Demonstration against G20 -Toronto

Montreal demonstration - Thursday July 1^st

CLAC 2010 denounces the magnitude of the police repression in Toronto during the G20 summit. Police violence in Toronto is an immediate articulation of the social violence perpetuated by the G20 economic agenda of economic austerity, that will deliver economic cutbacks to social services that will hit the most vulnerable in societies around the world. It is the people who will be forced to pay the bill for the last financial crisis, while the major banks and the financial sector responsible for the crisis, move in to benefit from the massive economic stimulus packages built via public finances.

In Toronto a police state and the policies of economic violence enforced by the G20 go hand in hand.

900 arbitrary and politically motivated arrests in Toronto, a number never seen before in Canada, amount to almost three times more than those during the October crisis in 1970. Police forces in Toronto violated fundamental rights, detaining people for hours without charge, without access to legal council and without access to food or water for extended periods of time. Toronto police are also guilty of breaking and entering without a warrant, political profiling, intimidation, assault, kidnapping and utilizing extreme measures of forces against protesters as well as journalists.

Across the world people are living in extreme poverty and suffering due to the political and economic consequences put into place by unaccountable financial elites gathered together within structures like the G20, we view the G20 as illegitimate and will fight for the G20's abolition.

Stephen Harper's hosting of the G20 assured that the main focus for the summit was to assure financial markets and big capital, nothing consequential on the environment, womens health, or the social consequences of the economic crisis. All of this to consider once again that capitalism, is an economic system that privileges the smallest minority at the expense of the larger majority, a system that we are committed to fighting.

This past weekend inside the detention center jail in downtown Toronto, women arrestees between the ages of 17-25 experienced instances of sexual harassment and sexual profiling. One independent journalist arrested arbitrarily has spoken out to the public after witnessing a woman traumatized from intimidation and sexual violence imposed by police officers inside the detention center. Other women detainees experienced threats of 'gang banging' and rape. Also many LGBTQ people were segregated from the rest of the arrestees, put in a separate cell because they were queer.

We were witnesses to the lock down of dissent and criminalization of social movements in Toronto. Police tactics in this forum are a well known tactic to divide the people, break the resistance and impose regressive politics. In Toronto the police delivered before unseen levels of repression and we will fight back.

CLAC – the anti-capitalist convergence - is a network of groups and individuals who unite together to consolidate their respective struggles at a local level and mobilize their communities in the face of the G8 and G20.