Remember that first G20 protest?  The kind of awkward one, way before people started breaking windows?

One of the organizers made the front page of the Toronto Star’s website today, after she was named a prime suspect in the G20 vandalism, and turned herself in to police.

You can read our interview with her here. We’re not positive, but it seems like that’s what The Star was drawing from when they cited “an interview with a blog.”

People assembled in Queen’s Park are charged by a line of mounted police. Two were trampled by horses, according to eyewitness reports. One is visible here.

According to The Toronto Star, an Angus Reid poll finds that 73% of Torontonians and 2/3 of Canadians believe that police actions over the G20 weekend were justified.

This is profoundly disappointing and kind of terrifying.

We’ve been on hiatus for a couple of days, traveling back to Montreal, and celebrating a birthday.  We’ll have more post-mortem G20 content up soon.

We first spotted this Buddhist monk near the high security zone in Huntsville, where he was kneeling next to the highway. His name is Sekiguchi Toyoshigi, and he had walked from Toronto to just outside the the G8 site, where he meditated for 12 hours.

He was also in the midst of a fast that he planned to continue until the end of the G20. When he finished his meditation, I walked back to town behind him and chatted with his friend Adrian. He told me that Sekiguchi does peace-walks around the world, including in Italy and Japan during their recent summits. He hopes his walks will draw attention to the need for international nuclear disarmament.

Word had spread around town about the man who had meditated next to the highway, and people stopped their cars to watch him go by. One woman rolled up and shouted “I’ve been looking for you!” before snapping some photographs and leaving. The people in the photo below had gathered because of a rumour that Obama’s motorcade was coming through (it turned out to be Michaëlle Jean), but they still cheered as he walked to the civic centre to meet his ride to Toronto.

Photo by Simon Hayter. He’s good.

Photojournalists were strapping on gas masks and helmets when I arrived at the standoff between police and protesters on Sunday. Police had stopped a nonviolent march at Queen and Spadina, and they were forcing demonstrators, journalists, and bystanders down Queen and away from the action. The cops stood in a silent blue and black mass while some people milled around anxiously.

I didn’t have a gas mask, or a helmet. And I definitely didn’t have the body armor that the Canadian Press gave to their journalists. Instead, I wrapped a red bandanna around my neck, and kept a bottle of vinegar and old swim goggles in my bag. Breathing through a vinegar-soaked cloth had worked when police fired teargas at protesters the night before.

It started pouring rain soon after I arrived and I ducked inside a doorway with a small group of people. When the police advanced on the crowd, two came into the doorway and grabbed me. I realized my media credentials were tucked under my raincoat and I pulled them out as they pushed me forward.
“I’m a journalist!” I said.

“And you’re wearing a fucking mask!” one of the cops responded.

They brought me behind a line of police, where no other photographers could see me. One officer told me to keep my hands on the wall and stay perfectly still while another told me to empty my pockets.  They kicked my legs apart and one officer rooted between my legs, sometimes with a closed fist. I’d slipped my flash card into my mouth, but it fell out while I answered their questions. They opened my camera bag in the rain. I told them my gear would be ruined if they didn’t close it, and one responded “That’s the least of your worries right now.”

They’d hauled me out of the crowd for wearing a bandanna. Eventually, they seemed to realize that although I could probably throw those rubber goggles pretty hard, I didn’t pose a danger to anyone.

Still, they were looking for a reason to justify the search. “Didn’t you notice that all the Black Bloc guys were carrying cameras?” one asked me.

Well, actually….

They finished their search and sent me away from the demonstration. As I splashed down the sidewalk, an officer shouted at me to walk in the road. I stayed on the sidewalk and asked him to stop yelling at me. He hit me in the chest and pushed me into the street.

***

When I dug through my media swag bag a few days earlier, I asked if money could have been spent more wisely. I wouldn’t expect the government to greet journalists with a complimentary gas mask and bulletproof vest. But if everyone thought the protests could turn violent, and few journalists had adequate protection, why give them a bottle of syrup?
I would have been happy with a gift certificate to an army surplus store. Instead, I used my free G20 water bottle to carry vinegar. And when police fired teargas, I imagined journalists from small papers breathing through rags soaked in maple syrup.

***

I walked away from the police, and hid from the rain in another doorway. I shot some photos of police loading people into a paddywagon and called my friends and my parents. I’d been fuming long before the cops detained me. Earlier in the day, I tried to shoot some photos of police searching a man at Queen’s Park. One yelled at me to get out of the road, and as I headed for the sidewalk, he said “You’re not even real media.” When I walked over and asked him what “real media was,” he shoved me and told me to get lost.

I wanted to show people what the police were doing, and if they were going to try and stop me, I figured it would only make it more fun.
I walked back to Queen Street, where the police were forcing journalists away from the mass detainment at Spadina. They were allowing business-owners to stand in front of their shops, so I crept from storefront to storefront. I wound up standing with a group of people around my parents’ age who wanted to make sure the events were documented. They spotted a group of men who were watching the action from their balcony and silently waving a CP24 camera crew over.

“You have to go too!” one said as she pushed me toward the camera crew. When I reached them, we watched police stop a young woman. I heard her say, “I’m not consenting to this” before police lead her toward the detainees.

Across the street, the men kept waving. When the police looked the other way, the cameraman and I took off. We sprinted behind the police, up the stairs, through the men’s living room, and onto their balcony. The rest of the CP24 crew followed. Below us, police searched the dozens of protesters who’d been standing in the rain for hours.

“Yo, Farah’s here!” I heard one man call to his friends.

I stashed my gear under their golf umbrella, looked through my foggy viewfinder at the police, and started shooting.

Naomi Klein speaks to the crowd gathered at Yonge and College.

This isn’t exactly great cinema, but it shows a basic timeline of events leading up to the detention of hundreds of people at the intersection of Queen West and Spadina Avenue on Sunday night.The crowd was trapped between two lines of riot police over a period of fifteen minutes, and held there for four hours. It began pouring rain shortly after this footage was taken. The rain continued past 10 p.m., when many in the crowd were released and loaded onto special TTC buses.

I apologize for how rough and shaky this footage is – I was just learning to use my camera, and was also pretty terrified. Still, I think it contains some important information about how quickly the whole thing happened. Police claim they gave us three chances to disperse, but the only announcement I heard was the one that we were all going to be arrested, after we were already blocked in.

Extended timeline:

5:19 p.m. (24 sec) I come across a group of protesters trying to march west on Queen street, being blocked off by police just east of University.

5:20 p.m. (1:34 min) Additional police move in with helmets on to reinforce the line of bicycle police. I’m with a group of people coming from outside the protest.  Policemen yell at the group to back up and push us back.  Notice how unoffending everyone in the crowd looks.  One girl says that a policeman pushed one of her friends by the throat.

5:23 p.m. (35 sec) Moments later the entire crowd is allowed to march west.  Most of the people I was standing with join in, presumably upset at being pushed around by police.

6:02 p.m. (15 sec) The protest stalls at Queen and Spadina, as a police line blocks them to the west.  A man is dragged into an alley and a line of riot police seal the alley, just as onlookers crowd around to see what’s happened.  Police had just told everyone standing on the balcony of the storefronts on the west side of Spadina to GET DOWN, NOW.

6:05 p.m. (21 sec) Riot police begin congregating to the north.

6:06 p.m. (5.2 sec) Riot police form a loose line on the level with a laneway just north of Queen.

6:14 p.m. (1:36 min) Riot police file in and form a line to the south, blocking off access to Queen Street.  The line of riot police to the north moves in.

6:16 p.m. (39 sec)  Riot police have tightened their lines to the north and south, leaving no exit for the hundreds of people between the lines.  We’re surrounded.

6:17 p.m. (45 sec)  A TTC driver backs out his streetcar.  Maybe he’s afraid of being pulled out of his car and arrested, like one of his colleagues was this weekend. Note the ice cream truck.

6:19 p.m. (29 sec) More riot police file in to enforce the line to the south.

6:19 p.m. (2 sec) Double line to the south.

6:21 p.m. (17 sec) Oh, fuck. Notice the “Everything is OK” dude right by the line of police to the north.  A girl standing nearby: “There’s a Jamaican store over there.  Let’s have them play Bob Marley and everything will be cool.”

6:21 p.m. (9 sec) Police tighten their line to the north, shields raised.

6:22 p.m. (12 sec) Announcement that we’re all going to be arrested.  Right afterward, one guy screamed “Fuck you, fascists!” and everyone else yelled at him to shut up: “Don’t start shit, man!” From what I saw, these people really didn’t want to start shit.

The demonstration brought out a diverse array of people, including mothers, children, and men in business casual.  The presence of all of them made it clear that you shouldn’t be pegged as a “radical” just because you care about your freedom to peaceably assemble.

You can see my sporadic tweets of the march on The McGill Daily’s Twitter feed.

A man joins in a chant calling for prisoners to be released from the improvised detention centre in an east end film studio.

A woman leaves the detention centre carrying her belongings in a plastic bag.

A woman speaks about the conditions in the detention centre. Prisoners spoke about being denied access to medications, verbal and sexual abuse at the hands of police officers, and being given little food and water.

The police announce that they will not release any more prisoners until protesters move away from Eastern Avenue.

Although some protesters continued to stand on Eastern,  police were satisfied, and continued releasing prisoners.

Riot police stand on Queen Street shortly before charging at protesters.

Protesters and bystanders are detained, searched, and loaded onto buses at Queen and Spadina.

Police lead protesters and bystanders onto chartered TTC buses at Queen and Spadina, after holding them for four hours in the rain.

A recently-released woman shows off the socks she was given at the detention centre in Toronto’s east end. Police kept her own socks, along with her shoes and other belongings,  in the plastic bag until she was released.

Toronto Star publisher John Cruikshank’s editorial: “Brutal spectacle failed a city and its people.”  Another good Star editorial here.

TVO’s Steve Paikin on how it’s been “A rough weekend for democracy.”

The Link newspaper (fellow CUPpies) chronicles the inhumane conditions at the G20 detention centre

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association condemns sweeping arrests and extended police powers during the G8 and G20.

Before the weekend began, the Globe and Mail cried foul at the Ontario government for extending those powers.

A Guardian columnist asks if the militarization of Toronto was worth it: “May Toronto’s G20 be the last.”

This Magazine rounds up this weekend’s five most important videos.

Erin Cauchi’s first-hand account of being detained at Queen and Spadina at Eye Weekly: “My night in Torontonomo Bay.”