Ontario Public Works Act removes probable cause & right to free and peaceful assembly.

There is evidence the police infiltrated “Black Bloc” and should have known their plans. Howard Morton is a criminal lawyer and a member of the Law Union of Ontario

Linchpin Editorial - linchpin.ca

We live in a political and economic system based on constant violence; exploitation of workers, destruction of the environment, war, racist police killings, hunger and homelessness in an environment of plenty, denial of land and self-government to indigenous peoples, plundering of the resources of the Third World and the arming of repressive regimes. This weekend, this quiet violence continued within the G8 and G20 summits. G20 leaders agreed to halve national deficits by 2013; The expected cuts to educational, social services and health care programs will no doubt continue to be carried out on the backs of workers and poor people.

On the streets of Toronto, the police reminded us of the state’s willingness to use blatant violence. Protesters sitting in the streets this morning at a jail solidarity rally were subjected to violent baton attacks, snatch squads and rubber bullets by the Police. Others were boxed in by riot cops and arrested, while being told they had to leave. Sleeping people have been pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night.

As of today, well over 600 people have been arrested. Many have been beaten. People who have been arrested have been strip-searched and held in cages, facing long delays in obtaining legal support, including one deaf man who was denied an ASL interpreter. People arrested have included both corporate and independent journalists as well as approximately 200 people, many local residents, who were surrounded by police and held in the pouring rain over four hours. This is how the state responds to anyone who shows dissent.

Common Cause stands in solidarity with everyone who was arrested or assaulted by the police. As anarchist communists, we oppose all state violence. While the violence on the street may dissipate after this weekend, the police will not be going away; they will be remaining in Toronto, or returning to Hamilton, Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary.

We will continue to resist austerity measures and other policies that exploit and oppress us in our daily lives. Although the street violence today was directed at us in Toronto, the violence of the state continues around the world. The violence of the capitalist state will not stop with the end of the G20 summit; neither will our resistance. We are with those arrested in Toronto, with those who protested, and with those around the world who will continue to fight for our collective liberation.

Free the Toronto 600!
Build the General Strike!

The G8/G20 are anti-democratic illegitimate institutions that inflict daily violence on our communities. Everywhere the G8 and G20 have met to further their exploitative agendas – from London to Pittsburgh to Toronto - they have faced huge opposition from local communities. The kind of mass resistance we have seen in Toronto has and will continue to follow them wherever they go.

For several months, communities across Toronto have been coming together to resist the imposition of austerity measures advanced at the G8/G20 summits. The Harper government spends 1.2 billion taxpayer dollars to host the G8/G20 summits while it cuts social spending in ways that have drastic impacts people in the Toronto area and other parts of Canada.

Since these communities have come together, the police have been using intimidation tactics to repress and silence people in the Toronto community. Police and intelligence officers went to community organizers’ homes and harassed them in the streets. Now they have arrested many of these people, many of them young organizers of color, and charged them with conspiracy.

These people hold the Harper government to account and they speak out against policies that are making ordinary people poorer, sicker and more desperate. As a result, they have been intimidated, harassed, and imprisoned. They are political prisoners in this country, where the police repression shows that its claims of democracy are simply window dressing.

While police continue to intimidate people, individuals and community members keep going out in the streets to show that they are not afraid and stand with political prisoners as well as oppressed peoples – first nations communities, immigrants and refugees, poor people, people of color, women, trans people, people with disabilities and queer communities.

The police intimidation and repression added to the anger and frustration people have with the G8/G20 policies and leaders that destroy their lives and the lives of people around the world. This is why people targeted banks and multinational corporations, and the property of police.

Ultimately, 1 billion dollars were spent on beating people who were demonstrating throughout the week, on intimidating community members in the streets, on arresting organizers of color and indigenous solidarity organizers, on sending demonstrators to hospital with broken bones, and on using tear gas on those in the so-called designated “free speech” zone. 1 billion dollars has not been used to protect people and to keep the city safe. Instead it has been used to repress the people who are working to make this city, and planet a fairer, more just, and more humane place.

Toronto Community Mobilization Network

Many in Canada are furious with the world leaders gathered there. Thousands marched through Toronto to protest over the G8 and G20 summits.

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The recent arrests of two London activists for “promoting disturbance” represent yet another dramatic escalation in the Canadian state’s ongoing attempts to criminalize dissent.

We denounce these arrests as the shameful police intimidation tactics they are, and declare our solidarity with the two individuals arrested - including our organization’s youngest member, Andrew Cadotte.

It is clear that politicians and police officers in this country are more than willing to bend the rules to try and intimidate those seeking to challenge the continued domination of the poor by the rich.

By referring to postering as “property destruction”, the police are attempting to build a psychological connection between lawful dissent and violence where no such connection exists.

The police cited the “negative message” of the posters as grounds for holding these individuals overnight in jail. But the true negative messages plastered around the city are in the sexist advertisements that promote women as emotionless commodities, and on the countless billboards that sell apathetic consumerism as a way of life.

Public space should belong to the community, not to corporations, and should be a space where we can freely express our ideas as part of the democratic process. This freedom must be regularly exercised and vigorously defended, or else it will be trampled on by the repressive nature of the state.

This is why several of our members joined with the direct action on Thursday, June 17th that covered our city’s downtown core with the very posters our comrades were arrested for putting up two nights earlier.

As anarchists and social justice activists, we have every intention to continue “promoting disturbance” of the capitalist status quo, guided by our undying commitment to international class struggle and, ultimately, revolution.

Common Cause - London

Common Cause is an anarchist organization with branches in London, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa.

The G-20 Summit was created as a response both to the financial crisis and to a growing recognition that key emerging countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance. The G-8 is increasingly seen as irrelevant.

The G-20 began as a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 economies: 19 countries plus the European Union. Recently summits meeting at the level of heads of government have been introduced. Collectively, the G-20 economies comprise 85% of global GNP, 80% of world trade and two-thirds of the world population.

Since 1999, many G-20 meetings have faced large public protests. While the majority of the protests have been peaceful, the past decade has seen a rise in dramatic property destruction and confrontation with police. In response to these more militant protests, many new law enforcement tactics have been developed, some of which include the use of chemical agents, sonic weapons and force to disperse protesters. This has been criticized by protesters as a monopoly on violence that has been privileged to the state. The expressed reasons for protests can vary from meeting to meeting, but include the following common issues: blocking neoliberal efforts to undermine local democracy, workers’ rights, environmental protection, and resistance to globalization.

An oligarchy is a form of power, governmental or operational, where said power effectively rests within a small, elite group of inside individuals or influential economic entities or devices - such as banks or corporations - that act in complicity with, or at the whim of the oligarchy, often with little or no regard for constitutionally protected prerogatives.

“An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information.”
Albert Einstein

PREAMBLE

We have come together in solidarity and respect, with the belief that together we can create a movement whose sum is greater than its parts.

We are all striving for similar goals. We are working for a world free of capitalism, sexism, of classism, of racism, of colonialism, of homo/lesbo/bi/trans-phobia, of environmental destruction, of abledism and of ageism.

We believe that we must embrace honest discussion and debate. We trust that our movement is strong enough, resilient and mature enough to embrace open differences of opinion. We believe that if we are to truly build a socially just world, it will take many different tactics, much creativity and many different approaches. It is this that allows us to work together even when we disagree.

We work together in solidarity and respect. This does not mean we endorse everything each of us does, or that we agree on all things. But we will listen to each other, we will discuss our differences openly and honestly, where necessary, we will agree to disagree and we will support each other when attacked.

We understand that people have different needs regarding safety. That while one person may need to be on the streets in a situation where someone else’s actions do not put them in danger, another person may need to know that if they are arrested, they will be supported, regardless of what the state may allege they have done. We know that the way to work through these needs is to hear each other with respect, to strive to understand each other and support each other even if we do not agree.

MEDIA RELATIONS:

We will not do the state’s work. We will not assist them in dividing our movement, in scape-goating our people, or in attacking our organizations and people.

We believe that in our movement, journalists (especially alternative media and movement media journalists) have a role in this discussion. When they write respectfully, honestly, thoughtfully, with an eye to the consequences of their work, they only assist us in speaking to each other and to the debates we must have if we are to win a better world.

It is with this in mind that we espouse the following principles (taken from the St. Paul principles). These principles are an attempt to outline a working process for us together as organizers:

1. Our solidarity is based on respect for a political diversity within the struggle for social-justice. As individuals and groups we may choose to engage in a diversity of tactics and plans of action but are committed to treating each other with respect;

5. We will work to promote a sense of respect for our shared community, our neighbours and particularly poor, working people,immigrants and others marginalized in our society and their personal property. We also will work to promote a sense of respect for Indigenous peoples and the land we are organizing on.

An injury to one is an injury to all!

Toronto Community Mobilization Network
http://g20.torontomobilize.org

By Heatscore

The staggering price tag attached to security preparations for the upcoming G8/G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto has caused quite a stir in the halls of Parliament - and a token debate in the corporate and state media. As could be expected, the country’s sycophantic opposition and their craven journalistic cheerleaders have seized on the grossly bloated figure (currently sitting at approximately $1.2 billion) to question the federal government’s competence and fiscal prudence – while Conservative meat puppets have countered that the costs represent part of “Canada’s important role in the world” and an unfortunate necessity of this post-911, terrorist-laden security landscape.

The indignant cries of the government’s mainstream critics are certainly valid - albeit far too narrow in scope; to put it in perspective, the amount of money being spent on securing a three day summit is almost three times the total federal funds allocated to “Energy and the Environment” in the 2010 budget. By spending over a billion dollars on securing an international conference aimed at promoting financial prudence and global austerity measures, Harper has demonstrated a lavish hypocrisy that puts Robert Mugabe to shame.

But what has not been given nearly as much attention in discussions over the summit preparations - outside of the vibrant alternative media, that is – is the increasingly aggressive role played by this country’s various security agencies, now grouped under the efficient-sounding title of the Integrated Security Unit (ISU).

Granted a dubious mandate from the RCMP to provide security for the Vancouver Olympic Games, VISU agents soon developed a nasty reputation for harassing members of the Olympic Resistance Network at their homes and workplaces - in one case going so far as to intercept an activist as he attempted to board the subway. Now, stripped of their V and seemingly normalized into the national security framework, this state apparatus – comprised of members of the RCMP, OPP, CSIS, Canadian Forces, Peel Regional Police, Toronto Police Services and various other security agencies – has turned its attention towards anyone and everyone organizing around the G20 clusterfuck soon to descend on Canada’s largest metropolis.

For months now, reports have been pouring into the Law Union’s Movement Defense Committee (a collection of volunteers charged with providing free legal services for G20 protesters) of ISU agents employing a variety of tactics to try and coerce intelligence out of activists in Ontario and Quebec.

While eight individuals have reported being visited by CSIS agents – who are much more heavily trained in advanced interrogation and profiling tactics - the majority of the incidents have involved members of the RCMP, OPP and Toronto Police Service. Some of these agents have attempted to ease the suspicions of their targets by expressing sympathy towards the activists’ interests, including an amusingly failed effort to find common ground with at least one Toronto-based anarchist by citing an understanding of the need to “stand up against oppression”. Others have relied primarily on textbook intimidation tactics, such as identifying activists by their full legal names, casually dropping references to family members and otherwise demonstrating that they know more about the particular individual then they legitimately should. Several of these tactics were used when ISU agents showed up to question Will Dean at his Toronto home.

The cops knocked on his door right after he got home from work, identified him by name, and immediately began asking him questions about a particular action being planned during the weekend of events.

After telling the police that he had nothing to say to them, the cops smirked and told him they’d see him at the G20.

“It seemed like some sort of Gestapo-pig-mind-fuck technique to make me scared that they are watching my every move,” says Dean. “What is really disturbing about the whole thing is there really isn’t any public information identifying me as an organizer - so they are definitely checking e-mails or working with informants.”

Well yes… they most certainly are.

If it wasn’t obvious enough already, CSIS spokesperson Isabelle Scott recently blurted out as much in an interview with Sun Media’s Tom Godfrey, in which she admitted that the agency generates intelligence on activists “through mail intercepts and surveillance.”

“It’s our job to collect information on potential threats,” said Scott, emphasizing that nothing CSIS or ISU have been doing breaks the law.

The idea of state security agencies keeping tabs on dissent is not new; the RCMP has a long history of spying on radical (and moderate) Canadian activists, and CSIS – whose very creation, in 1984, can be credited to a public outcry over the RCMP’s own flagrant abuse of authority – has continued on in that tradition.

And of course, technological innovations in the way people communicate have only made things easier for them.

“The old tactics of infiltrating groups and face-to-face spying (watching houses etc) has now become digital,” says Kate Milberry, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information who manages the privacy advocacy website geeksforglobaljustice.com.

“They don’t really need to go out and tap everyone’s phone anymore, as it has become much easier and much more efficient to simply monitor internet traffic. Without a doubt, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network’s website is under surveillance by several intelligence agencies. These agents also join facebook groups, find out who are posting messages, tap those people’s phones, check their emails etc.

“Security agencies have shifted towards a social traffic analysis – one that focuses not only what you’re saying but, who you’re saying it to. Using publically available data, they will see a Toronto organizer speaking with a Vancouver organizer, for example, and deduce that they are organizing together - and that they should be watched.”

This new set of tactics is part of what security experts are calling predictive policing – a new police strategy that reads like a kinder, gentler COINTELPRO.

At the first ever Predictive Policing Symposium, held last year in Los Angeles, the conference’s speakers – many of them former police chiefs and/or owners of high-powered security consulting firms – spoke of the need to embrace the implementation of “business intelligence and business analytics” into traditional policing. Particular emphasis was placed on increasing the use of tactics such as “data mining” “geospatial prediction” and “social network analysis.”

Whether or not members of ISU were at the symposium – it’s highly likely that they were – some of the event’s imaging certainly appears to have made its way into ISU’s public relations campaign.

“We reduce the image of the police doing it to the community; it becomes the community doing it with the police,” said one of the symposium’s speakers - former LA Police Chief (and current CEO of Altegrity Security Consulting) Bill Bratton.

This clever re-framing of the issue perfectly encapsulates the narrative being actively promoted by ISU – one in which they’re taking a “proactive approach” by “reaching out” to activists, in order to help ensure that “their message is heard” in “a safe environment.”

Conveniently enough, this narrative discounts the chilling effect that such a “proactive” approach can have on legitimate dissent, downplays the fact that tactics reminiscent of the East German Stasi are becoming commonly accepted in our so-called democracy, and attempts to divide the protesters into opposing “violent” and “non-violent” camps.

Most importantly, however, this soothing narrative ignores the fact that the international capitalist system urgently needs to be overthrown and replaced – which is, of course, the reason people are protesting in the first place.