Bon's Mots

This past week­end, while I was vis­it­ing my par­ents in St. Catharines, I watched tele­vised scenes of po­lice cars on fire, thugs in black smash­ing store­front win­dows and cops in riot gear beat­ing and ar­rest­ing pro­test­ers. After I re­al­ized it wasn’t a movie (what? I had just woken up), that it was hap­pen­ing in my beloved Toronto, my stom­ach knot­ted up in anger. What the f**k was hap­pen­ing to my city?

The G20 Summit is what happened.

When I re­turned to the city, and saw that it hadn’t burned down, I re­laxed. I went on­line — read the blogs, fol­lowed my Twitter feed — and got caught up on the sit­u­a­tion. I fig­ured I should write about the Summit, of­fer up more than snarky Facebook com­ments or 140-character tweets, be­fore pas­siv­ity and pro­cras­ti­na­tion set in. I’ve in­vested in a blog and some­thing con­se­quen­tial hap­pened in my city, so I should com­ment about it, right?

Let’s skip past the rea­sons why such a po­lit­i­cally charged event should not be held in a large, ur­ban cen­tre. They are pretty ob­vi­ous and have been dis­cussed ad nau­seam. We can all agree – with the ex­cep­tion of our sweater-vested leader and his min­ions – that it’s a colos­sal waste of tax­payer money.

Instead of re­hash­ing what has been said and writ­ten by peo­ple more elo­quent than I, I thought I’d of­fer some tips to the un­for­tu­nate souls in the next host city. They say you learn from your mis­takes and, boy, did we learn a LOT this week­end. Let me share some of that with you.

Surviving a G20 Summit, or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Barricades

So your city’s go­ing to host a G20 Summit. Congratulations! You have my sym­pa­thies. There will be a lot of ac­tiv­ity, as well as con­fu­sion, chaos and fu­ture class-action law­suits. But be­fore you en­ter head­first into the shit­storm, here are some handy sur­vival tips.

• Hosting a G20 Summit is a pa­thetic at­tempt to boost the cred­i­bil­ity of your leader on the world stage. It doesn’t work, just so you know. They may try to sell you on the idea by spin­ning it as a chance to boost tourism. That doesn’t work ei­ther. It’s ba­si­cally a billion-dollar boon­dog­gle. If your president/prime minister/premier is re­ally keen on the idea, vote him out of of­fice as soon as pos­si­ble. Or stage a coup. Whatever works for you.
• Your po­lice and se­cu­rity forces may be put in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion by the powers-that-be. Cops armed with tear gas, ba­tons and over­sweep­ing pow­ers are one thing; cops armed with tear gas, ba­tons and over­sweep­ing pow­ers who are on edge and feel­ing sur­rounded is an en­tirely dif­fer­ent ball of wax. Good plan­ning, fore­sight and co­op­er­a­tion with the com­mu­nity will help. And if your po­lice chief de­cides his force should have greater power to search, de­tain and ar­rest peo­ple, per­haps you should, oh, I don’t know, sug­gest that he may want to give the pub­lic a lit­tle heads-up.
• Offer for­eign me­dia cor­re­spon­dents com­fort­able sur­round­ings, good food and ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion. That’s pretty much all they want. Don’t feel as if you have to recre­ate the true [your city/country] ex­pe­ri­ence. But if you are go­ing to build a fake lake, for ex­am­ple, at least have a beaver or a loon in it. Go for broke – you’ve al­ready spent $57,000, what’s a few more hun­dred for the ex­tra taste of faux-realism?

Protests

Ah the cor­ner­stone of democ­racy. The right to as­sem­ble, free speech – it’s lovely, in­nit? But dur­ing a Summit, your civil lib­er­ties may be sac­ri­ficed to the God of Security. Just use your nog­gin wisely and you won’t get it split open by a baton.

• If you want to protest, you may want to do it in the days lead­ing up to the event. Get your mes­sage out there be­fore it gets lost in the mael­strom of G20 politi­cian spin, media-produced hys­te­ria and “Live! 24-Hour Super Summit Spectacular” newscasts.
• Don’t ask for the im­pos­si­ble, e.g. hold­ing a protest to get a G20 leader to lis­ten to you. The G20 heads of state will not watch footage of your protests, turn to each other and say, “You know what? They have a point. Let’s go shoot the shit with them.” Just saying.
• Engage in peace­ful protests. Contrary to what you might have heard and seen in the me­dia, over 25,000 peo­ple marched in peace in Toronto. It is possible.
• Beware of an­ar­chist thugs who will hi­jack your protests - their ac­tions will over­shadow your mes­sages and good deeds. Disassociate your­self from these ass­holes or you will end up look­ing like one yourself.
• Don’t be jerks and dis­rupt the lives of your fel­low cit­i­zens. Sitting on street­car tracks at a ma­jor in­ter­sec­tion isn’t a peace­ful protest, it’s a nuisance.

The Security Zone

Concrete and steel bar­ri­cades — get used to them. Hundreds of uni­formed men milling about (some in shorts) - en­joy them while you can. Living in “the Zone” sounds cool, in an 80s-slang kind of way, but it can be to­tally grody to the max– er, sorry.

• Stay as far away as you can from the se­cu­rity zone. Don’t come down to see the ac­tion, es­pe­cially if you’ve watched scenes of burn­ing po­lice cars and smashed store­front win­dows on the news the night before.
• If you live in or around the zone, but can­not leave, don’t choose that time to do your gro­cery shop­ping. Find an­other route to walk your dog. Yes, it sucks that you can’t move about your own city as freely as you usu­ally do, but don’t get all whiny about it. Having to turn left on your street when you nor­mally turn right does not make you a martyr.
• If you want to watch a protest just to see what it’s like, don’t. You might get caught up in it, and the cops aren’t go­ing to stop and ask you if you’re an in­no­cent by­stander - they’ll just snap the plas­tic cuffs on you. If you do get caught in one, and you see riot cops ap­proach­ing, stop tweet­ing about it and leave. Don’t stick around and be a hero. Sure, you might get some ex­clu­sive footage to send to your lo­cal news out­let or post on your blog, but it isn’t worth get­ting ar­rested for. (As an aside, if you’re blocked in by cops, peo­ple may find it hard to be­lieve your life is in dan­ger if you’re post­ing up­dates on Twitter every five sec­onds. It’s the Perez Hilton Effect. Just saying.)
• You will hear peo­ple say that your city has be­come a “po­lice state”. Unless you ac­tu­ally live in one, don’t be­lieve the hy­per­bole. People who live in a po­lice state are not al­lowed to protest at all. If they do, they are ei­ther shot on sight or taken away for­ever to se­cret detention/work camps. They can­not chat am­i­ca­bly with the po­lice or have their photo taken with them. And for­get about high-fiving one. People in a po­lice state are not ar­rested and re­leased within 24 hours - they just sim­ply dis­ap­pear. Yes, your city will look like a de­mil­i­ta­rized zone but this is tem­po­rary. In a real po­lice state, those bar­ri­cades would stay up for­ever. And you’d prob­a­bly be break­ing rocks in the hot sun.

In the end, when all is said and done, your city will re­turn to some sem­blance of its orig­i­nal self. It might not be ex­actly the way it was – terms like ‘black bloc’ will be added to your ver­nac­u­lar – but with a lit­tle work, and some spit and pol­ish, it’ll be as good as new.

In the mean­time, lie back and think of England. Here’s hop­ing you don’t get screwed too badly.