We salute the work of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network in bringing thousands of people onto the streets over the course of a week to express in radical terms dissatisfaction with the system as it exists, and for conducting educational work beforehand through various events, including the People’s Summit.
We salute the comrades who attempted to march to the fence to show that the streets belong to the people, and not to the ruling class or their domestic armed forces—the police. (That said, we disagree with black bloc tactics for their lack of strategic focus and for their adverse ramifications.)
Noaman G. Ali – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
Photographs taken by two BASICS reporters show that the police abandoned their vehicles at Spadina and Queen several times over the course of Saturday June 26, allowing them to be burned by supposed demonstrators.
Many journalists and commentators have noted that, although police presence was large enough to prevent the destruction of police vehicles and storefronts along Queen Street, Bay Street and Yonge Street, the vandals were effectively allowed to run amok.
What G8/G20 means for working people and the world
S. Da Silva – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
As the corporate media narrowed in on the “violence” on the streets of Toronto during the G20 summit—that is, three torched cop cars and a few broken windows—the biggest criminals of were planning the biggest acts of violence to be carried out on a world stage behind closed curtains. As the crisis of imperialist capitalism intensifies and deepens, the G20 world leaders have conceded the necessity to make the G20 their “premier forum for our international economic cooperation.” Read more…
Noaman G. Ali – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
On Tuesday, June 29, mainstream media reported that Toronto Police Services Chief Bill Blair and provincial politicians had effectively lied about the existence of a secret law that allowed police to arrest or search without warrant those who came within five metres of a security fence.
The revelation came one day after 2,000 people rallied outside police headquarters in downtown Toronto and marched through the streets to protest police abuses over the course of the G20 summit weekend, including the indiscriminate arrests of over 900 people—the largest series of mass arrests in Canadian history.
“This is what (capitalist) democracy looks like.”
Tyler Kendall & Farshad Azadian – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
On the night of Saturday June 26 some three hundred peaceful protesters and onlookers were arrested en masse on The Esplanade in front of the Novotel Hotel. Protesters had come there during the evening to show their solidarity with striking hotel workers represented by UNITE Local 75.
This rally was immediately met with a fierce and brutal police response, where many youth, including those from the Esplanade community, as well as workers, bystanders and journalists, were arrested—many brutally beaten as well.
The “black bloc” was nowhere in sight, and there was absolutely no property damage in the area. That is, there could be no possible confusion by the police.
The police blocked off both sides of the streets and fired rubber bullets, refused to let anybody leave, and then proceeded to attack and detain all who were caught in the middle.
Residents challenge police harassment and brutality in their neighbourhood
Peter Aleksa & Kevin O’Toole, Toronto Media Coop – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
On Sunday June 27, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network (TCMN) and the Movement Defense Committee (MDC) held a press conference at the Parkdale library to “highlight the willful violations of due process by police” and identify a “way ahead for Toronto communities.”
Over the course of the week, police from across the country committed systematic abuses of power against demonstrators, organizers and journalists. Several speakers described a climate of police intimidation, mass arrests, illegal detentions, searches and seizures, nighttime house raids, and physical brutality.
Police violently ejected protesters from the “free speech zone” at Queen’s Park at around 5:00-5:15 PM on Saturday June 26, and a second time at around 7:30 PM—when Christine Sinclair was there.
Christine Sinclair – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
The rain had stopped. We were sitting, we’d been on our feet all day, like many of our comrades. The flowers and gardens of Queen’s Park had been recently groomed, it smelled like summer.
Hundreds of them. In lines. In black. With shields and sticks and fists and guns. First they would rhythmically hit their batons against their shields—the rhythm of their approach audible and visible (my, aren’t they being accessible in their violence?). Together, in chorus, “MOVE MOVE MOVE.” They sounded like cows. With teeth.
TOTAL COST: $1.1 billion in Toronto
vs. $30 million in London, UK
and $12.2 million in Pittsburgh, USA
COST OF SECURITY: $993 million
NUMBER OF COPS: 19,000
NUMBER OF ARRESTS: 900+
“This has always been the way”
Tara Atluri – BASICS Issue #21 (July 2010)
“They do not know it, but they are doing it.” So said Karl Marx in Capital, describing how capitalist ideology is seamlessly threaded into our everyday lives and thinking. It appears so unfettered and uninterrupted; it has become as basic as breathing. This is nothing new.
June Jordan said it in her poem, “Message from Belfast for justice and for Jerry Adams.” Relating war to the everyday experiences of poor racialized people in America she writes, “This has always been the way.”
Today at the rally we scream and march against flagrant abuses of state power, violent police brutality that has caused mass amounts of people to be unlawfully arrested, detained, and tortured.
TORONTO 11:40pm, June 26 — G20 Police have threatened to mass arrest 300 peaceful protesters outside the Novotel hotel on The Esplanade in Toronto, according to a demonstrator at the protest. Since 10:30pm they have been snatching protesters one-by-one from the crowd and “the rest of us are just waiting to be arrested,” said the experienced activist, who has asked not to be named.
Protesters were sitting outside the hotel peacefully, when dozens of police in full riot gear with teargas guns marched in from the east side of the narrow street and then on the west side, enclosing the protesters.
According to the demonstrator, most of the protesters are young people who have little previous experience in demonstrations and have not been involved in any previous G20 demonstrations on June 26 or earlier. Moreover they have no legal information because they were not expecting any kind of trouble. “These are simply members of the public who want to make their voices heard,” the demonstrator said. The peaceful protesters include many who joined a march which earlier proceeded down Yonge Street after being brutally forced out of what was supposed to be the “free speech zone” at Queen’s Park.
They have been chanting “Open the lines, let us out!” “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “Peaceful protest, peaceful protest.”
The protesters are demonstrating outside the Novotel on The Esplanade where one day earlier hotel workers began a legal strike.
Protesters are asking for any support that people can provide them, especially through communicating this story which has gone under-reported in mainstream media. Police continue to take people one-by-one from the crowd.
Update 12:46am, June 27: At least one busload of people has been already taken away by the police. At this time, about 80 protesters remain, waiting to be arrested.
SEE ALSO 11pm UPDATE ON TORONTO STAR BLOG: http://thestar.blogs.com/g20/
FOR UPDATES BY THE MINUTE SEE TCMN TWITTER FEED: http://twitter.com/g20mobilize
