The Toronto 900

[sabotabby]

Well, the cops have lost it. They're just arresting everyone. Journalists, passersby, even children! One boy was sent out by his mom to buy milk and arrested because he didn't have ID.

Here are some links from writer_grrrrl, from her fantastic round-up.

Eyewitness accounts of police brutality.

The 5 most important videos from the G20. You won't see these on TV because they just keep showing the same loop of the burning cop car.

Conditions for detainees at 629 Eastern Ave are illegal, immoral and dangerous. (Trigger warning.)

I don't know how many of my friends have been arrested—most have checked in, but out of 900 people, it's pretty certain that I know a lot, especially since they were targeting community organizers. frandroid and Firoza, whom I spent most of Saturday with, were among those arrested. They have since been released. frandroid has a brief update here.

In a darkly funny twist, they've arrested quite a few people who clearly aren't on the side of the protesters. Conservative nutbag Sammy Katz was reportedly detained (though he denies the rumour on his Twitter feed), as were two photographers for the National Post. The sheer number of journalists, including reporters for Reuters and the Guardian, who were arrested bodes well for better coverage than we've been getting.

Locals can help by attending today's rally at 5:30 in front of the Toronto Police headquarters at 40 College St. W. Please come if you can. I know I've been reporting all sorts of terrifying stories about beatings and arrests, but we need to show them that we're not intimidated and that we won't stand for living under martial law.

tanyahp asked what internationals can do. Prime Minister Harper is tarring us all as "thugs" and is pleased at the G20's success. You can tell him otherwise at pm@pm.gc.ca. Our mayor, David Miller, gets some points for demanding compensation from Ottawa, but he needs to work harder to pressure police into releasing the detainees, dropping charges, and ordering a full investigation of police conduct. He can be reached at mayor_miller@toronto.ca. Our Premier, Dalton McGuinty, is responsible for the hastily drafted regulations that allowed a massive expansion of police powers. He's at dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org. You can drop police chief Bill Blair a line at 416-808-8000. Send strongly worded letters. Tell them that the world is watching.

Comments

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell.

My brain is not working tonight, but tomorrow I will be firing off emails of outrage, and then emails to other people asking them to fire off their own emails of outrage.

Presumably if they've arrested journalists from the Guardian, it'll get some good coverage over here - though not, no doubt, from the right-wing bastards who make up most of the rest of the press.

[sabotabby]

The Guardian fellow, Jesse Rosenfeld, is a Canadian freelance reporter. But he was reporting for the Guardian at the time he was beaten and arrested.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Ah - you can send me what to write and I will change into my own words and send too? My brain is eternally boggled and I am spending tomorrow rushing about between psychotherapist and mental hospital and so forth on little sleep, so am unable to spare brain cells for world affairs, alas.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

At first I was angry black bloc sorts were provoking the policy because the ones I've dealt with in Chicago were privileged partiers. But it became clear the police didn't need a pretext and also handled the chaos with a provocative mix of neglect - abadoning cars and streets at one point then excessively retaliating the next. I don't know if one was a strategy to justify the other, or the behavior of a group with so much power it can act on impulse at any moment without accountability.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I would like to email and tell them they are fuckwits, but if you get time tell me what o write, as my brain is completely boggled and I have forgotten what it is all about. I mean, I know it is goodies vs baddies and that you are goodies, and that there are baddies in the G20 being pathetic and evil and that they have baddie police arresting goodies, and that they are baddies, the ones behind the wall, because they are all for fucking over poorer countries and poor people and destroying the world with their greed and acting as though those of us who want things to be nice are just naive or evil rather than actually nice, and then my brain implodes. So my heart's in the right place, but write a wee bit I can copy and paste and I'll send it!!!

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Fuck - looked at links and it is just too upsetting. I am going to watch the last Dr Who, go to bed early and have nightmares about daleks instead. Will email baddies tomorrow if get the chance as it is all too upsetting.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Miller will do fuck all. At least if the Globe is quoting him accurately:

Mayor David Miller defended the police response Monday, saying officers acted with professionalism. He said police had an “almost impossible” job of allowing peaceful protesters to assemble while sorting out trouble-makers who used rallies as a cover to commit crimes.

“In the very big picture, our police did a commendable job,” he told reporters.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

He said police had an “almost impossible” job of allowing peaceful protesters to assemble while sorting out trouble-makers who used rallies as a cover to commit crimes.


Yeah dude, kinda hard when your agent provocateurs are all up in that shit isn't it?

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Will try to get some emails off tomorrow, also when brain in better shape.

Criminalizing peaceful protest seems to b a trend in western "democracies". The new UK government has promised to restore the right to peaceful protest, but right now I don't trust those bastards an inch.

But this arrest wave seems to be going way beyond. Have they made a crime of "Being in Toronto without a license within a week of a summit"?

Do they have wrongful arrest laws in Canada? (Believe it or not, some British activists actually managed to successfully do the police for that recently. Can happen occasionally.)

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Oh jesus chirst, this is just terrible. Ah, and the fuckers saying "you brought this on yourselves", fuck them, just fuck them all.

[sphinctourist.livejournal.com]

If I didn't love my computer so much I'd have put my fist through the monitor already I'm so fucking livid at all I've been reading today... which amazes me given how I can't muster even a shred of surprise at police behavior or the handling of this story by corporate media... guess I'm not quite as jaded as I thought.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

Considering I listened to Sammy Katz yap to CP24 all night last night while being detained at Queen & Spadina, I'm not sure what the eff he's talking about.

Thank you for all these updates.

[loolica.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly, I was about to post the same thing. I was all cursing his politics but glad that he was at least articulate. Plus, I think it's good for the broadest cross-section possible of the citizenry to get treated like crap by cops.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

You're pretty generous to Miller. He's lost me here. He's not even running for re-election, he didn't have to talk like a right-wing nutbag to please anyone.

Speaking of losing people, one positive outcome from this: Kate Holloway, who came just short 2000 votes from defeating Rosario Marchese in Trinity-Spadina last time and was set to run again, said that she's done with McGuinty and there's no way she's running for the Liberals again.

[awwh-snap.livejournal.com]

From all the descriptions, it sounded like a city under siege. Didn't they spend over a billion dollars in security too? All of that to deny even the most basic, democratic rights of its people to assemble and protest. Such is the decay of capitalist society writ large...

[sabotabby]

$1.2 billion, and they couldn't stop a few windows from getting smashed.

[awwh-snap.livejournal.com]

And all that money could have been put to productive use.

It seems world leaders have been extra careful since the WTC protests in 1999 to ensure that such cities with big conferences remain under siege to continue business as usual. They've finessed police-state tactics for such events, from Seattle to London to Pittsburgh to Toronto...