G20 Toronto protests turn violent

by: Daniel De Groot

Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 17:08


A large protest march outside the G20 security zone through downtown Toronto has turned violent, smashing up multiple stores and burning at least one police car in Toronto's main shopping district, Yonge st and College, with other reports of conflicts with police at Queen and John area (several blocks south-west).

So far no deaths, but the violence has been attributed to organized anarchist groups such as the "black bloc" (which I know nothing about and may not be a coherent group as such) which despite being a tiny portion of the protest, are obviously effective at provoking vandalism and damage within a charged up crowd.

As night is falling I don't know what will happen, whether the crowds will disperse, or if the overthrow-society twits will succeed at instigating even worse harm than ruining any positive message that the peaceful protests might have achieved.  Way to create a backlash against the left and against the change you seek, morons.

I'm safely a couple kilometers out of the downtown core, though I do live quite near to the containment site for arrested protestors.  Drove by on errands and the Police milling about there are all wearing gas mask carriers on their belts.

Follow it on twitter or at this CBC blog or suggest other good sources for real time info in comments.

Local news station CP24 also has a good twitter feed.  

Daniel De Groot :: G20 Toronto protests turn violent

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G20 Toronto protests turn violent | 27 comments
This Is What $1 Billion In "Security" Looks Like (4.00 / 4)
I was astonished to hear that figure on Democracy Now! this week--$1 billion spent on security for the summit.   Why can't they just bash people's heads in for $20 or $30 million like they used to in the good old days?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
Yeah. I'm really at a loss to see how they (4.00 / 1)
legitimately spent anywhere close to that on this summit.  Apparently they tried to gussie up an airport in cottage country so AF1 would land there, and a bunch of pork stuff for some conservative ridings so I'm not really sure how much was actually for security.

Still, just like US conservatives, ours are fiscally responsible.  

[ Parent ]
You spend that money (4.00 / 2)
and show all that force, to demonstrate how dangerous your opponents are. Also, to provoke them into doing something that justifies those actions.  It is self-justifying.

Of course, there are small groups of protesters who try to provoke the police in a similar fashion.

Support the Youth PROMISE Act

[ Parent ]
it sort of worked (4.00 / 2)
note how Daniel just goes ahead and assumes that the mythical anarchists are the instigators of the violence (as opposed to, more likely, acting in self defense)
[ Parent ]
eye witnesses report that's exactly what happened (0.00 / 0)
And tell me why smashing a clothing store and throwing human feces inside is "self defence" ok?

I've met these twits who want to overthrow society and have a revolution.  They're not fiction, but they are deluded and I can easily believe they try and orchestrate these things.

[ Parent ]
oh hey second hand reports (4.00 / 2)
I was in Seattle in 99 and I heard a lot of stories like that one, but oddly saw none of it.  The cops shot first, anything else you're told is bullshit.

By the by, there's nothing wrong with envisioning a revolution, especially given the current sad state of affairs in some allegedly civilized nations.

[ Parent ]
well (0.00 / 0)
here's a named witness to feces throwing.
[ Parent ]
eyewitness Max Power sees protestors kicking puppies (4.00 / 1)
eyewitness Travis Q. Disaster would rather see photographic evidence of people SHITTING INTO THEIR HANDS and throwing it
[ Parent ]
ok we're done (0.00 / 0)
If I find video of a protestor doing this, you'll say it was doctored, or it's a cop in disguise and on and on.  Ok, I admit it, all protestors are 100% peaceful and only the authorities ever cause any trouble.  You win.
[ Parent ]
how about you roll on down there and have a look around (4.00 / 1)
maybe talk to one of the evil radicals and ask if they're the ones starting this shit- the results might astound you
[ Parent ]
some more "self defence" (0.00 / 0)
here.  CBC vans are well known to attack protestors.  Damned public broadcasters!
[ Parent ]
police tear gas canisters are magic (0.00 / 0)
and only break things belonging to evil black bloc skateboard gang anarchsist
[ Parent ]
I saw the CBC camera (0.00 / 0)
zoom in and show a brick in the damn car.

Look, I believe 99% of the protestors are peaceful etc, but your contention that crowds don't attract shit disturbers isn't very tenable.  

[ Parent ]
your contention that those shit disturbers are ultra leftists or anarchists (0.00 / 0)
isn't either
[ Parent ]
I'm not sure (4.00 / 1)
That peaceful protests would have accomplished anything.  Holding hands and singing Kumbayah is boring these days.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both
were there giant puppets? (0.00 / 0)
did they bust out the big guns (rubber masks)?
[ Parent ]
What will this accomplish? (0.00 / 0)
This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and it's not clear to me it has accomplished much other than ramping up the security levels for them.  They're still willing to host them in major cities even, it's not like they moved them to a yacht in the ocean, or on top of a mountain.
[ Parent ]
next time, it'll be in a space station... (4.00 / 1)
in space.
[ Parent ]
No one's doing anything that accomplishes anything (4.00 / 3)
Boring, peaceful protests and juvenile vandalism are both ineffective forms of protest.

If you're going to do a peaceful protest, then be a bit more creative and disruptive and if you're going to do a violent protest, then do some real damage instead of the kiddie stuff.  (Note that I am nowhere near pissed off enough about the economy to advocate political violence at this point.  I just point out that, from a game theoretical perspective, if you want to revolt, the oppressed need to promise enough damage to the oppressors in order to get them to rethink the strategy of oppression.)

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

[ Parent ]
I am fully convinced this entire event, including vio9lence is scripted (4.00 / 1)
and there weren't people angry enough to do this, they would have been invented.

This below is a stop SPP protest in Canada recently, the President of the CEP union discovers four police agents carrying rocks, throwing rocks, you can see them in the video, and as they are discovered as police agents they cross into the Police lines, where they are pretend arrested, and "escorted away."


sorry typos again (0.00 / 0)
If there weren't people angry enough to do this, they would be invented.

But, to be clear, they arent leftists, even if they aren't police agents.

[ Parent ]
Here is the National CBC TV story about the police provocatuers. (4.00 / 2)

The violence in Toronto is to get the Bushite Prime Minister Harper re-elected.

[ Parent ]
can we talk about what 'violence' means? (4.00 / 3)
property damage, of itself, does not necessarily constitute violence to me.  To me, violence is the doing of harm - which could include property damage, but not necessarily.

There is a further conversation about what the results of property damage or other tactics are as well as what the results of violence more broadly is, but these conversations also are not necessarily identical things.

It might sound like semantics but I think there is actually an important distinction between damaging property and damaging people (including through damaging property) that gets lost in calling it all 'violence.'

fair point (0.00 / 0)
I did pause for a moment before characterizing it as "violence" but it's certainly a fair debate.
[ Parent ]
What distinction would you make (0.00 / 0)
Between damaging property and damaging people in the name of a cause that you oppose?

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both
[ Parent ]
It's a key distinction (4.00 / 1)
one of the things that happens in the United states as we saw in the recent SC decision on free speech is that property, corporations, and other inanimate objects are represented as human beings and therefore what people do to them is characterized by the same standards as what happens to human beings.

This is not only fundamentally flawed, but it is a moral choice (one that i find immoral) to say that the representations of people's economic interests deserve the same kind of treatment as actual people - e.g. 'silencing' a corporation through free speech is the same as 'silencing' a person.  Anyone who has actually been silenced in any way would find this grossly insensitive, at minimum - I certainly do.

So what I would say is that violence is about harm to people, and property damage is violent (or not) in sofar as it harms (or does not) harm people.  Breaking a store window can cause real human distress on financial and economic levels - but it is not the same as breaking someone's body.  

In order to respect the value that it's not the same thing to end the life of a corporation or a store as it is a person, that I'm not even sure how a corporation or property could be sexually assaulted, that corporations and property have different needs in terms of upkeep than the human body.

So in any property damage situation, that's how I would measure it - what's the damage/harm done to people (both those who commit the property damage, those who observe it
(e.g. the level of PTSD among Palestinian and Israeli children) and those who are attached to the proeprty, including as ownesr.  It's only then -- looking at the people involved - that you can assess whether or not the thing is 'violent.'

That's my opinion (in formation).

[ Parent ]
p.s. (0.00 / 0)
i would be willing to extend this, in some fashion or another, to animals, at minimum, but what that would look like would have to be figured out.

There's also a question that persists here about intent and effect in terms of harm done.

[ Parent ]
G20 Toronto protests turn violent | 27 comments




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