Statement from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP)

On June 26 and 27, the political representatives of the world’s greatest
thieves and murderers gathered in Toronto. They held their ‘G2o Summit’
in a billion dollar armed camp financed with public money stolen from
vital social programs. They threw out some meaningless platitudes and
drew up a plan around their real agenda – solving the crisis of their
bankrupt system by imposing austerity and poverty on people throughout
the world. With the Harper Government hosting the event and standing on
the right wing edge of the discussions, plans were drawn up to halve
public deficits by 2013. They will not, however, take the money back
from the banks and corporations they bailed out. Instead they will gut
public services, destroy social infrastructure and launch a war on poor
and working people.

Across the world, people under attack and in struggle saw that the
Toronto Summit was challenged and that the massive array of police
security protecting it failed to silence that challenge. On the 24th,
Indigenous people and their allies took to the streets. On the 25th,
OCAP along with many community organizations and joined by thousands,
came out to fight for justice for communities. We faced police
intimidation and attack without backing down and, after marching
through the streets, put up a tent city in Allan Gardens that was held
throughout the night in solidarity with the homeless and all those
being displaced and forced from their homelands here and abroad.

On the 26th, tens of thousands took to the streets and thousands of
them would not accept a route well away from the security fence that
the trade union/NGO leaders had negotiated with the cops ahead of time.
At Queen and Spadina, a confrontation began that continued all through
that and the next day. It was marked by firmness and courage on the
part of those taking to the streets and by brutal police attack. The
largest mass arrest in the history of Canada unfolded. Basic civil
liberties were effectively eliminated. The over one thousand who were
arrested faced inhuman conditions and despicable treatment in the
now-infamous Eastern Ave Detention Centre. People were taken by the
cops without the slightest legal justification. But still people
filled the streets and defied the G20 enforcers.

By Monday, the sheer scale of the abuses was beginning to cause
disquiet in high places. More seriously, it was clear that the violent
intimidation was failing miserably. Thousands came to police
headquarters that evening to challenge the police state conditions
being created in this City. They faced a subdued array of cops.
Harper’s plan for an austerity meeting complemented by a show of force
that would deter opposition had utterly failed.

The cops did not even wait for the events of the 26th to begin their
crackdown. A series of raids on homes and buildings offering
accommodation to protesters began the night before. People’s doors
were broken down, some were carried away in the middle of the night or
early morning in unmarked vans, some even at gun-point, with little
knowledge of what was happening to them. Our comrades from Quebec were
particularly targeted with extreme anti-Quebecois violence. Many vocal
and respected community organizers, our friends and allies, were
targeted and are still detained.

We are now building legal support and political solidarity with those
facing serious charges and attempts to detain them for trial.
Antiquated and reactionary ‘conspiracy’ charges are being used by the
Crown. It should go without saying that our movement will spare no
effort to ensure those facing legal persecution are given all possible
support, that they are set free and the politically motivated charges
laid against them be dropped. OCAP wishes to show our solidarity with
all G20 defendants and we demand their immediate release. This is an
attempt to criminalize, silence and intimidate our movements, and we
will fight against it.

At the same time as we fight and win this legal battle, we must set our
sites for the resistance that emerged around the G20 to grow. We can and
must build strong social movements in the fight against the austerity
agenda that the G20 devised. This agenda is the real conspiracy that must
to be defeated.

As they work to cut vital social programs, attack public sector
workers, expand security apparatus at home and abroad, attempt to
criminalize and brutalize poor communities, migrants, people of colour
and First Nations communities, we will mobilize to fight back. The
International Monetary Fund has called for twenty years of austerity.
The elements of that agenda will be decreed by governments and backed
up by lines of cops. We have shown in this City, as people around the
world have already demonstrated, that our resistance can be stronger
than their austerity. We will defeat their agenda and create a society
where the exploiters and their thugs go on trial while we build a world
based on solidarity and equality.