Working against a permanent Conservative majority

This originated as a comment over at Thwap's place, but perhaps I should expand on it a bit.

Call me a hair-splitter if you must, but while certain individual Liberal activists might be open to some new electoral thinking, I wouldn't be so sanguine about the Liberal Party itself.
I understand that they need some time to grieve, to heal and to come to terms with their third-party status, and I'm willing to grant them that time. But I'm not willing to put the hard work we need to do on hold while they do that.
We're facing four years of war, to be fought on many fronts and on many battlefields. If they want to spend their time and energy gazing at their navels and trying to revive a decrepit institution that's past its shelf life, that's up to them, but I've got more important things to do. And that goes for anyone else who's not comfortable with the idea of a permanent Conservative majority.

Initially I wasn't sure I wanted to come across all harsh and everything, but in all honesty, I don't know how I can be any more emphatic about the need for opposition activists, of whatever stripe, to stop flinging poo at each other and focus on the main task. Some of the language I've encountered from  fellow progressive bloggers, many of whom I've respected until now, is simply mind-boggling. You know who you are.

Shit Harper Did #FTW

Have I mentioned that I love love love love love these guys?

ShitHarperDid.com. Best thing to happen to democracy since the Vote Mob.



Keep it up, you crazy kids!

Related posts:

• The latest video from Enough Harper
• @MargaretAtwood buries another one
• Come on, now. Harper's no chicken

On @meslin, @nowtoronto, principle and pragmatism

Taking a break from #elxn41 for a minute here.

Toronto tweeters will, I'm sure, have followed the contretemps between Dave Meslin and Now magazine with some interest. A couple of days ago, Meslin finally lost his patience with Now and took exception to their characterization of him as a "seal" because of his willingness to swallow the fish tossed by Rob Ford.

A note from Sheenagh McMahon

The gutsy woman who got in John Baird's face yesterday has a message for us.

Follow the links. It's worth your time.

She's also very graciously allowed me to reproduce her e-mail messages to me. I can only stand back and applaud. While I wank on about citizenship and civic engagement from behind a keyboard, this lady's actually walking the walk. (h/t CuriosityCat)

A 'terrorist fist bump' to Alex Hundert

That's right. Give the wanktards something to get all excited about.

How do we hold them accountable?

I've been thinking for a few days about police officers and the obvious, glaring inadequacy of mechanisms supposedly designed to hold them accountable. We may or may not get a public inquiry in the wake of the way citizens were abused during the G20 weekend, but it's pretty clear that nothing's going to change and no one's going to be charged, suspended or otherwise disciplined.

The police board isn't going to do anything. The municipal, provincial and / or federal governments? The courts? Not gonna happen. At best, we might get some sententious declaration, a few months from now, that mistakes were made.

Even a well-resourced public inquiry with the power to compel testimony and make findings of fact - the Braidwood inquiry in British Columbia, for example - can't do much more than decide that subject officers don't have any credibility. At least in that case, the four RCMP officers who tasered Robert Dziekanski to death were held up for the public scorn they deserve.

What we saw during the G20, however, goes much deeper. We've all seen the videos, of aggressive and violent police attacking, abusing and shoving peaceful citizens. We've all heard the stories about outrageous and appalling violations of civil and human rights. What I'm forced to wonder is: where do they get the idea that it's OK to abuse the people they're sworn to serve and protect like this?

There's no shortage of examples, of course, but I'm struck by the particular egregiousness of this one. This York Region cop - a fairly senior one, if the three shoulder bars mean anything - starts pushing around a guy at least a head shorter than himself (1:40) and says "this ain't Canada" (3:57). Take away the badge and the uniform and he's pretty much indistinguishable from your everyday asshole on steroids - note the aggression, the bullying, the clear contempt for the people he's dealing with - but what's particularly noteworthy for me is his obvious knowledge that no one's going to call him to account for this. He knows he's untouchable.

Since we can't count on an institutional response, however, it falls to the broader activist community (that's right, activists - there's nothing wrong with activism, and the idea isn't going to be demonized or marginalized by the manufactured corporate narrative) to find our own ways of holding guys like this accountable. And in this case, I think that's accomplished by the video: it holds him up to the light so that we can see him for what he is.

Also, you've got to admire the cojones on this guy:

This way to Authoritarian Avenue

(Photo by Jonas Naimark)

I've written at some length about the need to assert control over the way the story of the G20 summit is told. It's not going to be easy, given the institutional and political imperatives interested in spinning last weekend's events as a bunch of black-clad anarchist thugs trashing our peaceful city, yada yada yada. That doesn't make it any less important, however.

Just so we're clear: this isn't a story about a bunch of world leaders / political hacks / meat puppets for the corporate string-pullers getting together and agreeing on a whole bunch of things that'll make our lives a lot more painful. And it's not a story about a few morons breaking windows. And it's not a story about how thousands of riot cops couldn't protect a handful of cars, much as I'd like it to be about that.

No. This week's story has been about the corporate / state security apparatus using our fundamental freedoms for toilet paper. It's about people being locked up for hours without water, without being allowed to go to the bathroom, packed into cages like animals. It's about homophobic slurs and threats of sexual violence. It's about thuggish behaviour by people who know they can get away with it, because the mechanisms designed to ensure accountability are laughably weak.

View Larger Map

Last Sunday evening, my partner and I rode our bikes eastward on Queen toward Spadina. We were held up at Queen and Cameron, about a block west of Spadina, by a wall of bike cops, backed up by a phalanx of more heavily armed officers from various police forces. We could see by looking eastward that the intersection of Queen and Spadina was completely cordoned off, so we pulled up and just watched. As we waited, we watched the facial expressions change on the cops confronting us; shoulders straightened, muscles tensed, batons brandished openly. The front line of bike cops started herding us westward, ordering us to move back, buzzing their bike buzzers and pushing us. We all complied, but you can only move as fast as the guy behind you, and that wasn't quick enough for the officers pushing us westward, and they began shoving us. I couldn't help but wonder whether they were doing it because they figured they could, that their uniforms amounted to a licence to push people around?

Theodor Adorno's description of the authoritarian personality may provide some insight, but ultimately it pales in comparison to some of the stories emerging from the weekend. As it happened, while we were being shoved westward along Queen, several heavy-duty unmarked vans pulled past us to discharge the heavily armed tactical squads, and that was our cue to get the hell out of there.

Lisan Jutras' account of being caught in the kettle is required reading for anyone who wants a first-hand account of what was going on at Queen and Spadina Sunday night, and despite being caught in the rain and not allowed to leave for hours, she was one of the lucky ones.

Tommy Taylor's account of his arrest and detention is mind-blowing. Hours without water or a chance to pee. Homophobic slurs. Abuse of disabled prisoners. At the conclusion he, like hundreds of other people, is released without being charged. It seems apparent that the police knew they'd have a hard time making charges stick, but in the meantime, hundreds of people were abused, threatened and deprived of the basic rights we normally associate with living in an open society. Got a problem with that? Go complain. There are avenues for that, Dalton McGuinty assures us.

And then there are the accounts of people who were actively beaten, threatened and abused. Lacy MacAuley was arrested outside the makeshift gulag on Eastern Avenue. Her story sounds like something from behind the Iron Curtain. Amy Miller talks about cops threatening to gang-rape her.

In a few weeks, or perhaps months even, there may be an inquiry. Findings will be announced. Wrists will be slapped. Tuts will be tutted. And eventually, if we're lucky, someone will decide that the police - Toronto, OPP, ISU, RCMP, York, Halton, Montreal, Sudbury, Barrie, and anyone else who was invited to the party - had absolutely no justification for treating people the way they did. Feel better now? If you want to complain, there are established channels. Uh huh. Good luck with that.

This needs to be hammered on, repeatedly, all the more so because the MSM are getting tired of it. There's an implicit assumption that our attention spans are, well, limited. Yeah, yeah, there were a lot of smashed windows and burning cars, and maybe the cops overreacted, but there were a lot of smashed windows, and - oh, look! Something shiny!

And that's the dynamic that the corporate / state security apparatus is counting on. The more distracted / cowed we are, the easier it is for them to keep doing this to us. Yes, it's inexcusable how people were treated, and it shouldn't have happened, but by the time these processes wind their way to the end, people will have forgotten. In the meantime, the association of protest and activism with all the negative connotations continues, and the mere act of stepping outside your door becomes risky, unless you're planning on doing anything more than being a good little consumer / producer.

So, part of the narrative that needs to emerge from this weekend is: let's just keep in mind how fragile our fundamental freedoms really are. It's become pretty clear that those charged with serving and protecting us, and those who control them, don't think they count for much.

The G20 and the criminalization of dissent

Public protest, activism and dissent are long-established and honourable traditions. From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, no society, no matter how egalitarian and how well-resourced, can make progress without people -- inside or outside the loci of power -- who are willing to stand up and risk censure or worse for pointing out that the emperor is naked. The Industrial Revolution prompted class consciousness. Women's activists brought universal suffrage. Labour activism and organization brought us the 40-hour work week, the weekend, and benefits. All of those are under attack now; nothing new there.

What is new, and especially worrisome, is the obvious state / corporate goal of tarring the very idea of activism itself. Thanks to the narrative propagated 24/7 this weekend in connection with the G20 -- the seeds of which were clearly sown weeks, if not years, in advance -- it'll be impossible even to use the words "protest," "demonstration," and "activism" without thinking of burning police cruisers, smashed store windows, and violent confrontation. In the days and weeks to come, we'll be hearing tropes like "violent black-clad anarchist thugs" so frequently that they'll become part of the subconscious noise. They'll become the norms. They'll become so ingrained that any suggestion that activism or opposition to the G20 / corporate agenda might be justified will come as a shock, a departure from established and acceptable ways of thinking.

Separating words from their meanings has always been part of the apparatus of repression, of distraction, of domination. In the United States, right-wing operatives have successfully turned the term “liberal” into an epithet. That strategy is clearly at work here, now, with the endless display of violent images and the feverish efforts to entrench a manufactured storyline – one we can all write in our sleep. Violent protestors are used to justify a massive investment in security and coercive state actions, which then have a chilling effect on further public participation. No one will want to be tarred with labels like “activist.” How convenient for the powerbrokers orchestrating events. God knows, democracy can be messy and unpredictable and even interfere with profit-seeking.



We cannot meet the operators / foot-soldiers of the corporate / state security apparatus on their own turf. They'll always have more guns, gas, tasers, truncheons and testosterone. Our best strategy is to undermine the narrative. We can't let them associate protest, demonstration and activism with negative connotations (as is clearly their strategy). We must challenge the storyline at every possible opportunity. Undercover cops as agents provocateurs? Unprovoked violence against peaceful demonstrators? Wholesale suspension of our fundamental rights? Rousting people from their beds in midnight raids? Privileged access to G20 leaders for business leaders and other ruling-class functionaries?

This is a challenge that goes beyond this weekend's G20 events in Toronto. What's at stake is the very idea of public participation, the very notion that we have rights that go beyond the channels so carefully delineated for us.

The G20 narrative: whose story is it?

Throughout the G20 weekend, I was following events on TV, on Facebook, on various blogs and websites, and on Twitter. (not quite like being out on the street, I know, but it’s a start ...)

It was hard to miss the building drama Saturday, what with the smashing windows, burning police cruisers and assorted related mayhem. By early evening, TVO broadcaster Steve Paikin’s real-time observations had started attracting a following on Twitter. I started following @spaikin as the buzz intensified. Good reporting -- amplified and enhanced by the sense of real-time immediacy inherent in the use of social media tools like twitter -- and I have no reason to question the honesty of his observations or the authenticity of his reactions to what he was seeing. The sense of outrage is genuine, and he asks several worthwhile questions that everyone in this town -- journalists, public officials, citizens -- ought to be following up.

My problem with Paikin's tweets, though, is that ultimately they simply feed a narrative that was almost certainly manufactured days, if not weeks, in advance. We can see that narrative taking hold, even as we speak, in the dreaded MSM, on Facebook posts, on blogs, and on Twitter. And it's a narrative that just happens to serve the agenda of the powerbrokers who orchestrate all this G20 / FTAA / SPP / MIA crap. How does it go? Watch:

"Peaceful city besieged by violent black-clad anarchist thugs." Get used to that theme, because we're going to be hearing a lot of it over the next little while. Thus giving corporate / state security apparatus an excuse for even more repression.

This leads to an even more chilling effect on public protest. Yes, you have the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, free assembly and all the other fundamental rights inherent to an open and democratic society, but how likely are you to exercise those rights when you're worried about getting clubbed, gassed or tasered? Especially when you're getting demonized and lumped in so consistently and overwhelmingly that the very words "protest" and "demonstration" take on pejorative overtones?

And how convenient that makes it for the owners / managers / investors who want all this -- "free trade," "security and prosperity partnership," "free market ," etc. -- to happen. Democracy, civil discourse and public engagement are all messy and unpredictable, after all, and they make it that much harder to maximize profits.

It's crucial that anyone with a conscience and a commitment to telling the truth do everything in his or her power to challenge and derail that storyline, ASAP, before the news cycle ramps up.

Were there any undercover cops trying to incite violence?







Gee, I wonder if anything like this was going on in Toronto today? Honestly, who doesn't think the images of smashed windows and burning cop cars play right into the hands of those who want more cops, more security, more surveillance, more pre-emptive arrests?

And what about the reports of police rousting people out of bed, without warrants? That's straight out of the gestapo-jackboots-on-the-stairs playbook.

And someone tweeted about the script CTV was following Saturday: over and over, video of one of the burning police cruisers. No images of cops charging / beating / assaulting people. Gee, I wonder what kind of storyline they're trying to construct?

If we don't challenge this immediately, the story is going to be all about the nasty violent black-clad anarchist thugs. An easy story for lazy media types to manufacture. Hell, I'd bet most of us could fashion that storyline in our sleep. Nothing about the midnight arrests days in advance. Nothing about indiscriminate police brutality. Nothing about exclusive access to G20 leaders for selected business leaders and other members of the privileged class.

Time to start pushing back, like right now.