One of the reasons that I adore Toronto is that within the city, I find the world. Every facet of our common humanity is represented and in daily increments we share that, each of us teaching the other.
On Friday I went downtown to find a vast area of our commonality closed off by the state and an eerily deserted city district, as if some horrible thing was about to happen. And on Saturday it did, with all predictability.
The presence of the Black Bloc and their palsied ignorance only serves the purposes of the state and their appearance at this event is about as surprising as ants on butter.
They are a distraction and a boon to the government as it scrambles to justify the outrageous cost of this debacle. And the photo-op moments came when the police inexplicably abandoned three cars in the middle of a major global protest and then let them burn while the world watched.
A billion dollars and there is still no cop when you need one? I think not.
The Black bloc, the burning cars, and the smashed windows are not the issue or the image that the world should see. The following two images should be the real lesson of this lost weekend.
People being searched for having the temerity for carrying bags in the downtown district, blocks away from the perimeter fence where the five meter kangaroo law that was passed in secret by the government on June 2nd that was not revealed to the people until it was violated in a Kafkaesque moment on the eve of the summit.
This obscenity against the principles of our constitution was then arbitrarily extended throughout the downtown core.
The Black bloc and its aftermath are little more than a distraction, so that your consent may be manufactured to allow those in power to do this, and by extension and in a very subtle way making each and every one of us more compliant and afraid.
Suddenly, a secretly passed law that was meant to be applied within a five meter zone of the perimeter fence was being applied throughout the downtown core. When the powers of the state are under stress, it doesen't take long for them to change the rules to suit their needs.
And that scares me way more than any burning car.
I have more pics and more to say, but I sense that I am like most Torontonians. We need some time to digest what happened, but there will be huge fallout from these events.
As for those who would so compliantly surrender hard won liberty: if you let the state do this, what will you allow them to do next in the name of "security"?
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