My thoughts...
What a horrible weekend for Toronto. I would like to forget it as soon as possible. I chose not to leave my condo and my immediate neighbourhood, and I'm glad -- satisfying my curiosity would not have been worth ending up in that stinking "detention centre" for a night. However, before I move on, I feel a need to vent my thoughts on a few things.
Firstly, after weeks of preparation (including a billion dollars spent, a massive disruptive fence, tens of thousands of police, constant ID checks of law-abiding citizens on their way to work, etc.) why did the police suddenly seem so stunned when about about 100 kids actually started committing the exact crimes they were supposedly anticipating? Why did they wait until only after those criminals dispersed to suddenly crack down harshly by stopping, searching, "corralling", and detaining hundreds of non-violent protesters, passersby, tourists, and accredited members of the press, even though many of these people appear to have little to nothing in common with the "black bloc"?
I'm usually the first to snort at conspiracy theories of any sort, but it does strike me as odd that those police cars were left abandoned in key intersections for so long, practically taunting the troublemakers to light them on fire. Only once the fires were left burning long enough for the press to photograph and broadcast them live on TV did the police finally react. It is not a stretch to say that the fear caused by these fires was useful to the police as it turned public sentiment totally in their favour and gave them a carte blanche to operate as they pleased for the rest of the weekend, with almost all rights of peaceful assembly tossed out the window from that point on.
Secondly, for who seem to feel that anyone who went near a protest deserved to be detained regardless of their intentions, please remember that we are talking about a huge swath of the city, home to hundreds of thousands of people, and filled with thousands of businesses, restaurants and bars that were fully open and doing business throughout. Queen and Spadina, for example, is many blocks from the security fence. Anyone who is not a violent anarchist who was caught in the baffling "corral" last night at that corner for four hours, given no explanations, no assistance, and finally released without charge, are damned right to be angry. The only thing that separates many of those people from you and me is that we live elsewhere or chose to walk on a different corner that night. What I saw on TV broadcast live during that event is simply not acceptable.
What the anarchist vandals did was disgusting, and they should be arrested, charged, and jailed. However, what happened to hundreds and hundreds of other mostly innocent Torontonians this weekend is equally disgusting to me. The police cannot take out their frustrations on one group of people because another group committed crimes the day before. It is not anti-police or radical leftism to expect that the police be transparent and forthcoming about they way they acted. If mistakes were made and many innocent people had their rights violated, the people responsible for this should be held accountable. Policing may be difficult, but our officers are supposedly well-trained and well-compensated for that reason. The information given to the public by the police throughout the weekend was convoluted and inconsistent and gave the impression that the police were either misleading us, or incompetent: "we did fire rubber bullets, no we didn't, actually we did, we used teargas, no it was a 'muzzle shot', wait, actually it was a smoke bomb". Now their claims that people were given many opportunities to leave Queen and Spadina is beginning to sound hollow in the face of the different stories told by countless other witnesses.
Finally, I am alarmed at how many Canadians seem perfectly happy to toss away so many of their fundamental freedoms (to congregate, to dress in any colour they please, to walk their neighbourhoods without being subjected to unwarranted searches or detainment, to be told why they are being arrested and detained, etc.) at the slightest hint of broken windows or adolescents in black hooded sweatshirts. I am disappointed that so many Canadians cannot tell the difference between criminals and peaceful protestors, and that the very act of protesting seems to be an act worthy of arrest in many people's eyes. That many Canadians also have no problem with the fact that laws were sneakily passed specifically to undermine some of our rights, and then only publicized the day of the event, is equally astonishing to me.
These are my thoughts in their long-winded entirety. I'm moving on now, trying to get back to enjoying the city I love without lettings these events cast a slimy shadow on certain corners in the city forever.
