As I began to write this, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network’s headquarters were being raided and a stand-off was occurring outside the police detention center. Today I get to be the observer, tuned into CP24 and the Toronto Media Co-op independent media site. I’m fighting back tears as I watch. Democracy isn’t crumbling. The veil shielding its ruins is merely beginning to fall.
Yesterday we were in the thick of things.
Steelbananas columnists Alex Consiglio, Borna Radnik, Karen Correia Da Silva, Curran Folkers, and myself (Devon Wong) along with guest reporter and friend Rachel Kwan and a small group of non-steelbananas friends were out on Friday and Saturday covering the G20 protests. We are sad to say that one of our friends, Paul Toro, was arrested on Saturday night, taken into custody along with over 150 peaceful protesters, members of the independent media, and bystanders in front of the Novotel Hotel on the Esplanade. Rachel, Alex, and I were also present at the Novotel and were the last three people to escape through a back alley with the help of a sympathetic plain-clothed police officer when riot guards moved in and opened fire on us with tear gas pellets and began to charge us while banging their batons against their shields and the walls of the building. They cut us off from Paul and we were forced to fall back.
I am baffled by media reports of violent mobs and dangerous protesters. Apparently broken windows and burnt cars (burnt by yahoos taking advantage of the situation, I may add, and allowed to do so by cops – I wonder why) justify brutal arrests of people who had nothing to do with that destruction. Several times we (Rachel, Alex, and I) were identified by police as dangerous individuals. Police photographed us as we photographed them. Reporters were often targeted as “threats”. Speaking to several police officers, they expressed concern for their own safety. They were frightened of thrown bottles and rocks. Well, I have news for them, they have armor, tear gas, sound cannons, guns, shields, and batons.
Homes sheltering activists were raided this morning. A move straight out of the Gestapo handbook. A journalist from the Guardian was beaten and arrested. See the Toronto Media Co-op for coverage.
The G20 and its institutions are illegitimate, non-democratic, and exploitative. The very fact that it must defend itself with such measures makes this clear. I hear much talk from people who haven’t been surrounded and attacked by riot guards that the protesters are to blame for this mess. I have news for them. The protesters are not the instigators. The G20 and its institutions are responsible for far more daily violence and exploitation all over the world. We’ll stop protesting when world “leaders” begin to put people before profits, human life before the bottom line, freedom before police oppression, nature before industry, stability before boundless “progress”, love before hate, peace before war, equality before exploitation.
Now a huge confrontation is amassing at Spadina and Queen. It’s pouring rain. Police are arresting everyone and anyone. Citizens of all walks of life and convictions alike being treated like criminals. Even mainstream media. It’s naked fascism. Meanwhile, 10 to 14 members of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network have been taken into custody. As if they’re terrorists. Community organizers, indigenous advocates, poverty activists, disability rights activists, environmental activists — people who make the improvement of human life and the survival of mother Earth their lives’ missions. Terrorists. Yeah, right. Oh yeah, and apparently protesting in Toronto is now illegal… as is walking the city streets.
I got news for your friends.
NWO doesn’t exist, 1984 this is not, and the fact that you can yell ‘fuck the police,’ and get away with it, very well means we’re not in the midst of an oppression.
And those who were arrested were not treated as criminals or terrorists. They were considered suspects. And eventually freed. Totally in line with the law, read up on it next time.
THIS IS WHY WE VOTE. No freedom? This is why we can pursue any career we want and disagree over ze interwebz. Get off your high horses.
This mostly sounds to me like “Ignoratio elenchi.” Of course those issues are important, but I don’t think attacking the police force is constructive. When they mostly did what they did for the sake of pedestrians, however imperfect they were.
This just negatively deepens your belief instead of working on a fundraiser to build a school in some low tech town in Africa.
Why are the people always standing so close to the police… I’d be one really uncomfortable police officer…
Hey “whats new”, were you at the protests? Here’s a video that might help cure your sad case of ignorance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaYbq484abs&feature=player_embedded
Yes, those are peaceful protesters sitting in Queen’s Park (the legal protest zone, by the way) being beaten down by police.
Two of our reporters were taken to the detainment centre, where they were crammed into small cages without food or water for hours. Female prisoners were made to urinate in front of male police officers, and many were in rain soaked clothing in the ice cold detainment centre without blankets.
We’re wrong? Then why is Amnesty International calling for an independent review of the Canadian government’s breach of human rights? See here: http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/news/view.php?load=arcview&article=5453&c=Resource+Centre+News
We were at the protests. We saw this brutality with our own eyes. We have pictures and videos. Perhaps you should get off your high horse, off of your couch and away from your television before you try to sound more knowledgeable than you are.
And Roger, they were armed, we weren’t. They intimidated us as we exercised our right to assemble (check out the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms). We also have the freedom against illegal detainment, and that was breached, as were human rights (a cold detainment centre with cages, hording people like animals, denying peaceful citizens food and water for up to 24 hours?). This is not Guantanamo Bay (though terrorist suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay are treated far better than they were in Toronto). People were literally picked off the street as pedestrians. Yes, some people were just jogging down the street when they were arrested.
Detainees were also denied legal counsel. This is against the law. You believe this is lawful? There were bad apples on both sides – bad protesters and bad cops, and obviously many ignorant people in front of their computers spouting off criticisms for events they themselves have not experienced.
I’m very sad to see Torontonians so divided. I’m sad that you seem to spout off mass media perspectives. I’m sad for the good Toronto police officers who now have to deal with the shame of their terrorist colleagues, and I’m sad that you’re writing such malicious and biased perspectives on the Steel Bananas blog.
P.S. Here’s an interesting compilation of videos of Toronto Police beating peaceful protesters, including a video of a cop bending a young woman over a fence with his crotch against her backside as she cries “Help! Please!Get off of me!”:
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/video/compilation-videos-about-police-violence/3897
If you still think the police action was justified after viewing these videos, this really isn’t a blog you should be frequenting.
To Roger, I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not. Sarcasm is tricky without tone of voice. If you are being sarcastic, then yes, I totally agree. I’d be one uncomfortable police officer, too.
To “Whats New”, which should probably be spelled “What’s New”…
Read up on it? Read up on it!? You fucking read up on it buddy, because I have friends who were in there, and the conditions were grotesque. Even mainstream media producers and Amnesty International representatives were arrested and can attest to the horrid conditions. And considered suspects? They were psychologically tormented and refused their rights to phone calls or water. I just finished speaking with Paul who has burned into his memory the image of a man who had been in a wheelchair in one of the cages, deprived of his wheelchair and fake leg, unable to move, left to sit in his own piss and shit for nearly 24 hours. So go fuck yourself “Whats New”.
For everyone else, Steelbananas will soon be releasing a special issue containing interviews with people who were detained.
Today, members of steelbananas including myself had our bags searched when we stood on a street corner with signs denouncing the brutality we had witnessed. There were six of us. We stood there for almost 2 hours. Our presence warranted the surveillance of what I would ballpark to be maybe 50 police officers.
They furthermore did not do what they did for the sake of pedestrians but for the sake of those giving them their orders and for the powers upholding the G20. Many pedestrians were arrested and thrown in the detention centre. (And you tell me to read up on it?)
To be fair, as in the example I mentioned above with the plain-clothed cop, there were many good cops on the streets as well. I met some. I spoke to some. But they also said they had to follow orders they didn’t like, that they considered morally compromised. Now, I’ll admit it’s hyperbolic to say this, but isn’t that the same logic that Nazi soldiers used to justify many of their actions? I’m speaking merely of the logic. Obviously our cops didn’t kill people. But it’s a slippery slope, and if it were more acceptable, I imagine many of them would have been off murdering people as you see police do in places like China and North Korea or… ahem… the United States.
You’re right that Canada isn’t totally Orwellian most of the time. Canada is for the most part a great place to live for people like us who number among the small percentage of the world’s population who control the large percentage of its wealth. But realize that your life is only so great because your great nation exploits its poor, its working people, its indigenous people, its disabled people, and the people of poorer nations in order to give us that wonderful life. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sit well with me, but now it seems that anyone wanting to voice their guilt is silenced forcibly.
In my conversation with the officer today, he told me that the media shouldn’t be covering these events because WE cause most of the violence. I didn’t commit any violence this weekend, yet I was shot at, manhandled, sworn at, clubbed at, charged, had guns pointed at me, witnessed far worse happening to others around me. Tell me, do you understand what it’s like to be standing alone in an intersection with police firing tear gas at you, unable to find your friends, people screaming and crying, and then hearing the rhythmic pounding of batons on shields as twenty officers in full riot gear charge at you — you, alone in the intersection, dead tired from marching and running all day having barely eaten or slept and being hypoglycemic and afraid of crowds, believing in the right to peaceful assembly, and now you have to figure out which way to run because if you don’t decide correctly in that split second you will be run down by men who don’t give a flying fuck that you’ve just been doing your job (which you don’t get paid for) or that you’ve done nothing wrong? And yeah, many members of the media were arrested and assaulted. Hell, I may be 21, but I look like I’m 16. They don’t know any better. But they wouldn’t care. They’d run me down anyway.
Get off my high horse? Fuck you, asshole.
And “some low-tech town in Africa”??? What does that mean? How fucking arrogant are you?
Devon Wong here. I would actually like to apologize for my vitriolic rant above. I can’t take it back… well, I could take the post down, but I won’t. I shouldn’t have been swearing at What’s New. Nor do I think as Karen wrote above that you shouldn’t read or respond to views you don’t agree with. I would like to apologize to What’s New for that.
That said, I don’t retract my views on the issue at hand. I experienced a lot of violence, more violence than I’ve ever experienced in my life before. Worse than that, however, it was violence perpetrated by the state, so it also feels like a betrayal by my own nation. It is my belief that even the police are not above the law they supposedly uphold, and I believe that many members of law enforcement including the upper brass by handing down the orders broke the laws of our nation. I believe that’s inexcusable. Because I enjoy detective fiction so much, I’ve been dropping lots of Raymond Chandler sentiments lately, one being that a thug with a badge is still a thug. There were a lot of thugs out this weekend. Most were wearing badges.
And for the record, I won’t take it down because I would like it to stand as an embarrassment to myself.
Also, a quick note on building schools in “some low-tech town in Africa”, I would point out that it is a history of colonialism and imperialism that lowered most (if not all) of Africa’s nations to their knees and the policies of the G20 that keep them on their knees. I frankly do find the phrasing of that sentiment insulting, What’s New.