From Four Star:
Between June 26th-27 2010, the G-20, an international organization between the protectors of capital, met to discuss how to secure profit during failing economic recession. Amidst housing and labor crisis, global poverty, lack of international medical care and aid, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and environmental disaster (THANKS BP!) they spent close to one billion dollars to protect their party.
This money was used to purchase brand new police equipment, street cameras (like Chicago), and overtime pay for police officers. What the bailouts in the U.S and the one billion price tag for the G-20 demonstrate, is that the wealthy will use government, regardless of political party, to ensure it’s economic stranglehold and footing in society. While people are starving, homeless, jobless, and corporations such as BP have destroyed entire regions in the U.S, that they would rather beat, jail, and demonize people who are rightfully angry.
Anarchists took part in every aspect of the demonstration, from working within unions, community organizations, anti-colonial struggles, to the black bloc. (See below for an update on the demonstration from Common Cause.) The media is working hard to justify the enormous security budget and the police attack against a peaceful demonstration by showing one event of the demonstration, property destruction and a burning cop car. Regardless of personal tactics, or political vision, we are in full solidarity with those arrested. There may be those who are angry at the image of a burning police car, but we are more angry at people wearing suits who are burning nations, taking our jobs to increase profit, and destroying the Gulf of Mexico to save what oil they can at our expense.
From Common Cause:
The events of the past week in Toronto have been unprecedented in Canadian history. Over 900 people were arrested, the biggest mass arrests ever in Canada, for daring to protest against the destructive policies of the G20.
Protesters and local residents were subjected to violent baton attacks, snatch squads, tear gas and rubber bullets. Sleeping people have been pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Many have been beaten. People who have been arrested have been strip-searched and held in cages, facing long delays in obtaining legal support. We have heard numerous accounts of sexual abuse by police from women who were arrested. Journalists have been punched, arrested and had their equipment broken.
On the streets of Toronto, the mask of “liberal democracy” has slipped off and the police reminded us of the State’s willingness to use blatant violence against its own population in the face of popular dissent. And thanks to citizen journalists, the alternative media and even some in the corporate media, the truth of what happened in Toronto is slowly emerging.
In order to make sure that the actions of the police state are fully exposed, we must keep up the pressure on the police and the government.
We must also publicly demonstrate our solidarity with all those arrested so that they are released as quickly as possible and charges are dropped against all those caught up in the net of the police state.
In Toronto, solidarity rallies outside detention centres and police stations are already taking place. But just as police forces from across the province converged on Toronto for the G20, so our resistance must spread out from the epicentre of oppression to every corner of the province.
Common Cause thus calls on all those concerned to take the fight back across the province and across the country.
Starting this Wednesday, June 30, we are calling for solidarity rallies outside police headquarters in as many cities as possible.
Our message will be clear:
Free the Toronto 900!
Fight back against the police state! We are putting you under surveillance!
Build the resistance against the G20! Build the resistance against austerity!
Build the general strike!
Common Cause
www.linchpin.ca
