Whose Streets? Our Streets?

I sat glued to the TV for the past two days, watching the mess otherwise know as the G20 play out on the streets of my city. Stories of inhumane treatment of protesters are the most distressing, and the violence from all sides is chilling. And I’m trying to make sense of it all, not laying blame, but figuring out, as much as I can, why it all played out the way it did.

The first thing to note, and something which the majority of protesters did not seem to understand, is that the right to peaceful protest and the right to public assembly does not come with the right to break other laws. The original protest march on Saturday was legal because organizers got the appropriate permits to take over the streets. The prayer vigil and march on Sunday morning was legal because organizers got a permit to march from Church and Wellesley to King and Bay. Once the police cleared the crowd at King & Bay mid-afternoon (at which point the crowd had shifted from the original prayer march protesters to a mixed crowd), taking over the streets was no longer legal. The decision to head west, instead of dispersing northward interrupted the flow of traffic – thus causing all of the protesters marching to be in breach of the law, as they were impeding traffic flow. Just because you were legally allowed to walk down the middle of Queen Street on Saturday, doesn’t mean it’s legal for you to do it on Sunday, “peaceful protest” or not.

I have a concern with people claiming their human rights to free speech were violated with regards to this issue.

Continue reading “Whose Streets? Our Streets?”