I’m staring out my living room window Sunday, catching my breath between visits to the detention centre, and suddenly a police van rolls up and nabs three people right in front of my house.
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We’re 2 miles from the fence. So this is plainly illegal. Problem is, I’m actually getting used to all this.
So here’s the deal: the storyline has changed. The city’s worst nightmare isn’t the shattered glass, though that’s a drag. It’s the possible effect all this menacing display will have on our future tolerance for arbitrary authority. Will we recover the sense of boundaries and prerogatives we had on June 20? Or has something shifted?
Saturday’s spectacle – its sometimes humour-strafed standoffs with riot police, endless impromptu street takeovers and marches, emergency tweeting and the grabbing of quiet moments for quick analysis – was a socially complex affair.
But not for police tacticians. They practised a paranoid one-size-fits-all style of crowd control, decades out of date and destined to alienate an entire generation of young activists for their entire adult lives.
Despite their undercover officers, their overcover ones, intelligence networks and online monitors, police showed their ignorance of protesting crowds and a preoccupation with collective punishment.
I spent almost 12 hours on the street Saturday, minus a 45-minute sushi break, and several hours Sunday, and I saw every variety of participant, from steelworkers to students, indigenous activists, radical cheerleaders, people with psychological problems, white-haired justice people, tattooed folk and an endless array of those ready to sit down in front of police lines and hold hands.
There were 200 Black Blocers and thousands of the rest of us – and that’s supposedly the reason police blocked us, threatened us with tear gas, marched with batons into crowds of us, drove horses into our midst so we fled in panic, and questioned, detained and sometimes hurt us on the street. Police acted as if all the protesters were villagers protecting a guerrilla army, treating everyone with the same suspicion, presumption of guilt and sense of impunity.
Nothing they did made sense to the civilians to whom they are accountable. Riot police suddenly appeared, forming deep lines in front of marchers in strategically senseless areas, exhibited huge operational inconsistencies, issued warnings to vacate in quiet voices and seemed to be governed by mysterious reasoning no one in the street could fathom or respect. And despite Chief Bill Blair’s promise that Queen’s Park would be a “safe” zone, by 6 pm Saturday it was the most dangerous place in the city.
I was shocked when I interviewed two detainees from the mass arrest at Novotel and found they had been detained for 12 hours with no access to a lawyer. But later, well, it seemed banal. Everyone reported that they weren’t allowed legal counsel.
Despite all the provocations, demonstrators didn’t go mob they vented their anger in long tirades against tyranny in front of impassive police and then danced and sang to entertain their tormenters.
And contrary to all those theories you learned in undergrad psychology about “contagion” in mass situations, street marchers kept their cool and their generosity. As I fled, my heart racing, from charging mounted police in Queen’s Park Saturday, voices rang out all around me: “Walk, walk, don’t run.” And soon, despite the proximity of the horses, hundreds of people slowed their steps to prevent trampling each other.
At one point, on University, I had a sudden Quebec City flashback and a flare of worry about tear gas. I must have said something out loud, because the heavily tattooed woman beside me in black offered me her only bottle of water to keep in case I had to flush out my eyes.
As for the Black Bloc, ostensibly the reason our rights drained away as the hours went on, don’t get me started. It’s easy to say they’re pumped by the cop overkill and the testosterone in the air, but they’re a symptom of a real problem, and I don’t just mean capitalism.
The Bloc has taken the noble tradition of civil disobedience and dragged it through the muck. When you decide to break the rules in the name of something grander, you have to own up. The Berrigan brothers didn’t destroy U.S. government draft documents and then put on disguises. They condemned the Vietnam War, and then they did the revolutionary thing: they went to jail.
I laugh to think of Blocers taking responsibility, and I’m tired of three days’ worth of people telling me we have to respect their rights as activists. Sure, I can see a situation where someone might decry oil’s fouling of the earth by defacing a gas station. But then you have to phone the police, contact the media, issue the manifesto, get arrested, reimburse the franchisee and explain oneself in court. It’s called being an adult.
Instead, Blocers slipped in and out of their personas. I stood next to one as he was taking off his black duds during a standoff. Coward. The broader movement likes to say, “There’s no Black Bloc, only black bloc tactics.” Don’t soak me in sophistry.
The destruction cult has the grassroots over a barrel – thus the “diversity of tactics” truce. If there isn’t an accord with the masked marauders, its members won’t respect the integrity of the peaceful protest zones. This pact entails not dissing others’ actions, which is why Toronto Mobilization Network reps were so careful with their words when interviewed.
Folks, liberate yourselves. The native march banned face masks and the Bike Bloc made a no-trashing policy. It’s time for movement indignation and shunning to send the Bloc back into civilian clothes permanently.
Last weekend, thousands of peaceful souls stood up to the scary sight of lines and lines of cops, and you’d better believe that all that cat-and-mouse scrambling over public space had a larger purpose.
Society owes a debt to those who spent hour after hour holding their ground as free citizens. This wasn’t the mission protest organizers sought, but when it was handed to them, they did what had to be done.
ellie@nowtoronto.com
