A people’s inquiry using arts, culture and communications to examine and respond to police actions during Toronto’s G20 Summit...

the problem i have with this initiative is in the second last paragraph where everyday people, are distinguished from "anarchists" and "vandals", who are clearly not everyday people but a completely separate class...actually two, since, in some cases even self defined anarchists or lefty types are going to great pains in order to differentiate between themselves and the people who smashed things at the riots, who always either seem to be constructed as police employed agents provocateurs or bad behaved violent activists who just don't know how to rebel in more peaceful ways.

i'm thinking of submitting a piece of creative non-fiction called "i'm an (alleged) violent protester?"...

seriously...i'm not fucking kidding. i really, really hate the way the nice, quiet, well-behaved kkkanadian lefty protesters are desperately trying to cling to some sort of weird ass moral high ground by internalizing the precepts of divide and conquer as if behaving in courteous ways towards people who have been hired by those who hate us will somehow in and of itself make change. i don't believe that at all and i think that those who do are seriously muthafucking misled.

A call to action

Over the course of the G20 Summit, held in Toronto in late June 2010, police ignored the civil liberties of Toronto’s citizens through illegal searches, detentions, and mass arrests — with Chief of Police Bill Blair making up the law and misleading the public as he went along. Hundreds upon hundreds of people have been searched without consent, assaulted and abused, profiled and harassed, and many have been beaten on the streets and in their homes, shot at with rubber bullets, gassed without provocation, detained for hours on end and arrested without cause.

Hundreds trapped by police and detained for hours at Queen & Spadina

Thousands are calling for an independent public inquiry into the abuses of power displayed by the police administered by the G8/G20 Integrated Security Unit during the G20 Summit Weekend. We too support this call, but recognize that public inquiries are often lengthy and costly, are frequently politically motivated and controlled by those in power, and can result in recommendations that are never fully implemented.

This is your invitation to join us in creating DON’T WEAR BLACK, a people’s inquiry using arts, culture and communications to examine and respond to police actions during Toronto’s G20 Summit.

Who will conduct the inquiry?

Artists, actors, writers, singers, musicians, dancers, speakers, crafters, teachers, students, photographers, videographers, twitterers, facebookers, makers, doers, audience members…you. Thousands of Toronto residents and visitors have stories to tell about the G20 weekend–some of them funny, some of them moving, some of them horrifying. We will ensure that you have your chance to raise your voice and share your story about what you experienced during that time.

What form will the inquiry take?

Artists, communicators and groups will be commissioned to develop and present an eclectic range of works based on the experiences of those who were swept up in the turmoil of the G20 weekend. A number of these will include innovative mechanisms for incorporating first-hand citizen testimony. In addition, a variety of ancillary events will provide additional context to the events of the G20 weekend, touching on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the War Measures Act, the Toronto bathhouse raids and other pivotal moments in the history of human rights and policing issues in Canada.

The target date for this inquiry is October 2010–the fortieth anniversary of the notorious October Crisis.

Why does this matter? Why don’t we just do as the politicians suggest, and put this all behind us?

The G20 may be over and the world leaders back in their respective countries, but for many the nightmare continues. The Toronto 1000 comprise the largest mass arrest in Canadian history–greater than those arrested under the War Measures Act and in the Toronto bathhouse raids combined. The vast majority of them are not anarchists or vandals but ordinary citizens who have been denied basic legal rights of access to lawyers, phone calls, food/water, medications while being kept in cages. There are accounts of detainees being taunted and humiliated, female prisoners strip-searched by male guards, fondled and threatened with sexual assault, a prisoner who is deaf denied an independent sign language interpreter, and specific targeting of Aboriginal, Francophone and Queer prisoners.

In time we will see charges dropped, prisoners released, settlements paid, class action lawsuits launched, reports from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Amnesty International, the Ontario Ombudsman and–one hopes–an independent inquiry or judicial review over what can only be described as the criminalization of dissent. But as we face weeks and months, and possibly years, before those resolutions are reached, we need to create our own opportunity to express our anger and sorrow, to understand and learn from what we all endured, and to bring each other strength. Above all, we need to take our city back–on our streets, and in our hearts.