I'm finding it hard to stay concentrated on work this morning.  It all seems so banal after the violation of democracy and free speech I just witnessed in my city.  So, some thoughts. And, then, I'll get back to work.

I really wanted to go down to the protests yesterday to take pictures and video.  I'm glad I didn't, and I'm sad that I didn't.

What kept me away was fear of the police, not the protesters.  This strikes me as an unfortunate thing, a bizarre thing, an enraging thing. 

Afraid of the police.  It seems unbelievable.

In the end, great instincts...

An Overview

Police brutality and oppression with impunity occurred this weekend in my city, which no longer feels like my city.  I'm disgusted, I'm emotional, I'm angry, I'm sad.  I actually feel like crying as I write this and reflect on the impact this weekend has had on my psyche.

But, mostly, I'm really, really angry. 

The irony with all of this is that, in this day and age of everyone with a camera, everyone with access to social media, that the police actually seemed to think they could act with total impunity.  I'm hopeful that this might be a tipping point for people to not accept this in our society. I'm not naively optimistic, but I refuse to believe that we are raising our son in an environment where we fear police presence and that we can no longer trust them to actually "serve and protect" us, that we cannot voice our dissent on our public streets.  I've never truly been politicized, but after watching this disgusting scene unfold over the weekend, unedited by the press and the powers that be, brought to you by the people who were peacefully protesting, on all of our behalf, I need to figure out a way to start taking tangible, practical, non-violent action.  Although the critical cleansing is starting to happen in the press, I hope it cannot be erased, and the current immediate, embarrassed reactions by some major media figures is heartening.  Our city leaders, on the other hand, continue to embarras...

Let me say up front, I, obviously, do not support the wanton destruction of property by a few "protesters."  But, we must ask ourselves, as this rolls out, how is that a few police cars were "left" in the path of Black Bloc protesters. How interesting that the fires were not immediately put out, but left to burn for all the world to see.  How bizarre that, just before all of this, hundreds of riot police set upon peaceful protesters in the "designated free speech zone" and drove them out (see more below).  How strange that, as one tweeter put it most succinctly, ''How were 19000 cops unable to control 100 anarchists?''. How interesting that police brutality ramped up after the events of Saturday afternoon, when the "rioters", not protesters, these "organized anarchists" (oxymoron much?) that the police continue to tell us they were completely prepared for, were left utterly to their own devices, to do exactly what the police told us they would do.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but, damn...

I offer you some of the scenes that I "witnessed" online this weekend, and some articles worth reading.

What We Saw This Weekend, and Should Have Been Allowed to See More Of

Let me start you off with this light video of our peaceful protesters in action:

<p>Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo

Some of the video below is disturbing. Maybe you don't want to watch it, but please do.  It is important that we are aware of exactly what happened over the weekend.

"Is no one on the G20 police force trained in conflict resolution? Nobody trained in how to rachet *down* the tension?"

To top it off, Amnesty Canada's call for an independent review: