Inside Torontanamo Part 1: Folly and the Fall

Well, it's been an interesting weekend, for everyone I expect but for me it has been, well, cataclysmic ... almost literally, given the torrential rain (look up the Greek etymology of cataclysm.) As I write this the protests continue but for me they are done: an embarrassingly stillborn and somewhat childish prank has me facing weapons charges with a potential six month jail term, and banned from any future protests due to the bail conditions that I agreed to in order to get released, despite the obvious charter violations represented in an order to avoid any public demonstration.

I'm sure you all saw the endlessly repeated footage of burning patrol cars and the debris of broken windows along Queen St left by the rampaging Black Bloc on Saturday night. Although I was in the city, I, like most of you, saw this only in snippets on the evening news: although I participated on the main march Saturday afternoon, and spent some time addressing Toronto's finest on a megaphone, in the evening I decided to go and see Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. With all the damage you'd think there must have been a large, uncontrollable mob raging through Toronto's streets but if you do the math on 15,000 cops and other assorted security personnel versus the maybe 30 or so black bloc I saw advancing through the march on their way to initiate havoc, well, it starts to look like maybe the cops were letting it happen.

In fact some eyewitnesses reported that they saw large groups of cops standing by while the black bloc did their thing. Eyewitnesses at the scene of two of the burning police cars insist that officers of the so-called peace drove them up, jumped out, and walked away leaving the cars next to the protesters following which, the cars exploded. Talking to the media outside, after my release, my understanding was that this use of 'decoys' had since been confirmed by the police.

In protest after protest, at summit after summit, in city after city all around Canada, in the United States and in many other countries as well we hear afterwards that undercover police officers infiltrated the Black Bloc with the express purpose of provoking violent retaliation against the peaceful protesters by the massed ranks of law enforcement. The tactic in this case has expanded to the more or less open detonation of incendiary devices in public space, with the obvious intent of framing a movement composed of pacificistic vegan hippies as deranged, violent lunatics looking only for an excuse to pillage and destroy.  

As a general tactic, this is what is known as a false flag attack. It has been widely used by militaries and security apparatuses throughout recorded history: when a pretext for war is needed, you dress up some of your guys as the enemy, have them attack you in some symbolic, futile fashion and then pounce. It is done far more often than many people appreciate and, at trade summits such as these - where the highest minions of the world-gobbling greed goblins who are behind most of the effed up shit dominating our increasingly alarming headlines are gathered - it has become almost de rigeur.

The results the next day were perfectly obvious: the police took their own undercover actions as justification to expand the security perimeter from five meters around the fence to more or less the entire city, without of course informing anyone of this de facto imposition of martial law, and began taking down anyone caught wearing black (could be black bloc), with funny hair (hippy), youthful (duh) or, I'm sure, just a certain look in their eyes (oooo, that one's awake. Gettim!) They were stopping and searching people at whim and booking them for anything that could be interpreted in any way as an offense.

Of course I should have expected that. I mean, I fully expected that there would be a false flag but the oiled precision with which it was enacted was simply breathtaking and caught me off-guard. At any rate, wooly-headed fool that I am, I had hatched a scheme to launch my own spontaneous, collaborative performance art resistance act against the triple-time-and-a-half-collecting armored mercenaries who were beating people senseless in the name of protecting the delicate ears of the walking moral atrocities meeting in our nation's greatest city from the verbal outrage of the people who actually care about the world they're destroying.

The idea was simple: I was to distribute a number of pre-packaged paint water balloons, in one of five attractive primary and day-glo colors, to whoever happened to be standing around, with the instructions that if we were to get tear-gassed, rushed, LRADed, what have you, to throw their paint balloons in the general direction of the riot police and then run like hell. I even planned to give the police fair warning: to shout through a megaphone that the following (unlike their tear gas) was non-toxic, water-soluble, and would come out in the rain. Having tested the paint balloons on myself with the help of a willing friend, I knew their impact to be distinctly noticeable but not in any way injurious ... especially to men and women wearing the heavy protective exoskeletons of riot cops, to whom I expect the experience would be akin to getting swatted by a declawed kitten ... especially if I even gave them warning, so they could pause and raise their shields against the downpour. It would give the protesters a few extra seconds of lead time to escape, and it would give the cops nothing more than some embarrassing stains on whatever fabric didn't get immediately washed out in the rain that would almost certainly have been falling.

A foolish prank, I'll grant you. The logical question of course would be, why would I want to do something so rash? Of course I knew I was risking criminal charges if caught, which could prevent me from leaving the country, which could prevent me from attending conferences crucial to success in my chosen field of stellar astrophysics. In addition, I have a completely clear record, now endangered. I am a police officer's son; and not just any police officer, but a man who was dearly loved and respected by all who came in contact with him, not just his colleagues but even the criminals, for his compassionate, merciful manner when on the job. My brother is a serving police officer. I'm from a respectable, middle-class (whatever that even means anymore) background; not only do I have a clean record, everyone in my family does. What was I thinking?

I was thinking, quite simply, that some answer had to be given to the rampant police brutality that was to be expected in riots the police would undoubtedly be provoking themselves. Where I went wrong was in thinking that they would only do this for individual riots, by having a few 'Black Bloc' undercover types throw a brick at an opportune moment; I had not expected that they would set up conditions to, in effect, declare the entire city a riot zone and then set about viciously attacking whoever happened to be nearby and vaguely hippy-ish. The elderly, children, even the disabled were attacked - note I say attacked, not 'arrested' or 'apprehended' or some other such euphamism - being ridden down by riot cavalry and clubbed and kicked into the mud by the legions of armoured storm troopers. See a link recently posted on my wall for more details on such events.

I did not expect such ferocity in the streets of a Canadian city.

And so, thinking the event I was going to would be relatively civilized (and it was, in a sense, if you can call the eerily efficient and meticulous fascism of the modern police state 'civilized'), but knowing that there would be police provoked riots and such, I determined my harebrained scheme as one of the most merciful methods of launching reprisal against deliberate brutality, for to spatter them with some paint would make them look silly, maybe stain a few uniforms, and give everyone a chance to escape (which in truth, isn't that hard with riot cops: it's not like they're wearing powered armor, and those suits are heavy and I'm guessing, don't breathe too well.) Were I intending to cause harm, I would have brought molotov cocktails, or pipe bombs, or some other type of explosive device ... that these weren't really much in evidence anywhere shows that almost no one, including myself, went to the protest in a mindset of war. No one but the government, that is. And so, despite the total absence of any meaningful threat to anyone, I am up on possession of 'weapons, dangerous' charges for something that should be misdemeanor intent to deface public property, at most. One of the cops at the arrest pointed out to me that perhaps an officer, visor temporarily covered in paint, might get assaulted and injured by another rioter, which is only superficially plausible if you forget the part about it being suicide for any lone protester to run up to a line of cops six or seven deep (you only ever saw them in such numbers.) Just because one guy is wiping thin diluted paint off his visor would not mean his buddy wouldn't break your face for trying to get close.

Of course, I could have just carried a sign, but ... that would have been ignored, wouldn't it? Did you, the TV watching public, see many signs? In the sense of actually reading them? In the background perhaps, in snatches as some bystander or protester was being interviewed about police brutality or (more likely) Black Bloc mayhem, and then cut to broken windows, cut to burning patrol car, Peter Mansbridge voiceover, "It's really a shame about the violence, it detracts attention from the issues. Hey, speaking of issues, they're being ignored in the midst of all the violence! Hey look, a burning cop car again! Oh, the humanity."

But you might have noticed colorful cops. And that alone would have sent a message: that even as the global financial ownership class and their tiers of minions continue to beat us into the ground, to rip away at our rights and our freedoms, to destroy the real economy as they suck it dry to build their walled gardens guarded by a scientific tyranny, to chew up what's left of the natural world and cover it over in concrete and convert it to money, as they seek to entrap us and our children's grandchildren's distant descedants in the same debt peonage in which they've enslaved you, me, us and by 'us' I mean the whole world, that even as all of this gallops ahead everywhere around the planet we will not cooperate ... but nor will we fight them, directly ... instead we will color their grey, dead world and where they mass a thousand uniformed men to bring violence and destruction we will muster ten creative, alive individuals and bring it back to life again, because while they must work like dogs to enforce their 'order' we must merely remember how to play to bring ourselves, and the world we co-create anew in every moment of our existence, back to a life worth living, a life lived in service of life rather than in fear of it.

Well, I'm a bit of a naive idealist perhaps, despite all the cynical conspiracy theories, and what can I say? Sunday afternoon around 2:00, with a bag full of prepared paint bags ("just add water!"), there I was crossing Bay St. in the Queens Park area, the so-called 'Free Speech Zone', later to be the subject of some of the worst of the police brutality (they beat the 'Free Hugs' guy to the ground, apparently for no reason at all. Obviously the notion of a man standing in a park hugging whoever comes by and consents constitutes a serious danger to the public order. I was beside myself when I read of this. I gave him a big hug back for the important work he was doing. He was a nice guy.) Standing on the traffic island were a few bicycle cops, and as we approached them I got a sinking feeling, a premonition arising perhaps from the hungry look in the cop's eyes as he scanned us and declared, "We're searching your bags."

Not 'May I?' This was an order, given to a slave by the master, or perhaps more appropriately by the school bully to the playground peon, and being massively outnumbered I knew there was no point in resisting (perhaps I could have talked them away with a megaphone, but I'm no Charlie Veitch and ... hindsight, 20/20.)  

"And my rights, officer?" I asked pointedly.

"Don't you worry about your 'rights'," he snickered. Then commenced a full search of everything, both bags, pockets (not a pat-down, understand, but physically sticking their greasy fingers into my pockets, ALL of them, as they searched in vain for anything dangerous on my person.) I had a gas mask of course, which they confiscated and will no doubt be presenting as one of the exhibits at the hearing (imagine that! Taking measures to defend oneself against a gas attack! How criminal.) Also confiscated, why I have no reason, was a hachi-maki or Japanese headband I'd brought back from the Land of the Rising Sun and wrapped around the hat I was wearing, for decoration, and a black t-shirt the Public Service Alliance of Canada (whose free bus I'd availed myself of to make it to the event) had handed out to me, which I'd had in my bag as it was my only dry t-shirt and I wanted to have a change available for comfort's sake, following the likely soaking. Apparently, being black, this is evidence that I am in the Black Bloc, and thus a Dangerous Anarchist.

Of course I was cuffed on the spot, whereupon I insisted that my friends had no part in this misadventure, which was true (they both, younger but wiser than I, thought it a Bad Idea) and the cops seemed to have believed them as they do not appear to have been detained.

I, of course, was not so lucky. Within minutes I was whisked away in a minivan, transferred to a paddy-wagon, eventually transferred to another paddy-wagon, driven around in circles while a couple of others were picked up, and finally, an hour or more later (they took my watch away, for reasons obscure, along with my shoes ... this they did to everyone) deposited in the nightmarish hellhole that was (is?) the G20 detention center.

The cases of those others were quite interesting. Both were bystanders who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first I became aware of initially in the following conversation:

"Any injuries I should know about?"

"Yeah, I've got really bad nerve damage in one elbow."

"Oh yeah?"

"Ow!"

-thud-

-slam-

This man, 'Bob' we'll call him, worked as a security guard and had no interest in protesting. Unfortunately he made the mistake of wearing black in the presence of police officers, and had the collosal foolishness to be carrying a 'weapons, dangerous' multitool in his pocket. As of my release, he was still in there, awaiting or perhaps being processed. His girlfriend was waiting outside for him, desperate for any news and thrilled I could provide it. Her devoted vigil was really touching, as was the presence of the small number of activists camped out with coffee, tea, and most importantly, water, which we'd been systematically deprived of on the inside.

And as for the inside, it was every bit the dehumanizing hellhole it was described to be.

More to follow in Part 2....