A Guide to the G20 Protests for the Not-Yet-Radical

[JohnyCanuck]

by Chris Hayward

A little more than a month ago, between the 21st and 27th of June, a week of protests against the Group of 20 Summit occurred in Toronto resulting in the arrests of more than 1000 people. I’m writing this piece for the friends and family in my extended network for whom the events were a bit of a shock. I’m writing especially for people who found the whole thing disturbing, who are uncertain about what they think, who are surprised and scared by what they’ve heard that police did, and put off by scenes of burning cars and broken windows.

My perspective is the view of someone who’s participated in this kind of protest before, who’s even helped organize some of them. I’m someone who has friends and acquaintances who were arrested and hurt over that weekend and in its aftermath. I’m someone who’s been in several political "riots”, been beat-on occasionally, pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed a fair bit more, but also never arrested. And I’m someone who thinks a lot about the role of protest in movements to change society. I have some sense of what motivates the people I know to get out on the street, some sense of how the police, courts and government tend to react to that, and some sense of the history that last weekend’s events are a part of.

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Less common knowledge is the broad pattern of often unpublicized repression that generally happens away from the spotlight of large protests or boycotts or campaigns. This repression is aimed at the most vocal advocates of change and at the organizations they are a part of. For any change movement you can think of, there is usually a long period in its history when its advocates and participants were being harassed, imprisoned, attacked or even killed. Though Martin Luther King Jr. is now regarded as an American hero, he was the target of a long, covert and hostile campaign by the FBI, designed to neutralize him as a civil rights leader, while he was actually alive and working for change. Movements for change take a long time to build, and the institutions that they are trying to change fight back the whole time, targeting those individuals who are kicking up a fuss and organizing other people to do so.

In talking about repression generally, I’m trying to challenge the idea that protest happens and the authorities are fine with it, until it turns “violent” and then those authorities have to “respond”. My brief sketch of political repression, combined with my thoughts about people fighting back against the violence and other mistreatment they experience daily in their societies, is designed to share my understanding that forces for change and the institutions and people that are hurting them are involved a long-term and often violent process of responding to each other. Before any demonstration or boycott or riot happens on the street, two things have been going on for years: the basic mistreatment and injustice that people are upset about, and the individual targeting of the most vocal advocates to change things.

The reason I’m sketching all this out is to try to influence your perception of the chain of events that happened at the G20 protests in Toronto, which gets simplified to “a protest happened, it got violent, and the police responded…” I’d like to convince you that the chain of events is much longer, that it is normal and has a history, and that police action can be best understood as not trying to curb violence in the moment, but as trying to repress protest generally over the long haul.

http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/guide-g20-protests-not-yet-radical/4398

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Woman shot (with rubber bullets) by G20 police speaks out

I was at the jail solidarity rally on Sunday June 27th, outside of the detention centre in support of my friends who had been surrounded and arrested in Queen's Park, the designated protest zone, the day before. Sunday's protest followed the route decided upon by the police, and was proceeding peacefully. A line of riot police formed between us and the detention centre. Without warning, two unmarked minivans screeched to a stop behind the police line. A number of plainclothes men stormed through the line and into the crowd, violently pushing two people into the ground. The people were dragged along the pavement and aggressively thrown into the vans and the vans took off. To all who were there, this appeared to be a strategically orchestrated kidnapping. The small woman who was snatched later became my cellmate. She told me of being choked and sat on by two large men to the verge of unconsciousness. A third man pulled her hair and all three verbally abused her, referring to her as "cunt," "bitch," "whore" and "street trash" on the way to the detention centre. All three refused to identify themselves.


At this point we decided to de-escalate the situation by sitting down. We chanted "we are peaceful, how about you" and clapped our hands. During this time, officers donning helmets, body armour, gas masks, and weapons resembling tear gas guns filled in the line in front of us. Several minutes later, once again without warning, the police line started moving quickly toward us. We stood up and moved backwards, complying with the yells of the officers to get back. Soon thereafter, the riot line parted to let an officer through who was wielding a large, intimidating weapon.

As an asthmatic, I had bought a painter's respirator from a hardware store to cover my face in case chemical weapons were used during the weekend. I had no idea what the weapon behind us was, so as a precaution, I reached into my bag, took out the mask and put it over my face. Not wanting to have my back to the weapon, I turned to face it while retreating. It was then that I was shot in the sternum. As I went to turn, I was shot again in the elbow, and I immediately hit the ground, falling into the fetal position. I remember simply hoping that someone was on their way to help me, and I knew I couldn't get up by myself.

A person ran back for me and attempted to help me to my feet, but on my way up, the riot line caught up to us and several police shoved me face first into the pavement. They yelled at me to stop resisting and kneeled on top of me. I was terrified, and lost control of my bladder. All I remember was begging them to be gentle because I was hurt. They then dragged me to my feet and walked me to a nearby cruiser, the officer on my left insisting on gripping my arm over the bullet wound.

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After being interrogated, I was led to be strip searched. When I repeated several times that I wanted to speak to a lawyer before being strip searched, I was surrounded by approximately eight officers. A male officer referred to me in third person and said, 'I know she'll behave because if she doesn't, she knows we'll be coming in', referring to himself and several other male officers. I was strip searched by four female officers. My search was minor in comparison to that of one woman, who was strip searched by several male officers and had a finger put inside her.

Afterwards, the officers escorted me back to my cell, sporadically moving me to different ones throughout the course of my incarceration. I knew that four hours after my hospital visit, the acetaminophen would wear off and I'd be in severe pain again. So I started asking officers if I'd be treated. I also needed to take my asthma medication. An hour and a half after I started asking to see the physician, I was finally brought to one. Throughout my stay, I would tell the officers my pain medication was about to wear off about 20 minutes in advance. They would wait until I was hunched over, shaking, clutching my arm to my front and crying before bringing me to the physician. I remember hearing a woman asking to see the doctor, and the officers told her to stand up. She told them that she couldn't, that she was too injured to do so. They told her if she couldn't stand up, she couldn't see the doctor, and left her in her cell.

We were occasionally given buns of white bread with a slice of processed cheese in the middle to eat and small styrofoam cups of water to drink . The bathrooms were outhouses without doors that faced the officers. The solitary cells didn't have bathrooms. The floors and benches were concrete, and puddles were common. The officers refused us blankets and warm clothing. I was refused a fresh pair of pants, and spent all 30 hours in the pants I had urinated in. There were fluorescent lights on 24/7. I huddled up in a corner of the cage, and dozed off for a couple minutes around midnight. But I was too hungry, cold and injured to sleep that night, like many other prisoners. I continued throughout the night to try and see the doctor every four hours.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alex/2010/07/woman-shot-g20-police-speaks-out