The people on the streets of Toronto during the G8/G20 were mostly ordinary citizens unprepared for the extraordinarily harsh police response that greeted the protest. Fifth Estate documents their stories in an eye-opening documentary.
They say it never happens in Canada. That’s what they say. Yes, everywhere else in the world, but Canada? C’mon. Canadians just don’t get that passionate about issues.
But Canadians did get passionate when last year’s G8/G20 meeting took place during the month of Huntsville, Ontario. They did take to the streets en masse in and around Toronto’s downtown G20 security zone. And maybe they expected some push-back from the powers that be, but most never expected the level of violence and suppression of human rights that actually took place when leaders of the world’s 20 wealthiest countries met to discuss issues that affect humanity.
So just in case anyone is still under the impression that these kinds of mass violations of human rights only happen in distant dictatorships, it’s worth watching the Fifth Estate’s telling documentary, “You Should’ve Stayed at Home” which documents the story of “ordinary citizens on the streets at Toronto 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.”
Watch “You Should’ve Stayed at Home”
Video Credits
Fifth Estate, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
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I experienced something similar here in St. Paul, Minnesota during the 2008 Republican National Convention. Living about a mile and a half from downtown, where the convention was held, I got a close up view of it all. Over 800 people were arrested during the protests, including some journalists, and of those, I think 7 or 8 ended up being charged with anything.
The city felt like a police state. Helicopters flew overhead 24/7 for a week. Police from all over the country stood at every intersection. A year later, the county sheriff admitted that they had planted “fake protesters” to stir people up and spy on a few of the groups considered “most radical.”
It was all quite chilling.