Posts Tagged ‘G20’

Demonstrators stand behind a line of riot police in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. (Kris Krüg)

CTV.ca

While the opening ceremonies of the 20three10 Winter Olympic Games unfolded at BC Place on Feb. 12, about 1,500 people marched through Vancouver’s streets, ushering in days of demonstrations.

Those events are largely remembered with fondness among Canadian protesters because they helped push community issues, such as homelessness and unsettled indigenous land claims, onto the international stage during the Games.

“It was not just to protest the Olympics, it was about tying them to local concerns,” said Harsha Walia, who was an organizer with the Olympic Resistance Network.

“We saw a convergence of social movements,” she said. “The same thing is happening in Toronto.”

Walia added that she and and 50 to 100 other Vancouver residents plan to travel to Toronto for demonstrations against the G20 summit, which is due to be held there on June 26-27.

Activists in Toronto have been meeting for more than a year to plan mass protests aimed at the international meeting. And they say they’ve learned from Vancouver’s anti-Olympics demonstrations.

“There’s a lot of inspiration we’re sharing from there,” said Syed Hussan, an organizer with the 200-member Toronto Community Mobilization Network, which is coordinating the G20 protests. “That was a very successful model.”

Organizers created the TCMN in December to help recruit like-minded groups for the upcoming demonstrations, which are expected to draw protesters from across Canada and the United States. They’re organizing meeting places, booking transportation, setting up lines of communication and gathering food to keep demonstrators energized while they’re on the streets.

As with Vancouver’s Olympics protests, their plan is to “do the local and the global,” Hussan said. Organizers hope to connect popular causes in Toronto’s activist scene, such as poverty and migrants’ rights, with decisions being made by the world’s 20 largest economies.

“The G20 is now a mode for everyone to come together and work towards a concrete point,” Hussan said. “We’re all joining forces, and it’s going to be a major turning point for the city.”

Security concerns

Like the Olympics, a special police unit is heading up security for the G20. It’s staffed by municipal officers, Ontario Provincial Police, RCMP and the Canadian Forces. And it’s responsible for staging what’s being described as the largest security operation in Canada since the Second World War.

For two weeks in June, most of Toronto’s financial district will sit behind kilometres of fence as police work to bolster security around the Metro Convention Centre, where the summit will be held.

“An event of that international size and scope lends itself to a very significant security presence,” said Meaghan Gray, a spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service’s G20 planning team.

“We anticipate that most of the groups that want to protest will do so in a peaceful and responsible way,” she said. “We’re planning of course for any eventuality.”

Police have been trying to talk to protest organizers for the past few months, Gray said. They hope to learn more about what they’re planning, so that the demonstrations and the security operation can work together “seamlessly.”

But many organizers have refused to speak to police, and complain that they’re being harassed.

“Sometimes when you give in to intimidation, it encourages further intimidation,” said Macdonald Scott, an immigration consultant and a member of the protesters’ legal team. “Nobody in Canada is under obligation to speak to the police, unless under arrest.”

Scott travelled to Vancouver during the Olympics to provide legal support during the demonstrations there. In Toronto, he said 40 to 60 “legal observers” will be on the streets to protect protesters. At least six other legal staff will work in an office away from the security zone, and there will be two-dozen lawyers on call.

The job of the legal team will be “to monitor police misconduct,” but also to provide “proper defence” to those who are arrested, and to bail protesters out of jail if need be, he said.

Organizers are also concerned that the scale of the security operations could discourage people from attending planned rallies.

“It’s a fear tactic — people are being scared to shut up,” Hussan said. “And I think the only way to organize in that is to have hope, share, and build community.”

Changing tactics

The expansive security operation being staged for the G20 summit is part of an international trend, according to Lesley Wood, a professor at York University who studies globalization and social movements.

“At any of these demonstrations, the vast majority of people are not arrested or hurt in any way,” she said. “But the optics of it are that it’s going to be a war.”

“The tactics of the protesters are not really radicalizing, and yet you’re seeing this constant militarization of the policing.”

The focus of mass protests in North America has evolved too, she said. During the height of anti-globalization demonstrations from 1999 to 2001, activists took aim at multinational corporations, and the idea of “summit-hopping” was in vogue.

Today, big protests tend to be more concerned with attacking governments for failing to deal with local problems, and with building networks of groups that want to address those problems.

Since the 1960s, social movements have come in waves that typically last a few years, she said. The fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks largely quashed the protest movement that had been on an upswing on the continent since 1999.

“I think that may have worn off,” she said. “There hasn’t been a lot of mobilization against the economic crisis. Looking at history, one would expect much more outrage.”

“Perhaps this is going to be the time when it emerges.”