Toronto and the G20

Although this blog is meant to be the corporate blog to my company, Onus Consulting Group, I feel today I'm going to write, rather extemporaneously, about something not financial services related.

The G20 summit hit Toronto this weekend, and it has been the talk of the town. As early as the week before, RCMP, OPP and municipal officers were seen walking the streets of Toronto. The town was definitely abuzz with expectation. Although the G20 is a new forum with Toronto being their fourth summit, it seemed just yesterday the enormous impact the anti-globalization protests brought to the WTO talk in Seattle. It was clear that these thoughts had not been lost on many.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not anti-G20 and the only activist cause I've ever really embraced is investor advocacy. I had really nothing to protest or march against. Although perhaps a "down with the Deferred Sales Charge on mutual funds" might have crossed my mind, I realized that if it sounded ridiculous to me, just imagine the thoughts on the minds of the public I'd be catering to.

My academic interest in the demonstrations against the G20 summit was just too much for me to stay away. Of course not being a "plugged in" activist, I didn't really know where to begin, so of course, I grabbed the latest issue of NOW Magazine. Old reliable, distributed each week, it has been Toronto's first free weekly and is going on 30 years. A left-leaning newspaper with very much an activist streak, their twitter feed was ripe with protests in the city and other updates as early as the Monday of the week of the summit. NOW ended up being the perfect resource. They had released a special summit issue with a headline reading, "G20: GET SERIOUS." I discovered I could stay at a protester's camp complete with a pancake breakfast. As well, there were an adopt-an-activist program where you could put up a protester for the night.

Picking the right protest was almost like picking an entree on a menu: There was quite the selection each with their own nuance. There was one focused on channeling your protest using the power of "music, speakers and global meditation." As well, there were a few where confrontation was encouraged. No thanks. Of course, I went with the house special. The People's First Rally was organized by the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Ontario Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress. I don't know who taught me that rule, but when choosing to observe a well run demonstration, the ones put on by organized labour certainly will never be a bad bet.

On Saturday morning, I woke up excited. Recharging the battery to my video camera, I then wondered if the pouring rain outside would hurt the turnout. Whatever. I had to check it out. The next thing that crossed my mind was should I go prepared? Do I need a gas mask or at least a hankerchief? Maybe a book of band-aids? Thinking about the power of stereotypes, I realized it might be a little more useful if I just carry an umbrella and wear a soccer jersey and some nice dress shoes coupled with a satchel (not a backpack) of scholastic magazines. Hmmm...Would it be enough? Perhaps instead I should don a red sweater with a large yellow letter on it wrapped around my neck? Large, black, round plastic rimmed glasses? Khakis? A white Lacoste polo shirt? Okay, I know I'm getting carried away, and I don't have any of that stuff.

I got there and was impressed to see the number of people. Literally, thousands enveloping the entire area. Not only the unions, but a slew of other causes were represented by a sea of flags and incredibly done banners...Campaigning for human rights in Iran...Bring Al-Khadr back to Canada...Anti-capitalism...Pro communism. You could tell it was every activist's dream. I did notice, at this time, that there were a group in black with bandanas covering their face. But, quite frankly, at the time, I was thinking they were the most boring of the lot. They weren't saying anything.

Another thing I noticed that I wasn't the only individual that was drawn to the event simply by its intrigue. They were dozens, if not hundreds, of people not chanting...not marching...just holding cameras and taking pictures. The spectacle of the occasion was simply too much to pass up. Where there were rows of riot police, people got up close and took pictures, some having their friends pose in front. It was quite amazing actually. The police for their part looked quite nervous, as best I could tell. For all the training, this must have been as new to them as it was to the demonstrators.

The whole thing was really quite harmless. We started at Queen's Park (College and University) moved south to Queen. Once we got to Queen and University, we couldn't go anywhere but either back where we came from or west. As we walked, there was a line full of police on the south side of the street in their regular attire except they were wearing yellow jackets and behind them was a row of police in riot gear. The police in the front didn't seem to be holding a line, and people, mostly the touristy folks like myself, were taking pictures of the riot gear police. We could have been at a museum and the riot police were the exhibits.

When I got to Queen and Spadina, there certainly was a restlessness within the crowd. With Queen blocked off from going any further west and the south of Spadina blocked off. There was nowhere else to go, but back to Queen's Park, which was not a far walk at this point. It was while I was making note of this that a flare went off. It was the group that I noticed before wearing the black (and would later become infamous as The Black Bloc or anarchists), but it was at this point that they started either lounging at the intersection or making their way back east on Queen. Again, I didn't put two and two together... that the flare was a signal, but it seemed, in retrospect, that was indeed the case.

By the time I got back to Queens Park, everything seemed quite merry. The large masses of people had evolved into a more dispersed crowd. Protests were still going on, but in a much more decentralized fashion. Okay, well, what else could there possibly be to see? Noting that I did have some work to do, I decided to call it a day. I might as well catch the last few minutes of the Ghana Vs. US game. I made my way to my brother's place to watch the game. I guess he didn't miss much. Glibly explaining to him that Toronto was a great place to respectfully demonstrate, the sidebar in the soccer match started reporting the violence literally minutes after I entered. I can go into all that, but quite frankly, so many others have done that rather well.

I am glad my entire experience of the G20 summit was one of peaceful demonstrations. It was impressive to be of the opinion for a few hours that Toronto was a great place to respectfully reflect your displeasure on a grassroots level. The importance of such an institution (and I'll call it that) is vital to our democracy. And, honestly, the police officers working the streets were great, as best as I could tell. For such a pain of a job, they did really well.

Of the demonstrations, they were some great stories and some ones that just made me roll my eyes. The team at the Canadian Labour Congress was by far the most organized, but their neon orange with yellow striped security vests initially confused me as to whether they were working the summit or protesting it. One demonstration I do want to give respect to are the Vietnamese. Their protest against human rights violations in Vietnam and persecution of bloggers was a story I, myself, had not been familiar with. Quite frankly, their grievances were quite similar to the ones put forth by the Iranians, who were also being represented. While we are always conscious of Iran, the Vietnamese story is not one we hear about.

Although it might not seem that way to some, learning of an injustice makes me realize that the peaceful protests did bring victory this G20 weekend.