Like many I am not happy with what went down in Toronto over the weekend, and I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. My disappointment is at so many levels and so many different people. While I thought about the order, I wouldn’t read too much into it – there is enough blame that I’m not sure we have to portion it out, just know that lots of Canadians are disappointed in you.
To the protesters who destroyed property, threatened people, and committed dozens of crimes this weekend – I am upset that you perverted an event for your own ends, ends that society doesn’t support and employing tactics that hurt dozens of people and businesses, big and small. You provided the justification for the security and your provocations invited a police response that was not otherwise needed. Your actions are not just illegal, they are not wanted and I condemn the acts.
To the police, if you can’t do your job without violating an individual’s Charter rights, we have a problem. I don’t want to pretend that I understand the legal intricacies of your job this weekend, and I recognize that situation in downtown Toronto could have escalated to a point where it could have spiraled out of control, but when I watch the video above I can’t help but think that you’ve gone too far. It’s offensive. It’s more than unfortunate. And I believe based on what I’ve read and heard that it was unnecessary, as were many of the 900 arrests you made over the weekend.
To the officials who closed the sanctioned protest point at Queen’s Park – citizens need to have a place to voice their dissent. It’s a basic human right. I recognize that safety concerns mean that the point cannot be right in front of the convention centre, but if so you need to provide an alternate space. Dispersing that group then placed hundreds in the difficult place of deciding whether or not to exercise their rights somewhere else – somewhere that threatens the security of the conference you’re protecting.
To the people who organized alternative conferences to the G20 – perhaps you are the least to blame – but be more active in providing an alternative dialogue to the closed system of the G20. Make it real, make it accessible, and make it clear that you condemn rather than condone the destruction of your city.
To the assembled heads of states and heads of governments of the G20 – maybe this roving conference idea isn’t working the way you want – you are giving the impression of disenfranchisement while creating logistical nightmares. I don’t know what the solution is, but there are those who said if you had it in Toronto in January there would have been fewer problems. If you had held it in northern Ontario in the winter there would be even less. As well, on the content of what you do – ensure you are paying attention to what your citizens are saying. Your agenda is not universally shared, and while I applaud your efforts to protect our monetary system and the economic recovery it needs to be defended not through truncheons but through rhetoric and leadership.
Finally, to the mainstream media and social media covering the conference – a lot actually happened in the discussions, discussions that you should have reported on. The stories on the protests and near riots are important, but the lawlessness of Toronto on Saturday pales in comparison to a good Montreal Stanley Cup riot. The next morning La Presse’s headline was still that Montreal won the cup. Your attachment to the images of the protests fed the violence and ignored the issues. And you did so salaciously. It took me ages to find out what the more violent protesters were in fact protesting against – and I had to find out on the kind of sites that cause CSIS to put a note on my file, rather than reading any story from the Globe or the Star.
What a terrible weekend. A black mark for the City of Toronto.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dave Cournoyer, Earl J. Woods, Alphonso Ribeiro, Alphonso Ribeiro, Rob and others. Rob said: RT @davecournoyer: Great blog post by @phendrana: How many people can I blame at the G20? http://twurl.nl/4v5qaw #g20 [...]
I guess “while the pox on all your houses” take meets a minimum standard for not being hypocritical, I don’t think it’s very productive. I’ve seen these kinds of approaches in the mainstream media you criticize, and like yours, they tend to ignore optimistic signs about protest, for example, 25,000 people marching without incident. (Toronto Video Activist Collective has a video of it here:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mL46t8H4oU
I still think the black bloc takes the disproportionate bulk of the blame in these kinds of takes. I still think that anyone getting too upset about burning cars needs to start getting much more angry about “men in suits burning countries,” as Naomi Klein put it this week. They’re paving the way for years of austerity measures to pay for a crisis that they created. But I guess if it’s your view that they have everyone’s interests sincerely and equally at heart, then, I guess, maybe the worst you can say about them is that they picked a bad time and place.
If you want to blame one more outfit, though, I think you can say that the “securitization” of Toronto was also a massive provocation (rather than strictly a defensive measure), and for that I think you have to look to the McGuinty government who passed a secretive law, the results of which are summed up well in this Ottawa Citizen editorial: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/black%20democracy/3213726/story.html
I’d like to hear more about this, though: “To the people who organized alternative conferences to the G20 – perhaps you are the least to blame – but be more active in providing an alternative dialogue to the closed system of the G20. Make it real, make it accessible, and make it clear that you condemn rather than condone the destruction of your city.” How do you think that can happen within the current mainstream media apparatus, whose flaws you note above? Cheers.
Very fair comments Rob, and when I was writing it I did have a section on commending those who peacefully protested but took it out for stylistic reasons – it broke the flow of the post. And not being present, it is hard to comment too far on the security presence in Toronto – I imagine you have to be there to understand fully the impact. All the same I’m looking forward to heading to downtown Calgary this afternoon without having to present my ID three times or explain why I’m going downtown.
I also don’t think the world leaders are all sunshine and lollipops, and I’m certainly not enough of an economist to comment authoritatively on the political outcomes of the conference but regardless of our personal views on the outcomes of the G20 conference, you can’t deny that they are largely under-reported in contrast to the protests. I know enough to know that if the US is serious about cutting its deficit in half by 2013 there will have to be some very difficult decisions in that jurisdiction, decisions that will be global in impact.
I wish I had the solution to the alternative conference question – but I recall with fondness the G6B conference hosted by the University of Calgary in 2002, when Kananaskis played host to the G8. Perhaps it is because I lived in Calgary at the time, but that seemed a reasonable yet important counter to the G8, and one that generated some buzz among the international media present and provided an avenue of dissent that seemed missing in Toronto.
Great post.