US consulate "no protest zone" liberated

by: TASC

Toronto: About 15 members of Toronto Action for Social Change (TASC), Hamilton Action for Social Change, and Homes not Bombs gathered today (20 March) and risked arrest by openly defying the policy which has prohibited such gatherings in front of the US consulate since 11 September 2001. (Since that date, groups which have attempted to hold protests there have been told to cross over to the other side of University Avenue).

Despite the presence of some two dozen Metro Police, RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or "Mounties"), private security, members of the Anti-Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence squad, and an obviously eager police wagon crew, no arrests were made.
Instead, the group stood for over an hour in the "first day of spring" rain, handing out flyers and joking that just as Czechoslovakia enjoyed a 1968 Prague Spring of liberation, perhaps this was one small signal of hope for a 2002 Toronto Spring.

Some of the protesters dialogued with police and RCMP, asking why there was a sudden turnaround on the issue of pavement protests since we had decided to make an issue of the no-protest zone. Hems and haws were the order of the response, however, with the explanation that "there's been no turnaround," "we didn't have details of that demo" where people were turned away, or "there is no policy, it's a case-by-case threat determination" which allows police to decide how to respond to demos.

On St Valentine's Eve last month, a group of about a dozen people had attempted to deliver a letter to the consul general regarding the detention of numerous Canadians held in US prisons as a result of racial profiling, but were denied access to the sidewalk in front of the building by police and RCMP who explained this was now standard procedure to "protect" everyone concerned. (Once the placards and banners had come down, though, the group was allowed to pass in front of the building on the way to the subway-hence, the issue was not a question of security, but the type of message we were bringing).
The group subsequently wrote to the consul general explaining why they would return in defiance of this policy. That letter was immediately passed to the RCMP.

Plans for today's demo were not as well received as we had originally hoped; some questioned the wisdom of going to the consulate because they felt the security hysteria would cloud the issue of freedom of speech and assembly, while others felt we should have gone through a process of approaching the police brass to get some sort of determination about who, exactly, should be allowed in front of the building.

In the end, however, we felt that this was a matter of principle, and that the security hysteria which has been responsible for the denial of civil liberties to thousands of people across North America-largely of Middle Eastern or Arabic background or Muslim faith, as well as those who protest these violations-should be confronted head-on by simply showing up at the public pavement in front of the consulate with our messages about ending the war and releasing political and racial profiling detainees. We also felt that this should not be a matter of talking with the police beforehand, because standing on a pavement with a placard should not be a matter up for discussion with armed agents of the state. Such an approach, we feel, almost instantly declares us somehow guilty of wanting to do something for which approval would hopefully be granted by those in power.

Whether the pavement will remain a liberated space is, of course, up to all of us. Today was a test which worked, but we must continue to reclaim public space regardless of how unpopular or difficult the consequences.

Contact
TASC, PO Box 73620, 509 St Clair Ave West, Toronto, ON M6C 1C0, Canada (email tasc@web.ca).