Stories by Margaret S.

G20: Harper stars in summer theatre

Bad guys in black made the Western hero look good

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
by Margaret Slavin

Kudos to our Prime Minister for using the public airwaves and Toronto's streets to produce such a scarily effective piece of street drama! The Conservatives have shot up in the polls and even Torontonians have decided that the police handled a potential riot very well.

The play cost all us taxpayers more than a billion dollars, but it was worth it. I overheard people on my street reliving one exciting scene: "They were wearing black and crawling out from under a manhole cover - but they got 'em! They're under arrest!" How thrilling! The sewer rats were trapped by the police, and we are safe!

Our government had a need to dramatize weakening the citizen's right to dissent. I felt some of that too for a day or so, until the reviews came in and I started thinking again about what had just been done to my perceptions. Young men in black fill only too readily a stereotype in our heads about the guys in the black hats, the villains.

But who were they really?We may never know, because the police held back while the windows of American franchises were smashed, and the police cars handily parked in their path were duly torched, creating the dramatic media shots we all saw in the first act.

Some of the Black Bloc may have been police officers. Why wouldn't they be? Three police agents provocateurs were exposed at an earlier summit in Montebello, and if the police haven't gone on infiltrating, we really need to ask why. Since very few of the men in black were arrested, any officers among them could quickly fade to blue.

Our government had that $1.2 billion expense claim to account for, but more than that, the need to dramatize weakening the citizen's right to dissent. The idealistic (if misguided) teens of the Black Bloc were there to be used.Arrests were made, but by next day judged insufficient in number to justify the money. So with the exciting vandalism over, and the mayor telling people to get back downtown, which they had, the play sagged.

Then the drama heightened again, when orders clearly went out to the police to cordon off one busy section and just close in.Reports seem unanimous that no one was given a warning or opportunity to leave. People were arrested on their way out for groceries, coming out of a coffee shop, heading home.

The mayor of Toronto had pleaded with the government to hold the meeting in a conference centre that already had a wall. Harper refused. For a short while, it looked as if he had made a foolish error.Wrong. The G20 street drama relied on a brilliant script, and it has played impeccably. Harper chose a city hated in the west, a city that doesn't vote for him anyway.

Right across the country, including around here [Peterborough], folks saw the burning cars, heard about smashed glass and mass arrests and decided to be grateful that no one was actually killed, although hundreds of citizens were roughed up, a couple of shocked tourists missed their plane, a disabled man had his prosthetic leg kicked out from under him.

Ah, but those are just details. As one post on the internet phrased it, these were "terrorists with boos-boos". Harper's play was a huge success; the production was brilliant; when it was over, the involuntary extras under arrest in cages in Toronto were quietly released without pay.

The fact that a couple of female police officers broke into tears and said, "This is wrong," will be quickly forgotten, along with the fact that the man the police most wanted but couldn't manage to arrest had to turn himself in. Thank goodness we're safe from him at least: he's the criminal who organized the cannons at Quebec City that penetrated security at the wall with flying teddy bears.
Margaret Slavin watched this one from home, but she protested at Quebec City and this one was much better.