Anarchism in Toronto

What is anarchism? It is a political philosophy which considers government as being undesirable, unnecessary and harmful. It promotes a stateless society without anyone in authority whatsoever. To an anarchist, it would mean no police, no government be it federal, state, provincial or municipal.

It would be difficult to think of living in such a society other than to imagine total chaos in which there would be no laws protecting anyone. Mobs of robbers, rapists, and murderers would be roaming our streets at will with innocent victims hiding in their homes, afraid to go out to look for food which would no longer be available anyway since all the grocery stores would be looted and then burned to the ground. Only the fittest would survive in the first year and after that, they would begin killing each other off.

This is the society that anarchists dream of obtaining. It is a madman’s dream. Unfortunately, these madmen (fools) still exist in our era and no doubt will continue to exist for centuries to come unless in the far future, society has found a way to eradicate this psychological disease.

Toronto, Ontario was the host of the G20 Conference in June 2010 and like all previous similar world conferences, the anarchists slithered out of their holes and came to Toronto during that conference to show the world that these slugs are still alive and slithering about in our society.

For those who are unfamiliar with the downtown layout of Toronto, let me briefly explain it to you. Yonge Street runs north and south and is the longest street in the world. It separates the eastern part of Toronto with the western part of the city. Queen Street which is in the southern part of Toronto and runs east and west and so does, Dundas Street which is a third of a mile (466 metres) north of Queen Street. College Street is a little over a sixth of a mile (1000 metres) north of Queen Street and it runs west from Yonge Street. West of Yonge Street on College Street is another main thoroughfare called University Avenue. It is a little over a third of a mile (200 metres) west of Yonge Street. At College and University, is Queen’s Park which is really the Legislative Buildings of the Province of Ontario. West of University Avenue is Spadina Avenue. It is another main thoroughfare in Toronto and it runs north and south and is half a mile west of University Avenue. South of College and Spadina is Queen Street and Spadina Avenue and that intersection is a sixth of a mile (1000 metres) south of the intersection at Spadina and University. It was in this area that the anarchists (slugs)began slithering and did more than three quarters of a million dollars in damages to cars and stores by the time they were finished.

Now every world conferences always have protesters on the scene. There is nothing wrong with protesters showing up near the conferences providing that they are peaceful. For the most part, they generally are.

The federal, provincial and municipal governments in Canada, Ontario and Toronto decided ahead of time that they didn’t want any protesters within at least half a mile from the Metro Toronto Conference Centre in Toronto where the G20 leaders were to meet for two days. (June 26 & 27) It is located on Front Street which runs east and west and the Centre is less than a block west of University Avenue and is almost half a mile (700 metres) south of Queen Street. The Conference Centre is a magnificent building and huge enough to handled world conferences. I know because I did security work in that Conference Centre several times in the past. Three-metre fences were erected bocks away from the Conference Centre and completely encircling the conference area so that no unauthorized people could be inside the enclosed area. And to really make sure that no unauthorized people would slip inside the enclosed conference area; as many as 10,000 cops were in Toronto to see that security at the conference was tight. Many of them came from other Canadian police forces across the country.

A large group of protesters, comprising of as many as 10,000 people, conducted protests downtown during the afternoon of June 26. They began their march from Queens Park at 1:36 in the afternoon and began heading south on University Avenue towards the Conference Centre on Front Street, which was approximately 1,700 metres (a little over a mile) south of them. The police would have none of that so they began fortifying their location just south of Queen Street by standing their ground with horses and a great many police officers on foot. By 2:00 pm, the marchers were still peaceful. When the marchers got to Richmond Street (one block south) the police began pushing the marchers back.

The protests all started as harmless protests, with everything from Green Party activists and gay and labor groups, to moms and dads with strollers. Then the Black Bloc moved away from the group. The anarchists had arrived on the scene. Horrified parents were running away from the protest with their kids. The vandals called themselves, the Black Bloc and one of the reasons was that they wore black clothes. A Black Bloc is a tactic for protests and marches, whereby individuals wear black clothing, scarfs, ski masks, motorcycle helmets with padding or other face-concealing items and often carry some sort of shields and truncheons. The clothing is used to avoid being identified, and to, theoretically, appear as one large mass, promoting solidarity or creating the illusion of a larger group. The

Black Bloc is sometimes incorrectly reported as being the name of a specific anarchist group. It is, rather, a tactic that may be adopted by groups of various motivations and methods around the world and don’t have one central leadership.

Tactics of a Black Bloc can include vandalism, rioting and street fighting, demonstrating without a permit, misleading the authorities, assisting in the escape of people arrested by the police, administering first aid to persons affected by tear gas in areas where protesters are barred from entering, building barricades, and attacking police. Property destruction carried out by black blocs tends to have symbolic significance: common targets include banks, institutional buildings, outlets for multinational corporations such as Starbucks, gasoline stations, and video-surveillance cameras. In other words, they are anarchists who simply don’t give a tinker’s dam about society but themselves. The idea of wearing the all-black uniform is that everyone in the "bloc" looks alike, so when a brick is tossed through a store window or a car is set ablaze, the group disperses, making it next to impossible for police to identify the perpetrator of the crime. These slugs also exist in Canada.

Two people allegedly carrying "incendiary devices" were arrested near the protest before the march began. Reports say the two had so-called Molotov cocktails - glass bottles filled with gasoline.

At 2:15, members of the Black Bloc were standing at the intersection of Queen and Spadina. So far, they were peaceful. At 2:32, after walking east on Queen Street, some of them confronted police at John Street and Queen Street. At 3:01, then 50 of them began heading east on Queen Street but at 3:26, they began smashing the windows of stores and banks and ATMs at the banks. At 3:44, they spray-painted two police vehicles that were parked on Queen Street and smashed the vehicles’ windows.

A renegade Black Bloc group of about 50 left a trail of destruction down Queen Street West in the heart of the city as they targeted symbols of power, authority and capitalism. Bank windows were smashed with hammers. Rocks were thrown through the windows of several Starbucks coffee houses. TV vans were smashed. Mailboxes were flipped and thrown through windows. One protester threw a pickaxe through the window of a bank like a tomahawk as his fellow slugs roared its approval. “Bomb the Banks,” was spray painted on walls. They also headed up Yonge Street where storeowners wept on the sidewalks outside their shops, and parents hurried past carrying crying children.

Many of these violent demonstrators had been using cell phones to tell others where police are located. This means that they weren’t totally disorganized. When they completed their vandalism, they shed their dark clothes and slithered away into the crown of innocent protesters and observers.

The Black Bloc window-smashing downtown vandalism in Toronto on June 26th looked eerily similar to what happened in downtown Vancouver during the Winter Olympics held in February 2010 when Black Bloc members in that city smashed up a number of bank and store windows.

Chris Bowen, part of the anarchist hip-hop duo ‘Test Their Logic’ and one of the movement’s most visible proponents of property damage said to the news media, “We don’t just crawl up from the sewers from protests. We are not violent people. I’m filled with love – love for this planet, not for pacifism and the status quo.” Actually two of his followers were actually seen climbing out of a manhole. It is difficult to see the love this twerp speaks of when you look at the images of smashed Starbucks and bank’s windows and burning squad cars. This twerp also said, “When buildings are destroyed and no one is hurt, who cares? It’s a broken window, not a life. The violence comes from the companies that are targeted. They are wrecking the environment; they are wrecking lives.”

I am happy to say that Bowen was scooped up during mass arrests of demonstrators on the morning of June 27th , joining the ranks of more than 600 detained by police. Now what should be done with members of the Black Block and other vandals who have been arrested?

I think that those who are convicted of vandalism should be sentenced to a minimum of two years in the penitentiary and if they are not Canadian citizens, they should be deported and never permitted to return to Canada. If they are Canadians from other cities, they should be prohibited from re-entering Toronto for a period of three years after they are released from prison.

A sad aspect of this mess is that while the vast majority of police were in the immediate areas of the fence surrounding the streets near the Conference Centre, there were very few of them about where the Black Bloc slugs and other vandals were doing all their damage. These slugs had a free reign to do their damage with hardly any police about to stop them.

According to David Miller, the mayor of Toronto, the city’s tourism, business and banking, culture, diversity and environmental leadership will be in the world spotlight. He got that right. We all wish that spotlight had been put out so that no one would know just how his concept really looked to the viewers around the world as they watched their televisions. What the people of the world saw was mindless destruction with no police in sight. The $1.1 billion dollars spent on security for the G20 event was not wisely used.