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05 July 2010 By Denis G.
Rancourt The 2010 G20 police state mass
aggression in Toronto has led to unprecedented
alternative and popular media coverage. Photos, raw
video footage, video reports, Indy media articles,
independent radio reports, documented testimonies, and
social media commentaries are pouring in. Taken together, this spontaneous
and autonomously produced information is the evolving
factual, interpretative, and recommendation parts of a
self-organized participatory inquiry into the police
state crimes of G20-Toronto. It will be more complete
and more true than any official report from a
government-appointed inquiry or than any ruling from a
group action lawsuit. We don’t need daddy to tell us
what happened or that “mistakes” were made. We need
daddy to be subjected to the consequences of having
designed and allowed this mass aggression. A few of
those consequences are and should be the lawsuits, the
official inquiries, the human and civil rights
organization condemnations, the negative media
coverage, demotions and firings, the loss of
credibility and legitimacy, and much more. One of the most disturbing
results of the participatory inquiry, at a systemic
level, is that these cops aren’t just pigs. The targeting, intimidation, and
terrorizing of protestors - treated like “the enemy”
in a war – was, like with all recent
anti-globalization protests, systematic. The patterns
described by the thousands of victims (from
psychological intimidation to broken skin and rape,
e.g., HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-amzGk7qN8"
HERE, HYPERLINK "http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/story-my-arrest-detainment/3997"
HERE) are identical. These are no ordinary pigs.
These thugs had to be trained to execute these
manoeuvres against civil society. It is the modus operandi of US
anti-democratic terrorism to train the military hit
squads of client states (for example in Latin America)
to search out and destroy civil society: union
leaders, activist teachers, independent media,
community organizers, etc. Exactly the same tactics are
being used against activists and organizers in
Canada. The cops are trained to view activists, not
as the much needed societal agents that they are, but
as “the enemy” that must be destroyed. Pre-emptive
arrests, bogus charges, ad-hoc interrogations, imposed
restrictive undertakings, and much more. This extends to campuses such as
the University of Ottawa where bogus criminal charges
are routinely levelled against activist students (see
reports on the HYPERLINK "http://uofowatch.blogspot.com/"
UofOWatch blog). And it extends to the streets
where anti-poverty organizers and the homeless
themselves are targeted and into every workplace and
school where anything but “cooperation” is quashed. These cops are not just racist
(all-ists) individuals because of their particular
personal circumstances. Their language and actions
show that they are trained into a military culture
where protestors and activists are the enemy and are
to be rooted out and intimidated away from societal
participation. They aren’t just pigs. They are
anti-democracy commandos. All the cops that let the one cop
brutally attack Guardian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld (
HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWNqMV4Bgs")
and that did not arrest their criminal colleague are
as guilty as the main physical attacker. There has to
be a strong militaristic culture among these cops for
them to allow their own brutality in full public view,
often with cameras rolling. Let us demand (publicly pressure)
that the official public inquiry and legal disclosures
include an investigation into police training and
tactics regarding the profiling of activists and the
intimidation protocols for demonstrators. Of course the cops are people
too. That’s why it’s not a waste of time to be
straight up with them and to face them down and to
expose them and to justly punish them and their
bosses. They’re not just pigs.
*** Addendum: I make the
following concrete tentative suggestion for detainee
support. Organize workshops about the legal process
and how to represent yourself. Represent yourself,
plead not guilty and go the full distance to trial.
The Crown has the burden of the proof and must
completely disclose its case and evidence to you
before you make your case. Ask for disclosures as soon
as you can. The disclosures can be shared after trial
with the media. This will so expose the false and
ludicrous bases for arrests… and it will put the cops
on the stand and the disclosures will name the cops.
Team up with others who can help. Don’t let a lawyer
representing you make a (for your own good) corrupt
compromise deal with the Crown. Denis G. Rancourt
was a tenured and full professor of physics at the
University of Ottawa in Canada. He developed popular
activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the
university administration and a defender of student
and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his
dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch
supporter of Israeli policy. [See HYPERLINK "http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/"
www.academicfreedom.ca]
[Other social activism essays by Denis G. Rancourt are
listed HYPERLINK "http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/blogs-etc/essays.html"HERE.] |