G20 Protests: fucked.

[Kai]

While some of you think "stupid hippies" when it comes to these things, I've been watching the video's on youtube and this one is particularly fucked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aohGLp00MmU

Sign of the times.

[Cain]

While I have some sympathy for the POV of the anti-G20 demonstrators, and am well aware of the brutality often displayed by riot police at such events, I also cannot help but think they are wasting their time.  When the anti-WTO protests got too violent, they just switched venues to places like Doha.  The G20 will just meet in a guarded compound in Beijing if the protests start to get too annoying, and then they will still ignore the protestors demands.

[Jenne]

...can't believe I was there just under a year ago.  ON Spadina.

Wow.

The end of that spot is damned good footage, and you can tell what's going to happen as the rush of NON-battle-armored dudes come in with their faces set.  Not all of the riot police are wearing gasmasks, wonder what THAT's all about...contingency plan?

[Cain]

There are also the riot police you don't see, in the crowd and wearing plain clothes, acting as agent provocateurs and inciting violence to justify the heavy handed response.

[Cramulus]

While I have some sympathy for the POV of the anti-G20 demonstrators, and am well aware of the brutality often displayed by riot police at such events, I also cannot help but think they are wasting their time.  When the anti-WTO protests got too violent, they just switched venues to places like Doha.  The G20 will just meet in a guarded compound in Beijing if the protests start to get too annoying, and then they will still ignore the protestors demands.

don't get me wrong, I generally think this form of protesting is an effete symbolic gesture. But one can't knock the power of symbols. These things serve two functions - 1. to communicate their message to the members of the summit, and 2. to rally and focus the dissident energy. I would say they've failed at 1 in any meaningful sense, but aren't doing too badly at 2. It may just be a matter of attaining the right critical mass. There is a certain protest size that will be difficult to ignore.

If I had to attend a protest, it would probably be the G8 or G20.

There are also the riot police you don't see, in the crowd and wearing plain clothes, acting as agent provocateurs and inciting violence to justify the heavy handed response.

yeah, that is really pretty crazy and in itself is cause for protest.

[Cain]

I see protesting this way: in 2003, the biggest protests of all time in this country and many others were made against the impending Iraq War.

It's now seven years later, and guess what?  The troops are still there.

The kind of critical mass you would need is virtually impossible to achieve.  And with pretty much all political parties in the G20 nations reading off the same economic script, with a few minor variations for flavour, a government can ignore it's own population's discontent by saying "what you gonna do about it?"

[Cramulus]

you're right, these kinds of protests are the equivalent of tapping on the glass with a sad look on your face.

But is there a more effective route for individuals to get involved? I feel like you'd need some actual power before you could get your voice heard, which doesn't leave us proles sitting in a spot where we can do anything.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

There are also the riot police you don't see, in the crowd and wearing plain clothes, acting as agent provocateurs and inciting violence to justify the heavy handed response.

It doesn't seem like a particularly wise tactic these days, since everyone has cameras built into their cellphones. One would think that there would be a backlash effect for the SWAT team.

Then again, this sort of thing is not a new image and no one really cares beyond "eh, sucks to be those protesters. What are you going to do though?" Aside from lodging a complaint against 12375.

[Cain]

Bonus G20 information fun

http://www.ianwelsh.net/what-actually-happened-at-the-g20-protests/

There's been a lot of crying about "thugs and anarchists" in Toronto.  I live about 4 blocks from where some of the vandalism occurred, though I wasn't there at the time.

As best I can tell, what happened is that for about an hour, the Black Bloc protesters clearly and visibly prepared for action, with both the police and other, non-violent protesters able to see they were doing so. The number of Black Bloc vandals seems to have been between 50 to 100, certainly not more than 200.  (The police had 20,000 men.)

The police actually withdrew, leaving behind police cars for the Black Block to torch.  Which they then did.   The Black Bloc then proceeded up Yonge street (the main north/south street in downtown Toronto), vandalizing as they went, and eventually many headed over to Queen's Park, the Provincial capital.  Two hours after the first violence, the police finally take action, ensuring that there are plenty of videos of police cars burning and vandalism that would not have occurred if they had taken action earlier.

According to the police, rather than confront a maximum of 200 protesters, they withdrew behind the barrier around the G20 meetings and let them vandalize downtown Toronto for 2 hours.

At the end of the day the people who matter never even saw any protests and the 1 billion dollar police presence and suspension of civil liberties was "justified" by vandalism and burning police cars.

Simply put, the police decided that they couldn't spare say 2,000 out of their 20,000 men to stop 200 vandals.  This was a deliberate decision to allow downtown to be vandalized.

I leave it as an exercise for readers to decide if this was a matter of incompetence, or if it was a deliberate strategy.  And if it was deliberate strategy, just what they were trying to accomplish with their strategy.

Of course, along the way Canadian Civil Liberties observers were arrested as well, and protesters were not allowed to see lawyers.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

you're right, these kinds of protests are the equivalent of tapping on the glass with a sad look on your face.

But is there a more effective route for individuals to get involved? I feel like you'd need some actual power before you could get your voice heard, which doesn't leave us proles sitting in a spot where we can do anything.

Run for office?

[Cain]

What makes any government anywhere give away major concessions?  Fear of, popular, widespread and violent revolution from below.

[Jenne]

What makes any government anywhere give away major concessions?  Fear of, popular, widespread and violent revolution from below.

...and since the Rodney King riots here in L.A., most of the protests I've seen in the Western world seem to be started and maintained by the college-age and college-going crowd...big difference, because they typically have "more to lose."

ETA:  of course I'm glossing over the whole Teabagger movement shite, and they were made up of mostly older, white middle to lower class Americans.  It just all seemed rather manufactured in a lot of ways, and I'm not really thinking it's in the general spirit of what this thread is about...though they did hold their share of rallies and whatnot.

[Requia ☣]

What makes any government anywhere give away major concessions?  Fear of, popular, widespread and violent revolution from below.

This is kind of a scary thought, given that the far right is the only faction left that seems willing to seriously consider violence.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

What makes any government anywhere give away major concessions?  Fear of, popular, widespread and violent revolution from below.

This is kind of a scary thought, given that the far right is the only faction left that seems willing to seriously consider violence.

That's because progressives generally frown on treason.

[Jenne]

What makes any government anywhere give away major concessions?  Fear of, popular, widespread and violent revolution from below.

This is kind of a scary thought, given that the far right is the only faction left that seems willing to seriously consider violence.

That's because progressives generally frown on treason.