Police, Protest, and Civil Society

Here are some bits from an opinion piece by Linda McQuaig in the Toronto Star:

In the aftermath of the G20 fiasco here last summer, one thing Torontonians agreed on was that such summits should be held in isolated venues — on military bases, on ocean-going vessels, on melting glaciers — anywhere but where lots of people reside.

But beyond being upset with the expense and disorder that weekend, many Torontonians (and city council) sided with the police, assuming that the arrest of 1,105 people must have somehow been justified, given the rampage of a small group through the downtown core.

What is now unmistakably clear — with the release of a searing report by Ontario Ombudsman André Marin and startling new video evidence of police beatings obtained by the Star’s Rosie DiManno — is that the vast powers of the state were unjustifiably used against thousands of innocent protesters, as well as against others doing nothing more subversive than riding a bike or picking up groceries.

Unbeknownst to citizens who had gathered for a peaceful march through downtown Toronto — similar to marches frequently held without incident in the city — the provincial cabinet had resurrected police powers from the 70-year-old Public Works Protection Act, enacted when the country was at war with Nazi Germany.

This, according to Marin, triggered “extravagant police authority” which the police went on to exercise outside the intended area, leaving citizens vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and detention far from the G20, and creating “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.”

If one were trying to dream up scenarios of overarching police powers, it would be hard to invent anything more lurid than the real-life tale of police yanking the prosthetic leg off 57-year-old Revenue Canada employee John Pruyn, after he was unable to move quickly enough from the designated Queen’s Park “speech area” where he was sitting with his daughter.

...

Indeed, while police were arresting the one-legged man on the lawn at Queen’s Park, a few kilometres away the G20 leaders were quietly scrapping a proposed tax on financial speculation, promoting an agenda of austerity, and generally assuring that the horrendous costs of the financial crisis would be paid for by the world’s citizens — not by the banks that brought it on.

The important role of protesters — so well appreciated by iconic Western thinkers like John Stuart Mill — is denigrated these days, perhaps because it fits uneasily with our society’s narrative about everyone being driven purely by greed and self-interest.

We seem to have trouble understanding people willing to spend hours marching in protests without the slightest prospect of personal gain, just a commitment to justice.

Instead, oddly, we accept as normal governments that squander $1 billion on “security,” turning the country’s largest city into a pseudo war zone and locking up hundreds of its finest citizens.

There is a messy line between protest and violence. Sadly in large protests there are fringe types bent on violence. It paints the whole protest as simply destructive, mindless violence. The success of the American civil rights protests in the early 1960s came from self-discipline. They policed their own protestors to make sure no lunatics were among them to undercut the message. Linda McQuaig forgets this. Successful protest requires the protestors to act as a unit and defend themselves not just from over-zealous police, but from nihilistic violent "demonstrators" who show up to trash things and not protest.

I heartily agree with her point about over-reaction from the police and the huge waste of resources in "policing" things like the G-20 summit. These meetings should be held away from urban areas because they do attract crazies. And the police should be severely rebuked for their infringement of the right to protest. And this means more than a "letter in their file". Some should be removed from the police force because they've proved themselves to be bullies. You need a great deal of emotional stability and patience to be a useful member of a police force. It is a tough job and it requires the highest standards to ensure that a society gets a quality police force.

But I will hammer the point again: protesters have to police themselves. If there are hooded "protesters" with shields and staves, the real protesters should immediately disband and clear the area, even point them out to the police, so that the police can quickly take down the crazies. Trashing urban areas is not "protest". It is mindless violence.

As usual, the real world is a murky place where right and wrong don't wear white and black hats to make it simple to see the good guys and distinguish them from the bad guys.