Monday, June 28, 2010

A Sad Weekend for Toronto

No art angles from me today, folks. All I can say it was a very sad weekend for Toronto. A lot of people have already articulated why in ways that reflect my own views, so I'll just link to them here:

Dale Duncan on Spacing Wire notes the key question, Why were so many peaceful protesters and passerby harrassed by ostensible security forces while vandals and criminals were allowed to go on a rampage without any police intervention? This is a cognitive dissonance that continues to resonate for me.

John Cruickshank, at the Toronto Star, writes a cogent editorial on the ways the summit and huge security spending managed to fail a city and its people

Matthew Blackett, also at Spacing Wire, asks how infrastructure and zone design might have played into events that unfolded.

BlogTO rounds up video of the protests; not all of the videos reflect my views--as Duncan noted previously, there were thousands of people who marched peacefully without incident with police, and these videos focus on violent incidents from both sides. Nonetheless, the videos certainly are eye opening.

Rabble also notes that Amnesty International--no fringe group, that!--is concerned about the way events unfolded over the weekend, and wants security operations reviewed.

2 comments:

L.M. said...

Good round up, Leah. (I'm still foaming at the mouth over the whole thing)

Leah Sandals said...

Yes, it's very, very upsetting. All I can hope is more and more information comes to light about how this all happened, and that responsible parties (both criminal and governmental) are held accountable.