A Night in Torontonamo Bay

It was like being in a rusty shower in a cheap hotel. Teeth chattering, chilled to the bone, I had the shakes. Water poured down, but I only felt dirtier. Perhaps this discomfort would be understandable had I actually been in a cold shower. Instead, I was surrounded by riot police last night in the midst of a rainstorm at one Toronto’s busiest intersections, Queen and Spadina, under arrest for “breaching the peace" at an anti-G20 demonstration.

Continue reading over at EyeWeekly.

Curious Bystander

Imagine, hundreds of people in a bloody downpour, shoved so close together that people are touching you on all sides like in a rush-hour subway. You cannot move very much, sit down, pee, or protect yourself from the rain by ducking under an awning or doorway. Instead, you stand there, hour after hour, after hour, until your teeth are chattering and your entire body is shivering unstoppably. You have no information, no idea what is happening or how long it's going to go on for. Some people just start crying, out of fear. One person standing close by suddenly falls over, hard, onto the street, evidently from exhaustion. Finally, rumours go around that everyone's getting arrested and carted off to the temporary jail. People are stunned beyond belief, and scared about what's ahead. But then......nothing happens. You just stand there. You can overhear some cops talking, also wondering what's going on and what they're supposed to do. There is nowhere to put everybody, no vans or buses or anything, so you just stand in the rain.

A mere observer, Dan Dolderman, professor at the University of Toronto, was among one those who got 'kettled-in' late Sunday afternoon. You can read the rest of his experiences over at The Agenda.

I Saw Police Brutality

Steve Paikin is an anchor and senior editor for The Agenda With Steve Paikin on TVO. He tweeted his experiences with the Police on Saturday night, particularly his observations of the treatment of Jesse Rosenfeld, a contributor's to the U.K's Guardian. In his follow-up article for the Ottawa Citizen, Paikin writes:

In Toronto the Good, we saw a law passed and enforced that was more anti-democratic than the War Measures Act. And we saw twice as many people arrested over a single 24-hour period in Toronto -- more than 900 at last count -- than what took place during the October Crisis in Quebec 40 years ago. And that event is in our history books as the most notorious abuse of civil rights in modern Canadian history.

You can read the rest of the article accounting his experiences: "A Black Eye for Democracy"

Charge!

Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo.