An immediate public inquiry is needed into the police repression at the Toronto G-20 Summit
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can be mildly embarrassing, even if UN votes change few economic facts on the ground.
On ‘security’ issues, the G8 endorsed a five-year exit plan from Afghanistan (which can always be extended). They denounced Iran and North Korea (without any commitment to eradicate the largest stock piles of nuclear weapons, which happen to be held by the USA, Russia, and Europe).
And they called for an ‘easing’ of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, rather than demanding an end to the siege, let alone the dismantling of the Israeli apartheid wall, or recognition of the right of return for all Palestinian refugees.
None of the ‘decisions’ of the G8 and G20 were actually made at the summits, which serve a rubberstamp and photo-op function for pre-negotiated policies, steeped in diplomatic vacuity. Thus, working people, the poor, and all oppressed sections of society had good reason to protest long before the summits. After all, we live daily under disaster capitalism.
So, protests proliferated in the week of June 20. This followed the People’s Summit attended by over 1500 at Ryerson University. It continued with demonstrations for aboriginal rights and against the rising tide of poverty, and culminated in the massive rally and march of 30,000, despite persistent rainfall, on Saturday, June 26.
The sponsors of the main demonstration, which set out from Toronto’s Queen’s Park, included the Canadian Labour Congress, the Ontario Federation of Labour, their major union affiliates, as well as the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace, Oxfam, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Ontario Health Coalition, Amnesty International, and numerous feminist organizations. The demo was peaceful and spirited. Chants of “Whose streets? Our streets”! and “This is what democracy looks like”! echoed down University Avenue’s ‘hospital row’, and up through Chinatown on Spadina Ave.
But the huge parade never made it onto prime-time news. Mainstream media coverage fixated on a tiny breakaway group. The so-called Black Bloc, animated by self-described anarchists, went on a windowbusting rampage that hit about 40 businesses, and torched four police squad cars. No one was killed or seriously injured. The only injuries were caused by the police, afterwards.
The anger of the Bloquistas against the social in-