T.O. gets Orwellian

BLOG POST posted on June 25, 2010 by Cameron Fenton

“Public Works Act” takes the police state across the repression rubicon

Yesterday, a friend and I – both dedicated community environmental justice activists, and I a grassroots indy journalist – became the first casualties of the newly expanded police powers of the “Public Works Protection Act”.  They have transformed a closed door, anti-democratic summit into a public work project, which will be defended at all costs. 

For a full account of what happened check out this report.

Of course, none of us are surprised by state repression in Toronto, but the implementation of this act, which was granted by the Ontario legislature to satiate a request by a Toronto Police Honcho to increase their powers to arrest with complete impunity, represents the institutionalization of police repression to a level not widely seen in Canada since the implementation of the War Measures Act.  The civil, provincial, and federal governments are now openly complicit in the gross violation of our civil liberties.

In fact, according to a media relations officer this act allows the police to “balance” our civil rights with the “need to protect life and property”.  The same officer, imported from Guelph, was completely oblivious to the Public Works Protection Act or the situation of my arrested comrade, requiring a 10 minute reprieve from our interview to respond to the question.  The cops have been taught the name of this law, and nothing else beyond the extra-legal arrest powers it grants them.

Harkening to the days of the red scare, we are witnessing the creation of neo-Mcarthyist  state tools for turning disagreement into a crime.  The criminalization of dissent – in Toronto and beyond – is meant to brand our movement as “terrorists”. 

But while this repression continues to build – in order to isolate the leaders of a number of allegedly democratic nations from the voices they supposed to represent – solidarity in the movement continues to build. 

See you in the streets.