On Agents Provocateur

Governments have found over the years that it works for them. They know they need legitimacy to stay in power over time, and movement violence gives them that legitimacy, what is often called "the moral high ground." They also need fear to stay in power, and movement violence increases the fear in the body politic. They work overtime to divide the movement, and movement violence is a great divider. And, perhaps most important, they desperately want to prevent new allies from joining the movement, and a frequent outcome of movement violence -- even property destruction -- is that potential allies stay away in droves.

(from http://www.trainingforchange.org/diversity_of_tactics)

My Experience with the G20 Protest

This was our office building at 211 Yonge Street a few days before the G20 even started.

Shortly after the first police cruiser was set on fire at King and Bay on Saturday, the angry mob moved up Yonge Street and past our building. We got to witness it first hand from the second storey window (our office is above the Nail Shoppe that you can see in the picture)

Fortunately (for us), at that point the mob was still only about 150 people of whom about 25 were “black bloc” protesters whose goal seemed to be to harm American/corporate businesses and banks, as well as jewellery stores apparently (something to do with “blood diamonds” we heard someone yell) They smashed the Starbucks across the street from us, then moved on north. There’s a video someone posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwzXRkFe9U4

the starbucks across from my office

I walked to work today and saw all of the destruction on Yonge between College and Adelaide, again mostly banks and American corporate businesses, no independent businesses seemed to be harmed except for two jewellery stores. It was all very bizarre.