I couldn't believe my ears this morning when I found out that the Vancouver Police Chief has described the Stanley Cup rioters as "anarchists and criminals who appeared to be the same people involved in the pre-Olympic demonstrations and noted police saw many equipped with goggles, gasoline and other tools to create damage."
It is incomprehensible to me that the police chief would associate these drunken, testosterone crazed young men with people who had legitimate grounds to protest the Olympics. Protesting a decision to displace poor people and spend billions of dollars on militarizing the city of Vancouver is not the same as trashing a police car because your team lost the final hockey game of the season.
So far, the charges stemming from the Vancouver riot include: 101 arrests, with 85 charged with breach of the peace, eight charged with public intoxication and eight charged with Criminal Code offences including theft, mischief, assault with a weapon and breaking and entering.
I have been to legitimate political protests. As I wrote here, I think protest has a very legitimate place at the heart of our democracy.
When police shut down a hockey riot and then attempt to confuse the public by stating that hockey rioters are 'the same no-good types' as G20 protesters and anti-Olympic demonstrators, they are attempting to dis-empower people and manipulate honest, law-abiding people into viewing all protests as events 'like those hocket riots in Vancouver." What this does is de-legitimize protests, leaving people to conclude that all protesters are 'thugs', and that mass demonstrations are 'dangerous.'
The other reason I find this offensive is that many of the hockey rioters are obviously white and middle-class. The story of the privileged athlete lighting the police car on fire is one easy example. But, as one commenter on this newspaper story pointed out, anarchists don't buy $150 trademarked NHL jerseys.
Then when the police chief comments, he doesn't (accurately) point out that the people arrested were mainly middle-class kids who probably don't even know who the current leader of the Liberal Party is. Instead, he tars them with the 'anarchist' tag, implying that rioters are probably lower-class rabble who don't deserve Charter rights anyway.
Take for example a group of cyclists arrested during the Toronto G-20 protests. As you read this, ask yourself if hockey rioters were treated this way:
About 80 people were detained and some were seen being strip-searched in front of Parkdale Community Legal Services on Queen Street West. About 40 of them had been preparing to board a bus bound for Quebec when the police surrounded them, freelance journalist Rebecca Granofvsky-Larsen told CBC News.
The police even arrested people for having a peaceful pro-cycling demonstration.
Over the weekend, I attended the Richard Olmstead Sustainable Living Tradeshow here in Woodstock. The keynote speaker was David Coon of the Conservation Council of NB. He spoke about whether it was possible to live 'sustainably' in a world that is ecologically unsustainable.
The crux of his speech was that meaningful change can only be achieved through politics, and that our democracy is in a sorry, sorry state at present. Looking at the lack of initiative shown by our current local, provincial and national governments, I am inclined to agree with him that we have to get our politics re-assembled into something functional before we can fix our problems.
The difficulty with this is that some people benefit from a broken system, and I think we need to challenge statements like "people who were part of the Vancouver hockey riot are the same as anarchists and anti-Olympic demonstrators." In addition to being factually incorrect, statements like these lead to a further erosion of the democratic rights and process that so desperately needs revitalizing.
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