2011-11-29
Peter Small
It was the final meeting of the top anti-G20 anarchists in Toronto last year.
They were putting the finishing touches to a variety of anti-summit strategies, and were especially concerned about how to accommodate “smashy smashy” vandalism without endangering peaceful demonstrators.
“We believe in diversity of tactics,” said participant Julia Kerr.
“Anything goes,” said Adam Lewis, one of the leading speakers. “Like do what you need to do to bring the heat down on the security state and the security apparatus.”
On Friday, a provincial court judge allowed media access to a CD and transcript of the meeting, surreptitiously taped by an undercover OPP officer, Brenda Carey, who posed as a dedicated activist and won their trust.
Justice Gerald Lapkin released the exhibits because trials are ended for 17 members of the group.
Lewis, 23, Alex Hundert, 31, Leah Henderson, 27, Amanda Hiscocks, 37, Peter Hopperton, 25, and Eric Lankin, 24, pleaded guilty last Tuesday to counselling indictable offences.
Charges were dropped against 11 others: Kerr, 28, Patrick Cadorette, 37, Monica Peters, 27, Paul Sauder, 27, Meghan Lankin, 22, William Van Driel, 27, Joanna Adamiak, 30, David Prychitka, 27, Sterling Stutz, 21, Syed Hussan, 27, and Terrance Luscombe, 25.The Spokes Council of the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance meeting at 519 Church Community Centre at 6 p.m., Friday, June 25, 2010, took place the day before rioters smashed store windows and torched cop cars in downtown Toronto.
At the meeting, participants were checked at the door and instructed by facilitator Adamiak to remove batteries from their cellphones, a security precaution.
Prychitka gave the rundown on Saturday Night Fever, a roaming dance party to “take back the streets,” starting in the Church St. gay village. “We’re looking for a lot of disco balls. We have a shipment of glow sticks. Bring banners and get ready to dance.”
Lewis outlined a plan to create “checkpoints” to prevent G20 delegates and support workers from entering the security fence surrounding the area downtown where the summit meetings were to take place. “It’s time to take back the city,” he said.
There was much talk of zones: green zones were to be safe areas for peaceful marchers; red zones for aggressive “direct action” for masked activists dressed in black — a tactic called black bloc; and orange zones were for people who wanted to support the black bloc without themselves being violent.
But meeting participants had trouble coming to a consensus about how black bloc activists were to blend in with the peaceful Saturday afternoon march organized by the Canadian Labour Congress, and when they would break away to “smash or break” things.
Meghan Lankin said her group would be “marching sort of peacefully with the march,” but, if police interfered, “we will respond and do our f—-ing s—-”
One scenario outlined by a woman was to “bring a riot into the green zone, like we break s—-, and then we have the cops that are f—-ing running after us and then we run into a green zone of people and use them as cover.”
There was much talk of escape routes if police closed in.
Cadorette said it was “highly probable” they would have to “punch through a line of cops trying to encircle us.” He wanted to know how many affinity groups, small gatherings of protesters, were committed to doing this.
Cadorette also mused about going to Bloor St. to “smash it up, which in my mind is beautiful.”
Peters ventured some marchers would stay at Queen and John Sts. “to do smashy smashy.”
“The rest of the people can . . . stay with the march and bloc up after the end and then go off and do smashy smashy if they want to,” she added. “I just love to say smashy, smashy,” she confessed, to much laughter.
Tom Malleson complained activists were discussing tactics for “hours and hours and hours and we always come back to the same things.”