Group statement by 17 people charged with conspiracy during the G20 regarding a plea deal.
November 22, 2011 -- As people across Turtle Island look towards the global wave of protests against the austerity agenda, the memory of the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto looms large as both inspiration and caution.
We are 17 people accused by the state of planning to disrupt the leaders' summit -- the prosecutors call us the G20 Main Conspiracy Group.
When public safety minister Vic Toews introduced his new anti-terrorism strategy last month, many were stunned to discover the feds were targeting groups -- enviro, native and others -- as sources of extremism.
The announcement was tellingly made just as the Tories revved up their attempts to discredit foes of the Northern Gateway pipeline. But for those who've been making their way through the thousands of pages of RCMP and OPP documents pertaining to the G20 released under freedom of information, this shadowing of dissenting orgs didn't come as a major surprise.
Among the many things we'll never know in the aftermath of the Toronto G20 is how a political defence would have affected the trial of those charged in "the main conspiracy" case.
That's because the case ended last month when six of those charged pled guilty to the lesser offence of counselling mischief (and two of them also to counselling obstruction of police), and 11 had their charges withdrawn.
Monday was the first day of what is scheduled to be an 11-week preliminary inquiry for what the Ontario Crown Attorney's office calls, the "G20 Main Conspiracy Group Prosecution." This prosecution will see myself, along with 16 other community organisers spend almost three months in court every single weekday, watching and listening as the Crown attorneys from the Provincial "Gangs and Guns Initiative" present evidence collected by a series of undercover cops who infiltrated community organisations across the country over a period of nearly two years prior to last year's G20 (an event which saw the city converted into "Fortress Toronto," as the heads of state from the world's 20 richest countries, along with more than 10,000 cops, occupied the city's downtown).