On Friday February 25 at 9 pm ET, the CBC’s the fifth estate will present its documentary ‘You Should Have Stayed At Home’ about the G20 summit in Toronto.
The CBC website notes, “They were the most unlikely of troublemakers. There were thousands of ordinary citizens on the streets at Toronto’s G20 Summit marching peacefully until the police closed in and shut them down. Many had gone downtown simply to see what was going on, only to find themselves forcibly dragged away by police and locked up for hours in a makeshift detention center without timely access to lawyers or medical treatment. It’s been eight months since the G20 and the iconic images are still with us — burning police cars, rampaging mobs, the massive security presence that according to the official story is all that stood between Canada’s largest city and chaos. But that’s not the whole story of Toronto’s G20. Astonishing new images caught on camera are now emerging and they expose a troubling new picture of what happened to hundreds of ordinary citizens swept up in the huge police dragnet during those three highly-charged days last June.”
It adds, “Gillian Findlay presents a revealing new street-level perspective of what happened when thousands of police were deployed in downtown Toronto and instructed to do what was necessary to ensure the wall around the G20 Conference Centre was never breached. Exclusive eyewitness video obtained by the fifth estate brings to light startling images captured on cellphones and minicams by the innocent bystanders who found themselves on the wrong side of all that G20 ‘order’. In a rare television interview, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair explains why police took the actions they did.”
More on this – including their request for you to send in your stories, photos and videos – at http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/youshouldhavestayedathome/.
THE COUNCIL OF CANADIANS
On June 28, the day after the G8 summit concluded, the Council of Canadians issued a media release stating, “The Council of Canadians participated in the People First march of more than 25,000 people on Saturday, June 26. The organization shares the concerns expressed by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association about the sheer number of arrests – more than 900 – and the jail conditions experienced by those detained. We also join with Amnesty International in calling for a public inquiry into the appropriateness of police actions both prior to and during the summits.” More on this at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=4103.
Several days later we endorsed the Facebook campaign calling for a public inquiry into police actions at the G20. That’s at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=4116.
It should also be noted that on October 24 we stated that the bail conditions placed on Alex Hundert were excessive and unwarranted (his conditions included not participating in any public demonstration). Hundert had been pre-emptively arrested prior to the G20 summit. The Council of Canadians donated $1,000 to Mr. Hundert’s legal defence fund. More at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=5074.
And Ontario-Quebec organizer Mark Calzavara – along with Ed Broadbent, Winnie Ng and others – is a Trustee with the G20 Legal Defense Fund. That Fund, “exists to hold and give out funds raised to support legal costs, fees, and other associated costs of legal defense for people facing charges stemming from the June 2010 Toronto G20 Summit. The Fund strives to support those individuals who took to the streets and organized in protest of the G20 summit. The Fund is accountable to defendants, to the larger post-G20 social movement, and to the public as a whole. We believe that building movements where we support each other strengthens the struggle for social justice.” More at http://g20legaldefencefund.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/hello-world/.
