It’s now been a week since the major “events” of the Toronto G20 protests (“events” = peaceful march followed by incidents of vandalism followed by mass detentions).
I’m not going to say much about what took place for two reasons; the first being that I didn’t make it downtown for the protests and instead relied on the mainstream news media as well as minute-by-minute updates from friends who were in the thick of it. And secondly, over the past week so much has been posted online – articles, photos and video – that it makes little sense for me to put any of that here.
I did, however, make a few observations. Watching (through TV, social media and news aggregators) the protest turn from a peaceful march into the violent mess that it became, I noticed very early that there seemed to be differences in attitude towards the protest based on whether the person commenting was there or not. This is mostly based on Facebook status updates, but it seems that most of the people condemning the destruction of the city were at home, whereas the ones who were more critical of police actions were actually downtown.
A friend of mine was right in the middle of things taking pictures and he was kind enough to let me use some of them here. What interests me more than the pictures are the captions. Like I said, he was right there, so it’s interesting to read what he had to say about where the police were in relation to the vandals. I’ve included his original comments as well as an exchange we had below.
At the very front of a huge parade of peaceful demonstrators was the Black Bloc (seen in the distance). They are marching east along Queen Street, smashing all the windows as they go. Ahead of them are some bicycle cops escorting the crowd. They did not react to the vandalism occurring behind them, probably preferring to avoid escalating the situation and sparking a riot. Property can be replaced; lives cannot.
A Black Bloc anarchist wearing gloves and a bicycle helmet walks past this Starbucks a moment after his comrades had smashed its windows. Riot police, looking on from the steps of the Much Music building across the street, did not react.
This was taken at the corner of Queen Street and John Street. About 10 feet behind me are more riot police and bicycle cops blocking the street. They did not react to the vandals.
Shattered glass litters the ground.
About 20 feet from me, an anarchist threw a brick through a Starbucks window. I ran back, expecting the riot police on the other side of the street -- 50 feet away, you can see them under the traffic lights in the middle of the photo -- to begin firing tear gas; in fact they didn't flinch. They allowed the anarchists to do as much property damage as they liked, but directed them down a corridor along Queen Street.
I think the police preferred to have insurance cover the property damage, rather than intervening with force which might have sparked a full scale riot. It seemed sensible from my perspective.
To give you a sense of the atmosphere: it felt nothing like mayhem. There was just a calm procession of legitimate demonstrators (and onlookers) while an equally calm group of anarchists at the front of the pack walked down the street smashing windows with impunity. Surreal.
Me: See, what I don't get is: you said that the crowd was mostly peaceful and that the vandals were easily identifiable. So why wouldn't the cops just pick them up and take them out? It's like they waited for things to burn and then arrested all the peaceful protesters en masse. At least that's the impression I get from peoples' accounts. Is that what you were seeing?
Larry: That's exactly what I was seeing. The cops were letting them do the damage. The anarchists walked for many kilometers smashing windows. In my mind this actually makes sense, since it is better to let them do property damage than to provoke a riot where people could get hurt. I think the police hoped that they could keep the damage controlled and channeled down specific corridors.
I can't say for sure, but my speculation is that at about 6:30-7pm, the police were under so much public/media criticism about letting the vandals run amok, that they went ape. They responded with very heavy handed tactics aimed at shutting all further demonstration down.
That's how it felt. Obviously I don't know what actual orders the police were under. There are scattered media reports that also tend to support this conclusion. Without a public inquiry we'll never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment