This morning's G20 update

[sabotabby]

CBC reports 400 arrests out of 10,000 people on the streets. Unfortunately, this will overshadow the targeted arrests of key (and non-violent) organizers that occurred well before any property destruction took place, including No One Is Illegal activists and a young Deaf man who was refused an interpreter (and later released).

More on NOII, including an interview with Farrah Miranda, who witnessed Syed Hussan being arrested. It's particularly sad that these are exactly the sorts of people who would have kept things calm and organized—they're community leaders respected by everyone.

Jesse Rosenfield, a journalist covering the G20 for the Guardian, was beaten and arrested.

Someone's live blog from yesterday. I can attest to the attempted suicide-by-yoga.

The jail solidarity party was raided by police.

It seems that the police are mainly arresting peaceful protesters (greater in number, easier to catch). It's also likely that much of the violence was caused by agent provocateurs. Some mainstream media is reporting that the cop cars were left abandoned on Queen St. as decoys—which would make sense, as we couldn't figure out why they would have left them there with no cops around at all. The one guy I saw smash a window was not wearing black and looked awfully burly.

Video showing the police attacking peaceful protesters. At 1:02, video journalist Brandon Jourdan is thrown to the ground and beaten by police while shooting video:

Toronto Police Attack Peaceful Protesters and Journalists at G20 Protests from brandon jourdan on Vimeo.

Steve Paikin, host of TVO's The Agenda, has a Twitter feed that's worth reading. Kudos to him and to everyone who kept a level head during the chaos and kept the rest of us informed as to what was going on.

Important note: I caution everyone to avoid using the term "anarchists" and "Black Bloc" to describe the people who committed various acts of vandalism. We don't know yet. There was definitely a Black Bloc—I saw a few at Queen's Park and the day before in Allan Gardens, being total dorks—but no one I know was able to attest to their movements or saw them doing anything beyond running around. I think it's very easy to divide protesters into Good Activists and Bad Activists, and making the latter term synonymous with anarchism. There were a lot of young kids and spectators around who were just there to see some action, not to mention agent provocateurs, whom we know were responsible for 100% of the violence at the Montebello summit.

Four Hamilton anarchists were arrested before the demos and the media is claiming that they were ringleaders. I know people who can vouch for them, and they are more likely the sorts of people who would keep yahoos under control. Until we know who broke what (and to be honest, we probably will never know), it's irresponsible to assume that a certain group of people were responsible for property destruction.

There is a state interest in high-profile acts of vandalism, which is why I think the police cars were abandoned to be torched. No one is talking about why we were out there protesting the G8/G20, what was discussed at the meetings, or even the fact that our leaders felt the need to meet behind layers of fences and police, isolated from any sort of public discourse about the decisions they were making. All the media will talk about is the burning police cars, which would not have been burnt if yahoos weren't able to access them. There was a need to justify $1 billion spent on summit security—which, in the end, did not prevent my beloved city from being trashed. Any sort of violence or property destruction helps Harper's case, and it's just as likely that it was instigated by state forces as it was by anyone in the demo.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This just in! Several black-clad people seen committing acts of vandalism were photographed wearing what appears to be the same combat boots worn by police. It isn't confirmed, but again, this is what happened in Montebello. (Union leaders stopping the provocateurs. Evidence. The famous boot photo.)

The following photos show vandals at yesterday's demos:




Later today, Comrade Sabotabby will issue a statement condemning the wearing of white tube socks with black shoes.



Granted, police-issue combat boots are not difficult to come by (you can buy them on Queen St. West—right near where the cop cars were burned), but it begs the question of how much of the destruction was even caused by idiot kids as opposed to by the cops themselves.

Comments

[lienne.livejournal.com]

sdfhjgk get this shit out of my fucking city D:

[sabotabby]

Tell me about it.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

I mean seriously

arrest the people who would have kept the peace! Beat up journalists! Leave the people who are actually breaking shit alone! YES THAT IS THE MOST HELPFUL FUCKING THING YOU GO GUYS.

*crawls into blanketfort*

*slams pillow behind me*

[sabotabby]

When we (meaning the march of labour and community groups) were leaving Queen's Park in the early afternoon, everyone kept asking where the cops were. I mean, we saw security drones and helicopters, but we barely saw any cops at all. They were all concentrated in one area. There were no cops anywhere else in the city.

I find it hard to believe that with $1 billion spent in security, they were unable to identify exactly who smashed windows and lit cop cars on fire. On the news, they were showing one of the cars burning on Queen St. for a good half hour—live!—and phoning the cops and asking why they didn't do something about it. People were just milling around taking video and uploading it to YouTube and shit. This had to be planned, because as much as I criticize the police, I can't believe that they are this incompetent.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, hell of a plan, right? I mean, we were watching some of it on the news and the reporter holding the camera on the burning cop car said outright that it had to have been abandoned on purpose. What are they hoping to accomplish here? For fuck's sake what good does all this bullshit do anybody?

[sabotabby]

It does Harper a lot of good. And the media, I guess, because they're having a field day and everyone is watching.

But in terms of promoting our agenda of human rights, the environment, reproductive justice, and economic fairness, our message just got lost to whomever did this.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

dear humanity:

you can stop sucking any day now! really you can! the power to change is in your hands!

love and cuddles,
pyth

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Are they the scary evil drones that we're getting in London for the Olympics? I am very upset about those but don't know how or where to protest or if there is any protesting going on.

[sabotabby]

They were on balloons. This didn't make sense to me, and outside of the heat of the moment, I am not entirely sure that someone didn't just let off a whole bunch of balloons.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Usually, I miss living in London. For the duration of the Olympics, not so much.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I think it's very easy to divide protesters into Good Activists and Bad Activists, and making the latter term synonymous with anarchism.

Oh, you know these anarchists. Always wearing black, throwing bombs and naming themselves after the days of the week.

[sabotabby]

+100 for the Chesterton reference.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Alas.

It all makes me sad and mad, and I have a hangover, so will look at links and video later when I feel less sick and more able to stomach it.

I want the world to be nice like you.

[sabotabby]

I feel like the entire city has a hangover.

Yesterday, I was just wandering around with frandroid and F. and esizzle, saying "HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THAT OMG" at all the broken glass. I realized in a detached sort of way that I would feel sick about it the next day, and of course I do, though I feel much worse about the comrades who were arrested or beaten, and even worse about the fact that the G20 leaders are meeting in their bubble to decide how to fuck the entire world over.

I want the world to be as sensible as I am.

[if_inconvenient]

I want protesters to dance in front of barricades and make cops smile like you do

and I want people in positions of authority to care about actual humans like you do

and basically I think the world would be a much better place if everyone was a little bit more like sabotabby

/wholly inappropriate roleplay journal

[sabotabby]

Yes, but now I feel like the young Sherlock Homes, as portrayed by RDJ, is saying this. :)

Success for our side would have publicly shown the $1 billion to be a waste. Had nothing at all been damaged and everyone remained loud but orderly, it would have looked properly excessive and Harper would have been embarrassed. As it is, he ought to be embarrassed, the $1 billion was a waste, but everyone will now focus on the small amount of people who were idiots. *SIGH*

[if_inconvenient]

:D

Seventeen-year-old Sherlock Holmes thinks you are the awesomesauce.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Even if the violence - no, let's call it what it is. Property damage. Even if most of the property damage wasn't caused outright by police plants, it was absolutely stage-managed to provide cover for the illegal excess of the massive apparatus of state oppression. One group of protest leaders arrested, another allowed to go on un-molested; marchers allowed to go this way, not that; cops out in force in one place and not another. None of this is accidental or the result of incompetence. The message of the protest, the perfidy of the G20, is squeezed into the distant background, channeled, drowned out, while the crazies and the window-smashers are spotlighted and maneuvered into position like dolls. This direct-action stuff is now about as spontaneous and authentic as the rebellion inherent in a bottle of Sprite.

My cynicism about protest is utterly without bound. Once street protest had its uses; then it was useful by inspiring and calling attention to the sheer enormity of the apparatus of state-capitalist oppression; now it's just an occasion for that apparatus to pour through each city like a tide, leaving behind a residue of new surveillance machines and permanently mutilated civil freedoms. Every time now it is a defeat.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think you are spot on the money. Two minutes of choreographed violence is being repeated endlessly by the mainstream news media. The more thuggish element of the police have had their night of beating up and arresting peaceful protesters to remind people in future to be more respectful of their masters. Today, apart from a few boarded up windows and police on the street corners Toronto is pretty much normal. The 20 wastes of space flown here at such great expense continue to waffle and pontificate in the gaps between finding new ways to fuck us over.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Pretty much with you on this. I am reluctant to conclude that a conspiracy in motion, because generally we humans aren't competent enough to hold 'em together, but the basic, basic question of motive in this area points overwhelmingly to State-backed provocateurs. When you ask cui bono about the "Black Bloc" stuff, about the broken windows and burnt police cars and officers with little boo-boos that are called on to justify killing peaceful protestors, the answer is always "The State," and just about no one bloody else.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

It has played right into Harper's hands, and it makes me psychotic.

[sabotabby]

I think he still looks irresponsible for having it in Toronto. There was no reason to have it in Toronto, and every reason to predict that this would be the result.

But of course, people will blame all of us when ultimately, he is the one responsible for every smashed window.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but his supporters will love him for fucking over Toronto and he hasn't got too many seats to lose in the city.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

acab.

[sabotabby]

??

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

all cops are bastards.

[cannibal-x.livejournal.com]

Surprised you don't know that .. it's kind of a british punk thing 70s punks would get tattooed on their knuckles I think.. "All coppers are bastahds" type of thing, like they said :)

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

This is a mostly irrelevant comment:

I met someone a few days ago with LOUS tattooed on her knuckles; I assumed there was an E on her thumb, and thought, "how wonderfully grungy". A while later, I saw her other hand, which said FABU.

[cannibal-x.livejournal.com]

Haha, what a funny turnaround.

[poetic-pixie-13.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're OK. Even though we're just lj friends I knew you'd protesting and I was a bit worried.

What have they done to our city? Fuck that video and those photos. Living in Malvern I have very little love for the cops anyway but for some reason this still surprises me. Idk, I still expect more from the cops. All that violence, all the people hurt, the damage done. Argh.

I'm going to try and go down-town today or tomorrow to see the damage with my own eyes. As if I needed another reason to loathe Harper.

[sabotabby]

Take photos! I'll be out of town.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I was thinking all the same things, watching on TV from Waterloo, and wondering what had become of my beloved TO. When the huge line of cops swept north in obviously military manoeuvres (they extended the flanks forward into a classic pincer around the north half of the park), beating their shields like some kind of organized thugs, intimidating the people of their own city, just standing there...I was sick with shame. This is why we can't have nice things, Canada. Because we've turned into a country where the police can behave like paramilitaries, instead of the Officer Friendly we grew up with (a myth then too, but the cops were bad in a more individual way, rather than systemically like this).

Just very sad, and glad no one was hurt too badly. It looked on the video that the one car that was torched, the guy who did it seemed to have firemaking materials on him, which gave me the fishhook eyebrow, for sure. Couldn't see his boots, though.

[serenity-winner.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you're okay. When I heard what was going on, I felt sick.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

OH HAY LOOK IT'S MONTEBELLO AGAIN

[firinel.livejournal.com]

if you look carefully, so does the bloke in the saggy blue jeans on his face have the same boots as both of the gentleman to whose shoes you've drawn arrows to. You can see it on the bottom of his right boot.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

That is an old picture which isn't mine. :D

[firinel.livejournal.com]

oh doh, I misunderstood.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

on my way home i saw Objectivists, 2 strong. Ayn Rand was right indeed.

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha I knew that all those tweets from a friend in Toronto, talking about the horrible violent protesters and what saints cops were, was either missing or ignoring this shit.

:(