Riot In T.O.: How It All Went Down At The G-20

Zig-Zag was there, and got away to write about it. A few notes:

1) Probably the most interesting bit is his schematic of the Black Bloc rampage:

2) On the numbers taking part:

Finally I stumbled upon the 'break-away' march as it neared the downtown financial district, going south on Bay Street. There were perhaps 600-700 persons, and I could see a loose and chaotic Black Bloc was there as well. Black-clad affinity groups were spread throughout
one section of the march, but there were many other militants with masks as well. Many people had no masks, or just a bandana over their lower face (not an adequate disguise, by the way).

Elsewhere, Zig-Zag sets the actual number of Black Bloc members at 100-150.

3) One iconic moment occurred during the protests when riot police attack a crowd that had just finished singing O' Canada. The youtube clip is here. Ziggy's remarks:

After an hour of this, the OPP retreated and left the area, marching out as they had come in, in columns of two. The crowd surged back across Spadina and into the block where the damaged cars were. Then the second police car was set on fire to cheers from the crowd (most of whom weren't protesters). After fifteen minutes of the cop car burning, the OPP returned. Then more cops, including horse-mounted pigs and buses of RCMP and Newfoundland Constabulary arrived, all dressed in full riot gear (a truly national effort).

[..]

At one point, a person suggested the crowd sing 'Oh Canada' (the national anthem), as if the spirit of patriotism would endear them to the line of riot cops facing them. Another fool walked to the front and sat on the street, with his back to the cops, and persuaded others to join him. As soon as they finished singing the anthem, the riot cops charge, trampling several.

4) There was no police conspiracy, as in the case of the Montebello summit, where police infiltrators were identified on the basis of their footwear by...well...me. In Toronto, incompetence and immobility were the order of the day:

The ability of the bloc to move quickly enabled it to outmaneuver the riot cops, who were hampered by a slow response time. Wearing up to 80-90 pounds of gear, they could not move fast enough over any distance. Just to get to an area required moving chartered buses or
convoys of mini-vans through city streets (not an easy task even under normal traffic conditions).

I observed one convoy of vans, for example, moving to stop the protest that was eventually mass arrested on Saturday night (at the Novotel Hotel). After the protest had passed south down Yonge St., the convoy rolled up and stopped at an intersection. A pig got out of the lead vehicle and began walking back, telling others he had extra batteries for their radios. Pigs got out of the vehicles and made last-minute adjustments of their gear, then got back in. The whole process took some 5-10 minutes.

5) The Bloc treats other protesters as, essentially, human shields. Zig-Zag even makes reference to the Afghan/Iraq insurgency.

6) Zig-Zag discusses a number of "solidarity attacks" in the wake of the summit. It's maybe significant that the bombing of the armed forces base in Trois-Rivières by the Résistance Internationaliste is not mentioned. Maybe they're not part of "the movement"?

So there you have it.

H/t