First off – Happy New Years! Here is a great background article: 2011 and Reflecting on 11 Social Movement Successes
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Toronto demonstration for a G20 public inquiry
Saturday January 8, 2010
2:00 – 5:00 pm
Queen’s Park
Fwd: WE “THE PEOPLE” DEMAND JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY – WE DEMAND A PUBLIC INQUIRY
The police and governments of Toronto, Ontario and Canada, have now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they THINK can literally round up hundreds of citizens, gathered together to exercise their Charter rights to protest, for no real, legal or discernible reason — and that we the people of Toronto, Ontario, and Canadians will simply stand idly by — during and after the suspension of civil liberties.
Just snatch and grab them off the streets, and thrown them in a cage, in many cases without access to legal counsel and in a few cases after being threatened or physically harmed by the police services. The arrested citizen then has to bear the cost of trying to defend themselves.
If the police acted illegally where is the accountability? The citizens of this city again have to bear the cost of trying to prove that, and the public pays the damages-not one single person in government or the police agencies has been held accountable. So in fact, the police are totally and utterly unaccountable.
The bureaucrats who made the decision to round up peaceful protesters, or just people walking down the street, are unaccountable. The politicians are also unaccountable, as apparently they have veto power over investigating themselves and apparently don’t even have the guts to conduct any kind of investigation, instead some semblance of an investigation has to be conducted by the Ombudsman.
Who the hell is accountable? If the police can illegally detain Canadians without any kind of accountability or oversight, how is this in any functional way for the citizen, any different from a police state? Arbitrary arrests and detentions on the basis of secret laws that nobody knew about, with no accountability.
That is the very definition of a POLICE STATE. WE THE PEOPLE are still absolutely appalled by what we saw on that weekend and shaken to the core by the hundreds of examples of police brutality that we witnessed and experienced and utterly disgusted by the silence and sheep like acquiescence from the people who are supposed to be representing all of us in Toronto and Ottawa.
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