RULERS WERE PROTECTED WHILE THE PUBLIC GOT SERVED • basicsnews.ca

BASICSFree Community Newsletter

Noaman G. Ali

On Tuesday, June 29, main-stream media reported that Toronto Police Services Chief Bill Blair and provincial politi-cians 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 out-side 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.

Police also violently broke up several entirely peaceful pro-tests, raided homes, stopped

Steve Da Silva

As the corporate media nar-rowed in on the “violence” on the streets of Toronto dur-ing the G20 summit—that is, three torched cop cars and a few broken windows—the big-gest criminals of were planning the biggest acts of violence to be carried out on a world stage behind closed curtains.

As the crisis of imperial-ist capitalism intensifies and deepens, the G20 world leaders have conceded the necessity to make the G20 their “premier forum for our international eco-nomic cooperation.”

While some will hail this move as a step in the direction of greater democracy, this sim-ply means that those countries

required to be coopted for the management of the imperialist world system are being brought into the fold of the world’s high-est coordinating framework.

This move comes not in the interest of the broad masses of people in G20 countries, but in the interest of finance and monopoly capital widening the scope of one of its main man-agement mechanisms.

Much lip service was paid to job growth and economic re-covery at the summit, but the principal economic measures agreed upon by the G20 na-tions were to halve the national deficits of the leading capitalist countries by 2013 and begin to stabilize or reduce their debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016.

G8/G20 SPEC IAL E D I T I O N

HOW COPS VIOLENTLY CLEARED OUT QUEEN’S PARK >>PAGE3PARKDALE RESIDENTS KICK OUT POLICE, TRY TO PROTECT ACTIVISTS >>PAGE4

CopsLefttheirCars to Burn, pg. 2

7:52 PM: South-side car is burnt out. North-side car is now on fire but police are nowhere to be seen.

6:24 PM: On Queen at Spadina, south-side car is on fire. North-side car is smashed but unlit and surrounded by police and firefighters.

ISSUE #21

Police enable destruction, mislead public to justify unprecedented mass repression

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IT’S NOT OVER...IT HASN’T EVEN STARTEDWhat G8/G20 means for working people and the world

Noaman G. Ali/BASICS

Marianne Madeleine Lau/BASICS

Farshad Azadian & Tyler Kendall

On the night of Saturday June 26 some three hundred peaceful protesters and onlook-ers 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 repre-sented 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 abso-

lutely 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 pro-ceeded to attack and detain all who were caught in the middle.

After waiting for hours out-side and even lining up just to get arrested by riot police, we were shipped off to the deten-tion centre set up specifically for G20 protesters at a nearby movie studio.

As we entered the prison, the true brutality of capitalism and state repression became clear.

The authors of this article were kept in packed jail cells,

G20 detention camps“This is what (capitalist) democracy looks like”

>> continued, PG.3 >> continued, PG.4

>> continued, PG.2

Over 30,000 demonstrators took to the street Saturday, June 26, in the “People First” rally to oppose the profit-driven agendas of the G8/G20 rulers.

Marianne Madeleine Lau/BASICS

G8/G20 BASICS #21, JULY 2010

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Noaman G. Ali

Photographs taken by two BASICS reporters show that the police abandoned their ve-hicles at Spadina and Queen several times over the course of Saturday June 26, allowing them to be burned by supposed demonstrators.

Many journalists and com-mentators have noted that, although police presence was large enough to prevent the de-struction of police vehicles and storefronts along Queen Street, Bay Street and Yonge Street, the vandals were effectively al-lowed to run amok.

This reporter saw that police had abandoned these streets to vandals even though they had rapid response units post-ed nearby and all throughout downtown Toronto.

Indeed, police abandoned two vehicles east of Spadina Av-enue on Queen Street West—not once, not twice, but three times. The third time the vehi-cles were abandoned, one had already been set on fire.

PHOTOGRAPH 1, 3:14 PM: Two police vehicles were first abandoned at the intersec-tion, one on the north side of Queen, at about 3:00 PM as a large group of demonstrators separated from the rest of the “People First” march and pro-ceeded east along Queen. The south-side car is not visible in this photograph.

Some of the supposed demon-strators had engaged in smash-ing the cars.

PHOTOGRAPH 2, 3:41 PM: The north-side car, #766, li-cense plate AYND 879, and the south-side car were soon sur-rounded by several police offi-cers in full riot gear.

Not long thereafter, accord-ing to BASICS correspondent Steve Da Silva, all police left the area.

PHOTOGRAPH 3, 6:24 PM (Page 1): After this second abandonment, the car on the south side of Queen was lit on fire sometime around 6:00 PM, while car #766 on the north side remained smashed but unlit.

Police in full riot gear and firefighters surrounded both vehicles and restricted public movement as the firefighters moved to put out the fire.

PHOTOGRAPH 4, 7:52 PM (Page 1): But both police ve-hicles were once again left abandoned, and now car #766 was lit on fire while police were nowhere to be seen until well after 8:00 PM.

In effect, the police colluded in creating a media spectacle rather than protecting citizens from the danger of burning cars.

Toronto Police Services chief Bill Blair has carelessly ac-cused organizers of demonstra-tions held over the course of the G20 summit of “criminal complicity” in property damage and violence. But he has failed to highlight the open and naked criminal complicity of his own police forces in the destruction during Saturday’s protest.

LET IT BURN: Police complicity in Saturday destruction

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P.O. Box 97001R.P.O. Roncesvalles

Toronto, ON M6R 3B3

G20 SUMMIT FACTSTOTAL COST: $1.1 billion in Toronto

vs. $30 million in London, UKand $12.2 million in Pittsburgh, USA

COST OF SECURITY: $993 millionNUMBER OF COPS: 19,000NUMBER OF ARRESTS: 900+• Conditions in the temporary jail have been criticized for being

“illegal, immoral, and dangerous.” • Police were supposedly given expanded powers near the secu-

rity fence for the G20 through the Ontario’s Public Works Pro-tection Act. This was passed quietly and without proper notice or legislature debate on June 2, 2010. It was later revealed that no such expanded powers existed.

• Heavily armed officers used excessive force, deploying ARWEN launchers, tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, horses and batons on civilians.

• Amnesty International Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and many others are calling for an independent review of the security measures put in place for the summits.

Not two years after finance capital received the largest blank cheques in history, to-talling trillions forked over to European and North American banks, finance capital is now demanding that workers pay for the fiscal crisis generated by governments serving and controlled by monopoly capital.

If contemporary Europe is any indication of what these fiscal measures will mean for workers, we can expect decades of “austerity measures” in the form of attacks on wages, pensions, benefits, and social spending that used to benefit working people.

The unprecedentedly harsh austerity measures that were forced onto European workers throughout the May 2010 have already provoked a string of general strikes and mass mo-bilizations across Mediterra-nean Europe, which was jus-tified by the finance capital in Europe as the need to reign in spending.

In the imperialist countries of Canada, U.S., and the EU, the next decade will stand wit-ness to an intensification of the economy policies of neoliberal-ism of the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, at the G8 Sum-mit, the geostrategic and mili-tary interests of the imperial-ists took centre stage.

While the G8 leaders used the developmental issue of “Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health” to provide the Sum-mit with an air of legitimacy, the more serious items on the agenda consisted of the current and future imperialist wars of aggression and conquest against Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.

Stephen Harper directed a menacing statement against North Korea and Iran, stating that “the governments of Iran and North Korea have chosen to acquire weapons to threaten their neighbours.”

“The world must see to it that what they spend on these weapons will not be the only cost that they incur,” he said.

The final G8 communiqué re-affirmed NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan for the foreseeable future and in effect gave Paki-stan the green light to continue its U.S.-backed war on its own people.

Stephen Harper also deliv-ered a lengthy statement on counter-terrorism, which falls flat on the ears of anyone who is aware of Canada’s unbend-ing support and sanctioning of state terror being carried out by Canada’s diplomatic allies Israel, Philippines, Colombia, and Sri Lanka, among others.

That these two summits had little to say and no will to act upon the ecological crisis that worsens by the day speaks vol-umes about the interest of the G8 and G20 countries.

Especially as these summits come on the heels of one of his-tory’s greatest ecological catas-trophes—the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster—one would ex-pect at least a show of concern.

Back in May 2010, already weeks after the oil spill, Harper rejected a direct plea from the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon to make “climate change” part of the G20 agenda.

As the economic crisis lin-gers on and geopolitical ten-sions mount among the dif-ferent imperialist powers, the wars of occupation and ag-gression will continue and the capitalist attacks on the work-ing class have been rubber-stamped and approved for a new round of offensives.

So if you’re still asking your-self why Canada needed to spend a billion dollars on secu-rity for the G8-G20 summits—the largest expenditure on a summit ever by a factor of at least ten—then you’re still ask-ing the wrong question.

The repression and targeting of thousands in the streets of Toronto over the past weekend had far less to with a few hun-dred supposedly violent dem-onstrators than it did with the social conflicts on the horizon.

So it’s not over. It hasn’t even started.

« It’s not over, from PG. 1

Speaking to a small group of protesters near Queen’s Park Saturday evening after police brutalized peaceful protesters there, Al Jazeera English’s Avi Lewis confirmed that police had simply let the property damage occur even though they could have stopped it.

Photojournalist Joe Wenkoff, who followed the black bloc, said, “There were riot police at the intersection of each street that went south from Queen Street into the Financial Dis-trict, but they didn’t engage the protesters. They just watched them go by smashing windows and spray-painting.”

When “they walked north on Yonge Street smash-ing windows along the way, there were no po-lice to be seen anywhere,” said Wenkoff. (http://www.youtube.com/user/ CanadiansNanaimo)

Yet moments after the de-struction had taken place, I walked alongside dozens of police in riot gear and on horses as they proceeded up Yonge Street.

By consciously creating a media spectacle—the now-iconic burning police vehi-cles and storefront damage on Queen and Yonge Streets

that have played over and over again in mainstream media—the police justified the massive repressive measures they un-leashed on Saturday evening and throughout Sunday (see “Police enable destruction...” pg. 1).

Moreover, it is not yet clear to what extent police provoca-teurs had infilitrated the so-called black bloc in order to ini-tiate and incite violence as they did during the 2007 Montebel-lo, Quebec protests against the Security and Prosperity Part-nership meetings.

Toronto Police Services pub-lic information unit represen-tatives were unavailable or un-able to comment.

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Compiled by Marianne Madeleine Lau

Smashed storefront on Yonge Street, Saturday June 26.

G8/G20 BASICS #21, JULY 2010

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Christine Sinclair

The rain had stopped. We were sitting, we’d been on our feet all day, like many of our comrades. The flowers and gar-dens 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.

There weren’t many of us. Most had dispersed. A handful on a statue, a few standing in the corner, some tourists tak-ing photos because of the scenic chaos. No one was directing the civilians. There were no mega-phones, no loud speakers, no agenda.

Police cars lined University Avenue. Pedestrians could not approach from the South, or the West, but had to go around through an alley to get to Queen’s Park. By the time I got there, the tear gas was gone but the cavalry was already out, charging. Their lines advanced, I saw a body underneath the horses. They would charge and stop, walk, stand, then charge again. Unpredictable. Menac-ing. A squid of black violence advancing in all directions, ooz-ing anger, hatred.

An officer fell on the steps as they ran towards us. We laughed. The park laughed—the human part of it. Few things could ease the tension. It did not ease theirs.

They advanced up the legal protest zone, illegally shutting it down. They trample the flow-ers to keep their lines straight, but do so gingerly—some life is worth preserving. Up near the building at the front lines a few of us ask them why they are pushing us out? No answer. Where do you want us to go? Home. This is the legal protest zone! Not any more. You have been warned a few times miss, get out of the way. The man beside me, taken behind the lines, seven armed men on top of him. Punching, hitting with sticks—he was unarmed. He was standing with us, quiet.

He was beaten, with only the noise of the blows and our cries of protest to let him go, get off of him—nothing. I didn’t see him again.

But they kept advancing. Off of Queen’s Park, onto the street, they followed us. We could hear them coming. Over the bridge, through the park, onto Harbord. Now hundreds of us, on the streets, no choice but to march on, traumatized by the snake of police brutal-ity, we take Bloor, then Yonge, then South to the fence. This was decided by chanting it. We were not hiding. We were not plotting. We marched not in lines with shields, but hold-ing hands with those who came with us for fear of being taken, and for joy of being in it to-gether. We chanted and sang, encouraged passersby to join, waved at people in balconies. We were the parade. They were the show of force.

I still do not know why they kicked us out of Queen’s Park. Despite their show of uncom-promising brutality and vio-lence, we continued peacefully. We stopped traffic, but we were not violent. We made noise, but not with weapons. For many, our walk ended in arrest, for disturbing the peace. Why, yes! The peace is breached! The poverty and oppression we were protesting about were the conditions we were put into. Our peace—our peaceful pro-test, our peaceful march, our peace speech—all slaughtered in riot gear.

Many have been saying it is a shame that the weekend was ruined by a violent few protesters. From what I saw and felt, it was not just a few violent people that ruined the G20 protests—it was the many, many people who decided to be violent. Those people just hap-pened to be police.

And they swarmed

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.

Marianne Madeleine Lau/BASICS

Police trample and pepper spray on peaceful protesters at Queen’s Park, Saturday June 26.

A demonstrator reels after being beaten by police at Queen’s Park, Saturday June 26.

and searched dozens of people throughout downtown Toronto without warrant, snatched a number of people into un-marked vans, and detained hundreds in appalling and abu-sive conditions.

The police “have suspend-ed law and order,” said Ryan White of the Movement Defence Committee, an organization providing legal support to the hundreds arrested by police. He spoke at a press conference in Parkdale on Sunday that itself had to deal with riot police (see “Get out of Parkdale!” pg. 4).

Through their lies and ar-bitrary use of powers, police seemed to become a law unto themselves—but their conduct was defended and compliment-ed by all levels of government, from Toronto Mayor David Mill-er, to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“I’ve never seen a situation where the police have lost con-trol to that degree,” said White, referring to the police’s engaging in violence beginning Saturday evening, after the police effec-tively permitted supposed dem-onstrators to engage in destruc-tion through the city (see “Let it burn,” pg. 2). Police then used the destruction to justify a spree of violence and mass arrests over Saturday and Sunday.

Police used batons and pepper-spray against peaceful protest-ers at the “free speech zone” at Queen’s Park on Saturday after members of the Black Bloc alleg-edly came there and shed their black clothing. Police again vio-lently dispersed demonstrators nearly two hours later (see “And they swarmed,” pg. 3).

When the protesters marched down Yonge Street to the No-votel hotel on The Esplanade, they boxed them in, beat some demonstrators, allegedly fired rubber bullets, and then pro-ceeded to arrest up to 300 peo-ple, including onlookers (see “G20 detention camps,” pg. 1).

Punam Khosla, an experi-enced activist and writer, told BASICS that the entirely peace-ful demonstrators were being snatched from the crowd one-by-one while the rest waited—she herself spent nearly 15 hours at the G20 detention centre located at Pape and Eastern Avenues.

As demonstrators were being arrested on The Esplanade, a jail solidarity rally of over 100 people outside the detention centre was also violently bro-ken up by police, and nearly 30 people were arrested.

Reports also spread of police conducting home raids, spread-ing panic and fear among com-mitted community activists throughout the city. “The fear to protest inflicted by cops ex-tended to folks even when they were indoors,” a migrant jus-tice activist told BASICS.

Throughout Saturday and es-pecially on Sunday, police also engaged in arbitrary searches far away from the security fence or from demonstrations. One street medic told BASICS that

« Unprecedented mass repression, from PG. 1he and people he was with were stopped and searched three times on Sunday alone. Police threatened arrest if members of the group did not identify them-selves, and seized medic equip-ment used to treat injuries dur-ing demonstrations (that were, in fact, caused by the police).

Despite the widespread fear, over one hundred people came out for another jail solidar-ity rally late in the morning of Sunday, June 27. This time, one of the organizers told BA-SICS, the route and extent of the march and rally had been negotiated with the police—who had offered assurances of no arrests and no violence.

Yet, as the demonstrators ral-lied outside the detention cen-tre, an unmarked van pulled up and a snatch-squad of police abducted at least three people. Police then started charging the peaceful protesters and fired gas blasts and rubber bullets.

Eventually, the crowd was able to disperse up Pape Av-enue—holding their hands up with peace signs, looking very much like prisoners of war.

The entire episode was cap-tured on several cameras (see http://www.youtube.com/user/ianthegoldin), including those of mainstream media.

On Sunday evening, police boxed in hundreds of complete-ly peaceful people—protesters and bystanders alike—for sev-eral hours in the rain at the in-tersection of Spadina Avenue and Queen Street. Many were arrested but most were eventually let go.

Natalie Deschenes, a spokes-person for the Integrated Secu-rity Unit, refused to comment Monday on any of the arrests of peaceful demonstrators, but did

state that if people were arrested at “a peaceful protest, it doesn’t mean that they did not partici-pate in [a violent] protest earlier.”

When this reporter assured her that several protesters who were arrested were in fact ab-solutely peaceful and were released without any charges, Deschenes said that specifics of arrests would not be discussed.

The picture that emerges from the G20 weekend is one of a police force run amok: effec-tively enabling property dam-age by doing nothing to stop it, and then using the destruction to justify beating, detaining and arresting peaceful demon-strators and bystanders alike.

In the chaos they created, the police also swooped up several community activists who or-ganize against poverty, for the environment and for migrant justice—these politically moti-vated arrests must be opposed and all prisoners must be freed.

Yet it must be understood that the police being a law unto itself is the daily reality for margin-alized communities all over To-ronto. Only now, they also have sound cannons and all kinds of other equipment for crowd con-trol in the future. What are poli-ticians preparing the police for? The protests that will inevita-bly come as they pursue further austerity measures? (See “It’s not over…”, pg. 1).

Many have referred to To-ronto over the weekend as a “police state,” but it must be remembered that the everyday politics of capitalism was firm-ly in command. A Conserva-tive prime minister, a Liberal premier, and a formerly-NDP mayor all praised the police for their exemplary conduct.

Noaman G. Ali/BASICS

Police confront peaceful protesters outside the G20 detention centre on Sunday June 27, shortly before violently dispersing them.

Marianne Madeleine Lau/BASICS

G8/G20 BASICS #21, JULY 2010

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Peter Aleksa & Kevin O’Toole Toronto Media Coop

On Sunday June 27, the To-ronto Community Mobiliza-tion Network (TCMN) and the Movement Defense Commit-tee (MDC) held a press confer-ence at the Parkdale library to “highlight the willful violations of due process by police” and identify a “way ahead for To-ronto 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 deten-tions, searches and seizures, nighttime house raids, and physical brutality.

As the conference ended, or-ganizers received reports of multiple people being detained at the TCMN convergence cen-tre two blocks away on Queen St. W. A crowd of between 50 and 100 people quickly assem-bled and marched to the cen-tre. Within half an hour, most of these people were detained as well.

A crowd of residents and passers by began to gather as buses and vans of riot police rolled in. While the Integrated Security Unit’s “Community Affairs” group hid by the cor-ner of a building well behind the crowd, the police presence steadily increased, with a pha-lanx of riot cops falling in be-hind the line of bike cops hold-ing residents at bay.

Residents were shocked to see such a display of force at a

centre that they saw as a safe refuge for protestors.

“This is an unbelievable show of force,” decried Cheri DiNovo, MPP for Parkdale-High Park. “This is a residential neighbor-hood. People and children live around here. We have every right to walk our own streets. These are our streets.”

“You’re protecting us from the threat of violence? You are a constant threat of violence,” screamed a woman who was out walking her dog. “You are intimidating residents. You’re intimidating the residents of Parkdale.”

The crowd hurled accusations at the occupying police and pe-riodically broke into chants of “Let them go!” and “So! So! So! Solidarity!”

“Make them show us the warrants!” demanded one resi-dent. “And have them show us the warrants for the 500 people they swept up off the streets like some South American dic-tator!”

Finishing their roundups, but without entering the con-vergence space, the police slow-ly began to retreat from the neighborhood, the residents still clamouring against them.

About two hours after they arrived, amidst cries of “Get out of our neighborhood! Get the **** outta Parkdale!” and “Parkdale is for the people, not police occupation!” the last line of bike cops proceeded to pull off.

In the end, despite another set of illegal detentions, the streets were occupied only by the force of community solidar-ity.

“Get out of Parkdale!”Residents challenge police harassment and brutality in their neighbourhood

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smaller than an average bed-room, where some 40 prisoners alternated between sitting and standing because of the limited space. We were denied water and food as well, not to men-tion legal services. There was a porta-potty washroom in each group cell without a door that faced the outside, clearly vio-lating personal privacy.

In the first hour of our deten-tion, a police officer joked upon seeing our condition, “What is this, Auschwitz?” and went on chuckling. Although the con-ditions in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany are in-comparable to ours, this state-ment gives you an insight into the views of the prison guards.

Within an hour of detain-ment, the authors of this ar-ticle initiated prison protests demanding water. Many had been kept without water for many hours, and asking polite-ly for this basic human right was not working. Our protests, which spread to jail cells across the entire warehouse, finally resulted in a small glass of wa-ter and a cheese sandwich.

One of the authors of this

article, Tyler Kendall, was im-mediately targeted by police for this rally and dragged out of his cell, beaten and thrown into segregation, while the as-saulting officers said, “So you want to be an activist, huh?”

In solitary confinement, pris-oners were offered no wash-room facilities and were told to relieve themselves in their tiny cells. Women were observed by male guards as they relieved themselves, and were denied privacy.

Throughout this whole peri-od of over 24 hours, not a single cellmate of ours had a chance to speak to a lawyer. The ratio-nale of the police was that we were protesters (which was not true for many of those arrest-ed) and so we deserved to have our basics rights and dignities denied.

We were treated as if our protest, to which we had a legal right, equated us with the most serious of anti-social criminals.

Finally, after enduring all this for anywhere from 15 to 24 hours, most of us prisoners—and we were over a thousand according to police—were re-

leased with no charges.This ordeal shows us the na-

ture of liberal democracy.The rich and their politicians

are willing to throw all that talk of democracy out the win-dow as soon as working people move on their issues.

From the top politicians passing secret laws that breach our charter rights, to the police on the ground who had no regard for human well-being, it is clear that the rich are ready to mobilize state re-pression against even peaceful protests.

The labour movement must respond clearly to these viola-tions of our rights, and move even more strongly against the upcoming austerity measures that will cut into the standard of living of working people.

Furthermore, we must all en-sure that any of our comrades and friends who remain in pris-on be released immediately.

The authors want to note that this article only discusses our own first-hand experiences of brutality, and that many of our friends have listed abuses and intimidation far more serious.

« G20 detention camps, from PG. 1

Tara Atluri

“They do not know it, but they are doing it.” So said Karl Marx in Capital, describ-ing 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 Ad-ams.” Relating war to the ev-eryday experiences of poor ra-cialized 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.

This is state brutality. This is tyranny. This is Canada and we are shocked that ‘regular,’ ‘normal,’ ‘peaceful’ Canadi-ans have gone to jail. We are shocked that English speaking, white, secular, middle class people with Canadian citizen-ship have gone to jail.

We should not be shocked. This is nothing new. “This has always been the way.” This is the work of ideology. To make you think that this moment can somehow be separated from other moments that are not just hidden in our national mythol-ogy, but are foundational to it.

Dudley George is dead. An Aboriginal man gunned down by police during a land claims battle. He is said to be one of the only people to be killed dur-ing a dispute over land claims

in this country. This is laugh-able, because every dispute in this country is in some sense about land claims. Every home-less Aboriginal person we see on the streets of Toronto being beaten by police, every Aborigi-nal woman we do not see be-cause she ‘disappeared,’ is gone because of claims to land.

This is nothing new. “This has always been the way.” What is new is that it is happening to people that this kind of thing usually does not happen to. What is new is that there are people witnessing state led vio-lence, who usually do not see it happen before their own eyes.

However, I hope this will be a special moment. A mo-ment that does not end when the streets are cleaned of all signs of the G20/G8 and the riot cops are sent back to their usual routine of terrorising those who are abjected from the boundaries of humanity. Acceptable targets of hatred that we all turn a blind eye to because on some level we have internalized a logic of capital that makes the deaths of the very poor, the very foreign, and the very dark, acceptable.

Perhaps this could be a mo-ment when we realise that we have never been free. The vio-lence of the police that received world attention is just a magni-fying glass, turned on to prob-lems that simmer beneath the surface of our liberal pleasant-ries.

Burial grounds versus white settler mythologies. Undocu-mented kitchen and cleaning staff against multicultural model minority rhetoric. Free speech and Zionism.

This is just a moment of spec-

tacle in which the everyday dramas of colonialism turn into a grand street theatre.

We should be proud of those who were not afraid to raise their voices and resist state repression today. However, it would be deeply moving if they were not afraid to do it tomor-row and the day after that and a week from now and a month from now, and for years to come.

Because violence is like love. It doesn’t operate according to a set temporality and cannot be measured by scale. It is always there and it shapes and informs lives through its most minute expressions and gestures, in the most grandiose ways.

There is an old Russian joke that Slavoj Zizek tells, which comes to mind:

“There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheel-bar-row he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing. It is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the work-er is stealing are the wheel-barrows themselves...”Zizek argues that when it

comes to violence, people tend to spend a lot of time search-ing in the wheelbarrow, rather than looking at wheelbarrows themselves. We search for problems or failings in the so-cial structure rather than ques-tioning the foundations of the neoliberal order itself. Violence is always and has always been present. “This has always been the way.”

Violence is not the result of a ‘mistake’ within the workings of state power, but is inherent to state power itself. There is

no alarm bell or panic button for everyday injustice. That’s just the business of the day.

When it all passes and we pat ourselves on the backs for hav-ing been there, for having said and done the right thing, for having cheered and marched, I hope that we are congratu-lating ourselves in the streets. Because the wheelbarrow will still belong to them. Because the land they wheel it over will still not be a barren space ripe for destruction and seizure, as great white men once imagined

and still imagine it to be. Be-cause I for one, plan to annoy world leaders long after Man-mohan Singh has gone back to India to kill some Maoists fighting for freedom and hide some slums in preparation for The Commonwealth Games.

Stolen wheelbarrow racing might be the only true common wealth game on offer these days. The only game in which we might all win, staging a vic-tory over the infinite loss that capitalism invites us to end-lessly race towards.

Wheelbarrow: “This has always been the way”

“Over the past few days, although folks who have been using black bloc tactics were damaging property, police were hurting people.”

–Susan Wallace, NDP federal candidate for Toronto Centre at Esplanade Community Organization meeting on June 30, 2010