![Ms. Communicate](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/now-what_0.gif "Ms. Communicate has been an informal advice giver for most of her life. Beginning in high school, she would regularly advise friends about life and love via incessant note-passing during class when she should have been paying attention to subjunctive clauses. Known as "sister C" and "aunt C" to her friends, she tries to be sensible, non-judgmental, realistic, funny and, where relevant, snarky. She justifies her time reading other advice columnists as "research" and considers it time well spent. Ms. Communicate will answer all letters in her weekly online column on rabble.ca and can occasionally provide confidential personalized responses if you ask her nicely.")
Editor's Note: Ms. Communicate will be writing twice a month columns on various and sundry issues related to advice, guidance and suggestions for living as happily as possible as citizens of various identities in the 21st century.
Ms. Communicate's column will be appearing on the second and fourth Thursday of the month. Please send in any topics that you would like her to cover, as well as any letters seeking advice, which she'd love to answer. Her email is mscommunicate(at)rabble.ca.
What can an advice columnist to the lefties possibly offer about the upcoming G8/G20 summit and the many protests taking place in resistance?
I was asked recently by an acquaintance: What's the point in protesting? Nothing changes anyways, and protesters will only be putting themselves at physical risk of violence.
My answer was: we must. Those of us privileged enough to choose when and how we enter into potential violent interactions with armed agents of the state, and let's be clear, there will be 10,000 of them in Toronto this weekend, those of us who can protest, simply must.
What the G8/G20 summit symbolizes for Canada is plentiful, and none of it is good.
Stephen Harper chose Toronto, a place he has been very clear about hating (even though he was born in Toronto and graduated from Richview Collegiate Institute, a high school I might have attended by the way. Eek.)
So why did Harper choose Toronto? The fancy folks could have stayed up in Huntsville the whole three days.
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1. To prove a point. Harper is pretty widely known as a control freak, and has a long memory. Don't mess with him. And I'm not saying this just because I hate him. Harper is flexing his muscles to the world, and Toronto is one way to show, domestically, he can do whatever the heck he wants to. Toronto still is the financial center of Canada. This is big business of course. From the outside I can see him imagining that it would look bad if this farce was held anywhere other than the largest city in Canada. WhatEVER.
2. It will cost more. Seriously, what is it about Conservatives and lavish spending that sends all the conservatives I know (a gratefully small number) into back-bendy-yoga positions to justify? Conservatives communicate fiscal responsibility, even though their track record shows nothing of the sort. More than $1 billion dollars for a three-day party? Made even more complex by starting at one venue and moving to a second? Come on.
G8 countries are the world's worst polluters, violators of the Kyoto Accord and the current crop of colonizers. And they're being hosted, feted, dined and secured for three days. At the cost, as we all know, of over $1 billion.
When the Harper Conservatives show their business agenda, they sure make it obvious don't they? Not that the Liberals would have been much different.
I was traveling back to Toronto on Tuesday this week and found Union Station abuzz with coppers. As my friend and I left the station to hail a cab out on Bay Street, since Front Street is reduced to two lanes and there's no stopping allowed, we saw four police officers harassing one young man, who, wouldn't you know it, was a man of colour. We saw him reach into his pocket and produce his driver's license and train ticket.
And for those who will be out there protesting, risking confrontations with the armed agents of the state at the municipal, provincial, federal and military levels, as well as private security personnel, I'll see you out there.
Those are very narrow reasons for protesting the G8/G20, all rooted in domestic political concerns about how horrible our own government is.
There are, however, many more good reasons to protest the G8/G20 that have absolutely nothing to do with Harper and his wasteful spending of our tax dollars. They would be excellent reasons to protest even if the summits were being held in another country.
Here are just a few:
• The G20 is concerned mainly with the international financial system. This is the same system that is responsible for the massive recession and attacks on the living standards of ordinary people all over the world. These "leaders" are meeting for the purpose of planning how to perpetuate an obsolete and destructive system of production and world trade, in the interests of accelerating the kind of uncontrolled economic growth that has wrought havoc on the planet and the impoverished majority of the world's population.
• Some of the G20 leaders, like Obama, Berlusconi, and Cameron, are unindicted war criminals. Many of these countries are participants in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while harbouring terrorists in their own countries.The police guarding these felons should be arresting them, not protecting them. They should not be made welcome in any civilized country.
• These "leaders" of world capitalism are responsible for aiding and abetting the destruction of the planet's biosphere by the economic system from which they derive their power and wealth. They are also responsible for sabotaging the Copenhagen climate meetings last year, and are planning to do the same in Cancun later this year.
• These "leaders" of world capitalism preside over the exploitation and oppression of their own people. Most of them also provide material and diplomatic support to other oppressive regimes like Israel and Colombia, while at the same time abiding by illegal and immoral blockades of Gaza and Cuba.
• Many of these leaders do not tolerate mass demonstrations in their own countries against their governments; it's important for us to show them that the rest of the world is on to their repressive game, and that we march in solidarity with the victims of their domestic policies.
• The G20 is an arbitrarily selected group of countries with no mandate to make decisions on behalf of the world's people. The least developed (and most oppressed) countries are excluded from the discussions. The holding of these meetings and the massive show of "security" surrounding them are an affront to the decent people who live here. It is important that we remind the world media that the small, wealthy elites who rule the world economy are despised and unwelcome no matter where in the world they go.
Well said, M. Spector. Now - violent tactics or non-violent tactics? To smash stuff or to build something? .... Or might you assert (I would say fatuously) that these are somehow compatible? I suppose I would put the same to Ms. Communicate. Would you advocate or defend violent tactics, either explicitly or tacitly through supporting a 'diversity of tactics' which condones violent tactics by 'refusing to judge' them (in itself a judgement in the affirmative)?
You're off topic and you're baiting. I won't bite.