On June 8th, the TCMN hosted a press conference on police intimidation around the upcoming G20 summit. This conference was attended by about a hundred cops, making twice as many police as there were journalists present! At least we can thank the police for being explicit – yes, their strategy is in fact to scare us into silence.
How else to understand the fashion show of repression they put on last week, posing with their weapons for the servile mainstream media? And how else to understand the exploding security budget other than as a threat -- “we're going to $1bn worth of beat the shit out of you if you make a fuss.”
But why this spectacle on the part of the cops? Why the home visits, the showy campaign of intimidation? If they're so confident in their security apparatus, why are they bothering to try and scare us?
They tell us they know where we live, that they're going to arrest us all, that they're going to explode our ear drums and torture us with tazers and chemicals. And – because they're cruel, sadistic fucks – we know they may well do that. And so we get scared. Intimidation is the only thing that makes policing possible, especially at an event as chaotic as the G20. We at SOAR believe that the most powerful use of the new and famous sound cannons is the waves they're making in the social and environmental justice movements. The cops and politicians hope that if they threaten and harass us enough, that we'll all just stay home and shut up.
But if we're not scared, there's no way they can stop us! They are trying to scare us into submission because they know that they can't control us all in the streets. They know that people are angry, that we're organized, that we don't believe the lies of the pigs, press, and leaders. If we stay strong and support each other, then that billion dollars is not going to be anywhere near enough to break our movements and keep us from achieving our goals!
“Free speech” ain't so free in this sham democracy – every time we speak up, we become targets. Anarchists are being framed as terrorists and are being compared to Al Qaida in the press. But the cops aren't just after anarchists – by targeting some radicals for harassment, they hope to scare us all into staying home. But it is exactly this sort of thuggish repression that is sparking the outrage and bringing people to the streets!
Down with the cops and their pathetic attempts to divide and intimidate!
Down with the fear-mongering of the cowardly mainstream media!
Up the movement, up the resistance, up the courage!
If we never give up, they never win,
Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance
ps – Although we love puppies and support the rescuing of unhappy puppies, we are not the Southern Ontario Animal Rescue (also SOAR) and we do not rescue animals ourselves. Just sayin'. However, we do believe that someone should stop the cops from exploiting and endangering the horses they've enslaved. Those horses probably do not want to be doing these things...