in Toronto, under the influence of that lunar eclipse in Capricorn, the leaders of the G20 group of nations met in Toronto. As usual there were huge protests, which have been a tradition at global economic summits since the World Trade Organization’s famous 1999 meeting in Seattle. Police arrested and brutalized many people — and a majority of Canadians said in a survey they feel the treatment was warranted.

By Rami Schandall | In Toronto

“Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.” — Tommy Douglas, 1942

Lack of corporate accountability is a bedrock issue for the anti-globalization movement, as I am beginning to understand in a whole new way.

There is nothing new about political and business elites making (or not making) deals behind fortified doors. It is the old way, and it has got to go.

I had the gift and the curse of the G20 Summit in my city this weekend. The gift, personally, is a charged sense of purpose, solidarity, motivation, and connection. I also found myself in the unplanned role of citizen journalist, witnessing, processing and sharing information in the immediate medium of twitter, which became an invaluable navigation tool for a rapidly changing, chaotic and violent weekend.

I am not a journalist, and I am not particularly radical. I am deeply aware of ambiguity and complexity. I am a student of human behaviour by nature and by training (anthropology, psychology, astrology, yoga, art). I loathe politics in its abused institutional form, but I am very interested in the body politic.

The G20 brought foreign leaders to my city, along with a the curse of a $1B+ price tag for ’security’, a barricade around the city core, a 10K-strong phalanx of uniformed thugs, also for ’security’, and an afternoon of ‘riot’ followed by a day of unprecedented harassment and arrest of innocent Canadians. Uncountable dollars were lost in missed opportunities for businesses that were shut down, tourists driven away, lives disrupted. But the serious story, the frightening story, is the sharp erosion of hard-won civil rights, overnight, with political, media and civil complicity.

Because the buildup in security before the G20 was ‘newsworthy’ for weeks beforehand, I had quite a good chance to chew over how to respond to the invasion. I opened up a space for some vision of creative, loving, and peaceful protest to emerge. An image from Eric’s writing, the symbol of “a woman, risen from the sea” (Jupiter/Uranus conjunct in the first degree of Aries) slinked in: I would become a woman risen from the sea…

Friday, June 25, I attended a sold-out, ticketed ‘rally’ at Massey Hall, a storied theatre best known these days as a great music venue. Many powerful voices were raised on so many of the critical issues facing this world’s people.

Talk of the the proposed UN Declaration of access to water as a human right reinforced my vision for creative protest, this woman risen from the sea. Canada’s Prime Minister has unabashedly opposed this proposed declaration. His home province, rich in both oil and water sources, can make a killing from commodification of water. Making access a human right might negatively impact his cronies’ profit margin. This is consistent with his hard-on for the crime scene that is the Alberta Tar Sands.

I can’t even get to the point of my loving protest image without my blood boiling with outrage.

After the rally, the theatre emptied onto the street, and we marched in solidarity to a tent city of people protesting poverty and the treatment of the homeless (forced off the streets for the G20). This group had earlier been harshly curtailed and harassed by the police, who had, we believed, been granted extraordinary powers of arrest throughout the city. (We learned today that the Police Chief lied about aspects of this law, muddying the already filthy waters.) [Globe & Mail]

Our experience of this walk was exuberant. Normal city police corralled us, no riot dudes with truncheons and bad attitudes. But we knew they were nearby, thousands of them. Then we rode home through an eerily empty city (Friday night!). No-one on the streets. Feeling very unsafe.

On Saturday, June 26, 2010, being fully conscious of the astrology of the moment, I honored my son’s sudden anxiety about going to the Civil Society March. I had no anxiety, but he had an intuition it would be bad for him to be there, and I think he was right. So in flowing layers of blue, seashells, ocean-faced, I went to the protest alone.

There were thousands upon thousands of beautiful people there. It was pouring with rain but no one seemed to care. I was blessed with good wishes and curiosity and openness all around. I walked in my big boots for 3 hours at the front of the march, in the middle of the march, hanging out with anyone whose message and presence resonated with mine. It is an amazing thing to walk with so many in solidarity.

There was tension throughout. At every single intersection, police made a show of slowing us down. We were walking south, toward the fortified barricade, and they were not going to let us pass unobstructed. They did keep letting us pass, but each encounter raised blood pressure on both sides. As Canadians, it is our right to assemble and to protest, and it is our right as protestors to be visible to the elite targets of our demonstration.

When we got to Queen St., the riot police had formed an impenetrable line, three deep, behind another line of police on bikes, so the march veered west. At one point, I saw a group of excited kids dressed in black t-shirts layered over colorful clothes, wearing black bandanas. Their energy was giddy and postured, like high-school kids considering trouble. I asked someone if they knew who they were, and heard “anarchists.” Similarly dressed individuals were later filmed and photographed vandalizing corporate property, using notorious Black Bloc tactics. I gave them a wide berth and carried on.

My march concluded peacefully at the Provincial Legislature, or Queen’s Park. This was the designated ’safe zone’ promised by security, and is a frequent location for protest. I stood around for a bit, talked to a few people, and decided to head home, elated that there had been no bad behaviour despite the tensions and hype.

It was only then that I realized that in addition to the corridor that had been cordoned off for our march, the police had shut down all traffic, streetcars, and subway for at least six blocks in all directions. I stopped someone to ask why the police were clearing the streets, and she told me that there had been violence, and probably the police were afraid.

A photojournalist has posted this footage which beautifully lays out what happened behind me, at the other end of the march. Vandals ran wild for hours and through miles of the city, without police intervention.

This version of the information as it unfolds in that video took days to surface beyond social media, because, I believe, the police and media conspired to use the spectacle of vandalism, particularly burning police cars, to justify the ridiculous security spend, and worse, to justify the brutal, violent arrest and illegal detainment of hundreds of innocent people, preemptively before the protest and in the following days. Toronto takes the cake for both most money spent and most arrests, somewhere in the area of 900. Detainees were housed in appalling conditions: overcrowded, denied adequate food, water and legal counsel. (I do not believe the 900 count includes the many more hundreds of “catch and release” arrests throughout the day on Sunday.)

The contrast between what I and thousands of others experienced and what was shown for the next 24 hours on television was astounding. I spent hours trying to understand what was really happening. Mainstream media ignored the 10 to 25K-strong march. All protestors were conflated immediately with the anarchist vandals. No-one was covering any of the issues brought up by the protests or those being addressed at the Summit. Media showed the same loop, over and over, of police cars on fire, vandals breaking windows, while twitter screamed and flashed images of peaceful protestors being charged by riot police on horseback, beaten bloody, tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets. My friend who works at CBC assured me the only thugs were the Black Bloc Anarchists, and the police were doing a great job, no unnecessary violence. The tear gas and rubber bullets weren’t being picked up by mainstream media, and the Police Chief denied it, so it simply wasn’t so.

Ah, to have such confidence in the powers that be.

Later, the truth. The turning point, in my observation, was when Steve Paikin, a well-established Toronto journalist tweeted that he was being manhandled and threatened with arrest if he did not vacate an area where a group of 200 mostly middle-class protestors were being squeezed in upon on all sides. There was no violence, and police gave no reason nor explanation for their actions. Paiken opted not to go to jail and was escorted away, while a journalist who writes for The Guardian was beaten in front of him and incarcerated. His tweets about this fact turned the discourse in the mainstream media. Recognizing the abuse of their own, and a fundamental democratic right denied, they began to squeak.

This tactic played out through two full days: journalists, camera people, all legitimate accredited press were expelled from areas where citizens were trapped, kettled for hours, tear gassed, beaten and arrested.

I cannot stress enough how utterly appalling and uncharacteristic these policing tactics are, here. This is not how protest is dealt with in my city. Who trained the riot police? Who came up with the money for all this ’security’ yet protected no property? Who was calling the shots while the good ol’ boys in black beat the snot out of unarmed civilians? And ordered our police force to let the vandals run wild, and refuse aid to the injured? Who manufactured all this HATE?

Gentle friends came to the aid of a man who had suffered a blow to the head and were directly told that the police were “not allowed” to help them get an ambulance or take him to hospital. The OPP’s motto is “To serve and protect.”

Conspiracy theories abound. The police have been caught before, instigating violence in protests by “infiltrating” or just plain impersonating “The Black Bloc.” There is evidence to indicate that undercover police were infiltrating for certain. Did they instigate and act as agent provocateurs? Did they let the vandals run unchecked for the brilliant PR? Was it part of a long-term plan, to justify the security spend and deepen the steady vilification of dissent, making conscious, critical citizenship criminal?

I feel, in a perverse way, both the police and the anarchists were mutually successful.

The police set the stage for violence with an empty city, dehumanized riot police, profoundly inconvenienced public, visibly eroded civil rights. This is provocation on the one hand, and invitation on the other. Violence as PR to justify violence and, in this case, an obscene gorging on new weapons and surveillance technology.

The most articulate justification for the anarchist violence I have read is that by selectively vandalizing corporate property, they reveal the extreme militarist architecture of the society, and hope to radicalize the population.

Two sides of one violent coin. We can do better than this.