Police state (G20 continued)

Nearly a month has passed since the G20, and I'm still slowly processing it in blog form.

Of course I got off easy (see the two entries below for my relatively unremarkable G20 stories). But many weren't so lucky. People were arrested – sometimes violently – for having a screwdriver in their pocket, for walking home from work, for wearing a black t-shirt. A couple of 17-year old girls were arrested for blowing bubbles. (Can you imagine being their parents during the 12 hours that they were not allowed to phone?)

I don't use the term 'police state' lightly, but that was exactly what they turned downtown Toronto into for almost a week. It was an armed camp with fortifications. I can't explain how creepy it was to move through those normally bustling streets, near deserted, except for heavily armed, black-clad cops everywhere, far outnumbering the civilians.

And anyone within miles of the dowtown area could be subject to arbitrary arrests and searches without a warrant.

The right to be free from arbitrary policy power, arrests, and searches; the right to be presumed innocent; hell, the right to freedom of speech – those are rights that our ancestors fought revolutions and wars for. Good people died for them. They underly our claim to be a free society, to not be an evil totalitarian regime.

This isn't Iran or North Korea. The people who were arrested weren't killed or tortured. They didn't simply disapear for disagreeing with the government. And life in Canada is not normally like it was during the G20.

But what is so scary is how easily so many of the rights disappeared at the slightest stress, at the slightest threat. There were, at most, a few hundred 'Black Bloque' protestors. On their account, the police and the powers that be criminalized tens of thousands of peaceful protestors – not to mention ordinary Torontonians try to go about their business.

For what? For what did they revoke rights, arrest and brutalize peaceful protestors and ordinary people going about their ordinary lives?

Well, the 'Black Bloque' caused some property damage. As far as I can tell they never hurt anyone – never targetted or attacked a person. I am not condoning them or their tactics, but the same can't be said for the security forces, who terrorized and hurt, I think I can say without exagerration, thousands. (Almost a thousand people were arrested, and judging by my experience you didn't have to get arrested to feel intimidated and scared).

The ironic thing is that they did terrorized so many, they spent so many hundreds of millions of dollars on security, they carted in over 10 000 cops from across the country... and from all appearances and first-hand accounts I have had shared with me, they did basically nothing to stop the Black Bloque rampage.

I'm not one for conspirary theories (and I don't really believe the one I'm about to propose) but it almost makes you wonder if the police let the Black Bloque run rampant so that they could justify clamping down. So that they could justify the exorbitant security measures and obscene expense that came with it.