http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/3862
G20 Capitalism is Attacked in the Streets of Toronto
Statement from No One Is Illegal Montreal
by NO ONE IS ILLEGAL & CLAC 2010
Also posted by Aaron:
Also in Migration:
G20 Capitalism is Attacked in the Streets of Toronto
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20 capitalism is attacked in the streets of Toronto
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TORONTO, June 26, 2010 -- The intersection of King and Bay is the financial
capital of Canada. Within blocks of these infamous cross-streets, amidst iconic
skyscrapers, are the headquarters of the banks, corporations, public relations
companies and law firms that help drive global capitalism. King and Bay in
Toronto is the heart of Canadian colonial capitalism, which projects its misery
all over the world, through mining, forestry and other resource extraction
companies.
While the G20 leaders planned to meet behind a steel cage and an unprecedented
1-billion dollar security operation, a contingent of thousands-strong
protesters gathered to defy Stephen Harper’s Fortress Toronto.
An over 1000-person strong contingent, representing diverse movements of
community-based struggles in Toronto, Ontario and across Canada converged in a
bloc entitled “Get Off the Fence”.
Activists and community organizers represented rank-and-file labour, migrant
justice, indigenous solidarity, anti-police brutality, ecological justice,
anti-war, anti-occupation, queer and trans justice, anti-poverty,
anti-capitalist, feminist, anarchist, and many more struggles and campaigns. We
are united together, learning from each other and inspired by each other. We
are rooted in our communities.
Today’s radical contingent separated from the “People First” Labour March
(which would march in a circle from Queen’s Park, a police-designated and
permitted “protest zone”). Led by the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble street band
of Montreal, the contingent took the streets, and occupied a large bloc within
the labour march. Several times along Queen Street, protesters attempted to
break through police lines, only to be met with riot police who hit and
bloodied protesters with their batons and shields.
Undeterred, protesters waited for the People’s First march to continue its
march up Spadina Avenue, the radical contingent doubled-back, and headed east
along Queen Street, with some protesters engaging in corporate property
destruction, including Starbucks and Nike stores along Queen Street. At times
running, at other times waiting to gather together, the protest was able to
march south onto Bay Street, and down to Canada’s financial capital at Bay &
King.
Chanting “No G20 on stolen native Land”, and “No borders, no nations, stop the
deportations”, there were cheers of support amidst the sounds of glass
smashing, as targeted property destruction of well-known corporate criminals
continued down Bay Street. The demonstration continued east on King until
Yonge, and then marched up Yonge Street to Dundas Square.
Commenting on the property destruction, one Toronto Star reporter wrote: "For
the most part, their targets are specific and symbolic: As the crowd tore
across Queen St., they hammered police cruisers, attacked banks and other
corporate companies. Yet they left a record store, a local tavern and an
independent hardware shop untouched."
Most of the targets are symbols to many of the ethical backwardness of a
society in which wealth is systematically stripped from poor and racialized
people who produce it, and remains concentrated in the hands of a few
corporations, banks, and global elites. Several police cars were destroyed by
protestors as well, many of whom felt anger over a week of unlawful searches,
arrests, and arbitrary violence that had hurt many, even on the peaceful
demonstrations of Friday.
* * *
Earlier in the day, key community organizers and activists from anarchist and
anti-capitalist groups were targeted for early-morning arrests (including at
least two members of No One Is Illegal based in Toronto and Montreal, as well
as organizers with the Toronto Community Mobilization Network). Despite the
preventative arrests and the downpour of rain, organizers and activists
regrouped and improvised together to take the streets of Toronto.
The repression of billion-dollar “Police State Toronto” has showed that civil
liberties can be suspended at whim. They have been officially suspended within
5 metres of the G20 steel cage, but unofficially suspended everywhere else.
Stephen Harper’s G20 police state has seen arbitrary arrests, beatings,
searches and seizures (including a confiscated umbrella yesterday, now dubbed
the “billion-dollar umbrella”).
The steel cages of Fortress Toronto are a microcosm of global apartheid, where
the elite gather behind police lines, while the rest of us survive in a police
state. Toronto has seen a taste of what much of the rest of the majority world
experiences on a daily basis.
We live in a world which is defined by, and maintained by violence, a violence
which self-interested G8/G20 leaders both perpetuate and deny. This violence is
lived daily by those in the Global South. It is lived by indigneous people in
'Canada' and worldwide, who face continued destruction of their cultures and
environments by mining companies, mega-dams, and other forces of on-going
colonization. It is lived by racialized people who are harassed by the police.
In the face of this extreme social violence that is day-to-day reality, there
can be no tears shed for the cars and windows broken by those who have had
enough with the forces profiting from their exploitation.
The fence did not come down today, but the interests that the G20 protects on
Bay Street were attacked. We organize, daily, in our communities. But those
community-based struggles also came together today, for a few hours, to
courageously defy Stephen Harper’s billion-dollar Fortress Toronto and the G20
agenda.
by Robyn Maynard & Jaggi Singh, members of No One Is Illegal-Montreal and the
Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC 2010)
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