The Year is Now 1984.

unity==strength

[previously posted to facebook notes]

I can not believe how many "don't be there if it looks dangerous" and "stay at home" and "what did you expect" comments there have been in response to the G20 horror show in Toronto last week. I don't expect anyone to read this, I just need an outlet to EXPRESS something. My hands are tied, but my fingers scream across this keyboard, the only weapon I may ever possess.

I admit to tears while watching the plethora of YouTube videos documenting this surrealistic comedy of errors. It boggles my mind that I have been so naive for so many years, to think I actually lived in a land of freedom of movement and freedom of speech. To think we as Canadians were somehow better off than our neighbours to the South. I admit to many more tears over the past week, while driving in my car, while playing at the park with my young daughter, while simply sitting and staring -- an act I am not well known for, but have found myself to be in more and more since news of the G20 events first were told.

I. Feel. Powerless.

Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a farce.

SecII: ... freedom of expression, freedom of the press and of other media of communication, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association.
Sec VII: right to life, liberty, and security of the person.
Sec VIII: right from unreasonable search and seizure.
Sec IX: freedom from arbitrary detainment or imprisonment.

and all capped off by Section I:
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

DEMONSTRABLY JUSTIFIED.

People were walking home from work, home from dinner, out to gather with friends. People were exercising their freedom of movement and freedom of peaceful assembly ... and for using their Charter-given rights, they were aggressively approached, surrounded, psychologically attacked (as in told to go home, without being given a means by which to comply, and then arrested for non-compliance), and then detained without explanation for upwards of 20 hours.

This didn't happen to one, or ten people. This happened to at minimum, _ S E V E N _ H U N D R E D _ non-criminal bystanders. The criminals, or rather, the police express regret that innocent people were 'caught in the net'. If these were the odds of a fisherman's daily catch -- weeding out 700 of the wrong kind of fish, just to get 200 of the maybe kind of fish and 10 or 20 of the right kind of fish... he would not be employable for very long and his family would starve!

Heck, we even study the bystander-effect on children when related to bullying and how it can be damaging to the human psyche and future development. I certainly feel like these acts were done to my neighbours and my friends, not only my fellow Canadians, but merely my fellow human beings -- and I sat at a distance of 100km and did nothing. Could do nothing. Was powerless to assist.

How can we even consider "staying at home" as an option to AVOID what "was to be expected" from this event? Go to work, pay your taxes and don't make trouble, has been said (tongue-in-cheek) in previous comments. Does this sound like a democratic system? Did you invite the G20 to the center of Toronto? Did you choose to spend $1 billion (that we don't have) on so-called security measures which were used as a tool to harass the innocent? I certainly didn't, but then, no one asked me.

What is the solution? What is the recourse? For those who weren't even given paperwork to prove they were robbed of an entire day of their life and held in sub-standard conditions, what can be the recourse except multiple hours and dollars in long, drawn-out court appeals, which will never actually make up for the events that occurred.

The time for action has come.

If there truly are masses of people ready to take back their freedoms then we need to get organized, unify and choose to stop. As in -- stop using banks, stop paying bills, stop purchasing, stop giving them the means by which to control us, the money that funds their unwarranted expenditures and all-sweeping decision making.

I know its not really that easy -- you need a roof and ... electricity and food and running water, etc, etc, etc .......

But if millions can find a way to survive it in third world nations ..... why must we in the civilized (read: comfortable) world continue to be the fodder for their canons and funding all they do? We go to work, we pay taxes, those in power do what they want and when we disagree, they don't listen... but we continue to go to work and fund their decisions.

Getting educated about your rights is still important, but the time for getting ready to fight has come and gone. The fight is already upon us, and from the monotonous responses to the recent injustices, it is overtly apparent that long-standing propaganda and main-stream news agency are winning the silent war. Exercise your freedom. Words and placards and flowers and peace ... will get us nowhere, or, as we've just witnessed, will get us unlawfully removed and detained. ACTION is where its at, but nothing says it must be _violent_ action. Can it not simply be us saying enough is enough is enough?