G8/G20 Protests In Toronto

As usual most of the media buzz throughout the day after the anti G8/G20 protests in Toronto focuses on "violence." On one side there is anger at the mass arrests of what are seen as "legitimate peaceful protesters" and on the other rage and "disgust" at the black bloc tactic.
Clearly whether or not the bloc was infiltrated by police is not the issue. What is evident to many is that their tactic was exploited by the police to justify a frightening attack mainly on youth many of whom have survived their first encounter with massive a police force deployed to defend the interests of the banking and corporate thieves who are determined at any cost to deprive the youth of a future.
1.3 billion Canadian dollars was spent on police and security forces to defend the heads of capitalist states whose main focus was how to orchestrate a severe austerity agenda on working people and the poor. A massive security fence surrounding the summit location became the symbol of the absolute exclusion of the voices of ordinary working people and youth from any involvement in collectively shaping and planning our economies, our lives and our futures.

Given the vacuum created over the last decades by the failure of the leadership of organized labour to mount any sort of offensive against concessions and in defence of public services, it is inevitable that protest mobilizations would be led almost exclusively by social movement activists. It was a grand experience to see tens of thousands of ordinary people and mainly young activists representing exploited, oppressed and marginalized groups organize effectively to take to the streets to creatively dance, chant and shout out their anger and rage and intention to fight back. The downtown core of the city resounded with chants "Whose Streets/ Our Streets!" and "This is what democracy looks like" for 3 days.

Throughout the week, the police presence strengthened and mainly youthful protesters were surrounded on all sides of the march by massive police presence in riot gear, periodically donning their gas masks to intimidate. The threat of sound cannon use loomed throughout , but the refusal to be intimidated prevailed. There was a clear awareness that no matter what happened, no matter how peaceful or riotous the protests became, the Canadian State would find a way to justify the over one billion dollars spent on police and security forces.

Police stood aside for over an hour as 3 police cars were torched, (perhaps planted to provoke), and store and bank windows representing bloody corporations responsible for the deaths and suffering of tens of millions of working and poor people worldwide were smashed. No mom and pop shops were vandalized, the targets were clearly the corporate and financial brutes whose interests were being defended in fancy hotels, convention centres and restaurants behind the security fence.

Almost achieving their objective by Saturday evening of flanking and terrorizing protesters at Queen's Park, pounding their shields and charging, they forced thousands of mainly youth into Toronto's two main streets. As the dispersed refused to flee to go home, protesters marched through the centre of the city in the direction of the security fence where the police repression and arrests began in earnest. The arrest numbers mounted and after successfully forcing the focus off the anger and organized protests of ordinary workers and youth, the State unleashed police repression throughtout the night and into Sunday, the final Day of protest. By Sunday the number of attacks on protesters, mainly youth escalated from approximately 160 to over 600, 500 of whom remain in jail today. Peaceful protests at the temporary holding and processing centre in defence of the arrested were charged by police wielding batons in maniacal fashion, grabbing youth and throwing them into police vans and buses. The Graduate Students Union at the University of Toronto was raided and 70 youth were arrested on the pretence of finding black clothing, "liquids of unknown substance" and stakes ( picket signs)
in their meeting space.

So what was accomplished and what was learned ?

Who were the forces on the streets? Whose absence as a organized force of resistance and fightback was glaring?

What was evident was the mass presence of youth, organized, angry, yet joyfully creative in their protest and detrmination to resist intimidation from the police and the state. A new layer of young people found their collective voice and despite repression, injuries and arrests, strengthened their determination to fight for their future.

The disgusting absence on the part of the labour leadership to demonstrate even the slightest attempt to organize and mobilize ordinary workers and youth to resist the austerity agenda of the summit leaders was glaringly obvious. Instead their media release attempted to cover their own betrayal, to gloss over years of concessions and capitulation to the capitalist agenda, to collaborate with the media, the State and the police, to focus on the black bloc and other "anarchist " presence.

The president of the Canadian Labour Congress cooperated with the police to make sure an orchestrated, fast moving march to Queens Park, amounted to nothing more than a tame, dampened down corraling of people rapidly in a circle to hear a few meaningless and empty speeches and then rush home. Making sure that the summit leaders were assured of their co-operation and have nothing to fear from organized labour, CLC president Ken Georgetti whimpered, we "abhor the behaviour of a small group of people who have committed vandalism and destroyed property," immediately and shamelessly diverting attention off their treacherous decades long failure to organize workers, youth and communities into a force of fighting resistance.

The shameless statement "we co-operated with police in choosing the route and had hundreds of parade marshalls to maintain order," tells it all.

Certainly we know not not to expect too much from massive protests at summits where plundering world leaders meet to sign off on agendas already approved. These meetings are formalities, pumped up cowardly shows of brute force and solidarity among the capitalist class . In this case an effort to hide the fatal flaws and contradictions in their system and launch an orchestrated austerity agenda country by country, the sole purpose of which is to save their system on the backs of public and private sector workers and our hard won public services.

A short term focus on so called "violent " tactics of protestors by the labor leadership, only serves to hide their decades long collaboration and implicit authorization of violence by the international capitalist class and their own  refusal to mobilize workers and our communities in a mass organized
fight back.

It is important for socialists, trade union and community activists to be aware and not to fall into this trap, to use this opportunity to organize as activists in our trade union locals and in our communities to force back not just this life destroying agenda of the capitalist elite, but to take back our unions as strong effective fighting forces of resistance to rebuild a strong anti-capitalist offensive.

A focus on the very small degree of "violence" must be avoided and the finger pointed back not only on the mass violence the profit seeking greedy world capitalists force onto working and poor people every single moment of every day through wars, environmental destruction and poverty.

We have been provided with a small window to resist the misinformation of the capitalist media and to view more clearly the need to forge a fighting alternative in the face of decades of blows and assaults on working people and the poor worldwide.