We were totally unprepared. ASO (Anarchists of Southern Ontario) was gaining ground by the time April 2011 came around. We had managed to reach approximately six thousand members and we were actively involved in working class struggles. ASO was also federated with anarchist organizations in the northeastern U.S., Quebec and the Pacific Northwest. We had built strong connections with many unions, including the steelworkers union (which had several subsidiary organizations), student associations in several universities, and had made much progress in the newly founded OFSW (Ontario Food Service Workers) in which anarchist politics had a very strong influence. The student associations that embraced anarchist politics were situated at the University of Windsor, the University of Toronto, Fanshawe College, University of Waterloo, and Wilfred Laurier, whereas the University of Western Ontario was inconsistent and had strong liberal tendencies. Our network had allowed us to organize large demonstrations regularly against the constant layoffs and union busting techniques sanctioned by the government. We had managed to provide a consistent anarchist perspective through independent media, Ontario wide anarchist publications and university papers sympathetic to the cause. We were constantly lambasted in the private media, as well as the national television station (CBC). This was no surprise, for the interests that backed those stations were both corporate and statist.

Although Stephen Harper was no longer in office, there was hardly a change with the Liberal Michael Ignatieff. The neo-liberal economic policies that had destroyed workers rights continued unchecked. Until April 2011 our organizations had not been persecuted other than the blatant lies coming from the corporate and state media until a demonstration in Windsor of approximately fifty thousand workers, students, and the unemployed was confronted violently by the pigs. Teargas, rubber bullets, and nightsticks were used liberally and four students from radical organizations were killed (as well as several hundred injured) in fights with the police. We immediately condemned the violent tactics used by the pigs and held Ontario-wide demonstrations in solidarity with the protest in Windsor which were supported by all the student organizations (including that of the UWO) as well as the steelworkers union and OFSW. Then it happened.

The pigs came out full force, confronting the protesters in every city violently while using plain clothed undercover agents to sneak into protest lines to arrest influential speakers and key figures in the ASO and student organizations. There was video footage of the arrests in London and Toronto, where the plain clothed agents had brutally beat those detained - while the media had dismissed the victims as political deviants and troublemakers.

A law was quickly passed in Parliament to legalize the repression of public dissent, which was totally unprecedented in Canada. Bill C-27 (Public safety and economic growth package) was a Trojan horse for regressive civil rights policies. It highlighted economic benefits for those affected by the longstanding economic crisis while totally annihilating free speech and the right of civil disobedience. The day after it was passed, since the law was regressive, anyone proven to be involved in organizing protests could be arrested for compromising public safety. The bill also provided the legal framework in Parliament to sanction the illegal military policing elements of the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership). We found out shortly after that there had been a similar crackdown on our American counterparts. Due to the continuity of government policies already passed by Congress, there was no need for legislative action on behalf of the state; the U.S. government simply revealed its claws.

There were rumours that private contractors from the U.S. had been deployed at an old base just north of Barrie. We would learn that these were the solution to the growing discomfort in the Canadian armed forces regarding their possible deployment in Ontario cities. Most soldiers in the CF (Canadian Forces) had strong sympathies to the growing working class discontent, due to the fact that their friends and families were involved in the struggle. There had already been problems with the redeployment in Afghanistan, which was not supposed to occur but the Canadian government had accepted after intense pressure from NATO. The soldiers began to desert en masse due to the efforts of our organizations to educate and reach out to the soldiers regarding their role in profiting U.S. oil interests through their exploitation of the Afghans. The CF leadership did not have the propaganda resources to indoctrinate their soldiers to the domestic and international interests of the Canadian and American bourgeoisie, especially with the strong independent media presence. Another factor was that the CF officer class was merit based and just like the regular soldiers had connections to the working class through friends and family.

There were several results of the increased repression and presence of foreign mercenaries. Our organization’s principle form of activism at the time was mass demonstrations, which were no longer legal and would be confronted brutally by the pigs. That meant that many of us would have to go underground to continue. Officially the ASO was reduced to a paper organization; we could publish criticisms of the actions of the state and the corporations, but if we were to provide militant solutions in our literature we would be shut down. It was decided at our last delegates council that the ASO would continue to exist only for propaganda purposes and that its finances would be transferred to small and trusted committees to immediately purchase weapons and ammunition from our counterparts in the northeastern United States.

Many voiced disapproval of this decision. Ultimately they were convinced of the necessity of this decision by citing previous revolutions and the crippling dependence anarchist militants had historically placed on other organizations for weapons and ammunition. It was understood that this crackdown was just the beginning and that we would eventually need to defend ourselves against the mercenaries. It was decided that the weapons would be distributed to loyal militants throughout the ASO where they would be held until they were needed. Because the organization had the foresight to act as quickly as it did, the weapons purchase surprisingly went off without problems. Over the period of three weeks, one thousand M4 assault rifles, one hundred and fifty M60 machine guns and five hundred thousand rounds of ammunition were smuggled through Minnesota to northern Ontario where teams then disseminated them by trucks to rural residences of sixty-three ASO militants.

On Labour Day (September 2011), three million people publicly protested bill C-27. The protest erupted quickly into massive confrontations with the pigs in Windsor, London, Waterloo, Guelph, Hamilton, and Toronto. The police were overrun by protesters brandishing baseball bats, hockey sticks, and whatever makeshift riot gear they could get their hands on. Large groups of riot police were detained and disarmed by protesters. The mercenaries and the U.S. Marines were called in to take control of the situation. They opened fire on crowds and renditioned key figures to bases nobody knew existed. They killed over three hundred of us that day. The time was beginning to feel right for retaliation.

By Zoe Blunt [http://zoeblunt.gnn.tv]

The 2010 Olympics are over, and we’re told that everything is back to normal. Wrong. Vancouver will never be the same.

Never mind what the news jockeys said about the thrilling celebration of our nation’s proud heritage, showcasing our city, hosting the admiring elite of the world, promoting our youth, and attracting new business and tourism. It’s all bullshit. For us here at ground zero, the Olympics turned the Lower Mainland into a nightmare landscape of security zones, armed troops, and police traps. And guess what? The nightmare didn’t end when the circus left town.

The past two months have seen chaos and repression so secret that we’re still trying to piece together the whole story. It’s ironic, because we’ve been trying to expose this sort of abuse for years – part of the campaign to keep our city livable, support human rights and end police persecution of everyone who’s poor, native, or critical of government priorities. When we witnessed what was happening with the latest round of evictions and brutality, we felt compelled to get the story out. Then, of course, we became targets too.

Even after all the discussions and predictions, we weren’t prepared for the scale of the crackdown. It went like this: dozens of arrests the week before the Games started, forced removal of homeless people for the duration, indigenous people targeted and independent journalists singled out – as many as they could get their hands on, anyway. Before the Olympics even started, a bunch of us were pre-emptively – arbitrarily, illegally – detained under the new security orders. Doors were kicked in, cameras, videos, and computers were seized, and people were taken away and disappeared. Without so much as a peep from the major newspapers, TV, and radio stations.

And yet, we pulled ourselves together and carried on. That’s what we need to do now – seize the moment, hang on to our experiences and analyze what happened, if only to bring some perspective to the chaos. Let’s start with the successes.

The huge throngs of people at the public protests in and around the “free speech cage” were amazing to behold. Apparently the Homes Not Games message hit a nerve. That nerve was pretty sore already after the bank collapses and thousands of layoffs, plus the revelations about secret budgets, high-profile scandals, more evictions, and, of course, the ever-swelling Olympic deficit that our children will still be paying off in thirty years. Then came the massive, never-ending traffic gridlock and the troops in the streets. The hubris of it all added up to a whole lot of pissed-off citizens. So naturally, the protests spilled over into the streets.

Not just protests, either. Months of planning focused on empowering people to start building the kind of society we need. Like Food Not Bombs, the Homes Not Games actions were organized by people who found ways to fill those needs themselves, rather than waiting around hoping the authorities would give a hand-out. These decentralized non-organizations stymied the police – with no headquarters for them to raid and no leaders to arrest, they didn’t know how to stop the movement. Several individuals in the network got busted the week before the Games, but they had the good sense to keep their mouths shut about their fellow activists.

The affinity groups were also tight – people took their safety and security very seriously. The scene was so heavy that anyone who was not 100% committed to the goal stayed home. After the first wave of raids and arrests, no one needed a reminder of what was at stake.

The folks who set up the legal defense fund in advance of the Olympics deserve a huge shout-out, along with the lawyers who are working for free or for reduced rates. Hundreds of people are facing charges – anti-poverty activists, indigenous people, tree huggers, indy journalists, and dozens more who were probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The people who went missing have been found, some of them in jails fifty or a hundred miles away. Some might get time served or a few weeks if convicted, others are looking at “terrorism enhancements” of many years behind bars, even though there was clearly no intention to hurt anyone.

The civil liberties advocates are hoping to push back the trend of police brutality and Charter rights violations. The criminal trials will be going on for months, and believe me, they’re educational (and open to the public!)

The media collectives and solo journalists deserve awards for extreme bravery in documenting dozens of cases of police attacks and human rights abuses with hundreds of hours of video – and getting away with the footage! Of course, the major media didn’t run those videos, but the web streams went around the world to millions of viewers. And the hot new “instant documentary” is coming any day now – the video posse is working round the clock putting it together. There’s dozens of clips online already, and a whole pile of new material that the cops are really going to hate – especially when the lawyers show the evidence to the judge and get our friends’ charges dropped.

We learned some things about playing to our strengths and their weaknesses. We outwitted the enemy a couple times. We outran them too. We are quicker, smarter, and more versatile than the crowd-control units. We know the terrain. We can switch to Plan B in an instant. They need orders. They’re weighed down by riot shields and command structures. Except when they get wound up in their adrenaline and testosterone frenzy, and start beating on people at random. All I can say is thank god for the street medics.

The street medics are fucking heroes. They waded into clouds of tear gas to help people who were blinded and panicked and disoriented and walked them out of there. They patched people up in the middle of the night and kept it quiet. Of course, a lot of people who were near the front lines – including the medics! – are still nursing injuries and pepper-spray after-effects. Plus, we are all suffering from “post traumatic activist stress disorder” – weeks later, some folks are still traumatized and in shock. No one expects this shit to happen to them. But people are taking care of each other and reaching out to each other.

The extreme level of police coercion stunned everyone. Even long-time activists who felt psychologically prepared for police violence told me how surreal it felt, suddenly finding themselves looking down a line of automatic weapons aimed at their heads and robocops barking incomprehensible orders. Everything slows way down and gets very bright and sharp. Impossible to forget, even if you want to. Many of our comrades from the past few weeks won’t be returning to the movement – they’re burned out.

Our public events were infiltrated by police informants and many of us were monitored for months before the Games. The cops pulled all kinds of petty stunts – faking people’s identities online, sending messages to try and start conflicts, playing on the divisions within the group like race and class and gender. Fortunately, it seems like the various affinity groups were quick to catch on, although a few out there are probably still figuring it out.

Surveillance cameras and face-recognition software made it easy for the cops to look out for possible “domestic threats.” (Threats to what? We’d like to know!) They watched for certain individuals and pounced on them when they approached the security perimeters. Obviously, you can fool the software with a bandanna, but they also arrested anyone with their face covered.

We weren’t expecting the total blackout on dissent for the duration of the Games, or the crushing media backlash after the party ended and the guests went home. Obviously we didn’t think corporate Olympic sponsors would give indy journalists free air time – but we thought at least we’d have access to our own blogs and independent media sites! A lot of those sites suddenly went off-line (or off-limits) in early February. A lot of cell phones stopped working, and some folks swore they were being recorded. We had to keep figuring out ways to work around these obstacles.

The radicals were isolated, thanks in part to intimidation and pressure on our more moderate allies. That was no surprise – we figured the mainstream groups would cave if the authorities leaned on them, and that’s what happened. They cooperated with the detectives and cut their ties with us. So we were basically left out in the cold, surrounded by hostile forces. Several of our demonstrations were outnumbered by the pro-Olympics cheerleaders and sports fans; there were lots of vocal threats and even a few violent incidents as they lashed out at the groups of peaceful protestors.

By the time it was over, there was a backlash from all sides against the people who were trying, against all odds, to get a message out to the world, to speak to the conscience of a nation against racism and brutality and homelessness and injustice.

And we won. We got the message out, and we all came together, and that was what they really feared, above all. Not just that we would loudly and publicly dissent for the world to see, but that we might actually join forces and work for common goals, like hastening the fall of this corrupt and unjust system.

It started for me when one of us asked – what sort of position do we want to be in, after the Games? How do we survive, evade, and resist the occupation? The TV cameras have packed up and left. The soldiers are back at their bases. We’re still here. What next?