[IPSM] G20 capitalism attacked in the streets of Toronto | No One Is Illegal & Defenders of the Land at the fence | G8/G20 and Africa

[No One Is Illegal Montreal]

[Please post and forward widely. Video, audio and an article - "G20
capitalism is attacked in the streets of Toronto" - by No One Is Illegal,
concerning the G8/G20 in Huntsville and Toronto.]


* VIDEO: No One Is Illegal and Defenders of the Land at "No Fences, No
Borders" press conference at the G20 fence in Toronto.

Watch the video excerpts here: http://bchannelnews.tv/?p=5690

In the days leading up to the G8/G20 Summits, activists and community
organizers have been co-ordinating events and actions around Themed Days of
Resistance, which highlight different issues each day, as a build-up to the
Days of Action that are scheduled for June 25-27.

The theme for June 24 was Indigenous Sovereignty and the streets of Toronto
saw a First Nations led march of over 1500 people.

Later in the day a press conference was held, and members of Defenders of
the Land and No One is Illegal (two groups involved in the march) spoke to
reporters in front of the three kilometre, $5.5 million security fence that
has encircled the area around the summit site in downtown Toronto.
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* AUDIO: The June 2010 edition of No One Is Illegal Radio features
perspectives from Makoma Lekalakala (Johannesburg) & Njoki Njehu (Nairobi)
about the G8/G20 and self-determination by Africans, in the lead-up to the
upcoming protests in Toronto later this month.

Makoma and Njoki address: celebrity activism, African social movements, debt
relief versus reparations, climate change in Africa, the role of South
Africa in the G20, and the G8-promoted New Partnership for Africa's
Development (NEPAD).

Both Makoma and Njoki offer a special message for protesters who will take
the streets of Toronto against the G8/G20 later this month.

LISTEN to the June 2010 show here:
http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/noone-illegal/2010/06/no-one-illegal-radio-grassroots-voices-africa-about-g8-g20

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* ARTICLE:

G20 capitalism is attacked in the streets of Toronto
by Robyn Maynard & Jaggi Singh, members of No One Is Illegal-Montreal and
the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC 2010)

http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2010/06/g20-capitalism-is-attacked-in-streets.html


TORONTO, June 26, 2010 -- The intersection of King and Bay is the financial
capital of Canada. Within blocks of these infamous cross-streets, amidst
iconic skyscrapers, are the headquarters of the banks, corporations, public
relations companies and law firms that help drive global capitalism. King
and Bay in Toronto is the heart of Canadian colonial capitalism, which
projects its misery all over the world, through mining, forestry and other
resource extraction companies.

While the G20 leaders planned to meet behind a steel cage and an
unprecedented 1-billion dollar security operation, a contingent of
thousands-strong protesters gathered to defy Stephen Harper’s Fortress
Toronto.


An over 1000-person strong contingent, representing diverse movements of
community-based struggles in Toronto, Ontario and across Canada converged in
a bloc entitled “Get Off the Fence”.

Activists and community organizers represented rank-and-file labour, migrant
justice, indigenous solidarity, anti-police brutality, ecological justice,
anti-war, anti-occupation, queer and trans justice, anti-poverty,
anti-capitalist, feminist, anarchist, and many more struggles and campaigns.
We are united together, learning from each other and inspired by each other.
We are rooted in our communities.


Today’s radical contingent separated from the “People First” Labour March
(which would march in a circle from Queen’s Park, a police-designated and
permitted “protest zone”). Led by the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble street
band of Montreal, the contingent took the streets, and occupied a large bloc
within the labour march. Several times along Queen Street, protesters
attempted to break through police lines, only to be met with riot police who
hit and bloodied protesters with their batons and shields.

Undeterred, protesters waited for the People’s First march to continue its
march up Spadina Avenue, the radical contingent doubled-back, and headed
east along Queen Street, with some protesters engaging in corporate property
destruction, including Starbucks and Nike stores along Queen Street. At
times running, at other times waiting to gather together, the protest was
able to march south onto Bay Street, and down to Canada’s financial capital
at Bay & King.

Chanting “No G20 on stolen native Land”, and “No borders, no nations, stop
the deportations”, there were cheers of support amidst the sounds of glass
smashing, as targeted property destruction of well-known corporate criminals
continued down Bay Street. The demonstration continued east on King until
Yonge, and then marched up Yonge Street to Dundas Square.

Commenting on the property destruction, one Toronto Star reporter wrote:
"For the most part, their targets are specific and symbolic: As the crowd
tore across Queen St., they hammered police cruisers, attacked banks and
other corporate companies. Yet they left a record store, a local tavern and
an independent hardware shop untouched."
[
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/829194--behind-the-black-bloc-mob
 ]


Most of the targets are symbols to many of the ethical backwardness of a
society in which wealth is systematically stripped from poor and racialized
people who produce it, and remains concentrated in the hands of a few
corporations, banks, and global elites. Several police cars were destroyed
by protestors as well, many of whom felt anger over a week of unlawful
searches, arrests, and arbitrary violence that had hurt many, even on the
peaceful demonstrations of Friday.

* * *

Earlier in the day, key community organizers and activists from anarchist
and anti-capitalist groups were targeted for early-morning arrests
(including at least two members of No One Is Illegal based in Toronto and
Montreal, as well as organizers with the Toronto Community Mobilization
Network). Despite the preventative arrests and the downpour of rain,
organizers and activists regrouped and improvised together to take the
streets of Toronto.

The repression of billion-dollar “Police State Toronto” has showed that
civil liberties can be suspended at whim. They have been officially
suspended within 5 metres of the G20 steel cage, but unofficially suspended
everywhere else. Stephen Harper’s G20 police state  has seen arbitrary
arrests, beatings, searches and seizures (including a confiscated umbrella
yesterday, now dubbed the “billion-dollar umbrella”).

The steel cages of Fortress Toronto are a microcosm of global apartheid,
where the elite gather behind police lines, while the rest of us survive in
a police state. Toronto has seen a taste of what much of the rest of the
majority world experiences on a daily basis.

We live in a world which is defined by, and maintained by violence, a
violence which self-interested G8/G20 leaders both perpetuate and deny. This
violence is lived daily by those in the Global South. It is lived by
indigneous people in 'Canada' and worldwide, who face continued destruction
of their cultures and environments by mining companies, mega-dams, and other
forces of on-going colonization.  It is lived by racialized people who are
harassed by the police. In the face of this extreme social violence that is
day-to-day reality, there can be no tears shed for the cars and windows
broken by those who have had enough with the forces profiting from their
exploitation.

The fence did not come down today, but the interests that the G20 protects
on Bay Street were attacked. We organize, daily, in our communities. But
those community-based struggles also came together today, for a few hours,
to courageously defy Stephen Harper’s billion-dollar Fortress Toronto and
the G20 agenda.



[Independent and alternative media are welcome to reprint this article (as
well as to post and forward the audio and video), with attribution and link
to the following website: http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com ]

nooneisillegal at gmail.com

http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com
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