Articles tagged with: G20 Summit
Tales from the G20: A Few Questions for Justin Saunders and Joseph Cami
It’s been over a year and people are still talking about the mass mobilization of protest and the repressive tactics used by authorities at the Toronto G20 Summit. Justin Saunders was there with a film crew and his documentary Tales from the G20 screens tonight in Montreal at Cinema Politica at Concordia. FTB’s Stephanie Laughlin interviewed Saunders about the film, what happened at the G20, what it means for the future of activism, the Occupy movement and upcoming projects….
Hey hey, ho ho, Bill Blair has got to go!
This past weekend was my first trip back to Toronto in nearly a year. That’s because I avoided it like the plague. Last year I was a student at the University of Toronto, but after the “events” that took place at the 2010 G20 there was no going back. On June 26th 2010, I was attacked by several police officers in full riot gear. I was ripped from the sidewalk outside of the Novotel in Toronto, pushed to the ground, shackled, crammed into a paddy wagon and illegally slammed in a dog cage for 24 hours.
Just who are the criminals?
A couple of days after the G20 summit ended in Toronto, a story surfaced through journalist Amy Miller about female prisoners (arrested while peacefully protesting) being strip searched in the presence of male cops. We reported it here as did several other media outlets. Now, we can put at least two faces to the story: those of Maryse and Jacynthe Poisson. The two 21-year-old students, twin sisters in fact, who also work with childred and marginalized people respectively, told La Presse how they were arrested while they slept in a gymnasium at the University of Toronto on the Sunday morning along with 200 other women. Apparently they had made the mistake of booking their transport to Toronto on a bus organized by the CLAC, something which is not a crime under any definition. While in custody, they were strip-searched twice, one time with the door open, not given enough food and had their shoes, bras and Jacynthe’s glasses taken from them, none of which were returned upon their release almost 60 hours later. The Toronto Police also refused to return their IDs.
This just in: G20 most wanted list
The Toronto Police Department is scheduled to release a list today of ten people most wanted in connection with violence at the G20 Summit. We’ve obtained an advanced copy, so here are the top five: 1. Stephen Harper: Wanted for scheduling his photo-op in a city that didn’t want it and where he knew there would be trouble. He knew that he could use that trouble as an excuse to bring on violent police repression which would show the world and his opponents that he could and would do anything he wants, minority government and individual rights not withstanding. Yeah, he also spent more than a billion taxpayer dollars on this disaster.
G20 repeat
Why should I give a poot about foreign countries when here are plenty of crises going on right here. In fact, to heck with anything happening there. There is no there. There is only here. Ok. The truth is, that no amount of protesting is going to make a damned bit of difference regardless of what we do, so why bother trying?
The bully got his way
Stephen Harper always struck me as a bully, but this past weekend, he proved to the world that he really was one. Like any good bully, he got his cronies, in this case the Toronto Police, to do all the dirty work and some of it was quite dirty. After standing by as their own cars burned and the windows of some local businesses got smashed by black bloc agent provocat…er…anarchists, the Toronto cops proceeded to round up close to a thousand people. Most of them were peaceful protesters and some of them were just ordinary Torontonians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is what democracy looks like?
My name is Alison Henderson and I was one of the innocent protesters arrested at the G20 Summit protest on Saturday June 26, 2010. I attended the protest to fulfill my democratic obligation as a concerned citizen of this interdependent world, to speak out against injustice. I attended because the G20 is an illegitimate and undemocratic body through which imperial corporate powers solidify and perpetuate social inequality and injustice in the world. I went to Queens Park in Toronto at 1pm to join the G20 Summit protest. Upon my arrival I was submersed in a sea of political protestors. People were protesting issues as diverse as freedom of expression, globalization, capitalism, corporate greed, aboriginal rights, fair trade, maternal rights, queer rights and environmental protection. Although each group and individual had their own reasons for attending the protests, we were all united through solidarity and our collective dissatisfaction with the status quo.
A Bullshit Billion
I remember writing last week that it would have been nice to make it to Toronto for the weekend to be apart of the G20 Summit protests. After that article was posted I remember thinking “What am I stupid? Nothing good ever happens in Toronto!” boy was I right. I’ve never seen such a spectacular failure on everyone’s account for a political gathering in my life. The activists, the police, the politicians, even the anarchists all had their reasons for being there, but it would have been just as productive and a hell of a lot cheaper if no one had bothered to show up.
Protest and Survive
Being from Montreal, I never thought there would be days that I’d rather be in Toronto. This coming weekend, leaders of the top 20 industrialized nations in the world will descend upon Toronto for the G20 summit followed as closely as possible by thousands of protesters. I wish I could be one of them. Activists of all shapes and sizes should be out en mass to show their discontent about everything, whether it’s global warming or poverty, the fake lake or Stephen Harper’s awful haircut. The point is I don’t think there has ever been less of a shortage of things to complain about.
