G20: Riots in Toronto this weekend.

[Hector]

What's G20 ?

Come on brotha...

G-20 major economies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This is the G8+5...

G8+5 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[toys2cool]

^Pretty much the same garbage that seems to follow G20 no matter where it goes. These dork protesters just need to let them do their jobs.

oh ok i see

[ctc]

>I'll bet these "Black Bloc" bunch are financially supported somehow as well!?

Not neccessarily; it's pretty easy to organize with cell phones and the internets, and they have low overhead: bricks are cheap and plentiful.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

My fear is that the rest on the world only sees the rioting and not the majority of people who were asserting their rights to peaceful assembly and free speech.

The police certainly were in a no-win situation. They definitely had the support of the majority heading into this event, but with a billion dollars spent on policing (five times the previous amount in other cities), the Black Bloc running unchecked for an hour or so on Saturday and then the contrasting heavy hand on Sunday that had Journalists, joggers, peaceful protesters, and tourist all nabbed along with the vandals and troublemakers. I can also only imagine the kind of fear for their own safety the police officers must endure when encountering such a large mob, particularly after their colleagues have been attacked and police cars have been set on fire.

My brother-in-law was one of the peaceful protesters that got locked up for 22 hours for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm really hoping that once everyone has been processed, that the majority of these hundreds of people that were locked up on the weekend will in fact have been documented criminals and vandals.

In the meantime, many small businesses have suffered, both physical damages that they must pay out of their own pockets and in terms of loss of income due to the lock-down. Hopefully many of the mom and pops businesses will have been able to weather this storm.

This weekend was just a taste of what living in a police state can be like, and I'll be glad when things get back to normal around here. I dropped my spouse off at work yesterday just outside the security zone and they were dismantling the fence, although the US embassy on University still looked like a fortress. I didn't want to see the damage on Queen and Yonge.

[garagesale]

I think it's pretty obvious how much I love my city.

All the craziness in the news is not my city. It's sad and unfortunate.

Don't want to get too political, but I agree that the media often misrepresent stuff like this.

I know they made the 1991 LA Riots seem like the apocalypse when I lived there. Right here in Oklahoma much the same thing happened after the OKC bombing and every tornado. They give people the impression that the entire state has been flattened. They were doing the same thing with the Gulf spill until a week or two ago.

JamesD

[Brazoo]

This weekend was just a taste of what living in a police state can be like, and I'll be glad when things get back to normal around here. I dropped my spouse off at work yesterday just outside the security zone and they were dismantling the fence, although the US embassy on University still looked like a fortress. I didn't want to see the damage on Queen and Yonge.

This is a really hard subject to breach without getting into politics.

More reports of personal stories by friends and acquaintances who were detained and specific acts of cruelty and even violence by police have been coming out now. The situation as a whole upset me, but I'm especially affected by hearing the specific experiences of people I like and admire. Having said that I don't think there's a single case of rioting and looting in history that can be pointed to as THE model way for police forces to deal with these situations. Overall I think what happened here was much less chaotic and unfair to citizens than similar situations.