It was quite a week in Toronto! Hosting the G20 Summit was exactly as advertised… a huge inconvenience to anyone who lives or works in the south end of the city. For most of the week leading up to the event, it was actually nice - quiet and easy to get around downtown with no traffic issues and easy parking. Not so much on the weekend.
I found it disturbing to watch TV and see “protesters” burning police cars and breaking shop windows in Toronto. We see it often enough in world news but never in our own backyard.
It is clearly the kind of thing we are not used to however, listening to talk radio this morning made it sound like half the city was destroyed – like it was some kind of violent war zone and that somehow the police did not do thier jobs. I know the media sensationalize everything but is it really necessary to create controversy where non exist? The truth is that despite the inconvenience, the conference went off safely, the delegates were protected (which was clearly the first priority) and the small amount of violence while unnecessary was relatively minor. In fact our friends in Montreal do more damage to their own city every time the Habs win a big hockey game.
Whether the summit should have been held in Toronto is a separate debate but I think the police did a good job keeping the order.
What I don’t understand is what the protesters hope to gain by breaking windows at a Starbucks. Reasonable people listen to rational arguments and protests. Rational people lose interest in protests that are violent or destructive.
In the end, the irony is that most of the reporting ends up being about the protest itself and not the actual reason for the protest.
In the end, it was a few strange days and now that its over, we return to normal. The Leafs did not make a deal on draft day, the Raptors are going to lose Bosh, the Jays continue to chase the Yankees and Red Sox and there is road construction everywhere. Summertime in Toronto!
Time to kick back and enjoy the Canada day weekend and the finish of the world cup.
Cheers and have a great day.
George
PS to my Dutch friends – go orange go!
George; Thanks for the support for Holland :)
ReplyDeleteI was downtown every day of the summit and did a lot of walking around; I do have a different take on the efforts of the police. What I saw was nothing but an incredible display of intimidation aimed at all the wrong people. In the end they pretty well simply arrested anyone they could get their hands on regardless of what these people were doing at the time. Those arrested included local residents, journalists, students out for a stroll, you name it. Considering that Police outnumbered protesters by a ratio of at least 5 to 1; were armed to the teeth with bulletproof vests, helicopters, motorcycles, riot gear etc. etc. I thought it was a truly shocking display of incredible incompetence. Maybe cynical but the only means by which the Police effort could IMO be called a success is if you use as a measurement the number of people they managed to arrest. Listening to the media today this seems to be how it is done. I think there will be other voices that question why they failed so miserably at containing a few hundred anarchists most often at the expense of peaceful protesters considering that they had just about anything they wanted to do the job at their disposal...
Robert - I don't disagree that the police were likely heavy handed on Sunday. Interestingly, they took a lot of heat for not being aggressive enough on Saturday. Perhaps it reflects our police force's lack of experience in dealing with this type of demonstration - fueled by many whose only goal was to be destructive. I was not there and admittedly saw only what was broadcast however, in this case, maybe the end justifies the means. I hate to "stand down" on civil liberties but maybe the fact that there was limited damage and limited injury justifies some heavy handed tactics. Then again, I was not detained... I suppose its an historic problem - how much is too much and are the the rights of those demonstrating more important then the rights of those being vandalized?
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