LibertasPost

After the naked protester was arrested, the riot police charged and we all had to run, even reporters like me ... we were on Queen Street and police were understandably on edge. About 100 feet from the spot where the demonstrator decided to strip, a car smouldered ... I couldn’t make out if it was a police cruiser, given how singed and blackened it was ... it was only later I discovered it was indeed a police car ... no mistaking the second vehicle almost directly opposite the smoking wreck, however. The second car was definitely a police cruiser, with the windows smashed and the body dented from where protesters had attacked it with sticks, rocks, fists and feet. Both vehicles lay abandoned near Queen Street and Spadina Avenue, in downtown Toronto. A madness of destruction on the afternoon of June 26, aimed at protesting the presence of world leaders for the G20 Summit.

All along Queen St. West—Toronto’s uber-trendy fashion and bar district—smashed windows and anarchist graffiti. Teams of glaziers calmly ignored the wild storm of riot cops in the streets to slap plywood over broken glass. A Starbucks right at Bay and Queen Streets with its window smashed completely. Ditto for a Toronto-Dominion bank standing next to the coffee shop. Further down Bay Street, countless shattered bank windows. Earlier in the day, I saw a burned out police cruiser being towed away from Bay and King Streets, in the heart of the financial district. Reports indicate four cop cars in total were demolished by the mindless mob—or more accurately, the small group of black-clad nihilists who broke off from a larger, peaceful protest against the G20. Idiots who think the best way to protest global inequality is by smashing things up ... this was not “spontaneous violence”—the core group of nihilists who performed the vandalism used hammers and baseball bats they happened to have with them and tore up tiles from the road to use as projectiles.

Nihilists who claim to be anarchists, part of the so-called “Black Bloc”—travelling like a parasite in a host body, unleashing mayhem during protests then blending back in the crowd ... black is their favourite colour, black balaclavas, black bandanas, black Doc Marten boots. Moronic rage is their favourite form of political expression.

The clock tower at Old City hall read 7:40 pm, when I decided I’d had enough ... I had taken the subway to attend the day’s event and didn’t feel like paying for a cab ride home ... to catch a train, however, I had to walk up Yonge Street to get to the Bloor station. All subway travel south of Bloor Street had been halted, by police request.
Yonge Street looked like a war zone. Between Queen and College Streets, I counted at least a dozen stores with smashed windows ... no doubt, many merchants who didn’t bother protecting their windows with plywood sheets are weeping today.

Throughout the day, I kept seeing signs and graffiti stating, “A better world is possible.”

Indeed, a better world is possible: a world without violent yobs who cover their faces while committing crimes, who substitute vandalism for analysis and equate property damage with blows against the imperialist empire. A world without wooly armchair theorists, who—though nowhere near the violent epicentre of the day’s events—feel entitled to blame the riot on police or larger socio-economic forces.

A better world in which our federal leaders don’t choose to hold an international summit in downtown Toronto—an act guaranteed to bring out every lunatic, nihilist and vandal in the country. The G8 summit, which preceded the G20 summit, was held in bucolic Huntsville, ON with nary a violent protest. Why Ottawa couldn’t have stretched the meeting to accommodate the G20 portion remains unclear. Certainly countless merchants and bank managers, dealing with broken glass, graffiti and vandalized storefront displays deserve an answer.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/0742/4737871828/