...democratic policing is less about authority from above, and rather more about the act of being policed. It’s a deal we make. ...
...Perhaps Toronto’s inhabitants must now, under the thumb of the summit, urgently consider the fact that they have over-consented to being policed. That they have relinquished certain inviolable rights. ...
...What we can never again consent to in peacetime is our cities coming under lockdown, our streets cut into segments, our neighbourhoods divided into zones. We cannot agree to be barred from our places of commerce, our universities, our democratic institutions. We cannot, ever, consent to live in a house of many mansions.
Things are getting curiouser and curiouser here in the G20 host city. These events are mostly scary because it wakes us up to how easily the rights we assume to be sacrosanct are stripped away. To whit:
Using Public Works to Limit Public Rights
more on this: The Secret G20 Law Nobody Heard About
and help is here:
Toronto Community Mobilization Network Statement on Ontario Public Works Protection Act and Arrest
and here:
Movement Defence Committee - URGENT: warning re. increased police powers near the security zone
If you are going out of the house this weekend: Arrest line: 416-273-6761 (write this on your body!)
I would say that I barely recognize my city any more but I lived here during the Mike Harris years and learned much about the fragility of democracy from him and his band of merry cranksters: the current federal cabinet ministers John Baird, Tony Clement, Jim Flaherty ... and the still-welcomed-to-the-public-discourse-by-TVO's-The-Agenda Janet Ecker, John Snobelen, David Tsubouchi et al.
Are we, as Richard Poplak describes, consenting to all of this? The comments on some #G20 blog posts indicate that there are some of us that go way beyond consent - some of us seem to relish the idea that people they disagree with are having their rights preemptively curtailed. Perhaps they have never read this little poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller.
follow @torontoist and @g20mobilize for updates...
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